From consensus to crisis: a review of labour’s journey through globalisation

This article sets out to provide an account of organised labour's journey from the Washington Consensus to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) three decades of globalisation in the making. For many, the GFC emphatically discredited the foundation principles of market fundamentalism laid down by the Washington Consensus in the early 1980s. The international platform Global Unions was precisely there in Washington, November 2008, to warn the G-20 that 'half measures will not fix a broken global economy'. For some years indeed international labour has been mounting criticism towards global governance and the GFC seemed to represent a sticking point for a radical change of course. To review this journey, we will track down the inflexion of union strategies and politics towards globalisation, with a special attention to labour responses to the GFC internationally and regionally (Australia). From there and by way of conclusion, we will raise some critical questions. The GFC was meant to compel a paradigmatic shift in global governance. Has it? 'We won’t pay for their crisis!' were to voice the streets around the world. Have we?

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IIRA 2010 7th Asian Congress of the International Industrial Relations Association

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978-979-96638-9-4

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