Conference on Organized labour
Responses to the Conference Paper
Nigel Haworth
University of Auckland, New Zealand.
23 October 1998
News of your initiative has just arrived on my e-mail and I am keen to make a somewhat hasty contribution. However, at this stage I would like to focus on the later issues associated with the challenge of a hostile economic environment.
Let me make some preliminary points. In terms of approach, I think that it is vital that the traditional global scope of ILO activity be maintained in this area. At the recent IRRA conference in Bologna, the continuing eurocentrism (and US focus) in debate meant that the Asian financial crisis, surely the most significant current challenge to labour internationally, might not have existed. On our side of the globe, the immediacy of the crisis, and its implications for labour, have been central for some 15 months.
Also in terms of approach, it is important that we begin conceptual work which captures the implications of internationalisation for labour relations in general and labour in particular. This might seem to be a strange and provocative comment in the light of, for example, the flexibility debate, or the work in place on MNC subsidiaries, or on the EU and labour. However, I suggest that much of this work has involved an extension of the traditional domestic models of labour relations into an international environment.
Labour relations theory and analyses of labour are still lagging in terms of their response to internationalisation, nowhere more obviously than in the area of the conceptualisation of labour's response to internationalisation. In this area, response's have been primarily institutional, rather than based on theory or model-building. I believe that the train of analysis begun with Levinson (1972) and continuing, for example, through Olle and Schoeller (1977), Haworth and Ramsay (1983), Waterman (1984), Harrod (1988) and on is a unique attempt to theorise labour's responses to internationalisation in a way which is analytically robust and orientated to action. The key issue raised in this debate is whether labour can respond to internationalisation in a way commensurate with Capital's response. Without clear perspectives on this issue, labour action may be ineffectual or misguided.
A key feature of this debate is the location of labour's response to internationalisation (and the changing economic environment). Clearly, domestic activity is but one location. Increasingly, regional and global action is being considered and undertaken. If we assume the emergence of some conceptual rigout around labour's response to internationalisation, institutional and organizational issues become important. At the domestic level, whilst we have much work available on labour responses to neo-liberalism, the implications of the WTO regime, the MAI and regional integration around trade liberalisation are much less researched.
Regionally, the research on the EU needs to be complemented by research on NAFTA, APEC, MERCOSUR and other mechanisms for regional or international integration as they carry with them impacts on labour. Central to this are two questions - the representation of labour in such processes, and the social clause/core standards debate. The international dominance of the ICFTU in international trade union activity, and the development of its policies, is an important area of discussion. The issue of, for example, China, the ACFTU and the ICFTU has major implications in the Asia-Pacific region. The role of the ILO, WTO and other institutions around the standards debate is another. An endless reworking of the theoretical debate about standards may be unnecessary, particularly since the OECD published their exhaustive overview (Fields 1994), but the implementation of standards regimes warrants research.
Research into the internationalisation of labour's responses is usefully considered against the backdrop of international structural adjustment. One of the key lessons of the Asian crisis is that effective responses must involve civil society and move beyond simple economic adjustment measures.
How labour, as a key component of civil society, fits into this broader strategy is not clear outside the EU framework ( and even there, things are not entirely transparent). Following World bank, IMF and ILO initiatives, productive work might be undertaken in assessing the involvement of labour (as domestically-organized or as represented by, for example, the ICFTU) in structural adjustment. The contemporary debate is on quite different territory from that found in structural adjustment in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s in which labour had little voice.
I conclude on a couple of methodological issues. First, new or further developed conceptualisations of labour in an internationalised environment are a sine qua non for effective future research. Second, macro-level and institutional analyses need to be complemented by detailed micro-studies of the impact of internationalisation on labour at enterprise and industry levels(production techniques, labour-management relations etc). Some work in this area is in place.
G Fields (1994) Trade and Labour Standards: A Review of Issues, OECD, Paris
R Harrod (1988) "'Social Relations of Production, Systems of Labour Control and Third World Trade Unions' in R Southall (Ed) Trade Unions and
the New Industrialisation of the Third World U of Ottawa Press/Zed Press.
N Haworth and H Ramsay (1988) 'Workers of the World Untied: International
Capital and some Dilemmas in Industrial Democracy' in Southall (Ed) Op cit
C Levinson (1972) International Trade Unionism, Allen and Unwin, London
W Olle and W Schoeller (1977) 'World Market Competition and Restrictions
upon International Trade Union Policies' Capital and Class 2
P Waterman (Ed) (1984) For a New Labour Internationalism, ILERI, The Hague
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