Transnational Trade Unionism: Building Union Power, edited by Peter Fairbrother, Christian Lévesque and Marc‐Antonin Hennebert. Routledge, London, 2013, 304 pp., ISBN: 978 0 415 81880 3, £80.00, hardback.
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12087 |
| Author | Matthew Lloyd‐Cape |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
employer’s anti-union behaviour, as well as massive informalization and a highly
divided local union landscape based on the countless divisions of caste, religion,
status, region and language, forced the UNI to reorient its strategy towards the state.
All in all, McCallum’s book is an important contribution to our understanding of
both the functioning and significance of comprehensive campaigns and GFAs. It
convincingly argues that local unions must not be excluded from analyses of labour
transnationalism. ‘Global union strategies’, McCallum concludes, ‘tend to reconfig-
ure local labor movements’ while at the same time ‘viable transnationalism depends
on actors enforcing local rules’ (p. 146).
JENNY JUNGEHÜLSING
Universität Kassel
Reference
Brinkmann, U., Choi, H.-L., Detje, R., Dörre, K., Holst, H., Karakayali, S. and
Schmalstieg, C. (eds.) (2008). Strategic Unionism: aus der Krise zur Erneuerung?:
Umrisse eines Forschungsprogramms. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften.
Transnational Trade Unionism: Building Union Power, edited by Peter Fairbrother,
Christian Lévesque and Marc-Antonin Hennebert. Routledge, London, 2013,
304 pp., ISBN: 978 0 415 81880 3, £80.00, hardback.
Transnational trade unionism has been the subject of renewed interest from a range
of academic disciplines in recent years, with authors applying insights from the
economic geography, global governance, political economy and social movement
literatures, alongside core industrial relations approaches. While scholarly works are
often separated by academic approach or scale of analysis, this volume embraces the
eclectic and experimental nature of trade union practices, drawing together many of
the foremost scholars working on international trade unionism. The result is a volume
rich in insightful case studies, thoughtful analysis and useful theoretical contributions,
providing an excellent overview of the contemporary field of literature, with some
pragmatic policy advice for practitioners.
The editors seek to contextualize the broad array of cross-border trade union
activity historically, geographically and with regard to level (local, national, global).
They identify three distinct periods of internationalism since the mid-nineteenth
century, with current efforts towards ‘multi-level arrangements’ (p. 10) being spurred
on by the embracing of neoliberal ideals by many governments, the increased impor-
tance of multinational corporations (MNCs) and the internationalizing role of the
EU. But the volume reaches out beyond the too-common European focus, with
contributions looking at international co-operation between advanced and develop-
ing economies on four continents. A further, less explicitly addressed variable in the
volume is sector, and case studies include a broad range of industries, from ore
extraction to car manufacturing.
Clearly, this is not a book to end in a neat two-by-two table of variables. Instead,
the authors see reason to celebrate the fact that ‘what is evident is the heterogeneity of
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812 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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