This is a story that has sadly been missed by the media. We all know that corporations and capital are increasingly beyond the control of any one nation. Because corporations are allowed to move operations out of one country and to another if they think that playing by the rules of the game in a country are too onerous (and still export back to that country. So thought they are unwilling to play by the rules, they are still allowed to play the game.) Because of this, labor as a force in the global economy is on the wane.
One of the principal reasons for labor's decline has been the inability to organize globally encompassing unions that are able to simultaneously strike in order to disrupt corporations global operations. This may be changing. Workers of the world are uniting.
Boeing Co. workers around the world now have a new and stronger voice to deal with the multinational aerospace giant with the formation last week of the Global Union Alliance.
The new alliance is made up of the Machinists (IAM)--which represent about 40,000 Boeing workers in the United States and Canada--and unions from five other nations where Boeing has major production facilities.
On New Year's Eve of last year, 5 global unions announced plans to form a new international union that would coordinate efforts across national borders. Amicus, the UK's largest private sector union, Germany's IG Metall, and two of the United States largest industrial unions, the Steelworkers and the Metalworkers.
If this keeps up 2007, may be remembered as the year that international labor was first organized into a coalition to combat the actions of multinational corporations.