International Trade Union Cooperation BRIEFING PAPERS N° 7/ 2008 responsible: rudolf traub-merz Global Trade Union Program www.fes.de/gewerkschaften Competition or Cooperation? The Future of Relations between Unions in Europe and the United States by Thomas Greven 1. Introduction In the age of globalization unions have to expand the scope of their activities beyond national borders in order to prevent“whipsawing”, i.e. the ability of companies to play off workers in different countries against each other. International union cooperation has a long history. As early as 1864 a first meeting of European unionists took place, and an American delegate participated in a meeting for the first time in Basel in 1869. Un­ions coordinated the successful fight for the 10-hour and then the 8-hour workday transnationally. Sub­sequently, however, the 20 th century saw a long “Fordist break” in international activities(Greven/ Scherrer 2005). Unions were nationalized through two world wars, during which national unions iden­tified with their respective nation-states and thereby often gained legal recognition as legitimate social organizations for the first time, as well as through the establishment of welfare states and the decades­long focus of economic development on domestic markets. What remained of international union activities after World War II was dominated by the Cold War. The current revitalization of interna­tional union solidarity encounters substantial insti­tutional, cultural and political obstacles. International union organizations have partially overcome the historic divisions with the establish­ment of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in 2006(cf. Traub-Merz/Eckl 2007). Already in the 1990s, unions proposed to link core labor rights to world trade in order to prevent a“race to the bottom” in terms of social standards. So far, the proposal was unsuccessful at the World Trade Or­ganization(WTO). Instead, economic competition has increased sharply and is extending to national regulatory systems. For unions, the logic of eco­nomic competitiveness and regulatory competition result in a massive decline of political power. In ad­dition, in many countries they are losing members and thus organizational power. How do unions cope with these challenges? Re­cently, the cooperation between US and European unions has developed a new dynamic. After a long­er period of very limited exchange and relations in international confederations that were characterized by attempts to delineate separate zones of influence, there are signs of renewed cooperation in global union structures as well as bilaterally. These develop­ments originate in strategies for dealing with trans­national enterprises(TNEs). In addition, there is a keen interest on the part of unions in Europe, to learn from organizing and campaigning strategies of US unions to counter membership decline. These developments will be the subject of the following discussion. Can the institutional, cultural, and political barriers be­tween unions in the US and Europe be overcome, or will their relations continue to be characterized by competition and a lack of understanding?