Author: Josiah

Categories
ISS14

#ISS14: ‘Democratic, libertarian, revolutionary’ – socialist unionism under neoliberalism

[This article draws on the plenary “Are we socialists, and what do we mean by “socialism”?]

Blair. Alex Tsipras. Pol Pot. Gramsci. Stalin. What do they have in common?

Answer: they’ve all called themselves socialist at some point.

Socialism is clearly a slippery thing to define, then.

Khaled Mahmood, Labour Education Foundation (Pakistan), says it means ‘production for the satisfaction of human needs and not profit’. But what does that look like in reality?

It’s easy to see what’s wrong with the current system. Capitalism entails a lack of freedom – instead we are slaves to ‘capitalism, competition and greed’. Such an ideology is inculcated into the young virtually from birth.

Pakistan knows the worst of capitalism, with military control upholding the power of corporations and corrupt politicians in a country where 70% live in poverty, leading people commit suicide due to their hunger. The majority of Pakistani women are illiterate, and most children in rural areas have stunted growth.

Yet over 60% of Pakistan’s budget goes to (largely foreign) debt repayments. Why? Rulers present and past have taken out huge loans for themselves, then stashed it in offshore accounts. Another 30% of the budget goes to the military.

Social policy gets just 10% of government spending. That includes 0.5% on health and 1.5% on education. What kind of justice is that?

In such a despotic context, Derek Keenan (Strathclyde University, UK) can safely assert that ‘the state is not the friend of the working class’. Socialism, for Keenan, must be anti-state – a libertarian socialism that entails a world without bosses, either in economic or political spheres. ‘The two can’t be separated’. Getting back to basics, state ownership is not the same thing as socialism.

In Bakunin’s words, “Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality”. An order based on unmerited hierarchy cannot be the basis for utopia.

Socialism must be libertarian and democratic, therefore. But it must also be revolutionary – ‘those with power now won’t give it up freely.’

Yet people are often scared to talk about these ideas. As the Marxist Slavoj Zizek has noted, it’s much easier to imagine end of life on earth than a radical change in capitalism. Where’s the utopian dream of William Morris, or Pataud and Pouget whose book was confidently titled ‘How we shall bring about the revolution’?

Perhaps it’s a loss of vision following the collapse of the USSR that has crushed all talk of a hopeful future. We’ve seen new elites rise under red flags, neoliberal hegemony, and left retreating into mantras or accepting society as it is. The post-crash lack of left revival speaks for itself.

It’s not for lack of inspiring examples, however. The Paris Commune, workers’ soviets in 1905 and 1917, the Spanish Revolution from 1936-38, Portugal’s 1974 revolution, the Zapatista movement from 1994-present, workers’ control in Argentina in the early noughties, and workers’ self-management in the current Bolivarian revolution (while fighting state bureaucracy and capitalism) – all these cases show there are alternatives to grasp at. Why aren’t we?

There’s a simple underlying current in these examples: worker and community self-management of the workplace and society, and directly democratic structures of administration. In the long run, they strive for a transformation of social relations and the abolition of wage labour.

But for Keenan, these can’t be achieved from up high – salvation isn’t a party affair, comrades. ‘A new Lenin is not around the corner, and if he was he might be about to mug you’. It’s a line worth remembering, because politics is too important to be left to politicians.

Where does the GLI stand in relation to all this? It can play a crucial role in stimulating and leading new ideas on the left and in the union movement – embracing a plurality of social movements and socialist organisations to catalyse autonomous activity from below. But looking deeper, can the unions really be schools of socialism? ‘It never struck me as so in 30 years, though I did get told off a few times!’ Keenan (half) jokes.

To twist a phrase, is another unionism possible – one that is democratic, libertarian, revolutionary? It’s a big ask, especially when the vast majority of the working class in world is not in or anywhere near a union.

There may be lessons from Switzerland. Corinne Schärer of the Unia union says her union has become the most important organisation in labour movement in the country over the last 15 years, and is taking on an increasingly political role. ‘We are not a political party – you can’t substitute a party and we don’t want to – but you do need a political agenda and vision’.

So-called ‘fixed stars’ guide the union’s political work, setting a 15-20 year progressive path after two years of extensive discussion from across the union and parties.

Parties still matter. ‘We need left-wing people in Parliament, so we support the idea of having strong Socialist and Green parties’, both of which are now solidly left-wing – the former mostly down to Unia and youth activists getting organised.

Not just in Switzerland but in Europe and the rest of the world, the left has to work together, particularly with the rapid rise of the right. Whether unions will ever be revolutionary, however, is another question altogether.

And that’s possibly because, as Bill Fletcher from the American Federation of Government Employees pithily puts it, ‘when you’re trying to drain a swamp but you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to think beyond survival.’

That, perhaps, is a better explanation for the lack of socialism in the union movement at the moment than any.

Josiah Mortimer is a guest blogger for the Global Labour Institute’s third International Summer School for trade unionists at Northern College this week. The views expressed in this article are therefore solely those of the author in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of GLI.

You can follow all of the conference online on the GLI site, through Union Solidarity International, and on Twitter: #ISS14.

Categories
ISS14

#ISS14: Stay Together for the Kids or Divorce? Unions and Social Democratic Parties

This article draws on the plenary Union-Party Relationships: Stay together for the sake of the children or get a divorce?

There’s a few ways to think about unions and their relationship with parties. Warring lovers? Separated? Have parties already left their former union bedfellows? Here in the UK, the relationship is certainly on the rocks. It’s not the only country where that’s the case, though.

India

1974 saw one of the country’s biggest strikes, when 1.7m rail workers walked out. It was brutally crushed, with 1000s fired and jailed. ‘A reign of terror was unleashed’, says Sujata Gothoskar from the Forum Against Oppression of Women, India.

Three years later, the union leader was Minister for Industries – forcing the still-fighting workers to go quit their struggle.

It’s a telling example of the effects parliamentary activity under capitalism. And it’s not an isolated case – the large Communist Party of India (Marxist) has many such examples. Meanwhile, the Congress Party is now committed to neoliberal policies, while the recently elected BJP poses an even more frightening future for workers. Existing parties are a ‘no-no’, then.

But the union movement in India is deeply divided, growing out of the national independence movement in a country with a definite lack of class politics – differences of caste, gender and a whole host of other divisions spring up.

In the messy political situation post-independence, unions were firmly linked with ‘their’ party, while independent unions were often viewed with suspicion.

It might partly explain why density is just 8% today. At the same time, unions’ political clout has been shrinking – in 1971, 21% of parliamentarians were linked with unions. By 2004 it was 4%. Now, it’s around 2%. So the chance of union-friendly policies is arguably remote; unions aren’t even consulted anymore by government.

But in this midst of this political decline and division, independent organisations are forming, despite (or perhaps because of) the neoliberal onslaught India has been subjected to since the ‘90s. At the company level, unions are emerging free of partisan strangleholds. The Self-Employed Women’s Association has soared to over one million members in just a few years.  Cross-party platforms are developing within central trade unions, and there are attempts to form an independent federation of unions.

Such initiatives complement the emergent broad fronts – including battles for the right to food or work, some of which have been successful. Alliances with women’s groups, human rights organisations and sexual minorities are forming, bringing the most disenfranchised into contact with the union movement.

These movements lack a partisan voice however, one with the power to actually implement their desired policies. For Sujata Gothoskar, it’s time for a new workers’ party. The chances, in a country and a left-wing still deeply split, are admittedly remote.

South Korea

Options in South Korea look similarly problematic.

The union movement there after World War Two was fiercely repressed. But, perhaps ironically, neoliberalism in recent years has coincided with democratisation – allowing, as in Brazil and South Africa, some institutionalised power. This ‘taste of political power’ only came when unions were legalised in 1998, says Lee Changgeun, Policy Director at the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU)

But are party links the way forward? There are several possible routes to political influence, including union-party links; collective action – such as general strikes in Italy, France and Spain; social pacts like in Sweden, Germany and others; lobbying in the US or electoralism in the UK, Brazil and South Africa.

Yet Korea lacked a progressive party until 2001, following the failure of both a general strike and a social pact with government and employers. The Democratic Labour Party (KDLP) was formed, winning ten seats in 2004 and five in 2008. Yet it soon split over a corruption scandal, before reuniting…and then in 2012 splitting again.

The path to power looks like one ridden with pot-holes. Such flaws provoked the KCTU to adapt a more pragmatic policy, dropping exclusive support for the KDLP in 2012.

Within the KCTU, around half of union members blamed union members themselves for the partisan chaos. Most, however, primarily blamed the party.

But for the KCTU, the problem was that it treated members as political subjects – merely mobilising votes and finance for party through ‘political substitutism’, leading the body to lose capacity and a leading role to deal with conflicts.

Two years on, 62% of members feel strongly they need a progressive party – a class-based party, in fact. And 40% of members think the KCTU should be the one to found it. It’s a daunting prospect.

For now, the union has set itself on a ‘workers political empowerment’ campaign, putting party issues within the context of that broader project. At some point however, the question of party politics may have to be revisited. As in India, it’s an unenviable prospect.

Germany

The decades following the Second World War in Germany was filled with student radicalism and a revival of discussion following democratisation. Many left wing groups emerged in student circles – but often ignoring workers themselves! In this context, Karin Pape (GLI Geneva) found unions a safe haven, becoming involved in a Luxembourgist organisation called Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik and reaching out.

After university, such radical students entered the workplace – often as union staff – and often became key radicals – in spite of not being in the Social Democrats, which by 1959 had abandoned Marxism. Yet the paid staff of the unions were entirely Social Democratic. And if you weren’t, well, you weren’t hired. Within companies though, communists were often elected for being excellent activists – but in spite of not being SPD. But the relationship between the SPD and the unions was fairly fluid – there was no element of control. ‘Unions didn’t really tell members to vote SPD…they just expected it!’

But perhaps at the heart of this relationship was a constant fear of the alternative, i.e. workers supporting the USSR. So concessions such as the welfare state were granted.

The Fall

This all changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Once the USSR was finished, such concessions weren’t necessary anymore. The Social Democrats, like many European parties, became neoliberal, even when the Christian Democrats would not dare.

Since then, union/SPD links have been fraught. Many trade unionists are now Green or support the Left Party. And the food workers union recently elected a woman who was not a member – both being firsts!

There are positives and negatives however. Now, there is no ideology or political direction within unions. Unions simply draw up demands, check them against party platforms and ask members who to vote for. The politics is lost.

So, stay together or divorce? Unions and the SPD are an old couple – they’ve missed the divorce (and as Dave Spooner said, there’s definitely no ‘sex’ anymore). As for the children, they’ve forgotten about them. That, perhaps, is the most worrying thing.

Maybe the same applies to the relationship between social democratic parties and unions across the world…

Josiah Mortimer is a guest blogger for the Global Labour Institute’s third International Summer School for trade unionists at Northern College this week. The views expressed in this article are therefore solely those of the author in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of GLI.

You can follow all of the conference online on the GLI site, through Union Solidarity International, and on Twitter: #ISS14.

 

Categories
ISS14

#ISS14: Public services under attack – international austerity and the fight-back

Speaking to the Global Labour Institute’s 2014 International Summer School, Rosa Pavanelli, General Secretary of Public Services International, gave an account of the struggles public service workers are facing. This article draws on her speech to delegates in Tuesday’s opening plenary.

Public service jobs used to be considered the gold standard in much of the world. Well paid, good pension, decent holidays and solid trade union rights. In an era of neoliberalism however, these previously ‘most formal of formal workers’ are facing the kinds of attacks previously only associated with the most ruthless companies.

International Struggles

There’s an ideological background to this. Labour market and union ‘reform’ has been factor in almost all post-crash countries. In South Korea, the government has recently initiated the most violent attack on public services – derecognising unions in each sector. Privatisation of the rail industry and the mass firing of union activists have turned the country into what one delegate called ‘a war zone’ for workers.

Public Services International, the Global Union Federation for public service workers, is used to privatisation battles – organising in industries which are often publicly funded and subsidised, but increasingly privately owned.

In the US, the Supreme Court last week ruled that there’s no obligation for care workers to pay union dues to unions collectively bargaining for them. These workers often work alone. They are now even more isolated – especially if their unions become toothless in the face of the court decision.

And internationally, at the last ILO conference, for first time delegates couldn’t reach a conclusion on the centrality of the right to strike – despite convention 87 of the ILO convention deeming it fundamental – because employers were so strongly against. It’s a frightening turn for workers of all sectors, as that is one of the only legal bases unions have on the global scale.

But there is some good news. The UN Women’s organisation recently recognised the role of unions as key to addressing the problems of women.

Moreover, until recently trade unions were previously not allowed to participate in UN discussions on migration. Now, after years of struggling from PSI and others, they can. With migration becoming a vehicle for new kinds of slavery, it’s an important milestone.

For public service workers, the water campaigns in the UN are equally important. In 2010, water was deemed a human right, providing the legal background for the massive 2013 struggles in Europe for water to be publicly owned – many of which won, in Paris and elsewhere.

And in the IMF, Christine Lagarde has recently said austerity is creating more injustice and poses a threat to democracy.

A turning point?

The ruling class, then, is getting scared. We are at critical point of class conflict. In response to a global ruling class, unions must likewise organise internationally, not just in one workplace. The welfare state wasn’t won in one shop floor but by the entire working class.

Multinational capital has a strategy. Unions can’t afford to navel-gaze. Whether in care homes, railway stations or outsourced water plants, public service workers in today’s climate of privatisation, cuts and union-busting know this better than ever.

Josiah Mortimer is a guest blogger for the Global Labour Institute’s third International Summer School for trade unionists at Northern College this week. The views expressed in this article are therefore solely those of the author in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of GLI.

You can follow all of the conference online on the GLI site, through Union Solidarity International, and on Twitter: #ISS14.

Categories
ISS14

#ISS14: How workers can win

There’s a question every trade unionist must stop and ask at some point: ‘what am I organising for?’

Kirill Buketov (image from USi)
Kirill Buketov (image from Union Solidarity International)

For Kirill Buketov, international campaign officer of the International Union of Food and Allied Workers (IUF), the central driver behind is fundamentally that ‘we are dissatisfied with the way the world is run.’ Putting this into positive action means being political – and possessing a few vital qualities.

Buketov raises some examples. In Moscow under the Soviet Union ‘what really shook the system is when workers went on strike.’ But to be successful, it took organisation and leadership. At first, workers struck without any idea what they wanted – state officials simply sent them back to work until they had some demands. It was only when they had a strategy that change began. In contrast, the Occupy movement was unsustainable and didn’t last because it lacked organisation.

For Buketov, every conflict is at root the same – ‘you need organisation, strategy and commitment to win – to fight until the very end’. He points also to the Kazakhstani oil workers’ struggle in 2011 when 26,000 workers walked out for six months. It was brutally crushed and achieved nothing. Why? They decided not to have organisation, changing their negotiators every time. There was no strategy or organisation.

But the most poingnant example is today in Ukraine. There, the Maidan movement was a genuinely popular democratic movement – and it achieved Yanukovich’ resignation. But right-wing forces abused the situation to lead the country after the left failed to create structures, organisation and strategy for when Yanukovich resigned. In sum, the right-wing were more prepared.

In a global economy however, if we want to be organised, we must work cross-borders. That’s where social media steps in – rank and file cross-border movements can utilise Facebook and Twitter to help build international platforms for organising people to fight and win.

The recent Thai shrimp industry slavery scandal, which the IUF is currently working on, shows that operating internationally for solidarity across borders is more vital than ever. To win, workers will need the ‘organisation, strategy and commitment’ that Buketov stresses is necessary. And with 250,000 slaves in the industry, they really do need to win.

Josiah Mortimer is a guest blogger for the Global Labour Institute’s third International Summer School for trade unionists at Northern College this week. The views expressed in this article are therefore solely those of the author in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of GLI.

You can follow all of the conference online on the GLI site, through Union Solidarity International, and on Twitter: #ISS14.

Categories
ISS14

#ISS14: The secret war on workers in Asia

This article draws on the plenary ‘The Fall & Rise of Labour?’ at the GLI International Summer School.

There’s a war going on in Asia – and it’s one that, unlike ISIS in Iraq or the chaos in Syria, is failing to make the headlines. It’s the war on workers that is taking place across much of the continent, according to the Executive Director of the Asia Monitor Resources Center in Hong Kong, Sanjiv Pandita.

The geographer David Harvey has termed this process ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Across the continent, workers are being forced off their land to make way for plantations, mining, or even real estate. They’re resisting – but employers and police are using the age-old methods of repression.

The recent surge in attacks on citizens has been propelled by the expansion of neoliberal policies in Asia, including controversial ‘export processing zones’ which lack any labour or environmental standards. In such areas, ‘everything is a commodity’ according to Pandita, particularly when inequality has soared in Asia, and particularly China, more than any other region of the world over the last 20 years.

And the figures are astonishing. 300 million people – almost the US population – are currently on the move in Asia, forced from rural land into the cities. This scale is ‘unprecedented at any time in the history of the industrial world’.

Of course, some end up in the factories that spring to mind in your head – the Yue Yuen factory in China where 80,000 shoe workers recently struck, or Foxconn where your iPhone was probably made. Most workers, however, don’t end up there.

Most will find themselves in an even more unregulated informal economy – picking shells, working informally on construction sites, gathering rubbish, and sex work. Informal work like this ‘employs’ up a quarter of Asia’s total population – one billion people. That’s 70% of total vulnerable employment in the world. It’s dangerous work, too. Over one million people die every year from work-related deaths in the region, according to conservative estimates.

These workers are not only dispossessed from their land and resources – forced out by multinationals with the help of the local state – but from their rights. And with very often no identifiable employer – whether because the supply chains are so long or because they are ‘self-employed’ – organising for better conditions is hard. But it can be done.

Following the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, the last year has seen some of largest strikes in Asia’s history. Again, the numbers are eye-watering. 100m workers in India went on strike last year – in one day. Millions stopped work in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, the latter of which won a 50% wage hike in the textiles sector. Cambodia similarly saw a major general strike last December, met with a violent crackdown. And in Korea – mostly informal workers took radical action, particularly bricklayers.

Within these struggles, the question of unity between ‘formal’ and informal work has to be addressed. ‘We have to believe all working people are one – no matter what they are doing’, Pandita says. The question is how to bring all of them together. New ways of organising are occurring – the challenge, with no or secretive employers, is how and where to bargain. Instead, the bargaining must be political.

Even where informal workers are organising however, it is often separately. Home-based workers, sex-workers and street vendors are getting organised – but not as one.

In such situations, the question of leadership also emerges, somewhat problematically. Movements often draw external middle-class organisers who take over. Yet ‘the agents of change have to be workers themselves. We have to just be catalysts.’ Perhaps the current situation is just a temporary phase while grassroots leadership develops.

From Western workers, solidarity has to be genuine – ‘it can’t be based on pity’. Movements against ‘accumulation by dispossession’ are rising up, and the challenge for those in the global North is to offer solidarity without co-opting them. One thing is certain however – with living standards in the West being crushed by austerity, ‘all of us are workers now’. It’s time to start organising like we believe it.

Josiah Mortimer is a guest blogger for the Global Labour Institute’s third International Summer School for trade unionists at Northern College this week. The views expressed in this article are therefore solely those of the author in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of GLI.

You can follow all of the conference online on the GLI site, through Union Solidarity International, and on Twitter: #ISS14.

Categories
Latest

#ISS14: Capitalism, anti-capitalism and the trade union movement – reviving labour amid crisis

The global labour movement is at a crossroads.

That’s the verdict of Bill Fletcher of the American Federation of Government Employees, speaking to the Global Labour Institute’s International Summer School in Barnsley this week. Workers are being hit by neoliberalism across the world – that much is obvious – but politically, the issue is this: how are unions to respond in the face of supposedly left-wing parties that have conceded to many of the neoliberal policies unions despise?

It’s question being asked while the populist right soar in much of the global north – filling the void where previously socialist politics would have existed.

Fletcher sees the current attacks on workers – from privatisation to public sector cuts – as representing the ‘obliteration of the social contract’ that emerged following the Second World War. But it was a social contract that was also ‘historically specific’ – built amid fear of the red threat.

It’s a message echoed by Asbjørn Wahl of the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees. For him, the tripartite state-union-employer relationship dominant across much of Europe following World War Two was the ‘child of class compromise’ – a child that’s now left home. In other words, there’s no going back. But neither should we. Capitalist and union cooperation dampened the radicalism of working class in an attempt to bolster support for the Cold War.

While it did lead to several decades of social progress in the West, social democracy became a mere ‘mediator between classes’. Such mediation became the final aim of the labour movement. And in capitulating to this, they gave up on socialism, contributing to an ideological crisis on the left.

Yet the end of the social democratic accord in the 1980s has made nation states less and less responsive to popular demands, while the stresses of neoliberal globalisation turn populations against one another. For Fletcher, the system’s weakness has created a breeding ground for a right-wing populism – what he amusingly calls ‘the herpes of capitalism’ – that is now on the rise across Europe and elsewhere. At the same time, any resistance to the neoliberal project is met with repression.

There is clearly a strong sense of alienation among people however. It’s up to the left to politicise this discontent. To do this will require broad new social alliances, concrete alternatives, and unions taking on broader political responsibility amidst mainstream party capitulation, Wahl claims. Such alternatives must be built on a minimum programme that includes standing against austerity, taxing the rich, cancelling public debt, socialising finance and defending democracy.

The current crisis is of course political. The response must also be political – rebuilding labour movement and rebuilding left must go hand in hand. There’s no going back to the corporatism of the 1970s. But Fletcher argues unions can be a ‘civilising force amid the current chaos’ – if they go through a reformation.

Such a reformation must involve the re-radicalisation and re-politicisation of unions instead of continuing a business or servicing model. And that’s no small task. But if the labour movement is to get out of this current conjuncture, we can’t depend on doing the same and expecting different results. Nor can we rely on revivalism and nostalgia for some by-gone social democratic past. Instead, we need a fresh start if we’re going to have any chance of challenging the ‘capitalism on crack’ that is the current paradigm. That will include working with social movements like those that organised the millions-strong Madrid march against austerity in March. If we do this, Wahl says, ‘we have a chance to avoid extinction’. It is, therefore, a chance we can’t afford to miss.

Josiah Mortimer is a guest blogger for the Global Labour Institute’s third International Summer School for trade unionists at Northern College this week. The views expressed in this article are therefore solely those of the author in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of GLI.

You can follow all of the conference online on the GLI site, through Union Solidarity International, and on Twitter: #ISS14.

Categories
ISS14

Dave Spooner at #ISS14: ‘A Starter Kit for International Trade Unionists’

Dave Spooner has kicked off the GLI’s International Summer School 2014 with a ‘Starter Kit for International Trade Unionists’ – a guided tour around the political and organisational landscape of the global labour movement.

Dave Spooner - image from USiLive
Dave Spooner – image from USiLive

The summary below is taken from the 2013 summer school proceedings. You can watch the full video of Dave Spooner’s 2014 session here thanks to Union Solidarity International.

The Starter Kit began with a discussion of the two types of ‘global unions’. The first type, global union federations (GUFs) used to be called International Trade Secretariats, and are the industrial wing of the international trade union movement. The political wing is the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and its variants. So there are two levels – industrial and political. Moreover, the ITUC represents national TUCs, while GUFs represent sectoral unions.

GUFs

GUFs are based on industries and sectors, paid for through union subs. The International Transportworkers’ Federation (ITF) for example is made up of different transport unions. ‘They are paid for by you’ through a percentage of members’ subs – ‘a coffee per member per year’.

There are a number of GUFs, such as the BWI (the Building and Woodworkers’ International, representing largely construction workers), EI (Education International), IndustrALL (a manufacturing/industrial GUF merger), IFJ (International Federation of Journalists), IUF (representing primarily food-workers), PSI (a public sector GUF), UNI (for service sector workers) and so on. These meet together in their combined website Global Unions, a useful resource which contains all the information about global union campaigns.

Examples of GUFs

The IUF (The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations) was founded 1920, representing 336 unions in 120 countries and 12m workers. Like most GUFs, it is based in Geneva. The GLI’s own Dan Gallin was general secretary of the IUF for 29 years.

The ITF (International Transport-workers’ Federation) is based in London, and organises seafarers, railways, road, urban transport, tourism, fisheries and so on, representing 681 unions of 4,500,000 workers in 148 countries.

A final example, the BWI, is based in Geneva, representing construction, building, forestry, wood and paper workers (among others). It represents 350 unions, 12m members, and 135 countries. The BWI congress, held every 4 years, unfortunately coincides with this year’s ISS.

Unions can be affiliated to multiple GUFs. Indeed, Unite is affiliated to most GUFs as it represents a wide range of workers and sectors.

What do GUFs do?

  • Trade union development and education
  • Solidarity actions – GUFs are active in resisting repression with solidarity actions through email campaigns, petitions, pickets etc.
  • Research – e.g. digging up information on target companies
  • Co-ordinating representation in transnational corporations. Unilever has factories all over the world and comes under the IUF’s remit. The IUF thus tries to bring together all Unilever’s unions to meet and plan action internationally in order to stop workers being pitted against each other by bosses.
  • UN and employer association representation
  • Information exchange – a ‘telephone exchange on a giant level’
  • Campaigning – from long hours and stress for lorry drivers, to food safety and land rights and everything in-between

GUFs often get involved in national disputes. National unions put out a call for solidarity, and GUFs respond by sending representatives, starting global campaigns etc.

The global federations also offer training, and can put unions in contact with other unions worldwide, organising joint training for example.

However, it must be remembered that they are not huge organisations, the ITF being the biggest with just 100 staff in London, plus staff regionally across the world. The IFJ probably has less than a dozen staff globally, while the IUF has around 100 staff and the BWI around 50.

The International Trade Union Confederation

The ITUC can be described as the global ‘TUC of TUCs’. Most countries have more than one TUC, and indeed some have dozens, while in UK we have only have one. The ITUC itself is quite new, formed in 2006 as a merger between two others confederations – the ICFTU (formed in 1949 and social democratic/democratic socialist) with the WCL (formed in 1920s and a Christian trade union federation of mostly Catholic unions based in Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Latin America and so on). Today the ITUC is based in Brussels, and Sharan Burrow is its General Secretary.

But what’s it for?

  • Representing the trade union movement on international governmental bodies – e.g. ILO, WB, IMF, WTO etc.
  • Campaigning for workers’ rights, e.g. through publishing its annual trade union repression report.
  • Organising solidarity actions against repression, especially governmental repression. It played a major role in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa.
  • Research and union development
  • The ‘Decent Work’ agenda

The World Federation of Trade Unions

Established in 1945, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) is a Communist union confederation strong during the Cold War which dates back to the Labour Union International. A Bolshevik confederation, the WFTU could be described as a ‘transmission belt of party policy to unions and to workers’, strongly following the party line.

The WFTU is was based in Prague, dominated by state-controlled unions plus other communist unions. However, it essentially collapsed after the Cold War ended, though remnents remain. Indeed, some unions are returning to the WFTU, which is today based in Athens and led by PAME, a radical Greek union confederation. It is seen as undergoing something of a resurgence.

Global Unions: Regional Structures

Many GUFs give their regional branches a high level of autonomy, allowing them to set their own policy, budgets, campaigns and so on. However, this degree of autonomy varies, with some being more centralised than others.

The International Labour Organisation

In terms of the ILO, we must first note it is not a trade union body, instead being part of the UN like UNICEF. However, unions do have strong representation in the ILO at 25%, with the ITUC holding many representatives. Employers’ associations also send representatives, holding 25% of seats, while governments hold 50% of ILO representation. As an organisation, the ILO can be seen as a ‘theatre of class warfare’.

A key role of the ILO is to set global labour standards, meeting annually for over two weeks in Geneva to debates labour standards – a process which takes months of preparation. In the case of domestic workers however, it paid off – they won. But it can go the other way.

Core Labour Standards

A key issue for the ILO is determining what the core rules are which should govern everyone. However, the ILO sets rules only for governments, not companies, creating a problem – you can only complain to the ILO about governments. Moreover, ILO Conventions (of which there are hundreds) have to be ratified by national governments, and as the ILO has no enforcement powers, ILO decisions are essentially voluntarily enforced.

The core tenets of the ILO are:

  • Freedom of association
  • Right to collective bargaining
  • Elimination of forced labour
  • Effective abolition of child labour
  • Freedom from discrimination
  • Decent work is big theme in the ILO too.

Important Debates and Issues in Global Unionism

A key debate within union federations today is that of ‘new capitalism’, represented through trends such as the financialisation of modern global corporations. Corporations are becoming more like casinos, sitting on vast stacks of cash. In a context of austerity, ‘there is lots of money – but it’s within the big corporations’. The US car company GM makes more money by ‘gambling on stock markets’ than making cars. Indeed, what companies now make is secondary – if they can make more money by gambling, they will do. This is having a major impact on us and workers generally.

Another major debate is ‘the problem with Europe’ – the demise of ‘Social Europe’. Social partnership was traditionally promoted by EU. However, the financial crisis means ‘the employers have walked out of the restaurant leaving workers to foot the bill’. Nonetheless, many unions in Northern Europe sadly continue to cling on to idea of social Europe. Moreover, the ETUC and European Industrial Committees were established and funded by the European Commission, and are often completely independent of the global union structures. The PSI and European Public Service Unions (EPSU) are completely independent, while the IUF is more involved in its European counterpart. Nonetheless, solidarity is very difficult in this context.

Climate Change, Energy and the Union Movement – Very few unions take climate change very seriously, although as climate change begins to hit this is starting to change. ‘When the lights start going off, you’ll start knowing there’s a serious problem’. In Pakistan garment factories are moving elsewhere, not because of industrial disputes, but due to power cuts.

The Future of Public Services – what do we think that public services should be? What’s our alternative – simply demanding more money funding and winding the clock back? Or democratic control?

The Rise of Precarious Work – Work is changing under ‘new capitalism’. Spooner notes his father had a job for life, yet ‘my kids won’t have that future’. All jobs are becoming precarious. ‘My kids may have period of unemployment, self-employment, agency work, etc. etc.’ Work is thus cut up and insecure. What do unions do about it?

On the other hand, most people in the world don’t even have precarious work – they have informal work, with people doing whatever they can, including selling their labour on the streets.

Rebuilding Unions from Below – Many unions are facing a crisis, with membership declining, facing huge attacks while maintaining structures which were created in a period of industrial peace. Yet there are few national collective bargaining agreements now. We need to rethink unions and rebuild from below. Unite Community Membership, StreetNet International – an international TU federation of people who make their living on the street – home based workers organising (your hand-stitched shoes are likely to have been made by home-based workers in Bulgaria, with 35k members in their union – they have strikes and do collective bargaining!), factory occupations in Greece and so on. All positive examples of new organising techniques.

Where are the politics? – Meanwhile, social democratic parties globally are declining, and relationships between unions and them are collapsing, particularly in Europe. The onward march of neoliberalism and austerity continues – ‘government policies are carrying on as they were’. ‘The crisis is permanent’, as they say. We need to think about political strategies to counter this.

The Resurgence of the WFTU – what does this mean? Why are the structures being revitalised a little? The RMT union in the UK has just affiliated to WFTU. In South Africa, NUMSA is considering it too. Does it stem from frustration with ITUC? Perhaps – the ‘ITUC hasn’t realised there’s a crisis happening for workers!’

Do we have a democratic socialist alternative? Here, we are clear in saying we are democratic socialists.

Sharan Burrow says ‘we are in a labour war across Europe, the US, [and] emerging democracies’. That’s from the head of the ITUC. The situation is serious.

All of these themes will be discussed over the course of the week, so look out for blogs of all the other main sessions!

Josiah Mortimer is a guest blogger for the Global Labour Institute’s third International Summer School for trade unionists at Northern College this week. The views expressed in this article are therefore solely those of the author in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of GLI.

You can follow all of the conference online on the  GLI site, through Union Solidarity International, and on Twitter: #ISS14.