A wide-ranging survey of labor’s response to globalization

Despite frequent hostility from traditionally pro-labor political parties and opposition on the part of union leaderships, the threatened demise of organized labor across the globe had been greatly exaggerated. The mid-1990s have witnessed a remarkable upsurge in workers’ militancy. From France, Germany and Belgium to Korea, Canada, and Brazil, the international labor movement has shown surprising resistance to the global reorganization of capital and the savage assaults of neoliberal state policy.

In this comprehensive study of current labor relations worldwide, Moody surveys both sides of the picket lines. He provides a measured assessment of multinational managements’ strategies to downsize, introduce flexible production and compel workers to accept less pay for more work. He emphasizes the need, in the face of these changes, for international coordination among national unions and provides examples of where and how this had been achieved.

A bracing riposte to conventional wisdom concerning the irresistible power of globalization, Labor in a Lean World is a definite account of contemporary labour relations on an international scale.

Kim Moody works on the staff of Detroit-based Labor Notes and is one of the most respected labor journalists in North America. He is the author of An Injury to All, and his U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition is forthcoming from Verso.

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 85984 104 4
£40 / US$20 / CAN$26