Ireland’s selective system of collective agreed minimum wages has come under significant pressure in recent years. A new fast-food employer body took a constitutional challenge against the system of Joint Labour Committees (JLCs) and this was strengthened by the discourse on the negative effects of minimum wages as Ireland’s economic crisis worsened. Taking a historical institutional approach, the article examines the critical juncture for the JLC system and the factors which led to the subsequent government decision to retain but reform the system. The article argues that the improved enforcement of minimum wages was a key factor in the employers’ push for abolition of the system but that the legacy of a collapsed social partnership system prevented the system’s abolition.

This article examines recent organising successes in the Carbones del Cerrejón coal mine, reversing the organisational crisis of the Colombian mining union, Sintracarbon. Using Wever's concept of ‘field-enlarging strategies’, we argue that these events were facilitated by the dissemination of organising experiences between affiliates of a Global Union Federation, International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which recently merged to form IndustriALL. Additionally, we argue that this articulation between international and national unions, based on the principle of subsidiarity, was facilitated through sustained ICEM educational project activity, providing multiple entry points for Sintracarbon to operationalise its strategy and re-establish bargaining with multinational employers.