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The Problematic Past and Uncertain Future of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2002

Peter Waterman
Peter Waterman
Affiliation:
Global Solidarity Dialogue, The Hague
A declaration of interest: I am politically engaged in, as well as academically engaged with, labor internationalism. I contributed a paper to the conference discussed below. (See Peter Waterman, “Labor Internationalism in the Transition from a National/Industrial/Colonial Capitalism to an Informatised/Globalized One . . . and Beyond,” Conference on the Past and Future of International Trade Unionism, AMSAB, Ghent, Belgium, May 19–20, 2000.). Previous to this I had been involved in a public exchange with ICFTU General Secretary, Bill Jordan (For both letters, see: Peter Waterman, “From an International Union Congress to an International Labor Dialogue: An Exchange between Peter Waterman, Global Solidarity Dialogue/Dialogo Solidaridad Global, and Bill Jordan, General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.” Published online as “An Exchange Between Peter Waterman and Bill Jordan, General Secretary of the ICFTU,” in the Forum on Labor in the Global Economy, LABOR-L@YORKU.CA, May 28, 2000.) An acknowledgement of a comment on a draft of this paper to Kim Scipes, Chicago.
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Abstract

The title above was not, of course, that of either the conference held or the book launched at an academic-cum-union event in Ghent, Belgium, May 19–20, 2000. The conference was entitled, interestingly, “The Past and Future of International Trade Unionism.” The book (edited by Marcel van der Linden) is blandly called The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (Bern, 2000). Jointly, here we have something of a milestone in the history of the international labor movement. The book, weighing in at 624 pages—a milestone indeed—is the first history of this organization. It is; in fact, the first book of any kind devoted to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) that I have ever come across. The conference, which involved major national and international labor history institutes, the ICFTU, and other specialists on international labor, was also unique in looking at the future of the international labor movement in the light of this history.

Type
Reports and Correspondence
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 59 , April 2001 , pp. 125 - 132
Copyright
© 2001 The International Labor and Working-Class History Society

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