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310 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. vii (1957)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0310 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD The remarkable growth of American interest in international affairs has encom- passed'the labor field. Government agencies concerned with labor problems, aca- demic institutions, trade unions, and business firms are devoting an increasing share of their resources to the study of international and foreign labor movements and of comparative labor relations. The present volume of THE ANNALS represents an effort to indicate some of the most significant recent developments in interna- tional.labor policies, activities, and research in the economically developed and un- derdeveloped countries of the free world. The articles in the first section are concerned with truly international organiza- tions and their activities. This is a period when the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions faces the World Federation of Trade Unions in labor's coun- terpart of the cold war, complete with technical and financial assistance programs, phony peace movements, boycotts, exchanges of delegations, wooing of the so- called neutralists, active use of labor intelligence services, and so forth. The structure of the organizations involved, their relationship to one another, their ac- complishments and regional alliances, as well as the really difficult problems daily to be faced, are well worth recording at a time when in crucial areas of the world the industrial worker and his union have become focal points of attraction for democratic and Communist forces seeking to maintain or fortify hard-won posi- tions. While the first three articles deal with international labor movements as essentially private and voluntary associations (making due allowance for the dubi- ous voluntary character of Communist labor movements), the fourth considers some of the challenging questions presently faced by the International Labor Or- ganization which is, of course, an intergovernmental agency operating within the framework of the United Nations. The postwar emergence of new problems in labor relations abroad, as indicated in the second section of this volume, was followed by a search for new approaches and new solutions. The nationalization of substantial portions of industry in Britain and France, plus major changes in political configurations, led to reap- praisals of established patterns of labor-management relations. The results were perhaps not as dramatic as had been either dreaded or hoped for. The German experiment in codetermination, which incidentally is by no means the only major development in the German postwar labor relations scene, has now reached the stage for preliminary evaluation. Here, too, the outcome seems to have been far from revolutionary, despite some earlier forecasts to the contrary. The postwar trade union movement in Italy has not yet become reconciled to Italy's own form of underdevelopedness. Its structural problems reflect sincere efforts to estab- lish viable plant-centered unions in the face of severe handicaps. The achievement and maintenance of full employment in most industrialized countries of Western Europe (Italy being the outstanding unfortunate exception) and in other parts of the world have raised important questions of economic and social policy. Does the maintenance of full employment require the development of a national wage policy? To what degree do governments feel compelled to in- tervene in wage bargaining, and what is the character of their intervention? What changes in the wage structure-occupationally, industrially, geographically-have vii

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