This Mémoire Préliminaire de Thèse is the first step in providing a historiographical perspective on the subject of international trade secretariats and labour history. I propose that this dissertation will examine the history of and surrounding the operations of the Geneva based International Union of Food Workers and Allied Associations (IUF) from the 1970's until 2010. The time period chosen is understood as the formative years of union decline and nation-centrism. Contemporaneous, labour his