Globalization and the Challenge to Unions: A Union View from Unilever India

In this phase of globalization, effective internationalism rests on the ability of the workers to build an international organization to intervene all along the supply network and the commodity chain of the multinational corporations.[more]

Class Warfare's Collateral Damage

Guest editorial by Stuart Appelbaum, president of the IUF affiliated Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union/UFCW and a vice president of the AFL-CIO.

The more than 450 workers at the Swiss company's plant were proud that Fulton was where Nestle's Quik got its start. They took even more pride that the paychecks they earned enabled them to own homes, send their kids to college and plan for their retirement. But last fall the lives of those workers, their families and everyone else in town were thrown into turmoil when Nestle USA announced it would close the Fulton factory forever.[more]

SARS: Death and Democracy in China

Addicted to secrecy, censorship and manipulation, China's new/old rulers were anxious to contain news of the medical crisis to prevent damage to the country's image and, it would appear, ensure an uninterrupted flow of visitors and investors to the Canton Export Fair. The results were deadly. The true number of cases in China may never be known, but tens of thousands of Chinese are currently under quarantine, and the number is growing daily. Censorship - the inevitable prop of all single-party rule - has again proven fatal, as it always does.[more]

Burma: Why the Boycott Continues

The Burmese military dictatorship is attempting to slip out of its isolation and regain lost economic and political ground. This cannot be allowed to happen, as the reasons for the international campaign to boycott tourism and foreign investment remain as valid as ever.[more]

IUF Support For International Union Action Against Iraq War

The IUF stands in solidarity with the trade unions around the world who have demonstrated their opposition to military action against Iraq at a time when UN weapons inspectors are pursuing multilateral efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime.[more]

Nestl� Must Drop All Compensation Claims Against Ethiopia

Creative minds at Nestl� headquarters are working overtime to minimize the public relations disaster arising from the company's pursuit of a USD 6 million compensation claim against the government of famine-stricken Ethiopia.[more]

Morgan Stanley and the New Class War

Morgan Stanley, the US-based investment banking giant, has issued a declaration of war on organized labour. In a recent "research note" to investors, Morgan Stanley US equity strategist Steve Galbraith advised them to "look for the union label�and run the other way." Pension and healthcare plans for employees, declared Galbraith, render unionized companies "toxic" to investors, and their non-union competitors should be rewarded accordingly.[more]

International Labour and the Elections in Brazil

Unions can contribute to the Workers Party victory in Brazil by actively monitoring national and international policy towards the new government � in the first instance trade and financial policy � to help give it the room and the resources it needs.[more]

Curtain Falls on Unions in Belarus

The farcical "Extraordinary Congress" of the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus (FTUB), which took place on September 19-20, formalizes the destruction of independent trade unionism under the country's authoritarian president Aleksander Lukashenko.[more]

The Corporate Program for Global Hunger: Let Them Eat GM0s

None of the commercial GM crop varieties under cultivation has shown increased yields or reduced pesticide or water consumption. GMOs have nothing to do with feeding the hungry and everything to do with feeding corporate coffers.[more]

Confusion at the ILO? China's Government Elected to Governing Body as...Worker Delegate

Enhanced recognition of China's ACFTU � an organization which refuses to defend working class victims of state repression � sends an unmistakable message to Chinese workers that their demand for independent unions must remain subordinate to another agenda.[more]

McDonald's: "Corporate Social Responsibility" as Blueprint for Union-Busting

McDonald's has now officially entered the "corporate responsibility" contest. In the guise of a social responsibility report, McDonald's has produced a manual for union-busting. "We know we are not perfect", announces company Chairman and CEO Jack Greenberg.[more]

Leaked EU Documents Show What's Next in the WTO

Confidential documents prepared by the European Commission to define the European Union�s position in the WTO negotiations on trade in services (GATS) give a flavour of what the GATS are likely to bring if corporate appetites are not curtailed.[more]

Argentina's Economic Crisis a Crisis of Democracy

The popular riots sparked by Argentina's latest austerity program have been widely described in the press as "austerity riots". It would be more accurate to call them "IMF riots", for the instant impoverishment of a considerable number of Argentine citizens is exactly what the IMF prescribed and got.[more]

Strong Unions, Safe Food

Recent food scandals in Europe have placed the issue of food safety at the forefront of public concern.[more]

WTO Doha Conference a Setback for Labour and the Poor

Dressed up in the language of a "development round" and rhetorical invocations of the commitment to poverty-alleviation is a significant victory for the proponents of corporate globalization.[more]

"Adieu Seattle?" Labour and "The War on Terrorism"

Critics of the global trade and investment system are at risk in the "War on Terrorism".[more]

Free Trade Area of the Americas: A New Corporate Offensive

FTAA will bring with it more poverty, more unemployment, more environmental degradation, more GMOs and the accelerated destruction of public services.[more]

Serbia's Frozen Revolution

Nezavisnost, founded in 1991 as an anti-war, anti-Milosevic trade union opposition, led the difficult, decade-long struggle against the nationalist insanity of the "Greater Serbia" project and its bloody consequences. As a result, it is one of a handful of organizations in Serbia today to endure and grow, untarnished by the opportunism and corruption which pervade nearly all aspects of Serbian politics and society.[more]

Davos, Protest and the Nature of the Beast

Those who sought to defend the interests of labour and broader civil society at the recent Global Economic summit in Davos have stated they were there to seek to alter the current political and economic form of globalization that has brought devastating social and economic consequences to so many. For the purposes of this commentary we shall refer to this current form of neo-liberal, capitalist globalization, as "The Beast".[more]

Social Europe or Europe Inc.?

European unions must be guaranteed the right to organize and to strike across national borders, including the right to strike in solidarity, if they are to effectively challenge the power of increasingly global employers in a Europe dominated by the logic of the market. Upward, not downward, harmonization of the right to strike is needed for this right to be securely and effectively exercised.[more]

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