Trade Union Guide 2008
Workers in a global world
The turmoil of the world’s financial markets reflects the ubiquity of globalisation. But what is so often overlooked in our analysis of this phenomenon is its impact on workers.
Globalisation is demonised by much of the left as a juggernaut rolling over anything in its path for the benefit of capital. Widening inequalities between and within countries is seen as a malevolent feature of its advance. As Professor Eric Hobsbawm has written recently: “The conditions of extreme economic instability such as those created by the global free market in the 1990s is at the root of the major social and political tensions of the new century. The impact of globalisation is felt most by those who benefit from it the least”.
This year’s trade union guide seeks to question the fashionable pessimism of the antiglobalisation movements. Its contributors are not naïve enough to argue that we can reconstruct the kind of international labour coalition established for a brief period a hundred years ago. But they argue – in their differing ways – that we need not despair.
Enough is happening across the world to suggest that an unregulated free market system is no longer an unchallenged way to bring about stability and prosperity. As the authors in this guide argue – despite their obvious political differences – the world’s workers face genuine opportunities to improve their living standards and exercise their freedoms.
With contributions from Martin Wolf, Richard Freeman, Christine Buckley, Nigel Harris, John Monks, David Coats and Roger Liddle
Comprehensive contacts listings are included in the PDF
