Harrod, Jeffrey, and Robert O'Brien . 2002. Global Unions? Theory and Strategies of Organized Labour in the Global Political Economy

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Oct, 2004  by Andrew R. Timming

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Harrod, Jeffrey, and Robert O'Brien (eds). 2002. Global Unions? Theory and Strategies of Organized Labour in the Global Political Economy. The RIPE Series in Global Political Economy. Series eds. Otto Holman, Marianne H. Marchand, Henk Overbeek, and Marianne Franklin. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28811-8

It is often the case in the study of globalization, whether approached from the capital side or the labor side, that an interdisciplinary position makes this already blurred subject matter all the more fuzzy. However, a powerful integration of the social sciences stands out as the most laudable achievement of Global Unions?, an edited collection of work on the prospects for global unionism. For the first time since the groundbreaking works of Munck (1988), Waterman (1998), and more recently Munck and Waterman (1999), academics and nonacademics alike have access to a stimulating book on labor internationalism that is simultaneously readable and sophisticated.

Jeffrey Harrod and Robert O'Brien succeed by most scholarly standards in weaving together effectively the expertise of some of the most well-established, not to mention well-published, students of organized labor, mainly from the political economy, industrial relations, international politics, and labor economics fields, with occasional guest appearances from sociology, geography, and pedagogy. From a logical series of multiperspectival chapters arises the practical conclusion that the challenges ultimately facing the workers of the world, though formidable, can be largely managed with an internationalist shift of tactics on the part of trade unions. The collection even goes so far as to suggest that such a shift is an indispensable step toward the establishment of a broader atmosphere of international peace and harmony.

The editors are not, nor do they claim to be, pioneers in the study of global organized labor, and it is certainly not the case that, as one contributor suggests, the study of social relations within multinational firms has been ignored in past international political economy (IPE) debates. However, this important work need not be justified on the basis of its filling a lacuna in past literature. The study is valuable in relation to its efforts to rethink the implications of organized labor in at globalized and multidisciplinary context. New and old debates surrounding industrial relations are addressed thoroughly alongside an analysis of international relations. This combination of what the editors call the two "IRs" (p. 17) provides a firm theoretical framework through which the strategies of organized labor in the global political economy can be understood.

In general, the book's theoretical positions are substantiated with useful discussions of historical context as well as with relevant and up-to-date empirical content. Though their methods are largely nonstatistical, the contributors manage to draw from the appropriate secondary sources and add something new to the ongoing debate, For example, in their respective chapters Robinson, Stevis, and Wilkinson outline rich histories of labor internationalism (albeit ones that are ,generally biased toward collective action among workers in the developed world), at times by drawing from trade union reports that otherwise might not have been brought to light in mainstream academic literature. Herod's case studies on labor disputes, Hannah and Fischer's investigation of skills and training initiatives in Great Britain and Brazil, and Lambert's use of charts and statistics to bolster his discussion of business versus political and social movement unionism all exemplify instances in which appropriate empirical content is brought to bear on the underlying conceptual framework. Notably, at no point in the work do the authors sway from the central theme (although the aforementioned chapter on skills and training initiatives could have been more transnational in its perspective).

Harrod and O'Brien lead off Part I of the three-part collection with an overview of the limits and scope of organized labor within the global arena. They rationalize their internationalist reconsideration of the labor debate on the basis of two key points: first, that wade unions are still key players in the global political economy and, second, that organized labor is experiencing substantive changes that require reassessment. Transcending the orthodox economic study of transnational corporations, Louise Amoore follows with a discussion of the forms of contestation within the social relations of the firm. She argues, for example, that traditional IPE theories have failed to take into account the political and social aspects of conflict both within and between multinational firms. Jeffrey Harrod next outlines a multidisciplinary approach for the creation of what he calls art international political economy of labor (IPEL), proposing to study the global labor force "horizontally" (p. 49), that is, according to different categories and forms of work rather than on a nation-by-nation basis. Nigel Haworth and Steve Hughes in turn argue that the field of industrial relations has been unable to cope with supra-national issues, thus necessitating its eventual engagement with the fields of international relations and IPE. They then highlight the International Labor Organization (ILO) as an international industrial relations regime that has been more or less successful in extending "beyond national industrial relations systems" (p. 751).