The organized labour movement – that is, workers and trade unions – has always related to “other” societal issues deemed outside its boundaries. Diverse issues – such as war and peace, environmental sustainability and gender equity – have made their mark in both discursive and practical ways on the labour movement. Perhaps the main strategic challenge (and opportunity) facing the labour movement today is how a progressive articulation with these other issues might be forged. If the labour movement is not the sole, or even the main, agent of social transformation, this task is a crucial one.

This chapter opens with a consideration of labour as a social movement. Labour has not always and everywhere been part of industrial relations machinery nor been linked to politics through social democratic parties. The tensions pitting “struggle versus structures” is explored, as is the way unions may be moving beyond managing decline to organizing for the future. Mainstream and radical critics of the labour movement alike often lack nuance and do not see how labour is constantly evolving and can, when conditions are ripe, act as a social movement.

The environmental challenge is the overarching issue in terms of sustainability and one that poses acute difficulties (although arguably also opportunities) for organized labour. How do we move beyond the “jobs versus the environment” dilemma towards some form of labour/environmental movement alliance or articulation? Labour is no longer – if it ever was – totally tied to the industrial mode of production, and needs to grasp the critical challenge of climate change. It is not easy, as it does not fit easily into traditional collective bargaining ways of thinking, but, from a global perspective, we do see change occurring.

Finally, I turn to the issue of trade unions and global justice. Ever since the 1999 anti-globalization protests in Seattle saw “Teamsters and Turtles” (labour and environment movements) unite and fight, a new form of global justice unionism has been posed. What is the potential for this articulation at global and local levels today? For the young activists of the global justice movements, labour is often seen as irredeemably compromised by established power structures.