Patch-work solidarity: describing and explaining US and European labour internationalism

Abstract

This paper describes and explains the broad patterns of union internationalism championed by Europe and US labour unions. Descriptively, historical evidence reveals that cross-national organizing and cooperation among US and European unions vary most significantly on three dimensions: (1) despite being modest and taking a back-seat to national priorities, both US and European unions have meaningfully increased their cross-border ties since the 1970s; (2) these unions have prioritized intra-regional ties over developing-country or transatlantic coordination; and (3) US unions are more interested in labour rights policies and basic organizing, including somewhat more attention to developing-country and transatlantic initiatives, while their European counterparts focus on broader welfare policy and collective bargaining in their regional setting. Analytically, the argument is that such patch-work internationalism reflects not only patterns of economic‘globalization’, but also historical-institutional features of domestic and international politics: Since transnationalism is difficult and costly for unions, unions invest scarce resources (organizers, money, political capital) on transnational activities to the degree that national opportunity structures limit policy, bargaining, and organizing benefits,and/orthat one or another international setting promises significant new opportunities for achieving such benefits.