This article explores the challenges of building international labor solidarity by comparing two campaigns that developed inside the Canadian labor movement. I critically compare and assess the campaign against South African apartheid in the 1980s and the more recent efforts to oppose Israeli apartheid. Both campaigns are examples of grassroots international labor solidarity, where organizers sought to build international solidarity through member mobilization and a focus on the power of workers to engage in solidarity actions. I examine how these union activists organized within their unions, and how their organizational differences and the ideological and political contexts they organized within shaped their successes and limitations. Drawing from the work of Antonio Gramsci, I argue that these campaigns were sites of counter-hegemonic practice both because of the analysis and critiques they offered but also because of the nature of their organizing.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a significant number of rank-and-file trade union activists in Canada became actively engaged in various forms of international labour solidarity. This activity, the end of the Cold War and the increasing impacts of neo-liberal globalisation combined to spark hopes for greatly expanding practices of labour transnationalism. This vision of transnationalising trade union organisation has not materialised and, in fact, inside Canadian unions there has been declining faith in the possibilities of building transnational solidarity. Starting with an analysis of the dominant dichotomies underlying the literature on labour transnationalism, I suggest that stepping outside these dichotomies can provide a different way of assessing the role of transnational labour solidarity within broader struggles for workers’ justice. In this article, drawing upon the case of transnational political solidarities built by workers inside Canadian unions in the 1980s and 1990s, I argue that assessing transnational practices with a longer view to class formation and the goals of workers’ emancipation can help to expand conceptions of what constitutes successful transnational practice. Such a reassessment of the role of labour transnationalism is particularly timely in the current context of right-wing populism.

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This past May we lost Aziz Choudry, a most beloved mentor, comrade, and friend.The breadth of Aziz's impact is reflected in the innumerable memorials in all parts of the world honouring his life and legacy. These ongoing gatherings from the reaches of South Africa, Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, the Philippines, the UK, and other parts of the world speak not only to Aziz's endless energy and commitment but also to his warmth, humility and generosity that spanned borders.Aziz was a very accomplished and prolific scholar and a deeply committed and principled activist and educator. He authored and co-edited many books. These include: