Labor Internationalism and the Contradictions of Globalization: Or, Why the Local is Sometimes Still Important in a Global Economy

Abstract

In this paper I examine two case studies of workers fighting against transnationally organized corporations. In the first case, a 1990–1992 dispute between the United Steelworkers of America and the Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation, union workers developed an international campaign to pressure the corporation to rehire them after they had been locked out in a dispute over health and safety issues. In the second case, a 1998 dispute between the United Auto Workers and General Motors, strikes by workers at just two plants in Flint, Michigan over the corporation's plans to introduce new work rules resulted in the virtual shutdown of GM for several weeks. Drawing on these two cases, I suggest that, in challenging transnationally organized employers, workers may on some occasions best achieve their goals through engaging in practices of transnational solidarity aimed at matching the global organization of their employer (“organizing globally”), whereas on other occasions they may be able to do so through highly focused local actions (“organizing locally”) against strategic parts of a corporation. Of course, which of these two strategies is most likely to succeed in particular cases will depend on a coterie of contingencies, such as how interconnected the corporation's component parts are. However, the fact that different geographical strategies may be open to workers challenging globally organized capital means at least two things. First, some workers may not have to organize at the same geographical scale (ie globally) as corporations in order to challenge them. Second, through their choices of which strategy to pursue, workers are clearly shaping the very process of globalization itself and the new global geographies which globalization is auguring.