By Doug Cunningham

U.S. labor unions in 2007 took more steps to organize globally and to try to come up with a strategy and the means to mobilize against the multinational corporate assault on workers rights. In April United Steelworkers President Leo gerard announced that America's largest industrial union is exploring a merger with the big U.K. union Amicus.

[Gerard]: “Today is a very exciting day for working people in North America and working people in the U.K. But I think it's also going to grow into a tremendous day for the future of working people everywhere. We're committed that as corporations globalize and global capital tries to flex its muscles that we need to build a counter force."

Derek Simpson of Amicus says multinational corporations need to be dealt with by global unions.

[Simpson]: "One of the tasks of trade unions is to defend working people, to advance working people's condition. And that's increasingly difficult within the confines of national boundaries when you're dealin' with the actions and events created by multinational companies."

The AFL-CIO ended 2007 by hosting a global organizing conference designed to come up with effective ways to confront and stop the worldwide assault on workers rights. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

[Sweeney]: "“In an age of rampant global corporate outlaws the world's workers must forge new alliances to defend their democratic freedom to come together in unions to improve their lives."

As these efforts were underway, a shift in public opinion on U.S. global trade policies emerged. Pollster and political strategist Doug Scheon says labor unions led the way on trade issues and a s a result a new consensus is being forged.

[Scheon]: "I think labor unions have been and will remain influential. But I think that today we're looking at a new consensus on trade involving labor, working people, and also business people who recognize that you can't compete fairly - you can't have free trade if other nations are p laying by rules that are very, very different from our own."

The rules of the game on trade need to be changed, but if U.S. unions are to flex real global muscle they must get much stronger at home. One way to do that is to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to reform labor law in the U.S. Dr. John Logan of the London School of Economics says labor law in America makes U.S. workers the most fearful and oppressed in the developed world when it comes to exercising their union rights.

[Logan]: "There's no other developed country in which employers routinely engage in that all-out assault on worker rights and their desire to form unions and to engage in collective bargaining. The problem in the United States is very clear. The problem is that the law provides very, very weak protection for the right to form unions, the right to engage in collectively bargaining. And employer opposition is much more intense, much more aggressive, and often illegal in the United States."

So even as it battles to uplift workers in the U.S., the American labor movement is also working to increase global organizing and cooperation across national borders. And heading into a presidential election year labor intends to do all in its power to elect a government that makes trade and labor law reform possible.