Globalization transforms workforces of transnational corporation from predominantly home countrydominated
workforces into foreign-dominated, multinational workforces. Thus, the national grounding
of trade unions as the key form of labor organizing is challenged by new multinational compositions
and cross-border relocations of corporate employment affecting working conditions of employees
and trade unions in local places. We assume that economic globalization is characterized by expanding
global corporate network of vertically and horizontally integrated (equity-based) and disintegrated
(nonequity-based) value chains. We also assume that globalization can both impede and
enable labor empowerment. Based on these premises the key question is, how can labor leverage
effective power against management in global corporate networks? This question is split into two
subquestions: a) How can labor theoretically reorganize from national unions and industrial relations
institutions into global labor networks that allow prolabor improvement in global workplaces?
b) How and why has labor in a globalized economy secured the core International Labor Organization
(ILO) international labor right to organize companies and conduct collective bargaining?
The Global Labor Network perspective is adopted as an analytical framework. Empirically, a
comparative case methodology is applied comprising four more or less successful industrial disputes
where labor achieved the right to organize and undertake collective bargaining. The disputes took
place in affiliated factories of foreign transnational corporations located in Malaysia, the Philippines,
Sri Lanka, and Turkey. The conclusion is that the combination of global labor capabilities and global
labor strategizing must generate strategic labor power that adequately matches the weaknesses of
the counterpart?s global corporate network in order to achieve prolabor outcomes. The most efficient
solidarity action was leveraged by a cross-border alliance of workplace collectives, national industrial
unions, and a global union federation using global framework agreements (GFAs) with key customers
of the employer. The least efficient campaign relied primarily on domestic developing country state
institutions supported by a foreign labor nongovernmental organization (NGO).
Author Biography
Peter Wad, Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen
Business School
