http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cssgj/CSSGJ_Workshop_Transnational_solidarity.php

Transnational solidarity in times of global restructuring

an analysis of positive and negative factors of co-operation across borders.

Workshop held at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice

6th - 7th November 2008.

Globalisation has implied three core challenges for labour. First, as a result of the increasing transnationalisation of production, there has been a danger of workers in different countries competing against each other for jobs, and of different national labour movements underbidding each other for the sake of national competitiveness. Second, due to the increasing neo-liberal restructuring of the social relations of production, including also a general deregulation of labour markets, as well as movements off the land as a result of the commercialisation of agriculture, there has been rising unemployment and an expanding informalisation of work. This has lead to an ever larger gap between established labour on secure contracts and an increasingly large sector of non-established labour on precarious contracts in the periphery of the labour market. Third, neo-liberal restructuring is also more and more extended into the traditional public sector often leading to a casualisation of work in a once strongly regulated area of employment. Competition between organisations representing these different areas is as much likely as is solidarity (Bieler, Lindberg and Pillay 2008).

The purpose of this workshop is to understand the possibilities for transnational action in a better way. The emphasis is on the analysis of concrete case studies of successful as well as failed transnational solidarity. Why will workers in one workplace show solidarity with workers in a workplace in another country, be it in the same company, be it in the same industrial sector? The workshop intends to focus on the practical content of solidarity and is, therefore, interested in the broad diversity of transnational action and the way it is rooted within the workplace and/or local community. This will include a focus on trade unions, but also other social movements/NGOs. The latter are often equally if not more important as far as the organisation of non-established labour and the resistance to public sector restructuring are concerned.

We are interested in paper proposals, which cover one of the following aspects of potential transnational solidarity:

case studies of transnational co-operation by national trade unions;

case studies of co-operation between trade unions and social movements at the national and/or international level;

case studies on regional and transnational trade union federations such as the European Trade Union Confederation or the International Trade Union Confederation, but also the European industry federations and the Global union federations;

case studies of spontaneous labour mobilisation inside as well as outside official trade unions;

theoretical papers on how we may conceptualise the inter-trade union co-operation as well as co-operation between trade unions and social movements across borders;

Papers can cover success stories as well as failures. The main emphasis of the workshop is on understanding better the possibilities for, but also the obstacles to, transnational solidarity in the resistance to neo-liberal restructuring. We are equally interested in paper givers from an academic, a trade union or a social movement/activist background. The workshop intends to bridge the academic – activist divide.

Please send all paper proposals to This Email address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or This Email address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by no later than 27 June 2008. An indication of interest well in advance of that date will be much appreciated. The workshop will take place at Nottingham University, UK on Thursday, 6 November and Friday, 7 November 2008.

References

Bieler A., I. Lindberg and D. Pillay (2008) ‘What future strategy for the global working class? The need for a new historical subject’, in A. Bieler, I. Lindberg and D. Pillay (eds.) Labour and the Challenges of Globalisation: What prospects for transnational solidarity? London: Pluto Press.