Documents Global Union Federation 40 results

"Questions of justice in the transition to a green economy have been raised by various social forces. Very few proposals, however, have been as focused and developed as the ‘‘just transition'' strategy proposed by global labour unions. Yet, labour unions are remarkably absent from discussions of the transition towards a green economy. This is surprising as labour unions are arguably the largest organizations in the world fighting for basic rights and more just social relations. This paper tries to advance the potential contribution of labour unions in this arena by asking: what is the full scope of ‘‘just transition'' today and how have labour unions developed and refined it over the years to render the move towards a green economy both environmentally and socially sustainable? The concept of just transition is hotly debated within labour unions and has different interpretations, and hence different strategies. The last section assesses these interpretations by means of a normative framework, which seeks to fuse political economy and political ecology. Empirically, we add to the growing literature on labour environmentalism, as well as transitions more generally. Analytically, our goal is to place the various approaches to a ‘‘just transition'' within a heuristic framework of environmental justice that is explicit about power relations when demanding justice, two themes central to this special issue. "

"During the last two decades labor unions at the national, regional, and global levels have developed environmental agendas that add to their long-standing and well-justified concerns with occupational safety and health. Yet, it is also fair to say that the internalization of environmental priorities by the broader labor movement remains tentative and contested. The goal of this article is to address three challenges encountered on the road to global union environmentalism, in each case highlighting some promising initiatives undertaken by unions in response. These are the challenges of forming a global labor agenda on the environment, of strengthening the links and deliberations among unions, particularly those in the reconfigured core of the world political economy, and of moving away from business environmentalism and in the direction of social environmentalism."

"The continuing advance of globalization, together with deepening European integration, has increased the significance of the transnational level of trade union organization and action. This study offers a comprehensive overview of the development, structure, and policies of global and European trade union federations to serve as a reference work on all the key trade union movements operating globally and in Europe. It presents an in-depth analysis of the challenges facing these organizations and their strategic and policy responses. As a handbook, this volume provides extensive and systematically presented data on transnational sectoral trade union federations. Applying an analogous structure in the presentation of both global and European levels, the study features extensive organizational profiles, portraits, and overviews. This empirical material serves to reveal recent innovations in cross-border policy instruments and strategic approaches since the 1990s. The changing profiles of international trade unions - as measured against a set of functional criteria drawn from political science - and key developments in transnational trade union activity since the start of the new century are also investigated."

"Trade unions face a range of challenges in a global world. As trade, production and consumption relations change, unions have begun to consider how they organize and operate. The argument is that for trade unions to effectively challenge key aspects of these global relations, they must take steps to rebuild the way they organize and operate at local levels. The conditions for this step are a reflective and experienced leadership, opportunities for leaders to meet each other, and for activists to develop practices of solidarity, information exchange and union cooperation with each other. To explore these themes we study a proto-typical case of inter-union coalition building. Over the last four years, three remote and local transport unions, in Victoria, Australia have developed the Victorian Group of the International Transport Federation. In doing this, these unions are building on existing forms of organization and in the process, they are reforging their relations with each other so as to have the potential to challenge international employers. "

"Globalization has adversely affected working-class organization and mobilization, increasing inequality by redistribution upwards from labour to capital. However, workers around the world are challenging their increased exploitation by globalizing corporations. In developed countries, many unions are transforming themselves to confront employer power in ways more appropriate to contemporary circumstances; in developing countries, militant new labour movements are emerging.

Drawing upon insights in anti-determinist Marxian perspectives, Verity Burgmann shows how working-class resistance is not futile, as protagonists of globalization often claim. She identifies eight characteristics of globalization harmful to workers and describes and analyses how they have responded collectively to these problems since 1990 and especially this century. With case studies from around the world, including Greece since 2008, she pays particular attention to new types of labour movement organization and mobilization that are not simply defensive reactions but are offensive and innovative responses that compel corporations or political institutions to change. Aging and less agile manifestations of the labour movement decline while new expressions of working-class organization and mobilization arise to better battle with corporate globalization."

"This article critically assesses the potential for the international regulation of temporary agency work (TAW) through building partnership between the Global Union Federations (GUFs) and major Private Employment Agencies (PrEAs). Given the limits of existing national and international regulation of TAW, particularly in developing countries, and the current deadlock in dialogue through the International Labour Organization, the argument of this article is that Transnational Private Labour Regulation (TPLR) offers a unique opportunity to establish a basis for minimum standards for temporary agency workers. This article goes on to propose three potential TPLR frameworks that, although compromised, are transparent, fair and sufficiently elastic to accommodate the distributive and political risks associated with partnership. They also offer important gains, namely increasing the competitive advantage of the PrEAs involved, minimum standards for agency workers and ‘field enlarging' strategies for the GUFs and their affiliates."