Free Trade and Transnational Labour

Andreas Bieler is Professor of Political Economy and Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, UK. Bruno Ciccaglione is the European Co-ordinator of the Seattle to Brussels Network. John Hilary is the Executive Director of the British NGO War on Want. Ingemar Lindberg is a former researcher and social policy adviser to the Confederation of Swedish Trade Unions (LO).

"[A] remarkable contribution to the debate regarding the role of trade union and transnationalsolidarity as a strategy to challenge such agreements...Free Trade and Transnational Labourprovides the basis for action and concrete examples that can be used in a variety of contexts,supplemented by a number of key theoretical interventions that place those struggles in context." - Global Labour Journal''... challenges the divide that presupposes diverting strategies for workers’ according to their location. Even though more utopian ideas have been put forward in recent years, this final conclusion is a remarkable contribution, and it is also a challenge for labour to rethink itself on the basis of the areas in which it is stronger.'' - Bruno Dobrusin, Global Labour Studies

• 1. Introduction I. Conceptual reflections 2. The implosion of global capitalism and the challenge for the radical left 3. ‘Imperialist rent’ in practice and theory 4. Uneven and combined development and unequal exchange: the second wind of neoliberal ‘free trade’ II. Empirical investigations 5. European trade unions and free trade: between international solidarity and perceived self-interest 6. Canadian, Québécois and European unions and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement negotiations 7. The ASEAN-China FTA and its implications for the global economy 8. COSATU and South Africa’s free trade policy 9. The Free Trade Area of the Americas in the Long Crisis of Brazilian Labour: lessons for building North-South responses to the current crisis 10. Free trade and the new labour internationalism 11. Mapping the resistance against bilateral free trade and investment agreements III. Outlook 12. Unions and Trade: what kind of solidarity? 13. Global Crises: the need to go beyond transnational solidarity in the struggle against the expansion of free trade agreements 14. Conclusions