TIE-Reflections
140117
Transnationals Information Exchange-Netherlands
and the
Moment of Shopfloor Labour Internationalism
Peter Waterman
[email protected]
Introduction
These notes are written in haste and from Lima, where I have no access to my print
library (though for my brief biographical recollections see Appendix 1). I hope,
nonetheless, that these notes might provoke the future thinking and activity of
those taking part in the final TIE-Netherlands event, January 21, 2017.
T
he passing of TIE-Netherlands should not be limited to one event, however
valuable this might be. The occasion should also stimulate reflection on
and research into its birth, rise, development and eventual closure.
1. TIE (to give it the acronym it had at its origins) actually represented the
outstanding international contribution to the ‘new labour internationalism’ of
the 1970s-80s. It was linked to, followed by or gave rise to a number of ‘labour
service centres’ in the UK, South Africa (still under Apartheid), Pakistan, Hong
Kong, as well as TIE-Germany and Brazil. Most of these were international and
internationalist centres. That they have also mostly disappeared, are fading, or
have transformed themselves into something else is no reason to forget the
wave. As with various other such, TIE-Amsterdam addressed itself more to its
national base, and more-or-less abandoned International English or National
Dutch.
2. This was the moment of ‘shopfloor labour internationalism’, the idea and
strategy of surpassing the limitations of official union internationalism (then as
now basically a top-to-top or top-down affair) by creating meaningful
international solidarity relations within specific companies/industries or
workplaces, at the base of the unions. As with most of the other international
labour-support centres, TIE never criticised the trade union institutions as such,
but seems to have ended up providing these with services.
3. The TIE-Reports of the early-1980s were impressive examples of
communicating the new global world of labour to a wider audience (e.g.
Peijnenburg et al 1984). The TIE workshops of that period brought together
shopfloor activists, and pro-labour academics. I recall the presence of Bill
Ridgers of Counter Information Services, London, and the Brazilian, Marcos
Arruda, connected with a major funder, the World Council of Churches. With its
publications, TIE also demonstrated the birth of the new ‘communications
internationalism’ (which later took off in digital form). TIE surely inspired the
UK-based International Labour Reports, which in many ways became in turn the
major organ of the new labour internationalism. With its informal structures and
processes, TIE also represented that new social movement form, the network.
4. Why I refer to a ‘moment’ is that this phenomenon came out of an
international wave of labour protest, combined with a new wave of
emancipatory left thinking – themselves both consequent on ‘Paris 1968’? The
moment, which had a peak of maybe one decade, foundered, I think, on two
rocks, that of an aggressive neo-liberal globalisation and that of the largelydefensive inter/national union forms and procedures of the 19th-20th century.
5. Such an impact had TIE that even at the turn of the century Kim Moody (1998),
and - well into the new one - Marcel van der Linden (2015) were still referring to
it as a or the shining light of a new kind of labour internationalism. The Moody
contribution was historical, analytical and substantial; it provides the necessary
launching pad for more critical accounts. The van der Linden reference is a
passing remark, in an otherwise pertinent and sobering 21st century paper. But
neither of these two considers the limitations of the TIE model or moment.
6. The limitations were early pointed out by two of the young academics
involved with TIE, who had themselves been heavily engaged with an
international campaign to ward off the closure of the Scottish plant of the
Canadian farm-machinery company, Massey Ferguson (often considered the first
TNC). This was just one of a wave of such closures in Scotland. In an argument
drawing on Marxist political-economy, sociological theory and the unsuccessful
experience of the Massey Ferguson activists, they concluded that successful
labour protest would henceforth have to surpass the limits of the factory gates
and the union office (Haworth and Ramsay 1984).
7. The conference agenda (Appendix 2) suggests such a possible reach, where
Point 5 refers to ‘unions and ‘varied solidarity: women, youth and LGBT’.
However, I note that reference here is to unions rather than labour more
generally and that ‘varied solidarity’ does not really take on those varied popular
forces in the ‘global justice and solidarity movement’ (GJ&SM). This has been
taking off for two decades, and includes indigenous and peasant movements,
whilst institutionalised union solidarity continues to flounder (Gallin 2007,
Hyman 2002, Waterman 2014, 2016). Nor does the event seem informed by
recent radical-democratic or socialist literature on international labour, on
internationalism or solidarity (e.g. Featherstone 2012, Burgmann 2016). Nor,
finally, is there reference to two major transformations of capitalism and,
consequently, labour - precarisation and informatisation (Bergfeld 2016, FoxHodess 2016, Forman 2015, 2014).
8. A literally foundational problem for both TIE and the various other
international labour support centres referred to above, has been that of funding.
Indeed, one is bound to speculate that it was the reduction or disappearance of
this that was responsible for the closure. This issue seems to be unaddressed by
the agenda of the final TIE event. Yet TIE was, after all, an international labour
NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation). It was therefore subject, as are all such,
to what the Latin American feminist, Sonia Alvarez, (1999, 2009), talking of
women’s centres in Latin America, called ongización (NGOisation). This implies,
amongst other things, the financial and ideological dependence on those above
and outside. As Alvarez suggests, this is a serious if not fatal condition. But in so
far as labour support groups address themselves to the political-economy of
capitalism, we surely need to consider these support groups in terms of the flows
and impacts of money and power.
9. And in so far as TIE was some kind of leftist think tank, it belongs to a broader
category of such, as one of those ‘alternative policy groups’ involved in ‘the
struggle for global justice’ (Carroll 2016). In so far as these are funderdependent, and both state and foundation funders are running out of money and of patience with ‘alternatives’ that do not fit their narrowing pragmatic
criteria - then the question arises of what form might be appropriate for the next
wave of international labour support groups. Could this be some kind of crowdfunded, online operation, infinitely cheaper and more flexible than any
institutionalized one (Waterman 2016b)?
10. In so far, further, as TIE-Netherlands (like TIE-Germany) are Eurocentred,
then the question arises of whether they are not or have not been Eurocentric.
The introduction to the closing event does ask ‘what we in the Netherlands learn
from union struggle in, for example, Turkey, Belarus or Chile?’. This might raise
the question of how a relation on a West-Rest axis, dependent on the inevitable
inequality of resources, might reverse or surpass a patron-client flow of ideas.
This issue has been tackled in a Spanish-language book, International
Cooperation and Emancipatory Social Movements, by a Basque centre of
development cooperation (Fernandez Ortiz De Zarate, Piris and Ramiro 2013).
This suggests an orientation distinctly more radical than that customary
between the West and the Rest, whether of labour solidarity or not.
11. Further, the question of history. There is a TIE archive at the International
Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. But this amounts to a mere 2.5m of
shelf-space, and the description of TIE on its website is more than somewhat
antiquated. One would like to hope that all remaining TIE materials can be
transferred to this Mecca of international labour history. Secondly, there is the
necessity for the collection of documents from past TIE officers, as well as
activists involved in its events over the decades. The latter could and should
include oral history. Whatever happened to those once involved with TIE? How
do they now look back on the TIE experience? If this begins to sound like a book,
or a single PhD, or a cooperative research project, so much the better.
12. Finally, whilst this piece may seem to represent a requiem for shopfloor
labour internationalism, I do not dismiss this as part of a more general strategy
for a labour internationalism that relates to 1) our globalized, neo-liberalised,
informatised and financialised capitalist times, and 2) all other alienated social
categories, whether exploited in waged form or not, these ‘others’ being
increasingly involved in emancipatory social movements of increasingly global
reach (Waterman 2010).
References
Alvarez, Sonia. 1999. ‘Advocating Feminism: the Latin American Feminist NGO
“Boom”’, International Feminist Journal of Politics.
Alvarez, Sonia. 2009. ‘Beyond NGO-isation?: Reflections from Latin America’.
Development’.
Vol.
52,
No.
2,
pp.
175–184.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/dev.2009.23.
Burgmann, Verity. 2016. Globalization and Labour in the Twenty-First Century.
New York: Routledge.
Carroll, William. (with Elaine Coburn and J.P. Sapinski). 2016. Expose, Oppose,
Propose: Alternative Policy Groups and the Struggle for Global Justice.
London: Zed Books. 2016.
Featherstone, David. 2012. Solidarity: Hidden Histories and Geographies of
Internationalism. London: Zed. Gall, Gregor, Adrian Wilkinson and Richard
Fernandez Ortiz De Zarate, Gonzalo; Silvia Piris and Pedro Ramiro. 2013.
Cooperación Internacional y Movimientos Sociales Emancipadores: Bases
para
un
Encuentro
Necesario.
Bilbao:
Hegoa.
http://publ.hegoa.efaber.net/authors/274.
Fox-Hodess, Katie. 2016. ‘Is an Injury to One an Injury to All? Some Critical
Thoughts on Trade-Union Internationalism Today’. Salvage Zone.
Forman, Erik. 2015. ‘Theses on a Unionism Beyond Capitalism’ Roar Magazine,
Issue
#0.
https://roarmag.org/magazine/rethinking-union-labororganizing/
Fuchs, Christian. 2014. ‘Part III Conclusions’ in Digital Labour and Karl Marx 9780-415-71615-4. http://fuchs.uti.at/books/digital-labour-and-karl-marx/
Gallin, Dan. 2007. ‘Foreword’, Craig Phelan (ed.), The Future of Organised Labour:
Global Perspectives. Bern: Peter Lang.
Haworth, Nigel and Harvie Ramsay. 1984. ‘Grasping the Nettle: Problems with the
Theory of International Trade Union Solidarity’, in Waterman, Peter (ed), For
a New Labour Internationalism. The Hague: ILERI Foundation. Pp.60-87.
Linden, Marcel v.d. 2015. ‘The Crisis of World Labour’, Against the Current.
https://solidarity-us.org/node/4424.
Hyman, Richard. 2002. ‘The Future of Unions’, Just Labour, Vol. 1, Pp. 7-15.
www.justlabour.yorku.ca/volume1/pdfs/jl_hyman.pdf
Moody, Kim. 1998. ‘Rank-And-File Internationalism: The TIE Experience’,
www.tie-germany.org/publications/tie_publications/RS_01_TIE.PDF.
Myconos, George. 2005. The Globalizations of Organized Labour 1945-2004.
New York: Palgrave.
Peijnenburg, Jeroen et. al. 1984. Brazil: The New Militancy. Amsterdam: TIENetherlands.
Waterman, Peter. 2010. ‘Needed: A Global Labour Charter Movement’,
Communications and Critical/Cultural Studies. Vol. 7, No. 1.
Waterman, Peter. 2014. From Coldwar Communism to the Global Emancipatory
Movement: Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalist. Helsinki: Intoebooks.
Waterman, Peter. 2014. ‘The International Labour Movement in, Against and
Beyond, the Globalised and Informatised Cage of Capitalism and
Bureaucracy’. Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements.
Volume 6 (2): 35 – 58.
Waterman, Peter 2016a. ‘A Coffee-Table Book on Dutch ‘Trade Union Solidarity’,
Working Paper No. 43. Amsterdam: International Institute for Research
and Education. https://fileserver.iire.org/working_papers/WP43.pdf.
Waterman, Peter. 2016b. ‘Expose, Oppose, Propose: Alternative Policy Groups
and the Struggle for Global Justice’. India: CounterCurrents.
Appendix 1: My TIE Moment
Extracted from Waterman (2014), Chapter 6: Academic/Activist 1970s-80s.
Within the Netherlands, I got increasingly involved with something we began to
call ‘shopfloor internationalism’. This was primarily represented by the
Transnationals Information Exchange (TIE), housed in Amsterdam at the HQ of
the left international think-tank, the Transnational Institute (TNI). The same
building housed the SOBE (Centre for Research on Multinational Companies),
orientated toward the Dutch unions and public, and toward the interests of the
South.
TIE, along with maybe a half-dozen other ‘international labour support
groups’ (my term) was a beneficiary of both the 1970s wave of shopfloor labour
activism in Western Europe, and of Dutch state funding for such solidarity
movements as those against Apartheid. Created in s and grouping some 40 other
groups, TIE also provided an early and spontaneous model of that new
international(ist) social movement form, the network. Whilst neither opposing
the dominant trade unions nor explicitly questioning their institutional form, TIE
obviously acted as a pep-group and an irritant – the grain of sand within the
oyster. Its main activity was arranging or hosting network meetings and
providing information. The TIE Bulletins were mostly devoted to one country
(e.g. Brazil), industry (auto, agribusiness, information technology) or company
(Ford). The bulletins were also models of both attractive design and information
alternative to that available from either the dominant media or the unions
themselves.
I seem to recall that the first of the shopfloor networks was, indeed, one
initiated by Ford motorworkers at Dagenham, London. And I seem also to recall
that this was an initiative of Communist shop stewards there. Within the UK,
around this time, there was a mushrooming of labour or labour and community
support centres, such as the Coventry Workshop. In London there was a more
internationally-orientated outfit, Counter Information Services (CIS). From 1972
to 1983 it produced 33 ‘anti-reports’, dealing, for example, with the Lucas
corporation, South African labour protest, women, Unilever, insurance.
Within the Netherlands, such other international labour education or
support groups developed as the Tilburg-based Industrial Restructuring
Network Europe (IRENE). Many of the so-called Third-World ‘country
committees’ took a particular interest in labour questions, as did the Utrechtbased India Werkgroep at the time of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, 1984.
My initial role with respect to these groups or networks was one of
observation since I was not then involved in shopfloor internationalism even as a
researcher. But it was through TNI meetings that I got to know the shopfloor
internationalists and international labour service centres in the UK, Germany,
Scandinavia, Hongkong and elsewhere, as well as the Marxist academics working
on labour as capitalism globalised.
Appendix 2: Final Seminar of TIE-Netherlands
Rough and partial translation of the announcement of the closing event. PW.
http://www.tie-netherlands.nl/node/4932
"Solidarity from the Shopfloor"
International symposium on building union power from the shopfloor.
TIE-Netherlands final symposium
January 21, 2017
How are activists from different countries engaged in building international
solidarity from the shopfloor? How are they organized and what has been
achieved? How can we from the Netherlands contribute to the fight for workers
rights abroad, but also: what we can learn in the Netherlands learn from union
struggle in, for example, Turkey, Belarus or Chile? And how might we be able to
shape a broad trade union solidarity that goes along with the struggle against
sexism, racism and homophobia?
On January 21 TIE-Netherlands is organizing an international conference on
"Solidarity from the Shop Floor." Here we enter into dialogue with activists from
Belarus, Turkey, Russia, Morocco, Chile and the Netherlands on their everyday
trade union struggles and how they work together on this. On the basis of
concrete examples we will look at the importance, the successes and challenges
of building international union work from the bottom up.
The international panel will debate with the public on:
1. International networks: what's the point in building union power in the
Netherlands? (FNV with speakers and autonomous unions from Chile)
2. International trade union solidarity: how to strengthen the trade union
struggle abroad? (With speakers from the BKDP in Belarus and the MPRA
from Russia)
3. Solidarity from the base within a context of repression, ‘The case of
Turkey’ (with speakers from Genel-İş Eğitim-Sen, Dev Maden-Sen and
Birleşik Metal-İş, all from Turkey)
4. Unions and ‘varied solidarity’: women, youth and LGBT (with speakers
from FNV BKDP in Belarus, Genel-İş and Eğitim-Sen from Turkey)
In addition to the plenary session of exchange and debate, there will be several
inspirational videos and photos displayed and there will the possibility to speak
to each other extensively and get to know each other better during the many
informal moments, in which the necessary snacks, drinks and live music will be
provided.
The symposium is also the closure of TIE Netherlands. TIE has devoted himself
since 1978 to build a strong and democratic international trade union movement
from the base. We did this mainly by organizing training seminars and
international exchanges between shopfloor activists from home and abroad.
From January 1, 2017, TIE-Netherlands will close its office and thus its
operations, and is happy to use this symposium to transfer contacts and
knowledge.
During the symposium we will share the work TIE has carried out in recent
years, with trade union activists at home and abroad. It is an opportunity to learn
from experience, to inspire and be inspired and to establish contacts within the
trade union movement and with other organizations. The symposium is intended
for union members and others involved with unions, as well as professionals and
activists active in NGOs, migrant organizations, interest groups, associations and
others concerned with labor, social movements and international cooperation.