Markets have become political arenas in multiple ways. As processes of economic globalization are regarded to be accompanied by harmful externalities and tremendous social costs protest action of workers movements and social movements is not confined to addressing the role of national governments or transnational political organizations but addresses also the role of corporations as ‘driving forces’ of globalization and especially precarious labour conditions. In this context, mobilizing consumers as political actors and advocates of a globalized workforce plays an important role. With regard to labour conditions political consumers are expected to demand and to promote labour rights within transnational production cycles. They are mobilized by ‘western’ unions and NGOs as well as by civil society organizations und unions located in the production countries. The paper focuses on the democratic potentials and risks of that advocatory political consumerism. It strives to answer the question of how and to what extend workers and consumers are able to build up alliances: How does transnational participation and cooperation between workers and consumer groups look like? How do intermediating organizations create and communicate shared definitions and solutions? In doing so, the paper analyzes on the one hand the relationship between the US-based consumer campaign ‘Stop Killer Coke’ and the Colombian union Sinaltrainal and on the other hand the relationship between the European (especially the German) Clean Clothes Campaign and labour organizations in the production countries of the textile industry (mainly in South America and Asia). By drawing upon those two case studies the paper expounds both the risk of consumers becoming the ‘long arm of unions’ and the problem of workers and unions being stuck in victimhood because of the ‘caring consumer’.
