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The International Federation of Workers’ Education Associations (IFWEA), held its 20th General Conference from 1-5 December 2007 in Ahmedabad, India. IFWEA is an international organisation which brings together a wide spectrum of organisations involved in workers’ education internationally including global union federations, national union centres, labour service organisations, university based labour education institutes and Workers’ Education Associations. Four Global Union Federations (GUFs), including the ITF, are affiliated. IFWEA’s secretariat is based in Cape Town, South Africa and there are regional coordinators in Africa, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Arab world and Europe.
In celebration of the 60th anniversary of IFWEA, a seminar on workers’ education in the informal economy was held in advance of the formal conference. The seminar brought together a wealth of experience and knowledge from educators working in and with informal workers’ organisations. Whilst there are commonalities with trade union education for workers in formal employment, there are interesting differences with which all educators need to grapple, including:
Educational materials and resource books on organising informal workers covering issues such as recruiting informal workers, building democratic organisations, handling day-to-day problems, bargaining, handling disputes and building collective action were assessed. Participants discussed the multiple uses of these materials and how they can also be used as a tool to generate ideas, plan and organise. As the materials are generic adapting and developing sector specific materials is essential.
Several sessions focussed on the role of education in supporting and sustaining global organising. Participants discussed the need to have a clear perspective on what organising is, and for this perspective to then inform the content and methodology of trade union education. Speakers on the panel highlighted the need to revive and strengthen political education in unions, so that organising does not happen in a vacuum but is directed towards winning concrete improvements which change power relationships in the long-term.
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION BY ITF AFRICA; A CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR
INTRODUCTION
The matter of poor or ineffective communication has been noted as one of the most frustrating shortcomings at different levels within the ITF family in Africa. The mandate of the ITF to coordinate and mobilise international Solidarity among democratic trade unions in the transport sector cannot be achieved without streamlining communication. Communication is generally presumed to have taken place, when a clear message is sent or transmitted to an intended recipient, it is received, understood and a feed back is obtained by the sender. The feedback confirms that the message has been received. The cycle does not seem to be complete in the case of ITF Africa in most cases.
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
WHAT HAS RESULTED?
As a result, the togetherness of ITF family is not being felt de-facto and consequently, the ITF in Africa is lagging behind in a number of areas:
POSSIBLE CAUSES:
The causes of these problems can be looked at from three angles:a- Attitude ( interest)
b- Infrastructural (equipment)
c- Structural (policy & practice) database
a) Attitude
The inappropriate attitude of some of the players in communication appears to be a major setback. The interest of the affiliates to communicate effectively needs to be cultivated or needs to be changed.
b) Equipment
It is very unlikely that a union whose attitude towards communication is weak will find it a priority to acquire appropriate communication equipment or use it when available. Nevertheless, unions should be advised and encouraged on access to equipment and on use. Unions that have a functioning telephone line for example, may not be aware of what they need to get the internet running and may not even imagine that the cost is within their reach until advised. To begin with, a questionnaire to assess actual needs should be done with the help of ITF’s IT department for unions to be advised on how to get connectivity.
c) Structure/Policy
It may not be clear whether the right structure of communication in ITF Africa is known to all the players. In the absence of clarity of communication procedures between affiliates, sub regions, sections, Nairobi and London, confusion develops and information that is supposed to be collected at certain points is not collected and cannot be used.
d) Difficulties
The most likely bottleneck, in overcoming communication difficulties might emanate from:
A WAY FORWARD
The Africa Regional Committee should discuss the matter and give direction as well as encouragement for this problem to be overcome. In the absence of efficient and effective communication, international work and solidarity become difficult to realize. Let ITF Africa make communication a catch word for Organising Globally implementation.
Forms part of a discussion paper presented to the Africa Regional committee meeting 22-23 October 2007 by Joseph Katende, ITF African Regional Secretary. Full document is available on request.
A visit to the port of Rotterdam was included as a field trip in the ITF Summer School 2007. It was intended to be a learning activity with the participants getting a first hand experience of observing a logistics and transport hub in operation with varied activities like handling, distribution and transport of cargo. This experience was intended to reinforce discussions during earlier sessions in the Summer School on subjects like how global trade has been revolutionised by the phenomenal growth of logistics networks operating global supply chains and how transport is critical to the smooth working of these supply chains.
Participants visited 3 port terminals that varied in their level of mechanisation. The Hutchison Port Holdings ECT delta terminal, is currently the most mechanised with only two or three workers on the ground operating machinery. The majority of the work was carried out by programmed machinery. The APM Maersk terminal although had great machinery these were operated by workers on the ground. Lastly the yet to be operational hi-tech Euro Max terminal, envisages even less dock workers as the truckers will load and unload cargo from their trucks and also backroom workers will have more screens to operate.
Participants observed the highly mechanised cargo handling from ships with hardly 2-3 workers per crane and the containers then being transported by the fully automated guided vehicles (AGVs), the straddle carriers loading or unloading containers from the AGVs and the stacking cranes (manned/automated) piling up containers, and later loading them onto trucks for onward movement of cargo. What this whole operation highlighted was the huge amounts of investments needed for modern technology, the need for only few highly skilled jobs to do the key operations while lashing/unlashing of containers, maintenance, and security jobs are either outsourced or done by casual labour.
Participants observed how the port complex houses innumerable warehouses (e.g DHL, Vopak), distribution centres (e.g Reebok, Nippon Express), oil refinery (e.g Shell) all intended to store, treat or process cargo before it moves forward along the supply chain.
Participants also observed how the logistics system at the port integrates a multi modal transport system with rail lines, a channel for inland navigation through barges and ferries, & truck terminals, all ready to carry cargo to/from various destinations so that the supply chain works unhindered taking the most appropriate mode to move cargo in time along the supply chain.
At a seminar organised by the British based NGO War on Want, Florence Lishika from the Cross border Traders; Association and member of the women’s committee of the Alliance for Zambia Informal Economy Associations (AZEIA) and Lameck Kashiwa, the General Secretary of AZEIA and secretary of the Market Traders’ Association, spoke of their experiences as informal workers and organisers of informal workers. The seminar was held on 19th July at Shoreditch town hall in London, UK.
The Zambian trade union movement was one of the strongest in Africa, but as privatisation and restructuring took hold in the 1980s, the movement has experienced diminishing membership as workers were forced into the informal economy. The majority of informal workers are ex-miners who used to work in the Zambian copper mines.
Lameck’s story is that of many ex-miners who find themselves in informal employment. He was retrenched without notice. One day after work he was told not to come back and informed where to collect his final benefits. Lameck is now a market trader and his daily concern and that of other trades (members) is whether he will have a place to trade. Securing a stable place to work is a demand the association of market traders is making to the local authorities. Maintenance of the trading and sanitary facilities is another demand of the traders.
Unfortunately “informal workers are seen as a nuisance and it is thought that the informal economy will disappear soon, yet even the government is thinking of downsizing the civil service!” One of the key challenges facing informal workers organisations in Zambia is gaining recognition from government authorities and achieving a legal status. Any social dialogue that takes place is often on the good will of office incumbents.
To put the informal economy in perspective, AZEIA represents 1.6 million informal workers and there are 285,000 workers in the formal economy. The sheer number of informal workers has also given them the power to make demands. In the case of the market traders the withholding of daily taxes from the local authorities, often forces them to listen. Everything in the country has been privatised and the local authorities rely on the market levies.
Florence recounted the situation of many cross border traders, who go across to neighbouring countries such as Malawi, Namibia and South Africa to buy anything they can be sold back home. Often there are more than 100 traders heading out to the same destination at the same time. These traders often exist on loans to keep them afloat. The lack of finance puts women traders in a vulnerable position. When they can’t fully pay for the goods, sex is demanded as a form of payment. This also applies to the transportation of goods whereby drivers accept and or demand payment in the form of sexual favours. The numerous customs checks also add to the cost of importing goods, as the second or third customs checks always say the goods were undervalued by the previous customs check so more money is demanded of the traders and again sexual favours may be traded. The risk of HIV/AIDS infection is very high and the simple need to survive puts women traders in a particularly vulnerable position.
Young women, boys and mature women are all members of the cross border traders’ association and are to be found trading in markets and on the streets. Florence conferred that for many of these traders “informal work is not a choice but a necessity”. There is no government recognition. “If the government had supported us, maybe things would be better.”
There is a great deal of hype about new investments in mines and other parastatals in Zambia; however these have not brought decent work. As Florence stated: “Investors who bought the mines are paying peanuts forcing many into informal activities. Also the jobs offered to the local population are often casual and menial jobs as the investors bring their own workforce for management and decent employment.”
In trying to highlight these issues at an international level, a global campaign for decent work has been waged for some time by a number of NGOs and labour organisations. Other members of the panel spoke of the work they have done in this arena. Barbara Caracciolo from Solidar, an alliance of NGOs and labour organisations elaborated on the progress of the decent work campaign. She stated that the idea of decent work/employment did not even get mentioned in the millennium development goals. However it now forms part of the global development agenda.
Guillermo Rogel from War on Want, informed the audience of the research that has been done on social dialogue with informal workers’ organisations in Zambia, Ghana and other countries. Lack of legal recognition is one of the main obstacles to progress on improving conditions.
Informal work is not just an issue for the south but also for the North. In Europe, it accounts for 20% of economic activity and its most visible form is the street vendors. Own Tudor from the UK Trade Union Congress noted that for British trade unions informal workers are a target group for organising in order to stop the undercutting that is taking place. However, organising informal workers present different types of challenges for unions. For example, the associations collects membership fees on a daily or weekly basis as members would otherwise not be able to afford to pay the full chunk at once. Voluntary subscription to cover funeral costs also exists.
Other challenges as pointed out by Lameck: “Informal workers see little benefit in attending a seminar, workers’ interests are in making money”. To meet their particular needs, the association has negotiated better loan rates, and the creation of suitable accounts for market traders.
In trying to deal with the legal issues and lack of an official channel for grievances, AZIEA is forging an alliance with the labour movement and is affiliated to the Zambian Trade Union Congress. The associations have also been involved in solidarity support action, with a local authorities workers’ union, which was seeking a larger grant from the government. This support proved to be a success. In terms of dialogue and recognition, the government of Zambia recently granted the Bus and Taxi driver’s union legal status, which is something they have been battling with for some time.
For information on ITF research on informal transport workers click here
The restructuring of transport has had a significant impact on how unions need to organise. The fragmentation of employment through casualisation, outsourcing and informalisation has both changed the nature of the transport workplace and the work experiences of transport workers. At the same time, transport worker occupy a strategic position in global supply chains which are often fragile and time-sensitive. How can transport unions organise, restructure and strengthen themselves to reach a fragmented workforce and take advantage of this strategic position in the global economy? The ITF’s Organising Globally programme adopted at its Congress last year provides the framework in which affiliates and the ITF collectively can identify targets for organising and coordinate union activities across the different transport sectors. In November 2006, an ITF education conference was held in Austria to develop an education strategy for Organising Globally.
Linking learning to building organisation
Many transport unions have begun formulating new organising strategies, embarking on organising drives, allocating additional resources for organising and setting up new structures. Education is an integral part of this process, Every workplace problem, dispute or campaign - spontaneous or otherwise - can be turned into an educational opportunity to bring unorganised workers into a union and/or to strengthen the confidence and power of existing members. If we are going to do effective organising, then we need to recognise and connect with what transport workers are learning and questioning through their own experiences of confronting changes and problems in their workplaces, sectors and communities. Thus education is more than the delivery of formal education programmes carried out by union education departments. Learning for workers happens in different places and spaces, and whether you are an educator or organiser, we need to link this learning to building union organisation.
There must also be a close and dynamic interrelationship between the organising strategy of a union and its formal education programme. However, often the role which education can play is too narrowly defined. In many cases, the link between education and organising is interpreted as the need to train organisers. Whilst the training of organisers is indeed essential, education should not be limited solely to this function. We need to remember that organising is not just about recruiting new members, but also sustaining effective, democratic unions. Education must play a role in every aspect of a union’s life building good, effective leaders and stimulating an active, involved and politically conscious membership.
The ITF education conference began to define a mandate for trade union education as part of this process of revitalising unions. The ideas below attempt to give a more concrete focus to such a mandate, and will hopefully encourage further discussion and debate in affiliates.
Stimulating critical thinking and action
The ITF’s Organising Globally programme aims at increasing the leverage of trade unions in the transport industry. This requires building a capacity for critical thinking and empowerment of transport union leaders and workers to intervene and bring about change in their workplaces, industry and wider society. Thus Organising Globally must be accompanied by a programme of political education for leadership and members at a local, national, regional and international level, with the aim of developing new policies and strategies to fight for the interests of transport workers.
Supporting research, campaigning, networking and solidarity
For unions in the transport industry to take advantage of their strategic position, there is a need for an ongoing process of information gathering, analysis, campaigning and networking. For such a process to feed into and strengthen organising, workers and members themselves need to be actively involved. An educational approach provides a structure and foundation for a cross-section of a union to identify common issues, gather information, and plan and make decisions about the targets and tactics for campaigns. It also provides the opportunity to develop campaign skills and capacity at different levels within a union, and to bring unions together with other organisations on a common set of issues.
Reaching different categories of workers
The findings of an ITF global research project on organising informal transport workers (see the education homepage of the ITF website) show that union education programmes must be specifically tailored to address the needs and problems of informal workers.
Sometimes union organisers with experiences in organising formal workers find organising informal workers more difficult. Thus the training of organisers needs to address the particular issues, situations and difficulties of recruiting informal workers including: overcoming suspicion and bad experiences, dealing with union plurality, overcoming opposition of the employers/authorities, motivating workers to join and finding the time and place to meet with informal transport workers.
Educating, building capacity and empowering leaders in trade unionism, trade union skills, politics and economics must form part of building informal workers’ trade unions. For example, the ITF affiliated NTU in the Philippines, runs a wide range of courses for informal transport workers’ associations aimed at consciousness raising, leadership and skills development.
Building capacity
If we are to link education and organising effectively, then unions’ organisational capacity to deliver education needs to be strengthened. Apparent at the ITF education conference was the wide disparity between affiliates, ranging from those offering no union education to others who are delivering education on a regular basis. Regarding the latter, there are differences between those with structures and resources (including trainers) allowing for a continuous development of education and those with weak or no structures and few resources.
However, capacity is also about perspective and vision. And it is clear from discussions at both the conference and other events, that a large number of ITF affiliates do not have a strategy for education. A lot of union education is ad hoc and unrelated to a long-term programme of organisational development. In many situations, education is not linked to the core industrial activities of a union. It happens on the sidelines and is seen as an optional extra. In other cases, education is used manipulatively by leadership as a transmission belt to pass information and/or decisions “down” to membership.
Thus unions need to need to allocate resources for education, develop education structures, train trainers and deliver education programmes which cater for different layers of the union. But more importantly, we need a trade union education strategy and methodology which builds a membership base capable of participating in and controlling the core activities and relationships of their unions, and reaching out to unorganised workers.
The mistake of linking the ability to carry out education to having financial resources is made all too often. Financial support for trade union education world-wide is in decline, so we cannot always rely on external support. There are many forms of low cost education which unions ought to consider. And we need to turn towards the resources we do have, but often do not recognise. For example, active union members can be educators. They can reach more members, more quickly and more effectively. They can tap into a diverse membership. This is important - it broadens the base of who is involved in union initiatives, and who is in the upcoming layer of leadership. So it is an approach which builds democratic participation, and organisational capacity and it can be an integral part of union transformation. There is an inspiring example from NETWON, an ITF affiliate in Nepal where organised union members reached unorganised taxi drivers at petrol pumps and played an educational role in providing information about the union, resulting in a significant increase in union membership.
The ITF plays an important role in providing opportunities for affiliates to strengthen their education work. Through global and regional education initiatives, the development of education materials on a wide variety of issues and the establishment of the ITF educators’ network, affiliates are able to share ideas, learn new skills and improve coordination on education. However, ITF programmes cannot be a substitute for union’s running their own education. Organising and education are inextricably linked and transport unions need both to realise their power globally. Alana Dave, ITF Education Office.
Click here for a detailed report of the ITF Education Conference held in Austria, November 2006.
The ITF research on organising informal transport workers is now complete and the four reports are available in English, French and Spanish. The study consisted of 3 case studies (Benin, Philippines and Zambia) of affiliates organising informal transport workers, and an overall report with an analysis of the debates and developments relating to informal work and informal transport work in particular.
The research took a year and half to complete and was supported by FNV Mondiaal. Chris Bonner from South Africa coordinated the research and produced the overall report.
Below are extracts from the report highlighting key issues and also findings from the case studies.
There are different degrees of informality and different levels of protection. This can be represented as a continuum, from informal to formal, unprotected to protected, embracing many different employment relationships.
Informal transport workers share similar problems and have similar needs as other workers in the informal economy. Commonly they are excluded in law or practice from labour and social protection laws. They lack representation and voice and are unorganised or ineffectively organised. They have a large number of concerns, including job insecurity, low and insecure income, harassment and corruption by authorities, poor facilities, and no access to training.
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Benin Case Study: The Syndicat National des Zemidjan du Benin, SYNAZEB, is a national union of informal transport workers in Benin, registered in December 2000. It organises drivers of motorcycle taxis, and indirectly the wives of drivers who sell fuel. The union runs on democratic principles through a series of decision-making bodies, namely congress, general assembly, national executive and branches. It has a women’s officer on its national executive committee. Its key activities are building solidarity, engaging in collective action, taking up member issues with the local authorities and with individual owners, educating members, assisting in the provision of social protection through mutual aid schemes. |
One overarching challenge is that of financial resources. Many unions are unable to organise informal workers seriously because the income derived from subscriptions from such workers is low and erratic. To sustain organisation, unions organising in different sectors of the informal economy are using a range of strategies to supplement membership subscriptions, such as:
- cross-subsidisation from formal members (where strong enough)
- solidarity funding on an ongoing basis, and
- project partnerships with governments, NGOs, and development agencies.
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Philippines Case Study The National Transportworkers’ Union(NTU) is a national federation of 16 regional federations, their base membership being local associations of transport workers, and 15 local associations without federations. The union does not recruit individual members and its membership is unknown, as individual records are not kept. Within the member associations there are both men and women drivers and operators, a majority being men. The union is open to all transport workers but in practice organises road passenger transport workers, and particularly operators and drivers of jeepney and Asian Utility Vehicle (AUV), tricycle and pedicab taxis. The main activities of the national union are organising and uniting transport workers’ federations, lobbying government, representing transport workers in public fora and conferences, coordinating mass action, education services, legal services and engaging in sectoral, multi-sectoral and international solidarity work. The member federations are formed to unite local associations and enhance their bargaining power. |
Established unions that are beginning to organise informal transport workers have to deal with a range of issues that fall outside of their traditional scope of operation - such as providing "business" advice and skills, running cooperatives or providing a broad range of social protection services. This often needs a change of mindset.
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Zambia Case Study The National Union of Transport and Allied Workers is a long-standing union that has survived many different phases in the history of the transport sector in Zambia. The union organises mainly formally employed workers in road freight and passenger transport and inland waterways. In 2001, faced with falling membership and inspired by the ZCTU, the union took a resolution to set up an informal economy desk with a view to organising informal transport workers. Although the union decided in 2001 to set up this desk, it has not yet managed to get beyond the preparatory strategising stage, and has not begun to seriously organise informal transport workers. Meanwhile there are now other unions organising this constituency- see the Zambia Bus and Taxi Workers’ Union -and the idea of a merger is on the table. No decision or practical steps have yet been taken. |
(The article, without the case studies, first appeared in Congress edition of Transport international)
For copies of the full report with recommendations and the individual case studies please contact the education department, education@itf.org.uk.
For information on the objectives of the project and participating research organisations, please click here.
The ITF education department together with the ITF dockers’ and inland transport sections commissioned a research paper from the Labour Research Service in South Africa with the support of the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity (ACILS), on the Southern Africa transport corridors, which includes Angola, Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa. The purpose was to collect information that would help inform how to strengthen trade union organisation and coordination along the Southern African Development Community (SADC) transport corridors.
Countries within the study are coastal countries that play a strategic role in the SADC region in handling exports to, and imports from, other regions of the world.
Some of the findings and recommendations are as follows:
To increase trade SADC countries have signed a range of intra-regional and international agreements. The SADCs Protocol on Transport commits member states to full cost recovery and SADC’s targets are to become a Free Trade Area in 2008, a Customs Union in 2010 and a Common Market in 2015. All SADC countries are also members of the WTO and some are also members of other regional integration areas and international agreements. Membership of multiple integration areas and agreements are seen as potentially causing conflicts in their implementation.
It is not clear how the various regional and international trade agreements will impact on the transport sector.
Numerous international and regional institutions and countries are involved in the financing of transport infrastructure development including the World Bank, the EU, Africa Development Bank. Their role, the conditions they set and the interplay with the World Trade Organisation needs to be understood.
As in the rest of Africa transport restructuring has taken on different forms and manifested itself to varying degrees, including outright privatisation, through a change in ownership, outsourcing, commercialisation, corporatisation, concessioning, public private partnerships (PPP)etc. It is important for unions to understand the different processes taking place within their countries in order to develop strategies to resist and shape them.
In South African unions are being offered to become partners and acquire financial interests in the transport sector through the privatisation process. They have been offered first option in the sale of state owned road freight companies and they have negotiated that workers become shareholders if plans for PPPs in the port of Durban go ahead. Unions need to debate the implications of having financial interests in a restructured transport company and how this affects their role in the restructuring process in light of the financial gain.
SADC member states have adopted the SADC Employment and Labour Sector and the SADC Social Charters, which commit them to implement ILO core labour standards. All member states have ratified these ILO conventions. National laws of Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa provide for the right to organise, collective bargaining and the right to strike. However this does not mean that labour law is effectively implemented, monitored and /or enforced. In Angola for instance the definition of essential services allegedly restricts the labour rights of transport workers and in Mozambique the law does not sufficiently protect workers against anti-union discrimination nor are workers able to freely exercise union activities.
Discussions for a joint campaign for implementation, monitoring and enforcement of ILO labour standards throughout the SADC region should be initiated.
Unions in Namibia and Mozambique reported a few cross border issues that involve differential and lower payment of workers from their respective countries when they perform work in SA (both in road freight and in the ports). The NATAU also reported truck drivers having to pay bribes to Angolan road authorities and Mozambique operators reported of victimisation once they enter SA.
There is a need to adopt a common campaign to address cross-border issues. Besides labour issues (mentioned above), there is a need to pressurise SADC governments to harmonise and enforce transport codes and regulations adopted by SADC member states.
There are some general common trends discerned in Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa as a result of transport sector restructuring. These include job losses, increasing casualisation and the usage of labour brokers, decreasing membership of unions and greater difficulties in organising. Negotiating with an increasing number of employers also takes up a large amount of time, effort and resources from the unions. All unions in all of the three countries studied have adopted a range of strategies to build their respective unions and protect workers, with different degrees of success. For the full research report, please contact the Education Department. education@itf.org.uk
Over the last 10 to 20 years there has been a significant decline in the funding available for general trade union education in the South. By this we mean programmes such as training the trainers, building the capacity of education departments, knowing how to manage trade union education programmes on the ground, and designing a curriculum.
At the same time there has been an increase in funding available to short-term, highly specific project-based education work. If you want to do short-term work on HIV/AIDS education, promote women’s leadership in the union, or organise amongst informal economy workers, you might find financial support relatively easily (although perhaps not easily enough!). But sustained funding for more day-to-day general education work is much harder to obtain.
I have seen many education officers, sitting patiently behind an empty desk. When I ask “What courses are you running at the moment?” they say “Nothing, because we are waiting for the funds to come. We are waiting for the next project to arrive, which will enable us than to start planning our educational activities.” Fewer and fewer unions in the South have the resources or skills to run systematic and sustained education programmes in support of basic democratic trade union organisation.
Funding demands
In addition, those funding agencies still prepared to support trade union education programmes - most often West European or North American solidarity organisations with access to state funding for international development - now require much greater levels of accountability. The skills needed to write a funding proposal, to provide project monitoring and evaluation reports, to manage project finances and supply adequate financial data and so on are becoming more and more complex and difficult for many unions.
Many unions simply do not have the skills or capacities to manage externally-funded projects. So funding agencies increasingly turn to sympathetic labour NGOs, which in many countries are staffed by bright young and skilled graduates who understand how to put together budgets, who understand how to do financial reporting, who can work in English, and can negotiate with the funding agencies.
Hence in the last 10 or 20 years agencies are increasingly working with NGOs to deliver trade union and workers’ education on behalf of trade unions, rather than working directly with unions themselves, inevitably creating tensions.
Meanwhile in the North there is also a decline in the support for general trade union education or political education, while at the same time, an increase in support for trade union engagement in the delivery of “life long learning” and skills training.
Skills investment
In a reaction to the challenge of globalisation, governments are investing heavily in upgrading workers’ skills, seeking the higher ground of knowledge-based economic growth (and - in effect - abandoning manufacturing to the low-wage economies of the South & East). Unions are seen to be very important to this strategy. So today, in many Northern countries, it is becoming increasingly difficult to gain state support for education in support of trade union or political development, but much easier to gain access to government funds to enable trade union members to develop vocational skills.
In both the North and South, general grants to support trade union education are in decline, replaced increasingly by contracts. In other words, governments turn to unions and say, “We will no longer give you X thousand dollars to support your education work, but we pay you Y thousand dollars to deliver this number of courses, for this number of people, with these objectives.”
It is becoming almost a commercial contract to deliver government targets, as opposed to a general grant to support a union’s democratically determined education programme. Rather than ask ourselves “What are our education priorities?” we ask “What are the priorities of the funders?”.
At the same time, as we all know, there is a crisis in the general membership of unions. Therefore there is a new organising agenda in both the North and South. How do we build our unions, how do we concentrate on organising? And what role does education have in the organising agenda.
Training activists is one aspect of this question. But how does trade union education in general relate to trade union organisation? Education is not simply restricted to training of organisers and recruiters. It is the means by which the democratic life, culture and political traditions of the trade union movement are maintained.
Tools for development
We need to ask ourselves - how do our education programmes help us organise more effectively? But also, how do we build core education programmes that are not dependant on short-term external project finance, but are permanent, sustainable and self-sufficient engine rooms of trade union development?
These questions are not limited to the ITF. In the early 1990s, the education work of the then International Confederation of Free Trade Unions was delegated to the regions. This made it difficult for the ICFTU to achieve a coherent education programme or policy. It also left many of the national centres unable to support the education needs of their affiliated unions, other than through participation in the occasional short-term workshop or seminar, with the vacuum increasingly filled by supportive NGOs.
The creation of the new International Trade Union Confederation however, offers new opportunities to consider a fresh global approach to trade union education development. The ITF, along with other Global Union Federations, could play a significant role in determining what approach that should and could be.
The core of our argument - both within the ITF and in the broader Global Union community - should be to concentrate on building the ability of our unions to design, manage and deliver our own education programmes on our own terms, and break the habit of dependency on external agencies.
We have to recognise that an international education strategy is not the same thing as a project financing strategy for unions in the South, nor a vocational training strategy for unions in the North. It must be capable of supporting international union organisation development and campaigns both North and South, and East and West.
The challenge for unions is to harness the power of education in support of organising, while keeping in mind that education is the long-term lifeblood of the union, not just a short-term recruitment tool.
It is time to engage in a fresh and critical dialogue with the “solidarity support organisations” (sympathetic funding agencies) as to how a new deal can be negotiated with their respective governments. Such a deal would recognise that healthy and vibrant trade unions are not merely agencies for reaching working people to deliver training and development targets. They are the bedrock of civil society and democratic life, based on participatory and democratic education provision.
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