Transnational labour mobilization in the Americas

MARCELO SAGUIER

Civil Society and International Governance: The role of non-state actors in global and regional regulatory frameworks

Routledge

Lugar: New York; Año: 2011; p. 181 - 197

Trade policy in particular becomes a key site of engagement of the labour movement in a context of a globalizing/regionalizing political economy. The opportunities of trade unions to participate in trade processes are largely affected by the ‘forum-shift’ tactics used by powerful states and corporations. Forum shifting allows them to move between decision-arenas in order to secure the outcomes they desire in the places where this is expected to be more likely. This places great strains on trade unions’ efforts to influence processes of trade policy making. Forum shifting demands that trade unions mobilise across various institutional and geographical places. The renewal of a critical labour movement is tied to its ability to mobilise at multiple decision-making levels, articulating transnational strategies directed at the institutional, material and ideational power structures of neoliberal globalisation. In this paper I look at the dynamics of mobilisation and rights-claiming practices of the labour movement in the Western Hemisphere as evidenced in its coordinated response to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) process. In many ways the labour responses to this trade project reveal the opportunities and challenges faced by the international labour movement in its efforts to reinvent itself in a context of transnational production and increased corporate power.