Ronaldo Munck: Globalisation and Labour: the New 'Great Transformation'.

Ronaldo Munck

Globalisation and Labour: The New 'Great Transformation'

Zed Books, London and New-York, 2002, 220 pp.

ISBN 1 84277 071 3 (pbk) 14.95 [pounds sterling]

ISBN 1 84277 070 5 (hbk) 45.00 [pounds sterling]

Let me begin by thoroughly recommending this book. As we would expect from this author, its analysis and argument is thorough, clear, accessible and provocative. It is a review of globalisation that does what Capital & Class readers would demand, since it puts labour and the oppressed at the centre of discussion, and seeks positive arguments and examples of action and resistance.

The discussion centres around issues that are rehearsed elsewhere, but which are subjected here to incisive and impassioned argument that separates the book from plodding texts repeating the cliches of the 'globalisation debate'. This readability allows readers less familiar with the arguments to rapidly acquaint themselves with the usual analysis of capitalism's post-war golden era. That is, that the Northern economies built their welfare states on the back of Fordist production, and in the context of the rapacious exploitation of the economies of the South. A well-organised set of chapters, which takes us from the 'old' to the 'new', encompasses analysis of the fates of workers in the North and South, and concludes with prospects for the future. Workers are not seen as 'malleable' or 'passive victims' but, as EP Thompson famously remarked of the working class, 'It was present at its own making' (Thompson, 1963 & 1970: 9).

For Munck, labour is the centre of the argument, and he rightly draws attention to all its forms and, in particular, to the mass of unorganised and unrepresented workers of the South. This is a working population divided along gender lines, which has rarely been well cared for by the institutional form of trade unionism characteristic of the Northern economies; all too often, this Northern form has been exported to the South as the one best way.

That the trade unions of the North are slowly waking up to the lessons they need to learn is represented in the development of the new organising strategies being taken up in countries such as the us, Australia and the UK. Now here's the problem: how do we organise and mobilise as workers, and how do our trade unions (North and South) need to change in order to respond to the new challenges of globalisation?

Munck, like many others, opts for social movement unionism and a new internationalism. Such categories can be incoherent, undefined ragbags of ideas and actions, although some would rephrase that point in a positive way, and call it a strength in its plurality and diversity. Certainly, trade unions (particularly in the old Northern industrial heartlands) need to challenge and overcome gendered sectionalism focused on a narrow economism and the workplace, and embrace broader agendas directly relevant to women. That is no surprise. Trade unions do what they do, and nobody from Marx and Lenin onwards--some syndicalists apart--expected them to be the active agents of the revolution.

Conversely, their everyday actions challenge capital at its heart, and constantly underline the antagonistic cooperation inherent in the relationship. So what, then, is on offer for labour and the trade unions, at the centre of an analysis of globalisation and exhorted to go beyond defensive reaction to the development of a positive agenda?

Munck welcomes the positive intervention of geographers who have pointed out that the local is as important as the global. Multinationals do not just exist as brands in cyberspace: they have to produce and sell goods, and to provide services in real places. This point is also made in relation to a claim that 'regionalisation' and 'reconstituted' forms of 'pooled sovereignty' are effective forms of power.

Effective enough, Munck argues with supreme optimism, to suggest that 'regional development policies ... in Europe are well able to deal with and constrain the allegedly all-powerful transnational corporations'. In a related argument later in the book, Munck also suggests that it is policies developed by regional or international agencies, in relation to the introduction of social clauses into trade agreements, that are the 'strategy best placed to unify the world's workers'.

Munck is not suggesting that trade unions can do this on their own. He has already pointed out their problems and their need to reform themselves: one strategy of his social movement unionism is for the development of alliances with NGOs and others that represent the unrepresented, and for there to be a focus in the new internationalism on women, human rights and environmentalism. Who could disagree that these are not fundamental areas in which workers must challenge capital? Alliances with communities is a key element in the new organising strategies in the North, if we are to learn the lessons of organising in the South; but in the end, we are left with a series of further questions.

In particular, we are left with questions about how these new strategies are to work in practice. Let us take some examples. Community unionism is something with which we hardly seem able to disagree in principle; but the concept itself is much-debated and problematic. There are problems of identifying communities and their leaders, and of establishing what sort of relationship unions might want to have with them, or vice versa. All too often, unions can be seen as 'using' communities in order to boost their recruitment, or to add to campaigns against hostile employers. Another problem at the heart of social movement trade unionism is that of unions working together with NGOs.

These relationships have been uneasy and unhappy in the past, and often for good reason. NGOs and unions do not necessarily share the same objectives (it is simply assumed that they do), and they may adopt very different strategies and methods as organisations. As Munck recognises, trade unions are 'more democratic than, say, Greenpeace' and, in their objectives, essentially remain 'syndicalist and economic ... let alone socialist'. A consumer boycott or a hostile media campaign might not suit a union wanting to establish recognition and bargaining arrangements. Neither might Munck's championing of 'social clauses' work. For a start, these global statements are negotiated, agreed and implemented in a multiplicity of ways, at a variety of different levels. They can be very useful in supporting organising strategies, but they can be counter-productive if local workers have never heard of them, or do not like what is in them. I doubt that most workers in the North or South have ever heard of them.

These issues and their complexities are not neglected by Munck, and he can hardly do justice to all the arguments in a short discussion. At 14.95 [pounds sterling], this book represents good value for money given Munck's ability to thread together a wide range of material. The examples given above will be dealt with in practice and not in books; but practice has to be informed by analysis. Munck's book does just that. No doubt he would also regard the book as a contribution to a debate, rather than the end of it, and his analysis should provoke readers to enter into the arguments. It challenges those involved with renewing trade unionism to lift the lid on social movement unions, and to ask some of the oldest questions again in a new context. If trade unions are there simply to represent people at work and improve their pay and conditions, then why on earth should they want to get involved with all these other things? And if they do, will they have to change themselves radically into new types of organisation; or should they be themselves, but learn to live more amicably and productively with the plurality of opposition to global capital? Munck is right to place labour at the centre of the question of globalisation, but we still have some way to go before agreeing on the answers.