During the post-war boom, unemployment among textile and garment workers in Europe and North America increased. Trade unionists attributed the textile crisis primarily to an increased supply of inexpensive textile and garment products on the global market, produced in Asia by low-wage labour. The aim of this article is to analyse the responses of European and North American unionists to the perceived threat posed by Hong Kong in particular. Specifically, it explores the efforts of the International Textile and Garment Workers’ Federation (ITGWF) to unionise workers in Hong Kong during the 1960s. It argues that the textile crisis in Europe and North America prompted both a reassessment of the scope of international trade unionism and a strengthening of mechanisms to engage in internationalism. The unionists contended that stronger unions could negotiate more favourable conditions, thereby mitigating the low-wage threat to European and North American industries, while simultaneously raising living standards in Asia. In the end, however, the results in Hong Kong were limited. Although the ITGWF appointed an Asian-born trade unionist to work on the ground, the mission’s perspective remained predominantly European/North American. The campaign faced considerable suspicion, with critics perceiving it as primarily funded by European and North American unions to alleviate domestic unemployment rather than advance genuine internationalism.

The new mobility of capital: The Swedish Garment Workers’ Union and overseas production, 1960–1972

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Swedish clothing manufacturers responded to the textile crisis by moving production abroad to countries where wages were lower and trade unions were weaker. With EFTA (the European Free Trade Association), the opportunity arose to manufacture clothing in Portugal and Finland for export back to Sweden. With a focus on the Swedish Garment Workers’ Union, this article analyses trade union reactions to the mobility of capital, looking at the public narratives about Swedish-owned factories in Portugal and Finland, published in the trade union members’ magazine Beklädnadsfolket, as well as internal trade union discussions about overseas production. In print, Beklädnadsfolket described the factories in Portugal in a critical colonial perspective. It informed readers that the regime prohibited trade unions and Swedish entrepreneurs sewed clothes from cotton produced in Portugal’s colonies. Thus, it tried to engage in a public discussion, and to generate public opinion against such foreign ventures. As for Finland, the trade union narrative was somewhat less critical. Nevertheless, Swedish representatives argued that the new factories in Finland posed a trade union problem, primarily because groups politically left of the Social Democrats controlled the local trade union organisations. In internal discussions, however, the mobility of capital – regarding both Portugal and Finland – was something the trade unionists considered when discussing other issues, such as free trade versus tariffs, the prospects for successful wage negotiations, or unemployment among the rank and file.

The aim of this article is to study the significance of international trade-union cooperation during the first two post-Second-World-War decades as regards the development of a more liberal labour-migration regime in Western Europe. The article illuminates the mutual interplay between the national and international level of the trade-union movement. Mainly, it focuses on discussions within the International Metalworkers' Federation, but also the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Thereby it creates an analytical bridge between the two different structures of the socialist/social democratic international trade-union movement. The article shows that trade unionists generally articulated positive attitudes to migration, at least as long as they were possible to control. Trade unionists connected migration with population and reconstruction issues, and tied movements of labour to a broader policy that aimed at a more effective use of all the means of production available. At the same time, they construed migration as a short-term solution to counter imbalances in Europe between the supply and demand for labour. The goal in the longer run was national labour markets in full employment, where all workers had similar conditions, which would decrease migration incentives.

The aim of this article is to study discussions within the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) about the early postwar process of European integrationat the intersection of international cooperation and nationally defined interests. The central question is the future of the Ruhr. This article argues that the developing Cold War, and the conflict between social democrats and communists, limited the reach of international trade-union cooperation but simultaneously strengthened the perceived need among social-democratic trade unionists in Western Europe to coordinate their policiesin relation to supposed enemies. European integration in combination with the Cold War also highlighted a need to coordinate the resources of European and anti-communist trade unions in North America. The article shows that the IMF generally supported European integration as a defence against the hypothetical threat from the East, but made attempts to sway the process to include a pronounced social dimension.