Introduction

This book investigates empirically the nature of the differences between the Eastern and Western trade unions. If the differences in trade union consciousness were due to the specificity of the local work settings, once the workplaces were made comparable by multinational capital, these differences would gradually disappear. The dialogue between Eastern and Western trade unions is made difficult by the different ways activists experience social change: under the form of slow crisis in the West, which induces reactions of resistance; under the form of global alternation in the East, which causes an overvaluation of any radical change. The international difference among workers in a globalised economy is evidence of a more general rising importance of diversity for the trade unions. The consequences for the trade unions' agenda should be manifold. The book concerns the transformation of class consciousness. Consciousness analyses and explains with reference to subjective experience, as a main determinant of the definition of identities and interests.