Labor Rights in a North-South Framework: International Trade Union Solidarity Actions

Abstract

Unionization is the most important instrument available to workers in their struggle to achieve their aims, to overcome their difficulties and to create the possibility of their expressing demands and improving social conditions. Workers’ organizations are counterparts to management, thus there exists a conflict of interests, values and aims not resolvable by means of legislation alone. As Davies and Freedland point out, ‘As a power countervailing management trade unions are much more effective than the law has ever been or can ever be … Everywhere the effectiveness of the law depends on the unions far more than the unions depend on the effectiveness of the law. The effectiveness of the unions, however, depends to some extent on forces neither they nor the law can control’.¹ Indeed, with their increased strength in the industrial countries, trade unions have established considerable influence, especially in countries with long traditions of cooperation between trade unions and related political parties.