For many commentators, globalization is the pivotal theme of our era. Conservatives celebrate expanding international markets, and labor leaders portray them as the cause of labor’s woes. Ironically, both sides agree on one theme: Labor has been essentially passive. It is either the powerless victim or the fortunate beneficiary of processes beyond its control. Yet last summer’s General Motors strike sheds a different light on labor’s role. Unions themselves may have some responsibilities for workers’ current fate and some potential for redressing obvious injustices.

Globalization didn’t begin with NAFTA. U.S. corporations started investing abroad after World War II. Large U.S. industrial unions aided these efforts — often by assisting CIA repression of left leaning unions abroad. They reasoned that corporate profitability worked to their benefit. They were right in a short term sense, but eventually foreign subsidiaries became competitors and job destroyers.

When Vietnam and the oil embargo caused inflation to run rampant here, foreign competition became fierce. Employers then demanded a new approach to workplace organization, “lean production.” Workers were to work harder and longer, some production was to be outsourced if necessary, workplace rules were to be bent.

In the last two decades many union leaders made a series of concessionary agreements on wages, working conditions, and terms for hiring new employees. They promised their members that such deals would allow current union members to produce a better product, keep their jobs, and eventually improve their wages.

Many corporations took advantage of union cooperation to downsize — with huge losses in union jobs. Cuts in jobs and wages at one plant were often used to leverage drastic reductions in other plants. The decline in union jobs and the economic distress of the last two decades then created a context in which governments could negotiate pro- business trade agreements.

Why have unions allowed themselves to get into this predicament? Veteran labor reporter Kim Moody points out in his recent book, Labor in a Lean World, that these were business unions that had long seen their fortunes as synonymous with corporate management. Management was to control the pace and nature of corporate investment, the organization of the workplace, and the long-term financial decisions. Unions would assure worker cooperation in return for a modest piece of growing profits.

Union leadership itself, often bureaucratic and insulated from the concerns of most shop floor workers, didn’t recognize that lean production was just the modern phrase for old fashioned speed-up.

The contrast between the promises and the realities of today’s workplace breeds contradictory politics. On the one hand, it encourages hatred of immigrants, buy American campaigns, and protectionism. Some commentators claim that all opposition to current corporate trade models is chauvinism in a new form. But Moody convincingly refutes this view.

Some shop floor dissidents have responded to the global corporate attack with an internationalism of their own: “social- movement unionism.” They have insisted on democratizing their unions and broadening negotiation goals to include demands that will benefit the entire community. They insist that future cooperation with management on workplace reform move beyond “consultation” toward a collaboration of equal partners. Where workers have an equal voice in redesigning jobs and in broader financial planning, long term workplace productivity and job security can be better assured.

In Europe, Asia and the United States dissident unionists have staged wildcat strikes against egregious work rules and harsh overtime policies that destroy community jobs. Some public sector workers have put concerns about patient staffing and class sizes at the center of their demands. In many instances the dissidents have sought to build alliances with labor in other nations and to expand economic opportunities for many who were excluded by traditional unionism.

Ironically, the very structure of the global economy does give workers some leverage. The turmoil in the economies of Latin America and Asia has encouraged a more radical union movement in these nations. Labor here in Maine needs to consider ways of building alliances with such groups. Champion Paper’s purchase of Brazilian facilities reflects both the strength of the dollar and the low wages of Brailizan workers.

During the GM strike, dissident unionists forced UAW leadership to take outsourcing and worker speed up seriously. Some of the worst abuses were prevented, but more basic tasks remain. Labor today stands at a cross roads. It can build on its modest success in slowing the corporate juggernaut, but only through internal changes. We are unlikely to have any viable and humane alternative to a corporate dominated global economy without a powerful rank and file labor movement. A democratic labor movement can both insist on and help implement broader reforms of corporations, the domestic safety net, and world trade. The most effective answer both to “globalization” and labor’s often negative public image is the rank and file internationalism growing within many unions.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail comments to jbuell@acadia.net.