What is it about?
Book review of Jamie K. McCallum's "Global Unions, Local Power". Important new material in the research McCallum conducted, but also a limited analysis that is too optimistic about the prospects of American trade unions assisting international organizing efforts. Nevertheless, the emphasis on dealing with companies on an international, rather than just local or national, basis when organizing trade unions and conducting campaigns is excellent.
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Why is it important?
This book is part of the growing literature on international trade union organizing, going beyond national boundaries and dealing with multinational corporations that operate beyond one country. The book also indicates the current limitations of this analysis and the need to go deeper into specific national and regional workers' cultures.
Perspectives
I addressed this book review partly as a labor historian (comparative - US, Japan, Australia), but also as a former trade union organizer when I was living in the US. A number of the unions mentioned in the book were ones I worked with directly while with the Meany Center for Labor Education, AFL-CIO in Washington, DC, and included unions and key officials in the SEIU, CWA, and other unions mentioned in the book. I also saw omissions of key people involved in organizing, particularly those who dealt with labor education and those engaged specifically with African Americans.
Dr David Palmer
University of Melbourne
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Global Unions, Local Power: The New Spirit of Transnational Labor Organizing
by Jamie K. McCallum
, Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, August 2017, Duke University Press,
DOI: 10.1215/15476715-3921395.
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