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As the first anniversary of the strike at Gdansk approached, I sought out Lech Walesa to make an assessment of how the movement was doing in the initial stage of becoming a full‐blooded trade union. In this report I first offer some comments on the differences between a movement and a trade union. I look at the four stages a movement goes through on the way to becoming a trade union. These are:

Trends in union membership between 1990 and 2000 indicate the increasing feminization of the Irish trade union movement in terms of membership. The historical experience in industrialised nations is for much of women’s work to be relatively short‐term and marginal to the main labour force. This, it has been suggested, has tended to discourage women workers from adopting a collectivist response to the issues of pay and conditions and so weakening their level of participation in union activities. However, the evidence from a survey of the membership in a general union revealed little difference in the attitudes of men and women in relation to levels of group solidarity, wage earner solidarity and union orientation. On the evidence of this paper there is no indication that the increasing feminization of the Irish trade union movement is having an adverse effect on union activism and solidarity.

This paper aims to present an exploration of grassroots perspectives on trade union methods of organisational change management through internationalism. A case study of UNISON (one of the largest UK trade unions, representing public sector workers) is explored with the intention of identifying whether or not there are opportunities for the rebuilding of grassroots‐led collective identities, solidarity and community beyond national borders.

The paper is based upon a case study of UNISON's North West region in England. Participant observation was conducted and semi‐structured interviews were held with UNISON key informants. Focus group sessions were conducted with UNISON grassroots members.

There remains a big divide between the aspirations of unions such as UNISON, and the grassroots perspectives upon labour internationalism of many members. Nonetheless, as some trade unions increasingly recognise that the choice is between organisational change and growing irrelevance, we show that the way in which organisational change is understood by the grassroots is of growing significance.

The research raises implications for understanding the relationship between international officials and others within union leadership roles; the meaning of internationalism at union branch level; and the impacts of new or emergent civil society agendas such as global climate change.

The research equips trade unions with a deeper understanding of how their organisational change management strategies are supported, or questioned, by members. It demonstrates the level of grassroots support for internationalism, enabling the identification of how members position themselves with respect to cross‐border solidarity, and how they interpret organisational change strategies.

There has been great debate as to the effects of globalisation and neoliberalism on trade unions and the strategies available to achieve renewal. One such strategy is trade union internationalism. Very little is known, however, about the extent and manner of membership understandings of internationalism. Do members support internationalism, or do they perceive it as a distraction from a core agenda? The paper explores this grassroots perspective.

This chapter focuses on the case of migrant Filipina live-in domestic workers in Greece and how the frame of their work and employment in precarious, low-status/low-wage jobs and race discrimination at work, that is, the employers’ residences, affect their participation in secondary groups of solidarity and workers and their representation in them, that is, community, migrant labour associations and trade unions, during the economic crisis in Greece. According to the results of in-depth interviews Filipina migrants are entrapped in a frame of isolative and exploitative working conditions and racial discrimination at work, that is, personal services, care and domestic work. In this working context, most of the interviewed migrant Filipina live-in domestic workers appear to have developed individualistic perceptions, they act in an atomistic manner, form materialistic beliefs, are indifferent to collectivity and solidarity and are isolated from their compatriots and other workers. They have low self-perceptions and expectations for social advancement and deal with their social and labour-related problems individually, or completely resign from claiming them.

This paper aims to provide a Norwegian perspective of how trade unions in the former Soviet block countries have dealt with the challenges of the post‐communist period and how the European trade union movement has attempted to assist them as they have adjusted to representing and protecting the interests of workers in a market economy.

This paper considers the point that the experiences of trade union development in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe should not be assumed to have followed some monolithic pattern.

Each of the individual states experienced challenges that were unique to them and which reflected the economic, geographical and social situation they found themselves in when they took the “leap in the dark” at the end of the 1990s. The speed at which they made the transition to a market economy was also quite diverse with some countries such a Czech Republic and Hungary making progress quickly whilst others, for understandable reasons, were much slower off the mark.

One of the main thrusts of this paper is the diversity of experience amongst the former Soviet block countries both prior to and after the 1989 changes. The paper invites researchers to explore this diversity further in terms of causality and the impact of this diversity on the democratisation process of Central and Eastern European Countries.

Provides a timely reminder of the dangers of perceiving trade unions in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe as replicas of their counterparts in the West. The picture he paints of the diversity of the region, the weakness of national trade union headquarters starved of funds to pursue industrial objectives by local trade union organisations who have a “holiday club” mentality and retain the bulk of the income for social and welfare benefits reminds us of the extreme difficulties that face trade unions in CEE countries as the strive to build strong and effective organisations capable of challenging multinational conglomerates.

Unions are the potential but secure democratic counterforce to capital. The creation of “objective conditions” for international co‐operation has preceded but must result in “subjective conditions”. This theme survives little challenged as a central tenet of the official labour movement in country after country. The pervasive complacency in other circles concerning the prospects for industrial democracy to be achieved through the internationalisation of the evolutionary, pluralistic collective bargaining model, particularly at a time when that model seems unable to cope with born again free market philosophies even at a national level.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the capacity for trade unions to mobilise internationally by considering how stevedores in Australia successfully internationalised a major dispute.

The paper reports the findings of a single case study of the “waterfront dispute” of 1998, an industrial dispute in the Australian stevedoring industry which included the mobilisation of unions internationally. This case study is one of the four cases in a PhD research project, which examined international trade union activity in the mining, manufacturing, banking and stevedoring industries. The methodology included semi‐structured interviews with trade union leaders and activists, as well as document analysis, and involved comparative analysis across the four case studies.

Australian stevedores or “wharfies” were well placed to mobilise internationally due to a combination of internal and external factors. In particular, the Maritime Union of Australia's long‐standing support for international causes, largely due to its left‐wing, internationalist politics, resulted in the union gaining significant support from unions internationally. Important external factors included the nature of the stevedoring industry, with its organic link to other industry sectors, combined with the neo‐liberal approach adopted in Australia which also influenced the internationalisation of the union campaign.

The study provides the opportunity to consider capacity for international mobilisation in the stevedoring industry and the contingent nature of international campaigns, with wider implications for union strategies in other industry sectors.

The paper contains an in‐depth analysis of a major dispute in the Australian stevedoring industry and makes a significant contribution to the expanding literature on the internationalisation of union campaigns and union strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interrelations between the evolution of industrial relations (IR) and IR research in Poland in the historical context. Two questions are put forward: How was the evolution of the IR system in Poland influenced by the re-constitution of a particular model of the capitalism and the strategies and struggle of IR actors? How were the ways of approaching and theorizing IR influenced by the aforementioned evolution?

The paper draws upon academic literature, secondary data on actors and processes of IR as well as four expert interviews with the representatives of the first generation of IR scholars in Poland.

The paper suggests that the development of the IR system and the related scholarship can be divided into three phases: the pre-1989 period characterised by the lack of autonomous interests representation and rather limited IR research; the early development of the post-1989 IR system marked by the debates on the integrative role of IR as peacekeeping mechanism in the period of deep economic and political changes (1989-2004); the post-EU accession consolidation of the IR system characterised by the weakness of the IR actors vis-à-vis the state and increasing neo-etatist tendencies.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationships between the emergent models of Eastern European capitalism and the evolution of IR systems. It critically analyses the state of the discussion on the IR field Poland emphasising the relevance of political-economic factors as well as the ideology of “social peace” for both the evolution of the IR system in the country and the state of the IR debate.

This paper aims to explains how the Dutch unions evolved in the post war period and the reasons why they committed such significant resources to developing strong links and assisting the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe complete the “Transition Process”.

The author draws on his first‐hand experience as the president of the Dutch graphical union, and for many years president and vice president of the sector's international trade union federations – to give an insight as to the rationale behind international trade union cooperation and solidarity.

The paper suggests that the help and assistance provided by the West European workers organisations, although costly has brought added value to the enlarged European Trade Union movement in so much as it has ensured that the Central and Eastern European trade unions have been able to complete the transition period.

The paper provides a first hand account of the difficulties that trade unions in the former soviet block countries had to deal with during the transition period, and how trade unions in the West had to overcome ideological and historical prejudices in order to provide help and assistance to their sister unions in Central and Eastern Europe.