Between Local Interests and International Solidarity: Negotiating Restructuring at General Motors Europe

At no other firm has transnational worker cooperation been taken further than at General Motors Europe. Worker representatives engaged in European wide mobilization, strikes, and collective bargaining, with the aim of “sharing the pain” of concessions and preventing plant closures. We argue that this is a case of identity work, a deliberate shift in the ideational underpinnings of union strategy, orchestrated by the European Works Council. While trade union strategy was subject to the reshaping of interests due to the objective facts of corporate restructuring, it was also subject to an additional subjective and internal political process of identity work.