ABSTRACT
In introducing the theme of ‘international labour’ it would be appropriate to make some assessment of the present fortunes and ultimate fate of the working class, a group marked out by Marx as the bearer of freedom for humankind. But the century of experience since Marx’s death provides neither unambiguous evidence to support his vision, nor sufficient testimony to refute it. The story of international labour has been one of disappointed hopes and frustrated dreams, as well as one of stirring acts of solidarity and fraternity. As socialist experiments have proliferated, so the message has become fragmented and diluted. The domain imagined by Industrial Relations specialists is a formal, carefully constructed, but often ahistorical world. Since 1949 the international trade union movement has been totally riven by the force of super-power rivalries. The immense gulf between the major international trade union federations is reinforced by a veritable panoply of supra-national agencies.
