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As corporations increasingly go global, so too are unions seeking to construct international ties and coalitions. And, increasingly, it's working, as strong union movements in European countries use their leverage to negotiate representation for their employed brethren in other nations. In the course of extolling these changes, however, Harold Meyerson offers this depressing thought:
Two mega-nations pose mega-problems for the future of global unionism, however. In China, which is increasingly the world's manufacturing belt, workers are represented, in theory, by a giant, government-controlled union whose locals are often headed by plant managers. This week, the unions are debating how to deal with China's not-really-a-union union movement; some kind of wary, conditional proto-recognition may be in the works. The other anti-union mega-nation is our own United States, a fact that increasingly poses a problem for workers everywhere as U.S.-based transnationals try to bring their union-busting practices to their far-flung facilities. At the moment, says Ryder, anti-union U.S. consultants are advising Chinese companies how to get around a mild Chinese labor-rights law that takes effect Jan. 1.American exceptionalism never rests, I fear. For more on the size and power of America's anti-union movement, take a look at this Center for American Progress report, which notes that the Bush administration, far from loathing all regulations, has actually shoveled money and authority to the arms of the government able to use regulatory law and investigatory powers to impede organizing and discredit labor.
