ABSTRACT
Unions are always in a sense reactive. They are organised on a class basis, founded on the existence in all capitalist economies of an underlying basic conflict of interests between capital and labour. As the organisation of production changes, unions must renew their way of organising, reacting to new strategies on part of the interests of capital. For a long period of time, economic structures have been nationally based and unions have been organised mainly within a national context. Now, as production and distribution is increasingly organised by transnational companies or networks, and as financial capital moves instantly across the globe, discussed in Chapter 1 of this book, also workers must reorganise, finding new ways of acting together across borders.
