ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand how national industrial trade unions in the Southern Hemisphere occupy international space and navigate between the global and the local. This question has prompted a debate on the appropriate articulation between the global and the local. Several scholars argue that trade unions are compelled to go global in order to counter multinational companies (MNCs) (Lambert 2002; Munck 2002; Webster et al. 2008). New forms of labour internationalism are emerging in the Southern Hemisphere that go beyond business unionism, relying on union networking across borders and, ‘with civil society associations, setting a new agenda, thus creating a belief that change is possible’ (Lambert 2002: 187). Other scholars are sceptical about the need for labour to match these MNCs at the global level (Burawoy 2010; Ghigliani 2005). They insist on local embeddedness, arguing that priority must be given to local endeavours. This ‘localist’ perspective is best captured by Burawoy (2010), who emphasises the need to develop local networks instead of relying on labour internationalism. He notes the complexity of the emerging new labour internationalism which, as Ghigliani (2005) also mentioned, it appears to be a matter more of form than of substance. Burawoy (2009; 2010) basically challenges the possibility of finding an alternative to globalisation in the global countermovement and suggests that priority should be given to the creation of broader solidarities at the national level instead of building transnational action.
