LABOUR INTERNATIONALISM OF PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS: "OLD" OR "NEW" INTERNATIONALISM?

Abstract

This research focuses on the way national unions of public sector use the international space to cope with the challenges that the globalisation discourse and market-oriented reforms of public services, pose on public services and public sector workers. The analysis and comparative account of the labour internationalism of CUPE and Ver.di show that these reforms represent both a threat and an opportunity to labour internationalism of public sector unions. As a threat, these reforms may push public sector unions to engage in international work in a rather defensive and pragmatic fashion, expressed in “old” forms of labour internationalism. As an opportunity, they may provide the ground for a strategic vision of labour internationalism which aims at building a movement of resistance and alternatives to the neoliberal model of globalisation, expressed in “new” forms of labour internationalism.