Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy.

In this exceptional book, Kim Moody, one of the founders of Labor Notes in Detroit, refutes the two most common, if conflicting, assumptions about the global economy. Representatives of the business class claim that the international free market is the most efficient way to allocate goods and services and to promote mass prosperity. Moody demonstrates that this is not the case. He notes widespread unemployment, poverty, and environmental degradation as proof.

But Moody also debunks the facile view that globalization is the only source of labor's ills. He argues, persuasively, that the production and consumption of most goods and services still occurs at the national level." There are logical reasons for this, he says, including the distance to market, and the time it takes to get goods there. "Capital is not as footloose as is often suggested." he writes, labeling the idea that most companies will up and leave at the drop of a hat as "globaloney."

While Moody outlines the problems with the free-trade model and shows how the IMF,. the World Bank, NAFTA, and GATT serve corporate interests, his main focus is on the labor movement. He examines why labor has not fought back harder both against these global institutions and against corporate power within national boundaries.

Moody suggests that labor has not been a mere victim in this process. Organizational and ideological limits kept it from mounting an adequate response to corporate domination. The bad news is that most workers are paying heavily for those inadequacies today. The good news is that labor now includes a strong activist element willing to learn from past mistakes and build an internationally oriented rank-and-file movement against global corporations.

In the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. companies responded to stagnation and foreign competition by emphasizing "lean production." The strategy was to make employees work longer and harder. if that meant bending union rules, so be it. Companies told unions to accept these changes, or there would be no jobs left.

So unions went along with lean production. They made concessions on wages, working conditions, and terms for hiring new employees. The results of these deals are all around us. Most large industrial corporations have downsized anyway, with huge losses in union jobs. Wages have fallen. And the companies have helped push through trade agreements that further threaten labor.

Moody explores why unions went this route. He argues that American unions for decades mistakenly identified their fortunes with those of corporate management. They allowed management to control the pace and nature of corporate investment, the organization of the work-place, and the long-term financial decisions. In exchange for higher wages, unions assured worker cooperation. Then when the companies failed to deliver on higher wages, the unions still could not get out of the mindset of "business unionism." They still hoped that by playing along, they would benefit their members.

Union leadership, often bureaucratic and insulated from the concerns of most shop-floor workers, did not do enough to reach out to the unorganized in other industries or nations, Moody says. And he faults organized labor for its "long and sorry record on questions of both race and immigration."

But shop-floor dissidents, here and abroad, have responded to the global corporate attack with an agenda of their own, which Moody calls "social-movement unionism." They have insisted on democratizing their unions and broadening their goals to include demands that will galvanize the poor and the unemployed.

The single most effective demand of this new unionism, he says, is for a shorter work week. By banning overtime and reducing the work week, unions will force companies to hire more workers. "The length of working time is labor's counterforce to capital's job-destroying tendencies," he writes.

Ironically, the very structure of the emerging global economy does give workers some leverage. As companies cut back on inventories to stay competitive, workers can exercise clout with a strategically targeted strike. And the international assembly line makes companies vulnerable. "Common cross-border actions by local unions in different countries can cripple even the largest transnational corporations in their major markets," he writes.

The turmoil in the economies of Latin America and Asia has encouraged a more radical union movement there. These new radical unions have staged wildcat strikes against egregious work rules and harsh overtime policies. In South Korea, Brazil, France, South Africa, and Ontario, workers have called general strikes. And in many instances, the dissidents have sought to build alliances with labor in other nations. Moody examines these efforts and praises the most successful ones. "The focus here is not on victims, but resisters," he writes.

But he is not a reflexive cheerleader. "Crafting a strategy to deal with the changing economic world cannot be reduced to linking together today's existing labor movements in some formal sense," he writes. "Linking together the walking wounded seldom wins a battle."

At a time when many progressive activists, and even some unionists, throw up their hands when confronted by multinational corporate power, Moody offers a different option: fighting back. His prescription of a shorter work week, internal union democracy, an aggressive stance toward management, militant shop-floor activity,and a broad social agenda should inspire people in the union movement and those sympathetic to it. Moody shows that the best answer to globalization is the rank and file internationalism growing within many unions. He is its most worthy chronicler and advocate.