Laurel Sefton MacDowell

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) was set up in 1949 and now has 215 affiliated organizations in 145 countries and territories on all five continents, with a membership of 125 million. It is a confederation of national trade union centres, each of which links together trade unions of that particular country. The ICFTU cooperates closely with the International Labour Organization and has consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The present book is the first history to be written of this important organization. A team of researchers describes the development of the ICFTUs precursors (the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres, the International Federation of Trade Unions, and the early World Federation of Trade Unions), and reconstructs the complicated history of the ICFTU itself, from its origins during the Cold War, through anti-colonial struggles, European unification, international campaigns against Apartheid and many other issues. A final chapter discusses the organizations prospects in the twenty-first century.

Labour Left Out: Canada's Failure to Protect and Promote Collective Bargaining as a Human Right, by Roy J. Adams

Vergara argues that ‘the administration of Carlos Ibañez and the Chilean business class conceived the Nuevo Trato as a response to the failure of previous copper agreements’ (p. 94). Was that the view of all who made up the Ibañez administration? More importantly, was that the view of the Chilean state? And should we assume that the government is the same as the state, and thus a unitary actor? The issue of the role of the Chilean state is further complicated when, on p. 158, Vergara argues that a ‘fifty year history of increasing state dependence on the mining industry and incomplete attempts to reduce or at least control, the power of foreign capital’ (my emphasis added). This is not my reading of Vergara’s story. In fact, the opposite is closer to what the reader has been told at this point in the book. In other words, if anything, the Chilean state sought not to control or reduce the role of foreign capital, but to accommodate itself vis-à-vis powerful players. Moreover, we have also been told that labor was controlled by the state so as to articulate this development model. Despite these shortcomings, Vergara’s Copper Workers, International Business, and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile is worth reading. Particularly students may find it thought provoking and accessible. Her book is a stimulating invitation to return to an important chapter in Chile’s socio-political and economic history.