During the 1990s deepening neoliberal integration, the end of the Cold War, the rise of more activist unions in the Global South, imaginative examples of global collaboration, and the decline or compromise of communist and socialist parties that had historically prioritised labour, offered a window of opportunity for international union politics. Why is it, then, that almost thirty years later the comprehensive network of global and regional union organisations continues to play a marginal role, even though they are clearly aware of these developments and have responded to them in creative ways? The answer to this question continues to have important practical and theoretical implications. Activists would still like to know whether global union organisations are basically sound but need to be reformed or are fundamentally unsuitable for a vital labour politics.1
In order to provide a systematic comparison of the various periods of global union organisations, I focus on two dimensions. For the sake of convenience, I call one dimension external and the other internal. Externally, global union organisations may be distinguished in terms of the varying approaches towards capitalism and the state system, providing us with a good proxy for the ideological preferences of global unions. Internally they vary, amongst other things, in terms of membership and capabilities in relation to their members. Here, I ask whether they have been more or less federal or confederal. In the case of federal organisations, members have transferred some supranational authority to these organisations. This, in turn, reflects whether the members have found common ground and are willing to temper some of their particularistic prioritiesâwhich remain dominant in the case of confederal organisations.2
For the purposes of this chapter I have identified five periods reflecting, as much as possible, major patterns in transborder union politics. The first covers up to the late 1880s, just before the âNewâ International (later known as the Second International, SSI) and the first International Trade Secretariat (ITS) were formed. I do not discuss this period here.3 The second covers from 1889 to the end of World War I and the deep divisions in the world socialist and labour movements that followed the Soviet Revolution. The emergence of the ITSs and the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) are the major results of this period. The third covers from the reconstitution of the IFTU in 1919 to the split of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949. The efforts at making the IFTU and the WFTU more federal and the reasons behind their ultimate failure are central during this time. The fourth covers the Cold War, from 1949 to the collapse of the Soviet Union (1989â1991), and it is marked by the hegemonic role of the American Federation of LaborâCongress of Industrial Organizations (AFLâCIO). This period could well be subdivided into a subperiod up to the very late 1960s which was fully shaped by the Cold War, and thus the AFLâCIO and the Soviet Communist Party, while the period from the early 1970s to the end of the Cold War witnessed some competition within the capitalist world as globalisation re-emerged and social democratic unions reasserted their global role. The last period covers the years since the end of the Cold War and is characterised by both a slow healing of some historical divisions within the labour movement and the onslaught of global hyper-liberalismâmore recently challenged by nativism. One could also subdivide this whole eraâfrom the middle of the nineteenth century to the presentâinto an sub-era during which union organizations were primarily Northern and thus internationalâperhaps as late as a few decades agoâand a more recent one during which they have become more, if not completely, global.
From 1889 to 1919: Resisting Capitalist Hegemony, Contesting Labour Politics
By the early 1890s there were in place a number of national union centres and parties, while states had implemented or were considering domestic labour policies. Domestically, the increased role of parliaments led unions and parties to further place their energies on reforming domestic politics; not an unreasonable strategy.4 The most important development of this period, from the point of view of labour politics, was the emergence to hegemony within Continental radicalism of the German Social Democratic Party.5
Internationally, states started negotiating labour legislation, with the first intergovernmental meeting on the subject occurring in 1890, a year after the first meeting of the Socialist International. Precious little was accomplished at the international level before 1919, while the direct participation of unions in policy-making was kept to a minimum. The representation of labour, instead, passed to policy professionals generally not associated with unions and many hostile to them. These professionals soon formed the International Association for Labour Legislation and its International Labour Office.6
The âNewâ [Second] Socialist International was timidly conceived in 1889, even though it was envisioned as a successor of the First International.7 While the First International included a number of unions, the Second International consisted of social democratic parties. Compared to the social democratic core of the Second International, then, the ideological range of unions was broader, with British trade unionists, AFL craft unionists, French syndicalists, as well as various Christian and anarchist labour organisations, playing a role in shaping international union organisations before World War I.
This divergence between parties and unions led to the formation of the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres in 1901. The Secretariat was formed under the political and organisational shadow of the Second International in order to accommodate both socialist trade unions as well as unions with no parties, such as the French Confédération Générale du Travail and the AFL, or with weak parties, such as the British trade unions. The Secretariat adopted a policy of single membership from every country, a policy that was biased in favour of social democratic unions and clearly against radical syndicalists, where the two were competing for primacy.8
In the period up to World War I the Secretariat, which became the IFTU in 1913, focused on the gathering and dissemination of information about labour unions and the creation of focal sources of information and communication.9 Establishing a common discourse within the IFTU proved more challenging than establishing an umbrella organisation. Neither the British unions nor the AFL ever adopted socialism nor were they comfortable with the union-party strategy of the Germans. The Secretariat did have an impact on French and US syndicalism, however.10 This it did in two different ways. First, it blunted the more militant trans-societalism of the syndicalists; second, it helped transform the domestic balance away from radical syndicalism.
Beginning in 1889, a number of sectoral international labour organisations were formed, known as the ITS.11 By 1914, there were 28 Secretariats, 24 of them based in Germany. They were overwhelmingly European, but after 1904 a growing number of US unions joined. The Secretariats were organised across craft lines and brought together national labour organisations. More than one national organisation was allowed only in exceptional circumstances. As the case of one of the best organised amongst them suggests, that of the typographers, the members were hesitant to establish strong federal organisations.12 This reflected both the misgivings of the Social Democrats as well as the concern of the British trade unions, and increasingly the AFL, that strong ITSs would further enhance the hegemony of the German unions.
During the period before World War I the ITSs were clearinghouses limited to trade unionist activities. Support activities were exceptional and there were no efforts at common organising campaigns. Some of them, particularly the International Transport Federation, were becoming more centralised and streamlined but at no time in their early, or subsequent, history did the ITSs organize themselves as federal or trans-societal unions.
It is fair to say that by World War I the unions that dominated the trade secretariats and the IFTU did not intend to overthrow capitalism or challenge the nationalisation of industrial relations. Nor, as it turned out, did they challenge the nationalism of their countries. In general, then, the nature of international labour organisations was affected by the increasing role of the domestic arena in labour politics as well as ideological and strategic differences amongst unions. There was no a priori external reason, in my view, why global union organisations should have ended up as confederal and intersocietal as they did, as opposed to becoming federal. This was the product of particular historical dynamics in a part of the world that was actually quite closely linked infrastructurally and which shared transnational networks going back decades.
The Long Interwar Period, 1919â1949: Contesting World Politics and Each Other
While the interwar period was one of increased statism, it should not escape our attention that this was also an era during which transnational societal transformations and contestations were at the roots of state transformations.13 The USSR, Italy, Germany, Spain, a number of South American countries and many other states were rendered powerful in the hands of victorious societal forces rather than through some internal organisational dynamics.
The impact of state policies on labour during this period ranges from the adoption of domestic and international policies to the forcible dissolution or corporatisation of unions. In addition, the polarisation of international politics was as much internal as external to labour organisations. It was during this era that some of the strongest labour and related organisations came into existence and contested global and national labour politics, if ultimately to the detriment of all contestants except the AFL.
The IFTU was formally reconstituted at the Amsterdam Congress of 1919, in the first international trade union congress ever held.14 Organisationally it brought together the national centres of the member countries. In the immediate post-war years the IFTU was active and determined in establishing its hegemonic role within the labour movement, taking its position at the International Labour Organization (ILO) as the representative of labour, advancing proposals for post-war reconstruction and engaging in major actions in response to policies in Hungary and Poland...