FOREWORD --Kim Scipes Labor, which had been a social and economic powerhouse from the late 1940s to early 1970s, in the United States and most other so-called developed countries, has been under almost continual assault since the 1980s. Today, while still powerful, it is a shadow of what it used to be. A growing number of local officers, union staffmembers, and activists are trying to address the serious problems that underlie Labor''s eroding power. There is a growing recognition that developed country unions are not able to address the problems they face alone; especially when faced by corporations from the US and from around the world with global production operations. Concurrently, there are a number of people in the developed countries that are becoming more and more aware of the so-called developing countries and their peoples. They see workers struggling against multinational and domestic corporations who existence is predicated on terribly exploiting workers, and especially young women workers. They seek to join them in common campaigns against these multinational exploiters, often seeking ways to utilize developed country consumer power to support workers'' efforts to unionize and to live better lives. And at the same time, workers and peasants in these developing countries are facing extreme exploitation and terrible oppression in their countries, with oftentimes serious repression by the elites and governments in these countries.

Faced with deep poverty, with not much of a future if the status quo holds, a growing number have been organizing collectively into trade unions, creating new labor centers and vibrant labor movements. As I wrote in the Preface of my 1996 book on the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines, Workers and peasants in ''Third World'' countries often lead lives of great poverty and extreme helplessness--and face severe repression should they challenge their fate. Acess to education and health care is limited. Poverty is ever present. Malnutrition is more frequently the rule rather than the exception. Death, often accompanied by painful suffering, comes at an early age. Unfortunately, these familiar images are presented again and again to us by the Western media. What is not conveyed to us, although also true, is that these same workers and peasants regularly take great risks to change their lives and societies.

People do not passively accept oppression, although often their situations force them to limit their responses. Death, arrest and torture are very common. So is heroism. This book focuses on workers'' efforts to change their society and their own lives in one ''underdeveloped'' country--the Philippines. This book is not designed to show you how impoverished or downtrodden Filipinos are--although approximately 75 percent of them live below the Philippine poverty line--but to show how they are trying to change their situation despite facing numerous obstacles put in their path (Scipes, 1996: viii). For multiple reasons, there are a number of efforts from around the world to join workers, unions and, sometimes, consumers together to build mutual support: global labor solidarity. Although this has been taking place since the 1840s in Europe, it seems to been resurging in Canada and Europe since the 1970s, with the US tagging somewhat behind. Yet the need is becoming more obvious day by day.

This edited collection is an effort to better understand what has happened in the past, to understand what is happening today, and to get people to think and act towards building a better tomorrow. It argues that there are not national solutions any more; situations must be placed in a global context, and solutions must advance the struggle for economic and social justice for all of us, even if our efforts are uneven. Fortunately, as will be seen, we are not the first to write on this subject; and hopefully, we will not be the last. There has been a considerable amount of writing on this subject already published. In this volume, we try to advance the thinking and theorization of building global labor solidarity, and specifically argue that while it must involve unions, it cannot be confined to them. We include articles by writers from around the world, and we discuss workers'' efforts in a number of countries and regions. However, there are many limitations with this work as well. We cannot cover the world, and do not pretend to do so.

An anonymous reviewer for the publisher pointed this out: Missing is any discussion of the new, non-traditional unions in Western Europe (SUD in France; COBAS in Spain, etc.) that attempt to put forward international labor solidarity and social movement unionism. The same could be said of the New Trade Union Initiative in India, and the split in COSATU in South Africa. There is also the question of China, where some international labor solidarity effors around China (have taken place-KS). Despite these limitations, we hope we can inspire people to get involved in seeing the world as a global "one," learn what they can do to advance labor solidarity, and then share their experiences and reflections with the rest of us. We know reactionary global forces are trying to separate, isolate and then immobilize us, picking us off, one by one. I cannot find who said it, and I believe it was said in relation to the US revolution over 200 years ago, but remains true today: "we can either fight together, or hang separately.".