The news yesterday that Unite, the UK biggest trade union, is joining forces with United Steelworkers, the largest private sector union in the US and Canada, marks the beginning of a new chapter for the trade union movement.
The new organisation, Workers Uniting, will be the first global union, representing more than three million workers from Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada and the Caribbean and covering a wide variety of industry sectors. A precursor to full merger, the new organisation will initially operate alongside for the two existing unions.
And it won't stop there - the plan is to merge with other country and region-specific unions to create a multi-national 'super union'. This will no doubt include unions in the big off-shoring centres like India.
A direct response to globalisation, the move will lead to the synchronisation of collective bargaining in companies with operations on both sides of the Atlantic.
This is an interesting development which could have major implications for global employers over the coming years. A genuinely global union with the size and clout of Workers Uniting will be a force to be reckoned with and will no doubt make activities like off-shoring and global outsourcing all the more difficult.
It will be interesting to see how the other unions respond to this move and how Workers United begins to make its presence known.
L
Having previously worked in Royal Mail for 14 years it always interested me how the presence of a strong union can impact on internal comms practice within a large organisation. I would suggest you have to work a lot harder at every stage of the communication process, knowing that there is a powerful competing voice in the wings with a hotline to the workforce!
Posted by: Bob Hammond | July 18, 2008 at 12:55 PM