REPORT Torquay May 14-15 2001
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2001-3
PRESIDENTMick
Leahy, Iron and Steel Trades Confederation
VICE-PRESIDENTDes Farrell,
GMB (Clothing and Textile Section)
Rosie Eagleson,
Association of Magisterial Officers
Keith Edmondson, JP.,
TGWU (Northern Carpet Trades Section)
John Fray, National
Union of Journalists
Alf Hitchmough,
Union of Textile Workers
Andy Knight,
Musicians’ Union
Joe Marino,
Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union
Ben Marshall,
Connect
Tony McCarthy,
National Union of Domestic Appliances and General Operatives
Judie McKnight OBE.,
NAPO
Doug Nicholls,
Community and Youth Workers’ Union
Garry Oakes, Ceramic
and Allied Trades Union
David Pickles,
Retail Book, Stationery and Allied Trades Employees’ Association
Terry Pye,
MSF (Metal Mechanics’ Sector)
Don Rishton, General
Union of Loom Overlookers
MOTIONS PASSED AT CONFERENCE 2001
ALTERATION TO RULE 10
The delegates to the General Council Meeting shall appoint by vote under Rule 7(a), from the list of persons nominated under Rule 6(c), a maximum of sixteen of their number to act as an Executive Committee subject as hereinafter provided, until their successors are appointed. The Executive Committee shall be divided into four sections; Associate Members with a maximum of three seats; small affiliates, that is affiliates with 3,000 members or less, with a maximum of four seats; medium sized affiliates, that is those with more than 3,000 members and up to and including 10,000 members, with a maximum of four seats. If insufficient valid nominations are received in any section the seats remain unfilled except in the 3,000 members or less category where any unfilled seats may be filled by the category up to and including 10,000 members. Large affiliates, those with more than 10,000 members have a maximum of five seats. Should any vacancy or vacancies in the Executive Committee occur during the period it is in office its proceedings shall not be invalidated by reason thereof, but should the members be reduced below the quorum provided for in Rule 14(d) the remaining members shall direct the calling of a General Council Meeting for the purpose of filling the vacancies.
MOTIONS
1. Manufacturing Industry
1 Conference reasserts previous policy recognising manufacturing industry as central to the political and economic health of an independent nation and vibrant public services.
2 Conference believes that Britain must be able to produce a balanced variety of manufactured goods in order to sustain democratic government and environmentally friendly trade.
3 Conference notes the absence of a clear industrial policy at government level and within the trade unions.
4 Conference therefore calls on the Executive Committee to prioritise a campaign for manufacturing and the development of sector based and general manufacturing policies and calls on the EC to work with the government to develop a coherent plan for industry.
Community and Youth Workers’ Union
2. Manufacturing Industry
Conference welcomes the success of the Government in creating an environment in which more than one million new jobs have been created in the United Kingdom and significant progress has been made in tackling long-term unemployment. It expresses its deep concern, however, that the benefits of economic growth have not been shared equally within the UK, and in particular there has been a continuing decline in employment in communities dependent on employment in manufacturing industry, attributable in large part to the unsustainably high value of Sterling against other European currencies bound to the Euro.
Congress identifies the short-term interest rate decisions of the Monetary Policy Committee as a significant factor in maintaining the misalignment of Sterling. The Committee have consistently kept inflation substantially below the target set by the Government and have taken inadequate account of the damaging impact on manufacturing of their contribution to sustaining a grossly overvalued Sterling exchange rate with the Euro. Working people in the steel and other manufacturing industries, who have improved productivity at rates unapproached in other sectors, are losing jobs because of the Committee’s misjudgements and predisposition to follow City of London interests and concerns at the expense of working people in the north of England, Scotland and Wales.
Conference calls on the Government to intervene to restore a sustainable exchange rate with the Euro to give British manufacturing and the communities which depend on it a fair chance to compete. It calls for immediate action to reduce the cost to manufacturing of electricity and to remove other burdens which put manufacturing in Britain at a serious disadvantage in international competition.
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation
3. Corporate Social Responsibility
Conference is appalled that around 6,000 manufacturing jobs are lost every month in the United Kingdom and believes that stemming this loss of jobs must be an economic priority of the government.
Conference notes that almost half of all manufacturing jobs lost have been in the Clothing and Textile Industry and further notes that many workers in the Industry (mainly women) have lost their jobs as a result of the manufacturing sourcing policy of high street retailers such as Marks and Spencer, a company who have encouraged their suppliers to seek out cheaper manufacturing sources throughout the world in order to increase a profit level which in the retail sector is already well above average. As a result of such corporate greed, thousands of workers have been thrown onto the dole.
The General Federation of Trade Unions calls upon the Government to recognise the ‘exit costs’ in the United Kingdom are far too low and do nothing to inhibit the export of jobs in sectors such as Clothing and Textiles. The GFTU urges the Government to ensure that companies are held to account and made to be socially responsible for actions and decisions that ruin worker’s livelihoods and often destroy whole communities.
GMB C&T Section
4. Rebuilding Communities
The GFTU Conference expresses profound concern at the increasing incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, violent attacks against women and young people, stress and ill-health, and other signs of deepening social malaise in many British communities built round industries in which employment has fallen substantially. Congress notes that the problems of industrial decline have been aggravated by a glorification of greed and individualism which has eroded respect for community values of cooperation and solidarity and undermined community support and encouragement for young people as they enter the world of work.
Conference calls on the Government to address these social evils as a grave threat to the personal development and fulfilment of young people and to work out a strategy to enlist the full participation of the trade union movement in reaching out to people and families adversely affected by industrial or technological change, and in restoring community links and support.
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation
5. Fighting World Poverty and Injustice
The GFTU Conference pays tribute to the outstanding role which independent trade union organisations have played in recent years in Africa, Asia, Latin America and central Europe in bringing undemocratic and oppressive governments to account and expresses its support for the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions, the Fiji TUC and other trade union organisations engaged in struggles currently to make governments accountable to the people and to make possible the free exercise of trade union and other basic human rights.
Conference expresses its full support for sister trade union organisations seeking to make governments responsive to the needs of the poorest groups in their societies and sees the development of strong independent trade unions as the most effective means for increasing the accountability of public authorities, in developing countries and elsewhere.
Conference supports the aims of the Government set out in Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work to halve world poverty by 2015 but expresses concern that, in addressing the problems, the White Paper appears to rely on market systems which have worked in the past to create and entrench massive inequalities and have denied to millions upon millions of people the opportunity to win for themselves the basic needs of life. The Government also shows a failure to recognise the leading role of the trade union movement nationally and internationally in fighting corruption and repression and in strengthening civil society as a prerequisite for success in the fight against poverty at the national level.
Conference recognises the need for a much increased flow of resources to the developing world from the rich countries. It calls on the Government to take a lead internationally in introducing a tax on financial speculation on the lines of the proposed Tobin Tax to curb destabilising transactions which have set back massively international economic development, and to have the revenue raised distributed through the UN system to the poorest of the poor around the world.
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation
6. The Right to Consultation Before Job Losses or Closure
This Conference urges the GFTU to mount an urgent campaign, calling for a change in UK law, giving workers and their representatives the right to consultation before any decisions are made to close factories or make employees redundant, especially where decisions are being made abroad and just handed down.
National Union of Lock and Metal Workers
7. Employment Rights
This Conference notes with extreme concern the considerable
volume of employment legislation which excludes workers in small firms
and organisations, or in the case of redundancy virtually all workers
not working for large employers. Conference is further concerned that
the Government’s recent Green Paper ‘Work and Parents –
Competitiveness and Choice’ advocates a small employer exemption
for many of its proposals on new parental rights. This is particularly
a problem for small specialist unions seeking to defend and promote their
members jobs and conditions of employment. Conference calls upon GFTU
to mount a campaign asserting the rights of all workers from day one irrespective
of type of contract working for smaller organisations and raising awareness
of this widespread exclusion form basic employment rights.
Association of Magisterial Officers
8. The Youth Service
1 Conference calls on the EC to arrange an early meeting with the Secretary of State for Education and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Lifelong Learning to press the long established policy of the GFTU for the introduction of a statutory underpinning for the Youth Service and new investment in it.
Community and Youth Workers’ Union
9. Violence at Work
That this Conference welcomes the Labour Government’s attempt to combat violence against workers at work and the “yob culture”.
That this Conference regrets the ineffectiveness of the “Exclusion of Certain Persons (Licensed Premises) Act 1980” to protect all those employed in Public Houses. It therefore calls on the Government to bring forward the necessary legislation to automatically exclude those found guilty of violent assault committed in Public Houses.
TGWU NALHM National Branch
10. Abuse of Children
That this BGC agrees that the future of humanity is in our children. To that end we call upon the Government to assist those organisations trying to tackle the growing problems of regimes and movements using children in ‘fields of war’ and abusing them for profit and not ensuring their basic human rights and values. The Government must bring to the attention of the word bodies the cost of armed conflict to these children.
This campaign should also highlight the abuse of child labour particularly where hazardous substances are concerned.
At home this BGC agrees to support the work of the NSPCC in their campaign to stop child cruelty in the UK.
Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union
11. State Pensions
That this BGC agrees that the only practical way in which state pensioners can have a fair share of the nations prosperity is to restore the link between state pensions and average male earnings and calls on the Government to commit itself to this reform.
Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union
12. Supported Employment
This Conference views with concern the developments taking place within the Supported Employment Programme. Conference re-affirms that disabled people must be allowed more of their own choices within the Programme. Conference therefore, calls upon the GFTU to work with the GMB CFTA Section and any other affiliated trade unions to:
1 raise the profile of the positive aspects of working within the manufacturing side of the Supported Employment Programme.
2 The GFTU Research Department to provide a comprehensive survey of disabled people who are employed on the Programme but outside of the factory base to ascertain the level of terms and conditions and the length of their employment spent with a host company.
3 To campaign with the GMB CFTA Section and other appropriate trade unions to secure improved government funding for the Programme which would secure and expand the manufacturing job opportunities within the Supported Employment Programme.
Conference also calls on the GFTU to raise the profile of the benefits of disabled people working in manufacturing industries. The GFTU to provide a quarterly report to affiliated trade unions on the progress of the campaign.
GMB CFTA Section
Address by Dan Gallin, President, IFWEA:
GFTU General Council Meeting, Torquay,
May 14-15, 2001
It is an honour and a privilege to bring to this meeting the fraternal greetings of the International Federation of Workers' Education Associations (IFWEA), on behalf of the other one hundred and one member organisations in 64 countries. You have joined the IFWEA this year, and it is a great pleasure to welcome you to our international federation.
I have been asked to introduce a discussion on international trade union action in the context of globalisation. I expect that this is the context where we will be working together, I hope very closely, and perhaps we can identify today, in this discussion, practical ways of doing so.
Globalisation means different things to different people, and the word is used to describe different realities. I would establish a clear distinction between technological processes, which are given, and power relationships which, by their nature, are a variable. Globalisation is, in the first instance, the process by which a single, integrated world economy is taking shape, a process driven by relatively recent but very consequential technological advances, mostly in communications and transport. In that sense, globalisation is unstoppable and irreversible, much like the industrial revolution of the 19th century. In that context also, the discussion as to whether one is “for” or “against” globalisation is equally meaningless as the same discussion was in the 19th century about being “for” or “against” the industrial revolution.
An entirely different question is that of understanding who controls this process, who benefits and who loses out. That is a political question, a question about social and political power. That is a question that is decided by the relationship of forces between social actors confronting each other globally, basically capital and labour, a relationship of forces that is constantly changing.
There are really two kinds of globalisation: the top-down globalisation of the powerful and of the elites, which we oppose, and the globalisation from below, of the people's movements, which we support and promote. The contest is between the present form of globalisation, controlled by capital in its interests, and a form of globalisation that is politically controlled by the majority of the world’s people and therefore likely to benefit the majority of the world’s people. The issue is not to oppose globalisation but to appropriate globalisation. That is what the global struggle of the labour movement is all about.
The currently dominant form of globalisation, driven
by transnational capital, has challenged the labour movement principally
in three ways:
In the first place, by the enormous rise in power of the transnational
corporations, which are at the same time the spearheads and the chief
beneficiaries of the new technologies. The large ones have a turnover
bigger than the GNP of middle-sized countries; they are influential and
sometimes dominant in the national politics of most countries, and they
control most of the international financial institutions and mechanisms
of economic cooperation by proxy, through their influence on governments.
Capital has also become highly mobile, with staggering sums circulating
every day through internet around the world, quite outside the control
of any national or international governmental institution.
In the second place, labour has been challenged by the decline of the national State in its role of administering and arbitrating the social compromise negotiated in the post-WWII period when labour was relatively powerful, a social compromise which transnational capital no longer needs because it now operates at global level, where it can evade the political constraints imposed on it at national level. The privatisation of public enterprises, the dismantling of essential services provided by the State, such as education, health and water supply, are a part of this attack on the State and, through the State, on social standards which reflect concern for an equitable distribution of the national product. Through its global operation, and through its influence on international trade arrangements, such as those negotiated in the World Trade Organization (WTO), which supersede national laws and policies, transnational capital is also sidestepping national institutions of democratic control, such as parliaments, political parties and also trade union centres.
The third challenge is the emergence of the global labour market where, because of the mobility of capital and the electronic communications, workers of all countries are competing with each other, as governments underbid each other to keep or attract foreign investment. This has set into motion a descending spiral of steadily deteriorating wages, conditions and social services with near-slave labour conditions at the bottom.
In that context, it is important to understand the economic role of repression. The largest pools of reserve labour are found in countries which are police States which attract 25 percent of all foreign investment in the world and where repression determines conditions at the bottom of the scale.
These are the challenges. What has been the response of the trade union movement? Initially, it has been weak and confused. Globalisation has caught the movement unprepared. That is now changing. The labour movement is beginning to respond at three levels: the trade union agenda, the organizing agenda and the political agenda.
The foremost task on the trade union agenda is, of course, to organize the transnational corporations, which means organizing each of their plants and linking them within an international organisation, so as to create a union counterweight and a measure of union control within the company itself. In this respect, some of the International Trade Secretariats have played a pioneering role, through their agreements with transnational corporations in the food and hotel industry, in shipping, in the chemical and petroleum industry, and in construction.
These are agreements on principles, such as the recognition of trade union rights throughout the operations of a given company, but some agreements also include other issues, such as programs to promote the equality between men and women, vocational training, best practice on information at enterprise level, occupational safety and health.
Some of these agreements have been concluded within the framework of the European Works Councils, demonstrating that these councils can be pushed beyond the information and consultation role assigned to them by the EU directive. They can become negotiating bodies provided they remain firmly under union control and the unions are strong enough to assert their bargaining agenda. To keep the EWCs firmly under trade union control and to internationalise them, so they cover all of the company's operations, also outside the EU and, indeed, outside Europe, these have to be trade union priorities so far as EWCs are concerned.
The workers employed by transnational corporations are only a minority of the world's workers, but they are a strategically placed minority. It is not unrealistic to anticipate the rise of a new system of global industrial relations based on agreements between international trade union organizations and transnational corporations.
The International Federation of Workers' Education Associations is making its own contribution to international organizing through its International Study Circle Program. ISCs are local study circles in different countries discussing the same issue at the same time. They are linked by internet and communicate the result of their discussion to each other, so each can respond. Such study circles could easily be local unions in different enterprises of the same transnational corporation, and what they could be discussing is the company. At the end of the program, you would have a network of local union branches that know each other, know how to communicate with each other, know something about the other enterprises, in other words, a virtual company council. This doesn’t replace meetings, but it helps prepare meetings, it maintains the momentum between meetings, it facilitates follow-up and it facilitates common action.
This is one of the ways in which we can use the new technology to globalise ourselves. The same communication technology, which has enabled capital to globalise, has put us in the position to create what could be the most effective trade union international in history, as long as we have the political will and the determination to do it.
The issue of international trade union rights is another one that has to be high on the trade union agenda. The right to strike is internationally recognized as a basic human right, as attested by several international instruments. When it comes to solidarity strikes, especially in an international context, we suddenly find out that a basic human right is not so basic after all. International solidarity strikes are criminalized in many countries, including industrialized countries, or surrounded with so many conditions as to make them practically impossible.
Yet, it is precisely this specific form of the right to strike that we most need in a globalising economy. I want to reinforce here a point made yesterday by Joe Marino: consultation in itself will not help us resist closures, relocations, outsourcing, if it is not backed by a capacity for union action. We need to mount a campaign to recover this right. A labour NGO familiar to some of you, the International Centre on Trade Union Rights (ICTUR), is already doing this.
Another international labour NGO, SOLIDAR (the former International Workers’ Aid, the umbrella federation of labour welfare and solidarity organizations, and also an IFWEA affiliate) is conducting an international campaign on the theme that trade union rights are human rights, together with IFWEA and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). We should not prejudge the form such campaigns can take, but we must think ahead about what we must do if our governments do not respond. We may have to take back this right the way we won it in the first place, decades ago: by exercising it.
The organizing agenda means simply that we have to organize the world’s workers into unions. At present, only about 13 percent of wageworkers in the world are organised; if one adds the workers in informal employment, the figure drops by more than half, probably around 4 to 5 percent.
Yesterday a colleague from the garment industry mentioned sweatshops. We need to deal constructively and effectively with the problem of the informal sector, which now includes the majority of the world’s working class and which is growing, at the same time as the formal sector is shrinking.
Many factors are at work there: the deregulation of the labour market with the growing casualisation of work is one. Another is the change in company structures. The typical company today is the coordinator of work done on its behalf by others. It will keep a “core” labour force and outsource most other work, which often ends up, after a cascade of subcontracting, with the individual home-based worker. Finally, there is the impact of the world economic crisis which started in Asia in 1997, went on to Russia in 1998 and to Brazil in 1999, and pushed millions of people out of formal employment into the informal sector. According to the ILO, 24m jobs were lost in East Asia alone, mostly in the “modern industrial sector”.
Therefore organizing workers in informal employment into unions should be a priority of the international trade union movement. Unfortunately, it isn’t, and most unions will tell you that with scarce resources their priority has to remain organising the unorganised in the formal sector. But in many instances workers in informal employment are organising themselves, as workers would, and it is not too much to ask of unions, even where they cannot do the organising job themselves, to remain supportive of those who do.
A related issue is that of the feminisation of the trade union movement. If we are serious about organising a majority of workers anywhere, we must realise that the vast majority of workers in informal employment are women. Also a majority of workers in casual, part-time and temporary employment – the area where jobs are growing, particularly in the service trades – also are women.
We need to open up our organisations to women, to a far greater extent than has been the case so far. This means not only taking on board the specific demands of women workers, but to facilitate their access to union structures, including at leadership level, and a change in the culture of our movement.
The political agenda has to do, in the first place, with the relations between the trade union movement and the political parties, which are its traditional allies. This relationship has become problematic. In Europe, most social-democratic parties in government have carried out far too many of the same neo-liberal policies as their conservative opponents, and there has been growing tension with the unions. The important point is that wherever unions have delegated their political thinking to parties, they are left without a workable response to globalisation.
This does not mean that unions do not need a political dimension. Of course we cannot do without politics, and everything we do is political. But it does mean that we need to develop our own political program independently, on the basis of the needs of our membership and incorporating a social vision that society at large can identify with. This should not be that difficult, since we are not defending any interests that are different from those of the great majority of the population. We are not a “special interest group” but the backbone of organized, democratic civil society.
On the basis of such a program we should seek alliances with other groups in civil society that have aims converging with ours: I am thinking in particular of the women’s movement, the human rights organizations, the ecology activists. This is the "grassroots globalisation" from below we should be encouraging. The demonstrations at Seattle and those that followed demonstrated the variety, the depth and the potential strength of mounting popular opposition to the neo-liberal model of globalisation, especially when such popular coalitions include the labour movement.
I already mentioned the importance of the fight for human rights. Since its inception, the trade union movement has been fighting for democratic rights, and this fight is a fundamental class issue that is a permanent priority for the trade union movement. Only in a situation where basic democratic rights are guaranteed unions can organise and act to advance their industrial and social agenda.
This is why the fight against dictatorships, whatever their nature, is a permanent task. We have won in Indonesia, although the final outcome is still uncertain; the right of workers to organise independent and democratic unions. Also the fight for basic trade union rights in the Arab Gulf States and the rights of migrant workers there, as well as in many other parts of the world. There are millions of migrant workers all over the world who are practically rightless, also in Europe, a major scandal in societies with democratic pretensions.
I have tried to list some of the major challenges which have arisen for the labour movement in the context of globalisation, and indicated some of the responses that the labour movement has developed, or could develop, to meet these challenges. I would just like to add that a basic condition for an effective international policy and action has to be the involvement of the membership. International trade union activity must be perceived by the membership as a natural extension of union action at local and national level, and never as a prerogative or, worse, a privilege of the leadership. To involve the membership must be the sense and the purpose of the program the GFTU is developing with the WEA in Britain and, indirectly, with the IFWEA, for education about globalisation.
You should ask yourselves whether your organization has an international policy, if not, why not, and if yes, with what results. You should know what international trade union organizations actually do, how they do it, how they make decisions. You should find out how you can influence such decisions.
I have mentioned four networks by which you can develop international policies and exercise international influence. They are:
- the International Trade Secretariats;
- the International Federation of Workers' Education Associations;
- the International Centre for Trade Union Rights, and
- SOLIDAR.
I thank you for your attention and I am looking
forward to the discussion.