Schmidt, Verena Trade Union Responses to Globalization: a review by the Global Union Research Network

This book provides a valuable overview of how trade unions around the world are responding to globalization. Above all, it shows how trade unions are key in influencing the rules to achieve a fairer globalization, while also playing a paramount role in implementing and enforcing these rules. Globalization has proved to be a complex and multifaceted process for workers. The strategies they develop to face its challenges must be equally so. The case studies in this volume demonstrate successful strategies undertaken by trade unions in Brazil, Bulgaria, the Caribbean, Colombia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and southern and eastern Africa. The contributors highlight issues crucial to trade unions in this period of rapid change, such as the struggle for transparent governance for a fairer globalization, the implementation of labor standards, employment creation, social protection, poverty alleviation (including meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals), and gender equality.