The message isn't changed

Increasingly, companies are coalescing into ever larger amalgamations and operating in a multitude of countries and in a wider than ever range of fields.

Also increasing is the penetration of foreign companies operating in this country, riding on the coat-tails of the wave of privatisations carried out by successive Tory, new Labour and, now, coalition governments.

The globalisation of capital is proceeding apace and with it come dangers that, like the companies, transcend national boundaries.

The maritime trades have a long experience of the perils of flag of convenience arrangements and it is now becoming clear that the capitalist version of globalisation is little more than an extension of that attitude to workers and their rights into nearly every field and all across the world.

Companies may carry with them into other countries the power that their enormous concentrations of capital brings them. They are, however, demonstrably less willing to carry any commitment to the rights of their workers, which they publicly acknowledge in some countries, across into territories in which they can get away with considerably less.

And this phenomenon is one which carries common dangers for workers everywhere.

Should firms be able to flout normal standards of behaviour in one country, as HRW has convincingly demonstrated that they can, these firms inevitably then attempt to import those abuses back into the countries in which trade unions and the law have hitherto combined to regulate their behaviour.

And, should that fail, they are still free to transfer their investment capital into the countries which allow them more scope for exploitation.

Which means that, wherever trade unions are successful in insisting on a decent and thorough system of rights for working people, they are first faced with aggressive anti-union policies and practices which they thought long defeated and, second, face the prospect of losing their work to branches of the companies abroad or see the profits that they have generated for their bosses exported as investment elsewhere.

Well, that's certainly a system that would suit the profiteers of the transnational firms, but it doesn't do very much for the working class, except to drive down wages, reduce their rights, increase their chances of unemployment and cut the amount of capital available for investment in the future.

And that means that unions will have to evolve a way, in an increasingly globalised world, of presenting an increasingly globalised response.

There is no longer any way in which unions can avoid confronting the consequences of super-exploitation in a multitude of countries or the repression of trade union and human rights in others.

Even the sloppy enforcement of trade union rights in the US has become a weapon that your own boss can use against you in a British workplace.

Thus, international solidarity has become more and more a necessity for self-defence, as well as friendly gesture to colleagues abroad. The fight to demand and enforce international standards of behaviour and remuneration becomes a real matter of urgency because, in a world of globalised capitalism, an injury to one is, in a more tangible sense than ever before, an injury to all. And, where investment abroad is made, it must be conditional on equal standards on pay.

Britain, for decade after decade, used the fruits of imperialism to buy off members of the skilled working class. It has changed a little now, and even the underdevelopment that imperialism caused in its colonies is now being used as a weapon against workers in the developed world, but the message is still the same.

It's: "Workers of all countries, unite!"