The Practice of International Labor Solidarity and the Geography of the Global Economy

Abstract

Economic geographers have neglected the international activities of workers and working class organizations. Worker invisibility has been particularly evident in explanations of the geography of foreign direct investment. Yet for over a century workers have built international labor organizations which have shaped economic and political geographies. This paper examines an international campaign waged on behalf of some 1,700 members of United Steelworkers of America Local 5668 who were locked out of an aluminum smelter in Ravenswood, West Virginia on expiration of their contract in November 1990. The lockout was part of a company plan to break the local union and operate the smelter with a non-union work force. The paper analyzes how Local 5668 and its supporters built a global solidarity network which successfully forced a multibillion-dollar transnational metals trading corporation to reinstate the locked out union workers and sign a new contract. As the paper shows, workers clearly make economic geographies through their actions. Economic geographers should pay greater empirical and theoretical attention to this fact.