The Resonant Places of Transnational Union Struggles: Reflections on the Organising Strategy of the International Transport Workers' Federation

This article explores a dilemma at the heart of union organising in Transnational Corprorations, namely, how to circulate union power across a broad spatial terrain when actually existing labour struggles are generally restricted to single sites? Reflecting on the experience of the ITF, this paper argues that single site campaigns have been the most tangible aspects of federation’s organising campaign so far. It is noted that these struggles are resource intensive, and have few ‘spillover effects’ (Lipshutz, 2004) within the TNC. At the same time, it is argued that the worker tenacity that defines these struggles is rare, and as such they should be theorised foundational ‘resonant places’ in a wider global organising strategy.