ABSTRACT
Trade unions’ earliest cross-border activities date back to the first half of the nineteenth century. In the course of the twentieth century they grew into giant institutions, of which the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), founded in 1949, is now by far the most important. In this chapter, the author analyses some of the background to the international trade unionism that consolidated itself in the twentieth century – paying particular attention to the ICFTU – and offers some thoughts about the future. Virtually from the outset the international trade union movement has had a dual structure: on the one hand the cross-national cooperation between workers in the same occupations (International Trade Secretariats) and, on the other hand, the joint efforts of national trade union confederations. The ICFTU originally viewed political democracy as parliamentary democracy with free collective bargaining.
