The Internationalization of the National Organizations If the national trade unions are to learn inter­national cooperation, it is important that they open up their organizational structures. Trade union policy-makers and lay officials must be schooled for international work. Transnational companies have long grasped that a professional career is no longer possible without international experience or an understanding of supranational problems. This finds expression in how these companies see themselves and their organization charts, The time has come for the trade unions to catch up. It is occasionally said of those who set union policy that they are"an elite waiting for their chance". Clearly, a modem(and that also means democratically legitimized) leadership team will remain provincial if it does not think and act internationally. To a large degree the adjustment of national trade union structures to meet the demands of flexible, supranational cooperation can be im­plemented in a way that does not lead to greater overall costs and which benefits all sides. A systematically organized exchange of lay personnel should quickly pay for itself since their qualifications would be raised and networks of communication would be streng­thened. The exchange of trade union special­ists in collective bargaining, economics and technology, or their journalists, teachers and legal experts, would allow the development of bi- and multi-lateral working connections. This in turn would spell a speedy end to what has become an unaffordable luxury: the wasting of synergistic energies and cooperative gains as a result of narrow-minded, nationalistic calls to "siege behavior." Gains in cooperation can be achieved in the area of lay activities as well. A great deal of pioneering work at the grass roots level which is aimed at concretely strengthening interna­tional solidarity could be carried out in re­gional, city and factory partnerships. Another example is to be found in the individual ef­forts of works councils and worker delegates to establish co-determination bodies in trans­national firms. The fact that a"Europe from below" could well flourish in the future can be seen in three examples of a growing trend of grass roots activities: the interregional cooper­ation between Saarland, Lorraine and Luxem­bourg; the establishment of a European works council at Volkswagen; and a company-level labour contract at the French-German televi­sion channel ARTE. Academic facilities and institutions with close ties to the trade unions should be urged to put more emphasis on"study abroad" pro­grammes for their scholarship recipients. Im­proving the language skills of these young people and their ability to deal with foreign cultures and international problems is also a human investment in the trade unions which will assure the development of a multi­talented, highly qualified generation of policy­making leaders. There are also various initiatives aimed at those in the scientific community who desire to play a role in international research pro­jects, educational and training programmes, and specialized congresses. Until now the trade unions have made only slight use of this resource. Trade Union Opportunity Management Many workers in the more prosperous West European countries and in countries with de­veloped systems of co-determination have fears of"social dumping" due to the hiring of low-wage workers from Southern and(above all) Eastern Europe, and the introduction of neo-liberal deregulation programmes. These fears should be taken seriously. Even when it can be proven with historical and empirical evidence that such fears have little foundation, there remain the uncertainties which are ob­viously connected with the modernization dy­namic in the West and the unpredictable char­acter of the world situation. 13