In recent weeks there have been demonstrations outside numerous Marks & Spencer stores, demanding that the supermarket giant stop the discrimination against (mostly migrant) agency workers in it British food supply chains. The demonstrations were organised by Unite as part of its campaign for minimum standards in the meat industry. We are challenging M&S to live up to its promise of “all products being sourced and manufactured to our high quality and ethical standards”.

There was something spectacularly different, however, about these demonstrations. In addition to stores in this country, solidarity demonstrations were also staged outside M&S stores in Manila, Hong Kong, Moscow, Zagreb, Cebu, Geneva, Phuket, Seoul, Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest and Istanbul.

The action was organised in support of the Unite campaign by the International Union of Foodworkers and its affiliated unions around the world. The IUF is one of 10 global union federations – internationals of unions representing workers in different sectors – which are gaining importance as unions struggle to respond to the challenges of the global economy.

Why would a Russian or Filipino trade unionist be prepared to protest outside a store in their own country – and risk arrest or harassment from security goons – in support of agency workers in the British meat industry?

Apart from the pleasing post-globalisation twist in the tale, involving workers in “developing countries” to take solidarity action in support of workers in the North, the worldwide action over M&S illustrates some important new trends in the international trade union movement.

The nature of work is changing throughout the world, with the growth of part-time, temporary, vulnerable and insecure employment. The scale of international labour migration is unprecedented. The majority of workers in the world are without properly protected and decently paid work. Unions throughout the world increasingly recognise the acute need to tackle the problem. In particular, they are targeting the increase of agency and contract labour used to create an unjust, divisive and discriminatory two-tier workforce in many industries.

Unions – along with many others - recognise that global retail corporations are the most important factor driving down standards and livelihoods. In effect, these companies control the working lives of millions of people throughout their supply chains.

Yet the giant corporations running the retail sector are vulnerable. Like other transnational companies, they are increasingly dependent on long supply lines and cheap transport costs, driven by “just-in-time” tight schedules, with little or no slack in the system. As demonstrated by the dock workers’ dispute along the west coast of the United Sates in 2002, it is no exaggeration to suggest that a strategically-placed picket line in the transport system can bring large parts of the world economy to a grinding halt within a matter of days.

Moreover, companies such as M&S are vulnerable to their own marketing pitch. When targeted by Unite, M&S managers ask why and complain bitterly that their competitors are guilty of far worse practices. M&S has introduced its “Plan A”. This is “our five-year, 100-point ‘eco’ plan to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing our business and our world”. Plan A includes this commitment: “By being a fair partner, we’ll help to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in our worldwide supply chain and local communities.”

Unite deputy general secretary Jack Dromey’s response is: “Prove it. Sign an agreement to ensure that there is no discrimination against agency workers or a divisive two-tier workforce in your supply chains. It is wrong to exploit newly-arrived migrant agency workers and wrong to undercut the workers who have been here for generations.”

Unions throughout the world recognise the importance of this campaign, not just for British workers, but for workers throughout the global supply chains of the big retail companies. They must be forced to take a real responsibility for advancing and safeguarding the rights and conditions of their employees.

The international action over M&S illustrates important shifts in strategy by the international trade union movement. Unions have had a rough time over the past two or three decades and there are few in the world which have not experienced a dramatic loss of membership and power. Debates continue nationally and internationally on how to reverse the trend. There are still fierce disagreements, but at least everyone is agreed on one simple over-riding principle: unions must invest in basic organising.

There is a new organising agenda, which is not simply about the recruitment of new members, but building sufficient organisational strength to challenge corporate power. Some describe this new emphasis as an “organising model” versus a “servicing model” for trade union growth. In other words, there is a rejection of membership growth based on union services and marketing (union credit cards, discounts on products) in favour of a more aggressive, targeted and well-resourced drive for better conditions for workers in specific sectors and companies.

For some unions, including the T&G section of Unite, the organising model was adapted from American experience, in particular the experience of the Service Employees’ International Union, led by the charismatic but controversial Andy Stern. The United Sates has one of the toughest environments for trade unionism in the world and union membership has suffered badly in recent years. The SEIU has bucked the trend and managed to increase membership dramatically over the past decade. It has been particularly successful in organising what some had considered “unorganisable”: low-paid, often isolated cleaners, caretakers (janitors) and care-home workers. The SEIU’s “Justice for Janitors” campaign in Los Angeles inspired Ken Loach’s film Bread and Roses.

This new approach, now adapted and adopted by other unions around the world, is characterised by major financial investment in highly professional organisation departments involving detailed planning and research, along with tightly-monitored membership targets and campaign priorities. Organising drives are backed up by new corporate campaign methods, borrowing much from techniques developed by campaign and lobbying groups outside the labour movement.

More national unions are investing and reorganising themselves around a new organising agenda, but in the modern global economy, organisation cannot be restricted by national borders. The SEIU has its own global organising programme and is co-operating with others, such as Unite, to form the Global Organising Alliance to strengthen transnational organising campaigns.

Inevitably, such initiatives make new demands on the organisational capacity of the international trade union organisations – most notably on the global union federations. To a greater or lesser extent, these are grasping the organising agenda and responding to the challenge of developing truly global union organisation with strategic organising objectives and a new relationship between themselves and individual unions – and between those unions themselves.

The workers outside M&S stores in Thailand, Croatia, Hungary and elsewhere were not just demonstrating in solidarity with meat workers in Britain. They were demonstrating that they are members of a global union federation beginning to build an organising capacity across the world.

Dave Spooner is the international programmes co-ordinator at the organising department of Unite.