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Now I have :-P

Problem is, I don't know any labour union blogs.

Working Life run by Jonathan Tasini and the Labor Research Association.

There have been preliminary moves in this direction.  The first round involved European and North American unions  Amicus (UK) IG Metall (DE) and Steelworker's and Machinists (US)

The move, to be announced this week, is seen by union leaders as the first step towards creating a single union that can present a united front to multinational companies.

Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, said: 'Our aim is to create a powerful single union that can transcend borders to challenge the global forces of capital. I envisage a functioning, if loosely federal, multinational organisation within the next decade.'

Amicus is itself planning to merge with the Transport & General Workers' Union in May to create a 2 million-strong labour organisation. Between IG-Metall's 2.4 million members, the USW's 1.2 million and 730,000 at the Machinists', a merger would create an organisation with some 6.3 million members.

Up until the 1980's the United AutoWorkers (UAW) represented workers in both the US and Canada, but the Canadians split off wanting to take a harder line.  Because there's government healthcare in Canada, they were able to get new contracts that transferred jobs out of the US because Canadian labor costs (wages + benefits) were lower than in the US.

This has changed with the last contract, so that US labor costs are lower, and will likely result in a long, and pointless strike by the CAW (Canadian Autoworkers) in their 2008 negotiations.  Many plants that are north of the border will likely be transferred back into the US to take advantage of the health care fix negotiated in the contract and the weakening US dollar relative to the looney.

In May of 2007, the UAW hosted autoworker's unions from 7 nations in the first of what will hopefully become a series of international labor strategy meetings.

"My biggest fear is that if we don't do something to develop a global strategy, then workers around the world will become less and less relevant to the process," said UAW Vice President Terry Thurman, who directs the union's National Organizing Department and led the May 22-24 meeting.

"What do we hope to accomplish? It's really quite simple. We must take direct action, finalize a joint strategy and understand that we cannot take care of our workers without bringing up the rest of the world. We have got to do this," Thurman said.

Hosted by the UAW and the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, this historic meeting was the first time international trade unions from eight countries, including the United States, had gathered at Solidarity House, the union's headquarters in Detroit, to focus on coordinated organizing strategies.

Unionists from Argentina, Brazil, France, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand and the United Kingdom participated. (Lekubu Herman Ntlatleng, auto coordinator for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, did not attend due to illness.)

If unions were able to negotiate international contracts, the power of mulitnationals to use profits from one country to tide them over from labor action in another country.  Even a 60% international union density would have a tremendous impact.  Most car companies have 60 days of stock, something like half of which is at parking lots at the plant.  In the 2008 GM strike, the UAW president called called the strike on minutes notice.  GM wasn't expecting it, and hadn't moved cars off the plant lots, so the only stock that they had was what was on dealer lots, which is a fraction of what's on the plant lots.

The Teamster's refused to cross a picket line to move these cars.  The company tried to bring in non-union truckers at night to take the cars out during the strike, strikers were able to block the gates to prevent that from happening.  This is a huge part of why this strike lasted for something over a day instead of going on for a month.  The UAW is currently out at International Harvester, another auto parts plants.  My two cousins there have been out for going on two months.  That could have been the GM strike if not for the snap calling of the strike.

It's a different game in other companies.  For example in Germany, IG Metall has a much better bargaining position because of the peak associational model, where you have the union on one side of the table, and the employer's association representing most of that industrial sector on the other.  They're able to effectively set wages and conditions of work outside the coercion that you have in the market when a companies can play there workers across one another.

Adam Smith's comment about the combinations of masters being no less common than the combinations of servants rings to mind.  Because although the working class is often divided, the corporate management shows strong class solidarity whenever there's a strike.  Even across borders.  The working class needs the same.


And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

Racism will be used as a tool to prevent transnational worker solidarity.

But I think the deeper problem is that the 19th century idea of 'workers' and 'bosses' is simply out-dated now, as are the politics that go with it.

To an extent that's true, of course. One of the great advantages held by corporate leadership today is that they have managed to fragment their employees by employing self-administering teams, creating a layer of sub-leaders who are both boss and worker and specialising tasks to the extent that it's hard to figure out who your 'colleague' is.

Nevertheless I think that it has been amply demonstrated here and elsewhere that the fundamental conflict of interest between the haves and the have-nots still exists, and still very much revolves around wages and working conditions (I include working conditions, because one of the ways to lower wage costs is to pay a very reasonable wage, but demand continually increased productivity - increasing efficiency, as it's called in newspeak, so that you need fewer employees).

An interesting aside is that the fragmentation into self-governing teams and project-oriented working schemes in which the individual employee/team is responsible for his/her/their own project and deadlines can be seen as a way of sneaking piece-rate pay in through the back door - another feature of the Bad Old Days before effective labour unions.

It's much easier to retool the economy along organic lines which make the old problems irrelevant than to engage in another century of confrontational smash and struggle.

I beg to differ.

If we want to bring the trans-nats under control (which I assume we do), we need trans-national tools with which to do it. Since a global government is not in sight, the only tool I can see is to hurt them where they feel it: On their bottom lines. Organised labour is a very effective way of creating leverage in that respect. If you have a less confrontational way of doing it, I'm all ears, but looking at the world today, it very much looks to me like the countries with the strongest labour unions are the countries with the strongest protections for the little guy.

- Jake

Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam

New media might change democracy. The radio and the TV did in their times. On the other hand, space travel was supposed to change the world too, and didn't.

- Jake

Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam

I don't really know what it is, but Americans have some preferential savings vehicle called 401(k). Use it.

Too bad Bush didn't manage to amend the pension system as he was more or less going to copy the Swedish model which has turned the entire population here into capitalists. Bush can't even manage the good policies.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

Not to mention the huge collective bargaining problems you would have when the members have such hugely diverging wages.

You might get it to work in the EU, with huge efforts. Or maybe only in the richer EU countries. In some formerly communist occupied countries labour unions=Satan.

I remember when GM decided to close a factory in Europe. It stood between Trollhättan (Sweden) and Rüsselsheim (Germany). Both sides initially promised not to undercut each other and then proceeded to do exactly that anyway. In the end the Swedish government launched a big infrastrucuture program for Trollhättan which convinced GM to stay here and leave Rüsselsheim.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.