In attempting to identify a range of possible strategies that might be useful to the American labor movement, it is helpful to view strategic approaches utilized by trade unions in countries where the national cultures bear at least a general resemblance to that of the United States. Also, Western European labor movements have recently been quite innovative. Europe provides an interesting set of national laboratories for the testing of strategies by a different type of unionism – Social Democratic Unionism – in a somewhat different setting. In addition, there is an important experiment in cross-national industrial relations currently going on in the European Community (EC).

Social Democratic Unionism, similar to Reformist Unionism, is a path not often taken by American trade unions. In the next two chapters, we will look at Social Democratic Unionism. First, in this chapter, we will examine a wide range of strategies and tactics employed in recent years by the traditionally Social Democratic labor movements of Western Europe. Second, in the next chapter, we will look at a particular Social Democratic strategy – contributing to regional economic development – that has been adopted in both Europe and North America.

As was done in Chapter 3 with strategies of American unions, national-level strategies of Western European trade unions are categorized according to the typology laid out in Chapter 1.