The global union
Source: Newsweek Special Edition
Dec 2005 – Feb 2006 (Adapted)

    What would a global union look like? Think more corporate partnership than class struggle. Today, capital is global and employers are global. Companies, not countries, make the rules. To survive, unions need to find their niche. Global companies are going to need an organization that, in a sense, will manage their labor and protect workers’ rights. A global union would set standard practices and codes of conduct – perhaps even minimum wages and work hours.
    My critics in the labor movement cringe when I use words like “partnership” and “value added”. The reality is that unions need to add value or corporations will ignore us. If we want an equitable stake in the company, we need to define what our goals are. We can’t just demand a raise in pay without offering an incentive to the company. We’re already far behind multinational corporations in the global game. We made the mistake of transferring the industrial model of unionism of the last country to the 21st. We lost market share: in 1960, one in four workers was in a union; now it’s one in 12.