Are trade unions across the world playing a strong enough role in finding solutions to the huge global challenges that humankind is facing? An annual International Summer School held in the UK is bringing union activists and leaders together to stimulate more discussion and action, as Celia Mather reports.
Increasing poverty brought on by austerity policies and precarious employment, corporations seeking ever more dominance through secret trade deals, dangerous levels of climate change from an economy driven by endless growth in consumption. People are out on the streets, demonstrating and occupying.
Massive online campaigns and social media vent our frustrations. But how well is the global trade union movement stepping up to meet these challenges?
How many people, even those who are union members, actually know anything much about what the trade unions do internationally? Dipping into union branch pockets to donate a few pounds to a solidarity campaign is one thing. But are the unions – here in the UK and across the world – doing enough to respond to and mobilise the energy of the working class, particularly the young who are fearful of the decades ahead and agitating to create something vastly better for themselves and everyone?
For the past four years the Global Labour Institute (GLI) has been running an International Summer School (ISS) to investigate these questions, and try to stimulate greater discussion and interaction among trade unionists internationally. Held at the workers’ education venue Northern College in South Yorkshire, it brings together a fascinating and probably unique combination of young trade union activists from across the world along with a number of highly experienced trade union leaders, including some from global union bodies, along with representatives from other types of workers’ organisations and a smattering of labour educators and researchers. Over five days they get to discuss the key issues of our times and how the trade union movement is or should be responding.
The GLI was set up by Dan Gallin in Geneva after he retired from being General Secretary of the global union federation for food, agricultural and allied workers, the IUF. His aim was and is to promote international solidarity among trade union organisations, and between them and other organisations and movements of civil society, to create a democratic and sustainable world society, based on the principles of social justice, freedom and the rule of law. Since then, the GLI network has grown, with bodies in New York, Moscow and Manchester. The British one is led by long-standing trade union internationalist Dave Spooner.
The International Summer School has become a key part of the GLI’s activities. It provides what they call “an open space to debate and question what are, and what should be, the politics of the international trade union movement”. Their rationale is that “…there is a political vacuum. Union members want an international political alternative to neo-liberalism and corporate capitalism, but little emerges beyond rhetoric. Many of the formal institutions of the international labour movement have retreated into a bland, lowest common denominator of politics, shy of even basic principles of social democracy, let alone any mention of democratic socialism. But this is precisely the time when radical political solutions – and a new sense of political direction for the international trade union movement – are needed.”
Democracy at work
The GLI’s first ISS was held in 2012, and there have been three more each July since then. At each one, some 100 participants from 30+ countries attend. As the word has spread, many more are keen to be there, but the GLI keeps the number limited so that real, lively interactions can take place. They also restrict the number of British participants, so that the School stays truly international.
For those who are not in the room, there are live video streaming, blog posts, and a busy twitter feed.
Each year, the GLI has been extending the social media reach of the School, working closely with Union Solidarity International (USi) https://usilive.org. For 2015, it was confidently estimated to be over 200,000.
As for the ‘live’ participants, unions here and abroad, and some of the global union federations, nominate from the ranks of their active memberships and pay for their travel costs. Some send a union official. From among the Global Unions, the 2015 School had leaders and activists from the food workers’ IUF, building and woodworkers’ BWI, transport workers’ ITF, service workers’ UNI, public sector workers’ PSI, and domestic workers’ IDWF.
There’s no big financial backing. This does mean that the School can only run in one language, English. Meanwhile, Unite the Union in the UK pays for the accommodation and meals at the College. Some other unions let their officers contribute in-kind help with organising the event. The School could not happen without voluntary support from friends and colleagues too.
One important thing to note is how the week is run. While each day there are presentations and panel discussions by people with experience on particular subjects, there is no way that those higher up the hierarchy are there to tell the others what to think, say or do. Rather, a key aim is to put the younger activists at the heart of the week. It is a chance for them to gain confidence in the issues, learn more about the international activities in which their unions are involved, and put forward their ideas for what needs to be done better – to union leaders who come because they are prepared to listen. All through each day, the meeting breaks off into highly dynamic discussion groups on each subject. And, to give them some form of ‘final say’, the younger activists form a Commission which meets every evening and on the final day presents their recommendations in the form of a ‘Living Manifesto’.
The School certainly provides a great opportunity for activists to learn about the structures and activities, and some of the history, of the global labour movement. Many have little other opportunity to do so. Talking to them, one gets a clear sense of the confidence that attending the School gives them to get more involved in their union’s internationalism, just what is needed to keep the international labour movement alive through renewal.
This year’s discussions and conclusions
Obviously, the latest developments in global neoliberal capitalism are at the heart of the discussions.
Previous Schools have discussed the way that capitalism bounced back after the financial crash of 2007-8, and the changing nature of corporations such as their ‘financialisation’. Now activists around the world are abuzz about the trade deals being negotiated in secret – the US-EU TTIP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership TPP, and TISA – all intended to strengthen even further the dominance of big capital by allowing it to operate without hindrance from social, labour or environmental constraints. So where are the unions in this development?
In recent times, unions have largely supported ‘free trade’ as good for economic growth. Many have, as the Manifesto says, actually internalised the prevailing neo-liberal ideology. Particularly in Western Europe, many have rested on the post-Second World War deal between labour, capital and governments which created the welfare state, still caught up in the notion of ‘social Europe’. Now, particularly too with what has recently happened with Greece, it is clear that that period is over. But do unions in Europe realise this? In fact, in an evening presentation on Greece, it was noted that the Greek unions were not really engaged in the mass mobilisations there. Such questions matter not just to European workers:
European unions are still very influential in shaping the global union movement. In the opening session, Asbjorn Wahl, a Norwegian trade unionist who also holds prominent positions in the international transport workers’ ITF, voiced his concerns, shared by many, that the labour movement needs a radical shift, to regain control over the political narrative of the economic crisis, and proactively use it to disarm the proponents of neoliberalism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Manifesto agreed with him.
Unions have also come to distance themselves from the wider working class, prioritising their own members, largely those in formal employment. Globally, however, those with ‘jobs’ have never been the majority of the working poor. Far more depend on the informal economy for their livelihoods. In recent years, such informal workers have been increasingly organising themselves and putting themselves on the map. At the School this year were, for example, representatives of unions/organisations of domestic workers in South Africa, home-based workers in Pakistan, and sex workers in France. How well is the trade union movement relating to these kinds of workers? Now, though, even standard union members – those with ‘jobs’ – are more and more being employed on precarious terms: short-term, part-time, zero hours, ‘apprentices’, seasonal, etc. The ‘formal’ and the ‘informal’ are merging. The Manifesto reflects this with a call on unions to reform their constitutions and structures so that they can represent and organise all workers including the informal, precarious, unemployed and migrant ones.
A return to politics may well be needed. But what does this mean, for example, for unions’ relationships to political parties? The GLI posed the question, “Stay together for the sake of the children, or get a divorce?”. The answer is not simple, as unions around the world have very different political histories and relationships, and organisational structures. Many union members tend to assume that their model of unionism is pretty much universal, which is not the case. Whatever structures exist, the School participants were clear they want their unions to have financial and political autonomy, and exercise far greater transparency and accountability to their members.
The Manifesto also reflects the participants’ desire for the trade unions to rebuild themselves from below, and do more to “build truly global solidarity movements using horizontal strategies, and engage with broader social justice movements, community groups and campaigns”. As an example of such possible alliances, among the guests giving an evening presentation were representatives of the Housing Assembly in South Africa which campaigns against housing poverty there, on a UK tour hosted by War On Want. Also, being at best ‘blanked’ by the mainstream media, unions must take advantage of social media to “animate the invisible”, as Unite organiser Ewa Jasiewicz put it.
As for climate change, as the Manifesto notes, this ” remains on the margins of the union agenda”. In fact, the 2015 School met at a seminal moment for the British union movement. The GMB had just signed a ‘charter’ with the gas industry body UKOOG while others such as the PCS, Unite and UCU have issued statements opposing fracking and encouraging members to join in ‘Frack Free’ demonstrations.
The GLI body in the USA – Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) – promotes these issues in the international labour movement. As TUED’s Sean Sweeney said, simply integrating renewable energy into the neoliberal framework is not the solution. We need much more discussion within unions here and across the world on how to bring about a just and fair transition to renewable energy, putting workers’ interests at the heart of the debate, bringing energy generation into public ownership, and so on.
The issues and debates are huge. This is a mere snapshot of what happened in just five days at Northern College in July. Videos, presentations and guest blogs from the sessions are available here: http://global-labour.net/iss15/. And now, in between Summer Schools, the GLI and USi are planning more online education materials on these vital issues.
Celia Mather: c.mather@phonecoop.coop
Edited version posted September 2015 at:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-global-trade-union-movement-stepping-up-to-the-plate/