South–South Labor Internationalism: SIGTUR and the Challenges to the Status Quo

Abstract

Labor internationalism and solidarity has been dominated historically by the European trade union movement. The 2008 economic crisis and the rise of emerging economies have led to a gradual reorientation of labor relations, increasing the capacity of a group of southern trade unions to influence transnational labor solidarity. This article reviews the increasing connectivity between southern trade unions, with a focus on the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR), which groups confederations from the Global South, with leading unions from Brazil, Argentina, Korea, South Africa, and Australia, among others. The leading argument is that despite shortcomings, SIGTUR has the potential to revitalize labor internationalism through extending the network into articulated global actions that challenge dominant neoliberal globalization.

Innovations in Labor Studies - Incorporating Global Perspectives: From Exhortation to Making It Real

“…To expand, some of the efforts known were listed. This included efforts such as the Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights (see Dobrusin, 2014;Lambert and Webster, 2001; O'Brien, 2019--and see the review of O'Brien at Scipes, 2019); the Labor Start network, the European dock workers' network (Fitz, 1990;Fox-Hodess, 2017Weir, 2004;Waterman, 1998: 79-110), Women Working Worldwide (see Hale and Wills, 2007), Asia Monitor Resource Centre, the Australia Asia Worker Links, the Maquila Solidarity Network, and the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (for the latter, see Vogel, 2006). International solidarity campaigns were mentioned, such as those between garment workers and consumers (again, see Armbruster-Sandoval, 2005;and Kumar and Mahoney, 2014), as well as efforts of by Canadian workers to support Palestinian workers through developing the Boycott, Divestment and Solidarity movement, after building an earlier labor campaign against South African apartheid (Nastovski, 2014), and labor support committees, such as the Philippine Worker Support Committee.…”