Transform the trade unions

Globalisation produced a crisis in the trade union movement. As privatisation and technological change opened up new industries and services, as capitalists shifted production around the world in search of ever cheaper labour, the traditional bastions of trade unionism fell one by one. New unorganised workplaces grew. Labour, social democratic and communist parties, adopted the Washington - consensus and when in government applied it as vigorously as the right.

The first to react to this new environment were the rank and file, whose jobs and families were at risk. When the Liverpool dockers were sacked in September 1995 for refusing to break a strike by trainee youth, they flew round the world putting up picket lines to boycott scab cargo: the first literally "flying" pickets! They formed an alliance with the new environmentalist movement, Reclaim the Streets, to occupy docks and physically defend their strike from police attack.

But they were stabbed in the back by an entrenched bureaucratic leadership, determined to defend the union's assets against the courts and abide by the anti-union laws.

Meanwhile, in the States, a similar alliance with radical youth was aimed at recruiting workers in the new industries and among the migrant communities - Jobs with Justice, the Bell telecoms strike - and attacking the increasing use of sweatshops in the Global South by the likes of Gap and Nike. The 1996 UPS strike, conducted after the Teamsters for a Democratic Union had ousted the corrupt old guard, was also a landmark in turning the unions towards organising part-timers and casual labour.

The US United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers allied itself with the independent Mexican union, the FAT (Authentic Labour Front), to organise workers in both countries. Andy Stern of the SEIU....

  • Available now from:
    League for the Fifth International
    BCM 7750
    London WC1N 3XX

£3 (GBP) - UK
£4 (GBP) - Europe
£6 (GBP) - Rest of the world

Make cheques or International Money Order payable to: MRCI
Price includes postage and packaging