May Day 2007: Enter New Unionism - Stage Left

May Day 2007: Enter New Unionism - Stage Left

"Workers have more to celebrate this May Day than they've had for a whole generation. In fact 2007 may go down in history as the beginning of a fourth wave of trade unionism(1)", says Peter Hall-Jones, from the New Unionism network (www.newunionism.net).

"Unions have arrested their international membership decline(2) and are now going global(3). They are forging new alliances, building new structures, and joining together across borders to bring a whole new kind of pressure to bear on multinationals".

At the end of the 1970s international union membership peaked, and then went into an almost universal period of decline. However the endless doom and gloom which has bee recycled ever since did not become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Recent research(2) shows that for the last nine years membership numbers have held their ground. In fact union membership has grown in more countries than it has declined.

Far from standing still, unions have been using this time to discuss and experiment with new strategies for running a more humane form of globalisation. 2007 is the year things came off the drawing board.

The media has realised that something new is happening. In the last month alone, the following papers all ran major stories on this developing new unionism:
a.. Washington Post
b.. The New Statesman
c.. The Guardian
d.. The Spectator
e.. Christian Science Monitor
f.. International Herald Tribune (links are clickable)

Trade unionism is back, but this time it is not just the voice of rhyming protest. The new unionism is contending for the steering wheel, not the handbrake.

ENDS

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