Documents Hilary, John 3 results

"‘Free trade' strategies have increasingly become a problem for the international labour movement. While trade unions in the North especially in manufacturing have supported free trade agreements to secure export markets for their companies, trade unions in the Global South oppose these agreements, since they often imply deindustrialisation. Especially the expansion of the free trade agenda into services, public procurement, investment, intellectual property rights as well as investor to state dispute settlement provisions are considered to be problematic.

The purpose of this volume is to understand better these dynamics underlying ‘free trade' policy-making in order to explore possibilities for transnational labour solidarity. Bringing together labour academics with trade union researchers and social movement activists, this volume moves from conceptual reflections about the impact of ‘free trade' via the analysis of struggles around free trade agreements to considerations of concrete alternatives."

"When the first edition of this booklet was published in spring 2014, few people could have predicted that TTIP would soon become one of the hottest political topics in Europe. TTIP has become a key political issue in many countries, with growing media interest feeding off public fear at the substantial dangers that the agreement will bring. That is why we updated our publication on TTIP by John Hilary. The concerns detailed in the first edition of our booklet remain as valid today as when it was first published, given that the central design of TTIP itself remains unchanged. For this reason, the original text is reproduced in this updated version exactly as before. Yet there have also been political developments over the past year which add to our understanding of the full meaning of TTIP and its likely impacts on society and the environment. The new preface outlines those developments, with references to primary sources, so that readers will have the full range of materials available in assessing the threat that TTIP represents."

"Opposition to capital's promotion of free trade and deregulated markets should be a unifying factor binding together the transnational labour movement. Yet the predominant stance of European trade unions has been to support the free trade agenda promoted by the European Union, while calling for social conditionalities to offset its most negative impacts. This article seeks to draw out the ambivalent positioning of the European trade union movement over and against free trade, and to explain its contradictions as evidence of tension between the instrumental and expressive tendencies faced by trade unions in their pursuit of self-interest in the globalised economy. The analysis concludes that a more radical articulation of the labour movement's political interests is required if this tension is to be resolved in favour of transnational solidarity."