New Labour Internationalism Case Study of McDonald's Union Action

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International Trade Unionism in a Globalizing

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DOI: 10.1177/0143831X05054740
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International Trade Unionism in a Globalizing World: A Case

Study of New Labour Internationalism
Pablo Ghigliani
Economic and Industrial Democracy 2005; 26; 359
DOI: 10.1177/0143831X05054740
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International Trade Unionism in a
Globalizing World: A Case Study of New
Labour Internationalism
Pablo Ghigliani
De Montfort University
In recent years, scholars and activists have identified the development

of an emerging new labour internationalism (NLI), and pointed to its
impact upon the structures and practices of international trade
unionism (ITU). This article addresses this issue through a case study
of an international action opposing the labour practices of
McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast-food retailer. The evidence
reveals a complex picture. Even though many of the features of the
allegedly new labour internationalism are present, they seem to be
more a matter of form than substance.
Keywords: globalization, international campaigning, international trade unionism,

labour internationalism, McDonald’s, trade unions
Introduction
At the beginning of the 20th century, international trade unionism

(ITU) was appearing to thrive. Today, this is no longer the case.
The whole idea of internationalism faces a period of uncertainty
and restructuring (Hyman, 2002). Lee has suggested that ‘ironically,
trade union internationalism flourished when multinational capital-
ism was in its infancy’, whereas now that multinational companies
(MNCs) have effectively come to dominate the global economy,
there is a lack of ‘a vigorous international trade union movement
capable of confronting corporate power’ (Lee, 1997: 3).
In spite of the general recognition of the decline of labour during
the 1990s, several scholars as well as activists point to the seeds of
an emerging new labour internationalism (NLI) with significant
Economic and Industrial Democracy & 2005 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and
New Delhi), Vol. 26(3): 359–382.
DOI: 10.1177/0143831X05054740

360 Economic and Industrial Democracy 26(3)
consequences for the structures and strategies of traditional inter-

national trade union activity (Breitenfellner, 1997; Gallin, 2000;
Jakobsen, 2001; Lambert and Webster, 2001; Lee, 1997; Moody,
1997; Munck, 2002; Waterman, 2001a).
This article critically addresses this claim by analysing the
dynamics, limits and contradictions of an international action, a
meeting held by a group of trade unions opposing the labour prac-
tices of McDonald’s. It is important to emphasize that the article is
an exploration of NLI, not a case study on McDonald’s; therefore,
I refer to the particularities of the corporation only as necessary for
this purpose.
To achieve this goal, I first outline the basic features of the old and
new labour/union internationalism. Second, I briefly discuss the
relevance of ‘labour geography’ (Herod, 1997) in connection with
labour/union internationalism scholarship. The third section pre-
sents the methodology applied. The fourth and main section outlines
the international action under study and identifies a set of tensions
that affected its development. To conclude, some final remarks are
made regarding the emerging NLI and the interplay of the local,
regional and global scale in ITU’s strategic definitions.
Old and New Labour/Union Internationalism
Although the history of ITU overlaps with that of labour inter-

nationalism, strictly speaking the latter includes the former, which
began with the creation of the International Trade Secretariats
(ITS) by affiliating national unions operating in a particular sector
(Logue, 1980; Lorwin, 1953; Windmuller, 1980). While internation-
alist in rhetoric, and occasionally also in practice as in the struggle
for union rights and the eight-hour working day, the struggle for
social reforms was soon confined to national level (Hyman, 2002)
and ITU ‘came to mean the interrelation of national trade unions
bodies, whether this combination was to serve reformist, revolution-
ary, practical or moral goals’ (Waterman and Wills, 2001: 306).
After the Second World War, the Keynesian policies contributed
to deepening, at the national level, the relationship between trade
unions and the state in the West. At the same time, the ethos of
the Cold War brought about at the international level what has
been called trade union imperialism by which ‘internationalism
became a rhetorical cover for a politicised trade union foreign

Ghigliani: New Labour Internationalism 361
policy on behalf of Western powers and of the Soviet Union’

(Munck, 2002: 144). Nevertheless, ITU from the 1960s onwards,
particularly the ITSs, made efforts to counter the power of inter-
national capital and to launch the first steps towards multinational
collective bargaining (MNCB). Levinson (1972) established then
the classical case for this strategy by arguing for ITU and MNCB
as the only ways to confront the power of MNCs.
In sum, according to Ramsay (1997: 520), ‘networking, informa-
tion gathering and provision have been the traditional core of inter-
national union links in practice, at all levels of union organization’.
Concurrently, he also argues, MNCB became ‘the grail for the inter-
national labour movement’ (Ramsay, 1997: 520). And finally, this
author suggests, the growing role of political lobbying activity in
the European scene has arisen as another defining feature of ITU
in recent years. It is worthwhile to add that this lobbying activity
has gone far beyond Europe, for the International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has lobbied to build a mechanism
of social regulation into the framework of the emerging global
governance structures since the 1980s.
Regarding NLI, there is not yet general agreement among
scholars about its boundaries, features and potentialities; however,
broadly speaking it would be characterized by networking and
information-sharing communication, new recruiting targets and
new concerns for gender and consumer issues, the environment
and human rights (Barchiesi, 2001; Bezuidenhout, 1999; Hyman,
2002; Lambert and Webster, 2001; Lee, 1997; Moody, 1997;
Munck, 1999, 2000, 2002; Waterman, 1999, 2001a, 2001b). Basically,
it would be characterized by an opening attitude towards social
movements and community groups and, consequently, by the
increasing role of the politics of alliances and coalitions. Then, it
is argued, this NLI has ‘moved beyond a conception of transnational
collective bargaining, involving a more ‘‘social movement’’ union-
ism’ (Munck, 2002: 154). In this sense, it would comprise a complex
interaction of local, national, regional and global responses by
breaking with the traditional understanding of unions going global
to match the internationalization of capital and its globalizing
strategies (Herod, 2001; Munck, 2002). Such changes would be
linked as well with a greater concern for rank-and-file needs,
bottom-up organization building and the extension of grassroots
activity (Lambert and Webster, 2001; Moody, 1997; Munck, 1999;
Waterman, 1999, 2001b). Lastly, the seeds of NLI take a diversity

of forms; some of them well beyond international labour institutions.

But they also express themselves at all levels of union organization
from federal and sectoral bodies – such as the ICFTU and ITSs –
to national and local unions, and even company-based shop
stewards’ contacts and grassroots groups (Munck, 2002; Ramsay,
1997).
In short, while enhancing traditional core activities of ITU by the
use of new information technologies; the emerging NLI brings new
concerns and practices, transcends the conventional wisdom of
MNCB by pursuing a complex interaction between local, national,
regional and global actions, establishes narrower relationships
with other social movements, and goes beyond the conventional,
diplomatic and ritualistic interchanges of the past.
The next section considers the ‘new labour geography’, which has
a consonant orientation with NLI. Labour geography highlights the
spatial aspects of labour activity at all scales and levels and across
institutional, cultural and political dimensions.
The Relevance of a ‘Labour Geography’ for the Study of Labour/

Union Internationalism
If the preceding picture is accurate, NLI might be challenging the

traditional limits to ITU defined in the literature as mainly focusing
on the prospects for MNCB (Ramsay, 1997, 1999). Ramsay (1997:
508) has identified the main problems faced by MNCB as the
‘incompatible interests of different labour movements, especially
between the developed and less developed countries; the lack of con-
sonant legal frameworks and collective bargaining practice between
countries, making coordination extremely difficult; and absence of
more than token membership interest in international solidarity’.
If it is useful to recall these factors to evaluate whether or not they
remain problematic for the emerging NLI, it is useful to consider as
well their conceptual implications for the study of labour/union
internationalism. Herod (2003a: 501–2) stresses that any inter-
national solidarity campaign represents ‘an explicitly spatial response
to the changing geography of global capitalism within which
workers find themselves. . . . the practice of labor solidarity is, in
fact, an inherently geographical one . . . that is not only political,
social, and cultural but also spatial in nature’. The factors listed
by Ramsay make this point clear; therefore, ‘if theorizing is about

identifying the fundamental processes at work, then geography has

theoretical significance’ (Castree et al., 2004: 63).
This theoretical relevance is enhanced even more by the process
of globalization, which is rescaling workers’ lives in complex and
contradictory ways by changing the spatial and temporal relation-
ships between places (Castree et al., 2004; Herod, 2001, 2003a).
Concepts such as place, space and geographical scales have been
reworked by geographers to better address not only the current
reality of labour but also its future prospect.
For instance, while the Marxist literature in economic geography
was crucial to emphasize the ‘social production of space’ and
research the structural causes of the uneven development of the
geography of capitalism (Harvey, 1982; Smith, 1984), it tended to
overlook the active role of labour in these processes (Herod,
1997). Thus, by emphasizing the spatial dimension of workers’ activ-
ities, ‘labour geography’ corrects the old notion of space as the arena
of social interaction and the scant attention paid by Marxists to how
workers seek to shape space in accordance with their own needs
(Herod, 1997). Likewise, the scales at which social life is organized
can be understood as a result of struggle and compromise (Herod,
2003b). How and why workers organize different scales of operation
become key questions for labour/union internationalism scholar-
ship, for these different modes and scales of labour organization
have an impact on the geography of workers’ solidarity across space.
‘Labour geography’ has also pointed to the potential conflict
within the realm of labour internationalism between class and
spatial interests due to the uneven development of capitalism.
Johns (1998: 255) has seen this as the main factor that ‘makes build-
ing a truly global movement problematic’.
In short, ‘labour geography’ provides useful conceptual tools for
the study of labour/union internationalism by locating NLI as the
‘shift from a spatially hierarchical model of organising internation-
alism to one focused upon much flatter spatial networks’ (Herod,
2003a: 518).
The Case Study and Research Methodology
The research involved an analysis of a five-day ‘meeting’ against

McDonald’s labour practices. This meeting comprised several
features that are often identified as characteristics of the emerging

NLI. The event brought together different levels of union hierarchy,

had human rights and environmental concerns, involved other social
movements and aimed at building a long-lasting network of unions,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), anti-global movements
and researchers. Besides, the McDonald’s workforce is a typical
example of the new recruiting targets of trade unions.
The meeting was organized by FNV Mondiaal (The International
Department of the Dutch Trade Union Confederation) and FNV/
Horecabond (Dutch Hotel and Catering Workers’ Union), in co-
operation with the International Union of Food, Agricultural,
Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associa-
tions (IUF) and the ICFTU. It took place in October 2002, in the
Netherlands and Belgium, and included workshops to share differ-
ent local experiences of struggle against McDonald’s, preparation
of press statements and leaflets, planning of future actions, a
public demonstration in front of the busiest McDonald’s restaurant
in Brussels, and a meeting in the European Parliament with the
president of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs.
Organizations from 11 countries participated in the activities.
They were Argentina, Hong Kong, Scotland, England, Germany,
Italy, the Philippines, Russia, the US, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Originally, the meeting was promoted by a small group of
Catholic members of the FNV concerned with the exploitation of
child labour in a toy supplier of McDonald’s in Shenzhen, China.
This original initiative converged later with the intention of FNV
Mondiaal to make public that the good relations between
McDonald’s and the Dutch unions were not the rule worldwide.
In order to offer a balanced picture of the international situation,
FNV/Horecabond asked assistance of the IUF, which suggested
inviting representatives from Russia, Italy, the Philippines and
Argentina. A definitively international meeting, FNV as member
of the ICFTU, invited the latter to participate and coordinate the
activities together with the IUF.
The data collection rested upon participant-observation, qualita-
tive interviews and the documentation produced by trade unions.
The benefit of participant-observation was that it provided access
to an unremarkable event in ITU life in order to infer from its
dynamic the prospects for NLI. Moreover, the empirical approach
to this strategy with its emphasis on systematic observation and
recording of social interactions proved to be useful for in-depth
study of the meeting. The downside is the small scale of the study,

which makes generalization difficult. Another aspect was that the

social distance between the researcher and the interviewees certainly
narrowed due to the researcher’s involvement in the activities.
Eight interviews were carried out, all of them throughout the
meeting except one, which was carried out before at the head-
quarters of the IUF in Geneva. The interviewees were chosen
according to the purpose of the research and the incidents observed
during the meeting.
New Labour Internationalism: Some Revealing Findings
Findings have been organized according to two sets of interrelated

tensions that emerged during the meeting: tensions between organi-
zations and between different strategies. They are summarized in
Figure 1. Each is briefly analysed in the following subsections.
Tensions between organizations

ICFTU >< IUF
international >< national unions
trade unions >< social movements
Tensions between strategies

resources >< priorities
lobbying >< mobilization
European Works Councils >< non-European unions’ needs
producer identities >< consumer identities
FIGURE 1
Tensions between Organizations
ICFTU and IUF. Both the ICFTU and the IUF consider
McDonald’s a global threat to union rights, collective bargaining
and, in the case of Europe, for works council institutions. But
strategic differences in their geographical scales of operation compli-
cate their relationship.
As early as 1953, a few years after the re-establishment (1946–8) of
the ITSs, Lorwin wrote:

. . . the ICFTU recognises the right of the Trade Secretariats to maintain their
independence, to have autonomy in their internal affairs, and to have full
jurisdiction in trade and industrial matters. The Secretariats, in turn, recognise
the ICFTU as the representative of international organisations of labor which
formulates and executes general policies. (Lorwin, 1953: 310–11)
Nowadays, the IUF seems to have lost confidence in this division

of labour; whereas the ICFTU tries to keep it untouched.
IUF officials define their strategy as going from the local to the
global scale. Thus, their tactical aim is to work together with local
and national unions that are in conflict with MNCs to transform
local grievances into global demands by pursuing what they defined
as Global Agreements (IUF, 2001a, 2002a). As one IUF official put
it, ‘local trade unions deal with their members and IUF with the
headquarters of MNCs’.
Consequently, companies like McDonald’s are not a priority for
the IUF because they are not priorities for its members. McDonald’s
is always on the agenda of the annual international meetings of the
IUF (IUF, 2000, 2001b, 2002b), but it has been postponed for par-
ticular and extended campaigns given that ‘all of them [national
trade unions] see McDonald’s as a major front but not as a priority’
(IUF official).
On the other hand, the very structure of the ICFTU makes it un-
likely that its starting point will be local. During the five-day action,
ICFTU officials underlined time and again that the only two ways to
protect workers’ rights are better application of the law and workers’
self-organization for collective bargaining. As these traditional
dimensions are still mainly national and local realities, the ICFTU’s
approach can be summarized as one of lobbying globally to
strengthen unions’ position at the local and national scales. Accord-
ingly, the ICFTU has been pursuing mechanisms of global social
regulation since the 1980s, which have been translated into several
initiatives under the labels of Social Clause, Global Compact,
Core Labour Standards and even Codes of Conduct (French,
1997; ICFTU, 1996, 1998, 2002b; Munck, 2002; United Nations,
2002).
Small incidents during the meeting manifested this tension. For
instance, the IUF decided not to participate in the closure of the
activities in the ICFTU’s office in Brussels. Explaining this decision,
an IUF official commented: ‘it was not thought at the beginning as
an international meeting . . . ICFTU has not any role to play, and

not only in this particular case, but also in the process of building
global agreements’.
While IUF representatives did not set out any specific objectives
during the meeting, press activities seemed to be the main concern
of the ICFTU. This organization produced a report on the media
coverage of the public demonstration, drafted the final document,
and publicized widely the events in its web page. The IUF was not
involved in any of these activities and never said a word about the
meeting in its web page, despite long discussions on the crucial
role of the internet for publicizing trade unions’ activities.
Although these small frictions did not preclude collaboration
between the ICFTU and IUF, they seemed to reinforce the old ritua-
listic practices of ITU outlined earlier.
IUF and national trade unions. Another traditional limit to labour/

union internationalism, the lack of enthusiasm of national unions,
was in evidence during the meeting as a tension between the IUF
and its national roots. The usual explanation is well known: diverse
national conditions and interests influence trade unions’ disposition
to engage in international solidarity, thus reducing the potential for
international activity.
IUF officials repeatedly referred to this problem during the inter-
views. As one described it: ‘there is not yet a big awareness at
national level about the importance of global agreements. Some-
times trade unions recognise such importance as well, but they see
this as too far away. It is not an immediate feeling.’
They also pointed to the broad requirements that are needed to be
a member of the IUF – similar to those required by the ICFTU. For
them, these minimum standards result in strong political differences,
very conservative officials and heavy bureaucratic structures of
national trade unions, which end up playing a negative role for
campaigning.
The case study seems to suggest a more complex situation. First,
national unions played a highly ambiguous role. The FNV/Horeca-
bond, the Dutch union, is the case in point, for it was this union
together with the FNV Mondiaal that promoted and partly financed
the international action under study. Second, findings also give
credit to the classic picture of national unions playing a conservative
role. In particular, this became clear, as we see in the next section,
when representatives of the McLibel Support Campaign (MSC)
and McDonald’s Workers’ Resistance (MWR) called for active

support for the day-action against McDonald’s. However, to reduce

the problem to the backwardness of conservative national officials
would be misleading because they were not the only ones to express
such reluctance. On the contrary, it seems necessary to approach the
enquiry the other way round. Gallin (2000) – former president of the
IUF – has stressed that ITS officials have real room for manoeuvre
to take into account real needs of members to articulate inter-
national policies and solidarity.1 Briefly, that not only organiza-
tional constraints but also political decisions matter. In our case,
instead, the IUF refused to use this room for manoeuvre and
inclined towards procedural arguments. Facing the request of the
MSC and MWR, the IUF representative eschewed any political or
tactical debate by arguing in favour of the need to consult members.
On the contrary, some national representatives did not seem to con-
sider explicit support a danger for their national duties; instead, a
few were quite enthusiastic about this proposal. After all, national
representatives can always discharge responsibilities in front of
local management to remote decisions, whereas the IUF, hoping
to deal with McDonald’s headquarters, must assume responsibility
for any international action. But this episode leads us to the next
level of tensions.
Trade unions and social movements. The relationship between trade

unions and social movements was of a more difficult sort, particu-
larly when anti-global movements exposed their methodology. The
most divisive topic was the 18th Worldwide Anti-McDonald’s
Day called by the MSC and MWR for the following week. The
MSC was set up in late 1990 to generate solidarity and financial sup-
port for two London Greenpeace activists, Helen Steel and Dave
Morris, who defended themselves against McDonald’s accusations
of libel in the longest judicial case in English history (Vidal, 1997).
It became a true anti-global movement and the MSC is now the
main network holding the annual Worldwide Anti-McDonald’s
Day. MWR is a clandestine network established in 2000, when a
group of workers decided to counter McDonald’s anti-unionism at
the workplace by organizing a global network using email and inter-
net. For the first time, the MSC and MWR did a joint call for action
against McDonald’s.
Both organizations were invited by FNV to the meeting. The very
attendance of these groups testifies to the opening of trade unions
to social movements as argued by NLI’s thesis. Nevertheless, the

clear division between trade unions’ approach and the strategies

supported by these groups seemed to be untouched. IUF representa-
tives were clear: ‘we think that [it] is very difficult to get involved
with the anti-globalisation movement . . . there is a big gap between
trade unions and these kinds of groups’.
MWR and the MSC tried to open the debate about the Anti-
McDonald’s Day, when composing the leaflet for the demon-
stration, but both the ICFTU and IUF refused to engage in any
discussion concerning this action. Thus, the MSC and MWR sug-
gested making an announcement in the leaflet that this action
would take place; once more the IUF and ICFTU rejected this.
The national organizations that were more inclined towards explicit
support – NUWHRAIN (Philippines), HERE (USA) and FNV/
Horecabond – left the decision to the international bodies.
Finally, the leaflet did not mention this action and while the web-
site of the MSC appeared in it, that of MWR – an essential tool
given its network organization – did not (‘Not So Happy Meals’,
2002). This fact has a strong symbolism because all its members
work at McDonald’s. On the contrary, the delegate from the
Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC) was strongly
sympathetic towards these two organizations. Lastly, the MSC as
well as MWR left the meeting soon after setting out their respective
positions.
Tensions between Strategies
The contradictory matter of resources and priorities. In the face of

limited resources, local and national trade unions often prioritize
targets other than McDonald’s. Limited resources constantly
restricted the ability of local and national unions to campaign on
the issues generated by McDonald’s. The workforce of this MNC
is difficult to organize due not only to ‘the nature’ of its work –
small units, part-time and high turnover – but also to McDonald’s
strong anti-unionism. Royle has shown in detailed studies how
these factors conspire against workers’ solidarity and unions’ orga-
nizational capacity (Royle, 2000, 2002a, 2002b).
However, these same officials began to perceive in McDonald’s a
threat that goes beyond its premises. As the Conclusions of the meet-
ing states: ‘the growth of employment in the service sectors and the
role that McDonald’s has provided as a model for service sector

business organisation made the issue of respect for workers rights by

McDonald’s management of increasing concern internationally. . . .
It is not only the impact of the company on wages and working con-
ditions in its sector but also the impact of McDonald’s activities on
the broader industrial relations and social environment that should
be of concern to the communities in which it operates’ (ISLPM,
2002: 2).
Thus, ITU approaches McDonald’s as a global undermining force
of the traditional industrial relations paradigm, and, therefore, of
collective bargaining and trade union rights. The anti-unionism of
the corporation especially is of key importance in understanding
the reasons underlying this international action.
When launching the initiative, FNV Mondiaal referred to this
issue quite clearly. The action aimed to show the ‘obvious anti-
trade union strategies this multinational applies . . . how funda-
mental labour standards are deliberately violated (particularly trade
union rights and the right to collective bargaining), and what the
situation is with regard to collective agreements and legislation’
(FNV Mondiaal, 2002: 2).
Consequently, the tension between resources and priorities was
behind the scene from the beginning. Unions concurred with the
unanimous sense of sympathy being expressed and seemed ready
to join initiatives, at least at the level of discussion and debate.
But the resource implications of long-term actions on local struc-
tures stopped them time after time. As we see in the next section,
this dynamic strengthened the wisdom of political international
lobbying and discouraged any attempt to look for workers’ organi-
zation and mobilization.
Lobbying and mobilization under the ideological umbrella of social

dialogue. If the nature of the work, the anti-unionism of the
corporation and the lack of resources prevent unions from attempt-
ing to organize McDonald’s workers, the ideological umbrella of
social dialogue reinforces lobbying against mobilization. In fact,
the latter was manifest in a quite successful demonstration – in
terms of media coverage and public attention – in front of the busiest
McDonald’s in Brussels, where the leaflets were handed out. How-
ever, neither the trade unions from Belgium nor the ICFTU based
in Brussels made serious efforts to organize the demonstration,
which seemed to be just a token gesture towards publicity and

marked by passiveness. There was no real coordination among the

organizations involved to ensure a broader participation.
Instead, there were several initiatives aimed at establishing appro-
priate channels to exercise political lobbying, often using the lan-
guage of social dialogue. The visit to the McDonald’s training
centre in Amsterdam, the idea of meeting international management
(finally refused by them) and the closure of the activities with mem-
bers of the European Parliament were the most evident expressions
of this will.
Hyman (2000) has identified four different usages of the notion of
social dialogue. It can be just another term for industrial relations, a
process of exchanging information and viewpoints, a particular
institutional configuration designed to encourage consensus, or a
prescription for social partnership and the avoidance of conflict.
Our findings seem to support two of these meanings.
First, the notion of social dialogue was repeatedly used as a
replacement for industrial relations, collective bargaining and
other means of pursuing agreement between employers and trade
unions. The most noticeable feature of the Conclusions (ISLPM,
2002), the draft of which was written by ICFTU representatives,
was the concern about unions rights and collective bargaining as
the basis for building a genuine social dialogue. Consequently, the
document stressed both the need for building a social dialogue
with national trade unions allowing workforce organization and
the need to establish international relations between McDonald’s
and the IUF. Five out of the nine paragraphs of this document
(apart from its formal opening and closure) were devoted to this
argument.
Second, throughout the meeting, the ICFTU often associated the
notion of social dialogue with the rhetoric of social partnership and
dismissed more confrontational approaches at the global scale.
As with social dialogue, the notion of social partnership also has
different usages. According to Hyman, some usages of this notion
seem to suggest that the interest of capital and labour is potentially
harmonious, whereas others do not preclude a conflictive approach
but imply a pragmatic accommodation between labour and capital
in the interest of mutual survival. In many cases, social partners is
just another label for industrial collective actors; and in its weakest
sense, social partnership would be ‘little more than a positive evalua-
tion of pragmatic give-and-take in industrial relations’ (Hyman,
2001a: 50). Nevertheless, it can be argued that all these perspectives

tend to downgrade the antagonism between labour and capital in

favour of the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Hyman has also under-
lined that in the concrete experience of European countries since the
1950s, the growing wisdom of social partnership ‘also involved a
shift in the methods and resources of unions themselves: from the
mobilisation of economic pressure to the organisation of political
influence’ (Hyman, 2001a: 51). Likewise, the ICFTU explicitly
states as its fundamental aim to achieve international political influ-
ence (ICFTU, 1998, 2002a, 2002b).
In summary, for the ICFTU, the ideological umbrella of social
dialogue seems to comprise the strengthening of collective bargain-
ing, the peaceful resolution of conflicts and the exercise of inter-
national political influence. But in the absence of rank-and-file
grassroots and, particularly, of an international framework of
industrial relations, this ideological wisdom confines the ICFTU’s
strategy to political lobbying. In the case under study, this orienta-
tion was strengthened by the difficulties in organizing and mobiliz-
ing fast-food workers at a local or national scale. Then, in this
context, the predominance of political lobbying for collective bar-
gaining and union rights under the label of social dialogue comes
to be the international translation of the originally national rhetoric
of social partnership. In practice, this tactic mainly implies pledging
international bodies to recognize trade unions from national to
global scales. This explains the optimistic conclusion of ICFTU
officials when stating that ‘where McDonald’s has engaged in
social dialogue with trade unions . . . it was noted that McDonald’s
was able to operate successfully while behaving as a responsible
social partner’ (ISLPM, 2002). But even within this narrow under-
standing, it is difficult to find examples of this responsible behaviour
(Royle, 2000, 2002a, 2002b).
A European matter: the Works Council Directive. This issue was a

clear dividing line during the meeting. Despite being exclusively a
European question, the topic occupied deep and long discussions.
While this situation was partly an arithmetical affair (for half the
delegations were from Europe), it also showed the troubles of co-
ordinating international actions between Europe and those outside
Europe. The European Union (EU) has reinforced a regional per-
spective giving material and institutional basis for collaboration.
In this line, European Works Councils (EWCs) appear as a concrete
opportunity to consolidate interchanges, strengthen the ITSs and

overcome, or at least increase the flexibility of national structures.

As Wills (2001: 189) has put it: ‘the development of EWCs has pro-
pelled Europe to the forefront of discussions about trade union
organisation in the global economy’. The same view is held among
European trade unionists: ‘Europe promises to become the chief
laboratory for the experiments in global unionism’ (Breitenfellner,
1997: 545).
At the same time, these common perspectives seem to have
increased the perception of the periphery as a threat for the regional
building agenda of the European trade unions due to the attractive-
ness of its labour costs and the impact of the immigration flows upon
the European Welfare State and the labour market.
As a result, ‘though the European Union is far from constituting a
supranational state, or indeed a supranational industrial relations
arena’ (Hyman, 2001b: 173), its institutions offer an appropriate
place for developing common policies and exercising political lobby-
ing. While it is difficult to find such room at the global level beyond
the devalued ILO, the European Parliament offers a concrete insti-
tutional complement to the national sphere. It was there where the
five-day action against McDonald’s ended. While European unions
argued their cases with enthusiasm in the European Parliament,
trade unions from the Philippines, Russia and Argentina gave a
cool reception to the initiative. So did they when witnessing the
repeated irruption of long discussions around EWCs, which led
the union official from the Philippines to exclaim: ‘we have no
such kind of animal in our country!’ It is clear that the EU has
opened the door to regional solidarity, but it might become a
major obstacle to developing a true global solidarity.
In sum, though regional integration has encouraged global union-
ism and cooperation, it appears to be a troublesome process, for it
might also strengthen new boundaries, or even worse, cement old
ones between Europe and developing countries, as this case suggests.
Trade unions’ targets: producers or consumers? In the face of their

own decline, lack of resources and MNCs’ global expansion, some
trade unions rediscovered the potential importance of the consump-
tion sphere and the growing power of the mass media upon society.
In the mid-1990s, a rather successful series of consumer boycotts,
built on the basis of thoughtful publicity, arose as a promising
global response to extremely adverse labour conditions. It was a
complex phenomenon that took place, mainly in the USA, against

firms such as Levi-Strauss, Reebok, Nike and other high-profile

companies. Since that time consumer campaigns have been incor-
porated into the labour repertoire (Munck, 2002).
To begin with, campaigns were launched to deal with MNCs’ sup-
pliers and subcontractors in the midst of decreasing possibilities of
taking industrial action, and as an indirect way of putting pressure
on the big corporations. Generally, these consumer campaigns are
organized from within developed countries, targeting the violation
of workers’ rights by employers operating in peripheral countries.
Initially, they aimed at labour conditions and the lack of freedom
of association, moving then to environmental issues as well.
In 2000, McDonald’s itself was the focus of a big campaign
against the use of child labour by its toy suppliers, organized by
the HKCIC together with the Confederation of Trade Unions of
Hong Kong and Greenpeace (Wong, 2002). According to Munck,
all these kinds of events against MNCs ‘were paradigmatic of the
new labour internationalism’ and opened new possibilities for
labour solidarity by means of cutting across ‘the boundaries of
national/international, production/consumption, labour/community
and so on’ (Munck, 2002: 163).
But these consumer campaigns have also shown limitations. They
have not been complemented by organizing campaigns; therefore,
they so far have not had any impact on workforce unionization.
Besides this, they have often tended to collapse labour rights into
human rights. This universalization leads to a blurring of class
boundaries and naturalizes the wage system, for ideologies around
labour fade away and citizens or just people discursively replace
wage workers. It might be argued that this helps to balance, in a
positive manner, a former lack of attention to struggles and identi-
ties other than those of workers. But this universalistic approach
seems to exchange old flaws for new ones, since in this manner
each campaign appears as a singular response to a singular case of
an isolated injustice. Once within this logic, it does not matter any-
more how many cases have been found. The powerful notion that
capitalism is built upon a basic injustice and exploitative relation-
ship is gone.
But there is something else. MNCs chose to answer consumer
campaigns at the same level with publicity and public relations,
and this decision ushered in new strategic interactions.
First, these responses brought the mass media to the fore, opening
a battlefield in which power relations depended almost exclusively

on money. But second, MNCs realized that the rhetoric of fair prac-
tices and social responsibility might be another road to successful
competition. Then, the MNCs’ codes of conduct and socially
responsible advertising exploded; McDonald’s itself has its code of
conduct and a Corporate Social Responsibility Report (McDonald’s,
2002). This complex strategic evolution played a crucial role in the
meeting but one that most participants were unaware of.
Once again, damaging McDonald’s public image seemed to be the
only strategic resource in trade unions’ hands. The leaflet handed
out in the demonstration was completely devoted to this objective;
indeed, it was fully built around a critique of McDonald’s self-
presentation. This was not an isolated fact, for similar inputs were
added to the Conclusions (ISLPM, 2002). There was no intention
to communicate with workers. Not only in these documents and
actions but also during the debates, workers hardly appeared as a
target of communication.
While this shows the changing dynamic of consumer campaigns as
we mentioned earlier, it expresses something more. As MNCs
answered to public attacks through media strategies, in this case
campaigning seemed to move from denouncing MNCs for concrete
and specific facts to combating the image that the company puts into
public circulation.
A short anecdote illustrates this point. During the meeting, the use
of child labour by McDonald’s toys suppliers became a fixation.
Given the emotional impact of this issue, it was initially incor-
porated in the draft of the leaflet. However, the delegate from the
HKCIC recommended deleting this statement because this NGO
had no evidence that child labour was being used currently by
McDonald’s suppliers. But instead of accepting this suggestion,
the original statement about child labour metamorphosed into the
following: ‘some happy meals toys are known to be made under
dangerous and abusive conditions by suppliers in China’ (‘Not So
Happy Meals’, 2002).
We might wonder about the rationality of this sentence, in which
there is no trace of the original intention of publicizing the use of
child labour. Why not the hard conditions in which potatoes for
McDonald’s are produced in Argentina? Or the high rate of
labour accidents in slaughterhouses linked to McDonald’s in the
US? Or the repression of McDonald’s workers in Indonesia? Or
the surveillance undergone by workers of McComplex in Russia?

Part of the explanation is the obsession for publicity. Behind

‘dangerous and abusive conditions’ trade unions officials were still
reading ‘child labour’. It is unclear whether the public read the
same when they received the leaflet in the street.
This story reveals another fixation too. The prudent advice of the
HKCIC representative was the outcome of repeated warnings
against adding information to the pamphlet that put them in
danger of being sued by McDonald’s. This final remark could be
seen as a trivial aspect of the dynamics opened up by consumer/
producer dichotomy. However, it is another crucial outcome of
public confrontation under the rules of mass media and publicity.
During the meeting, neither the advantages nor disadvantages of
consumer campaigns were evaluated at all, with the exception of the
Italian and the German officials. But those were partial exceptions
because neither of them underlined the current gap between the
public campaign and workforce organization nor did they try to
suggest a way out of this situation through looking for strategic
connections.
Lastly, the participation in the meeting of the MSC provided good
insight into the relationship between consumer campaigns and
workforce organization. The MSC has carried out in the UK the
most successful and permanent consumer and press campaign
against McDonald’s, and probably the longest any MNC has experi-
enced.
Thus, it is a revealing case due to the contrasting situation
between the strength of the MSC campaign and the absence of
any attempt to unionize the McDonald’s workforce in the UK.
Obviously, the latter is not the objective of the MSC. But the lack
of repercussions of this successful consumer campaign for workers’
organization and mobilization cannot be dismissed by trade unions.
Nevertheless, the potential lessons that trade unions could learn
from this experience were ignored.
Conclusion
To conclude, some remarks will be drawn with regard to the inter-

play of local, regional and global scales in trade unions’ strategic
definitions.
First, findings have shown that there is not a linear relationship
between national and international organizations. To begin with,

it was a national trade union and its international branch – the FNV
– that was the key actor in calling for an international activity.
Moreover, while national interests and constraints still obstructed
international solidarity, ITU also took conservative advantage of
this situation by a ritualistic reference to the needs of consulting
with their national members on proposals that went beyond routine
politics.
Second, we have seen that trade unions perceive McDonald’s as a
global threat, although McDonald’s is not a priority at the local
level. This aspect underlines an interesting dynamic.
As the IUF defines its strategy as going from the local to the
global scale, the reality that McDonald’s is not a local priority
means its global threat is hardly addressed by this international
union. The lack of local resources and force conspires to build a
global strategy of opposition. The ICFTU focused on reinforcing
labour laws and workers’ self-organization for collective bargaining.
Since these are still national and local realities, the ICFTU ends up
lobbying globally to build strength locally.
Both approaches seem to fail in dealing with McDonald’s as a
global threat. Thus, this failure reinforces the orientation towards
consumer campaigns, although they have rather lost their original
appeal. Despite their success in exercising pressure over some
MNCs in the short-term, they have not strengthened workers’
rights, trade unions’ rights or collective bargaining. Moreover, we
have seen how, in this case, campaigning moved from denouncing
McDonald’s for particular and concrete reasons to combating the
image that McDonald’s puts into public circulation. While some
national trade unions have begun to identify the limits of these
actions, the majority still approach the issue uncritically.
Third, the insistence of European trade unions upon the issue of
the EWCs is illuminating in regard to another dimension of the
interplay between local and global. This very concrete process of
regionalization encourages cross-border concerns and, therefore,
internationalization. Yet the same process appears as troublesome
for global solidarity, giving support to early warnings against the
‘attempt to find a superficial economic basis for the necessity and
possibility of international trade-union politics’ (Olle and Schoeller,
1977: 70). The article neither argues the opposite case, that is, the
structural incompatibility of interests between the labour move-
ments of developed and peripheral countries. It just points to the
empirical recognition of how institutional and economic conditions

ease some international relationships and not others. Ultimately, it

is a problem related to the dynamic of the globalization process:
whether we understand the EU as only a step towards greater
world integration; or on the contrary, the EU’s rescaling entails a
consolidation of new, long-lasting borders that demarcate the
inside/outside of developed capitalism, in which case, trade unions
might face new potential limitations in international politics due
to the uneven development and spread of capital through space
(Harvey, 1982; Johns, 1998; Smith, 1984).
Fourth, then, it could be argued that these constraints are more
acute in the midst of the diminishing attractiveness of labour ideol-
ogies and utopias, for international solidarity is not only an outcome
of objective conditions and organizational strength but also of ideo-
logical commitment. To rebuild utopias and emancipatory ideolo-
gies is crucial for ITU’s ability to engage in transforming the
current worldwide reality of growing marginalization and poverty.
Otherwise, ITU risks becoming the complaining, powerless partner
of any tripartite agenda and any multilateral international body.
In this sense, neither the rhetoric of social dialogue nor the con-
tractual tone of social responsibility seems to offer a way out to
counter workers’ demobilization. This bankruptcy of labour ideolo-
gies appeared to be deepened by trade unions’ focus on consumers
and the universalistic rhetoric of human rights.
Finally, we wondered whether or not the case study supports the
case for an emerging NLI. The participation of NGOs and anti-
global movements give credit to the alleged opening of unions to
civil society. However, the gap between trade unions and these
other organizations in this case remained unchanged. McDonald’s
might be seen as a typical case of new targeting concerning union
recruitment, but there was no real discussion about how to gain
members among McDonald’s workers. Moreover, consumers instead
of workers were the targets of communication strategies. The role of
the internet for networking and trade unions strategies was dis-
cussed, but the internet was used more for spreading unilateral infor-
mation and propaganda than for communicating and establishing
links among the participants in the international action. Therefore,
while the case study reveals some features of an NLI, a closer
analysis shows that on many occasions this might be more a matter
of form than substance.

Notes
I would like to express my gratitude to Susan McGrath-Champ, Peter Waterman and
Trevor Colling for their help.
1. For instance, Dan Gallin appeared as witness for the defence of activists accused
by McDonald’s of libel; and the IUF office in Moscow strongly supported workers
persecuted by McDonald’s for their union activities (Borisova, 2000).
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Pablo Ghigliani
is Professor of Social History at the
Department of Sociology, Faculty of
Humanities, and member of the iLAB, a
research centre on labour issues, Escuela
Superior de Trabajo Social, both at the
Universidad de La Plata, Argentina.
Together with Maurizio Atzeni, he is

currently co-coordinating LabourAgain, a

research network on labour and social
mobilization in Latin America, hosted by the
International Institute of Social Studies, the
Netherlands. He is undertaking his PhD at
De Montfort University, UK.
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International Trade Unionism in a Globalizing

Article in Economic and Industrial Democracy · August 2005

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International Trade Unionism in a Globalizing World: A Case

The online version of this article can be found at:

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In recent years, scholars and activists have identiﬁed the development

Keywords: globalization, international campaigning, international trade unionism,

At the beginning of the 20th century, international trade unionism

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consequences for the structures and strategies of traditional inter-

Old and New Labour/Union Internationalism

Although the history of ITU overlaps with that of labour inter-

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policy on behalf of Western powers and of the Soviet Union’

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of forms; some of them well beyond international labour institutions.

The Relevance of a ‘Labour Geography’ for the Study of Labour/

If the preceding picture is accurate, NLI might be challenging the

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identifying the fundamental processes at work, then geography has

The Case Study and Research Methodology

The research involved an analysis of a ﬁve-day ‘meeting’ against

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NLI. The event brought together different levels of union hierarchy,

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which makes generalization difﬁcult. Another aspect was that the

New Labour Internationalism: Some Revealing Findings

Findings have been organized according to two sets of interrelated

Tensions between organizations

Tensions between strategies

Tensions between Organizations

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Nowadays, the IUF seems to have lost conﬁdence in this division

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IUF and national trade unions. Another traditional limit to labour/

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support for the day-action against McDonald’s. However, to reduce

Trade unions and social movements. The relationship between trade

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clear division between trade unions’ approach and the strategies

Tensions between Strategies

The contradictory matter of resources and priorities. In the face of

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business organisation made the issue of respect for workers rights by

Lobbying and mobilization under the ideological umbrella of social

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marked by passiveness. There was no real coordination among the

Downloaded from http://eid.sagepub.com by Roberto Hernandez Sampieri on October 23, 2008

tend to downgrade the antagonism between labour and capital in

A European matter: the Works Council Directive. This issue was a

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overcome, or at least increase the ﬂexibility of national structures.

Trade unions’ targets: producers or consumers? In the face of their

Downloaded from http://eid.sagepub.com by Roberto Hernandez Sampieri on October 23, 2008

ﬁrms such as Levi-Strauss, Reebok, Nike and other high-proﬁle

Downloaded from http://eid.sagepub.com by Roberto Hernandez Sampieri on October 23, 2008

Downloaded from http://eid.sagepub.com by Roberto Hernandez Sampieri on October 23, 2008

Part of the explanation is the obsession for publicity. Behind

To conclude, some remarks will be drawn with regard to the inter-

Downloaded from http://eid.sagepub.com by Roberto Hernandez Sampieri on October 23, 2008