Labor unions can take on international fights and win!

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"Fresh off a strike in Erie, PA, the United Electrical Workers are a model of the working-class internationalism that can build a more just world.
fter nine days of picketing in below freezing temperatures, striking workers in Erie, Pennsylvania returned to work recently under a 90-day agreement.
The 1,700 strong United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) strike quickly drew national attention. Senator Bernie Sanders declared his support for the union and even invited the president of the local to speak at his campaign rally. As “the first major U.S. manufacturing strike of the Trump era,” according to The Nation, Erie brought renewed focus to the struggles of American industrial workers who have faced job loss, wage stagnation, and weakened bargaining power as a result of corporate globalization.
But Erie isn’t just a reminder of the problem. It also points us toward the solution.
For decades, UE has been a leading example of global labor solidarity. The union’s commitment to internationalism offers our greatest hope for an alternative to the existing global system.
Since the 1980s, policymakers and the corporate interests that they represent have designed a globalized world that places profit before people and planet. This “neoliberal” global system allows capital, but not people, to move freely across borders. Because corporations can shop around for the most exploitable labor and environmental conditions, countries desperate for investment are pitted against one another in a global “race to the bottom.”
While right-wingers like Donald Trump have tried to paint this as a contest between America and the rest of the world, the true struggle is between capital and the working class, regardless of nation. The key to victory is therefore to unite workers across borders.
UE does just that.
UE was one of the first unions to recognize and respond to the threat of neoliberal globalization. During the run-up to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it built a unique alliance with the Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT) of Mexico that has served as an exemplar of transnational labor solidarity ever since. UE and the FAT remain structurally independent but play active roles in each other’s strikes, campaigns, and organizing drives. They exchange rank-and-file members to promote dialogue between countries, launched a joint education center along the U.S.-Mexico border, and have even run mutual fundraising campaigns.
Most innovatively, UE and the FAT have leveraged the NAFTA side accord on labor to pressure each other’s countries on labor legislation. Along with other partners in Mexico and Canada, the FAT submitted a complaint to the Mexican government that North Carolina’s restrictions on public sector collective bargaining violate NAFTA. Though existing trade agreements are far from supportive of workers’ rights, the UE-FAT alliance points to ways to leverage the meager protections that do exist.
UE also recognizes that working class interests go beyond the narrow set of demands that can be won from management at the negotiating table. It played an active role in the multi-issue Global Justice movement, participating in multiple World Social Fora and sitting for some time on the Coordinating Committee for the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. . ."

https://popularresistance.org/labor-unions-can-take-on-international-fights-and-win/

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