Proposal Paper of the Socioprofessional Network of Trade Unions: The Trade-union Movement at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century

The Labour College of the Alliance for a responsible, plural and social world brings together trade unionists and other activists on five continents, in an exchange of information and experiences across sectors and region. The goal of this booklet, and the accompanying website (www.forum-alternatives.net) is to nourish exchanges between people involved in social movements, specifically within trade-union organisations. More specifically, the goal is to identify current problems within the labour-union movement and to build an international network to identify proposals and experiences that can take trade unionism into the 21st Century.

For the past 20 years, throughout the world, the situation for workers has been deteriorating. The triumph of neoliberalism resulted in trade unionism entering a crisis and confronting a loss of direction. However, this neoliberal policy applied from country to country via structural adjustment and « downsizing » programmes has also built the elements needed for a new social convergence. In the text, are identified some of the questions trade unionists must ask themselves if they are to understand and engage in this new birth of the global movement for a better world.