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This edition includes;
Understanding industrial Issues and collective bargaining for women in Africa
At the Africa women’s planning seminar held in Kampala, Uganda from 29th June to 3rd July, training women on industrial issues, campaigning skills and including women’s issues in collective bargaining agreements emerged as core areas for a future education project. This project would be the third phase of the ITF/FNV long-term capacity building programme for women transport workers.
Ten women representing unions from Togo, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Guinea Conakry, Kenya and Ghana took part.
During the preparations for the seminar it quickly emerged that most of the women trained during the past two project phases have been lost either through retrenchments, barriers put up by leadership or have left the trade union movement.
As a result of this situation, basic skills including, communications and leadership skills, will need to be rebuilt and linked to the development of women’s own support base.
UK educators discuss collaboration
At a UK educators meeting held at ITF House in London on 1st July 2008, a skills seminar on writing funding proposals and a joint project on climate change were suggested as priorities for collaboration.
Participating unions included Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers & Firemen (ASLEF), Unite the Union, National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) and Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA).
The aim of the meeting was to discuss collaboration and support, as well as how UK educators could participate more actively in ITF education activities.
During the discussions, it became apparent that there were different experiences of running education on international issues. Unite-TGWU section has a long tradition of conducting courses on globalisation. At the RMT such courses are run as part of political education. However some innovative ways of educating crew ship members through the use of information technology is currently being developed by the RMT. For the TSSA such courses have been offered but they attracted little interest. In ASLEF, due to lack of funding such courses do not exist.
The meeting also discussed the need for an education coordinator in the European region of the ITF. This would enable a coordinated education approach on the wider international issues impacting on unions in all transport sectors in Europe.
Organising in LAN
At the first ever seminar of unions representing LAN workers in Latin America, deepening the mapping process of LAN subsidiaries, sharing information on collective bargaining agreements, negotiations and LAN anti-union practices were among the identified areas of collaboration. The seminar took place from 10- 12 of June 2008, in Santiago Chile.
A total of 30 participants from 12 unions representing LAN Airlines Holding group (formerly LAN Chile) workers, met for three days with the aim of developing a network between the unions.
This was the beginning of an organising project in which education plays a key role. The project is supported by the FES and the FNV. Gabriel Mocho, ITF Education Coordinator, Americas.
Globalisation on Wheels: How the World Bank is restructuring transport and how unions can respond.
This paper was developed as part of the ITF/FES project on neoliberal transport restructuring and trade union alternatives and is the third and final research paper from the project.
The paper looks at the World Bank's transport policies and projects, and their links to its trade facilitation work, and critically discusses the Bank's claim that they have contributed positively to economic development and poverty reduction. It also discusses how transport workers’ unions are responding, and at how lessons might be learnt from their experiences.
Sections 1 and 2 of the paper outline the World Bank's transport and trade policies and its changing transport strategy, while Section 3 challenges its claims for their positive effects, focusing particularly on privatisation. In Sections 4-7, the rationale for the Bank's transport strategy-that more international trade leads to more economic growth, which leads in turn to less poverty -- is critically examined.
Section 8 discusses trade union experiences of dealing with World Bank transport policies and projects. Section 9 draws together the paper's argument and outlines an alternative approach to transport restructuring for human development. Finally, Section 10 makes some recommendations about further work to build on the project.
Brendan Martin, a consultant, coordinated the project and is the author of the three research papers. For a copy of Globalisation on Wheels and previous papers please contact education@itf.org.uk or click here.
Education Briefing:
“Organising is about growing the organisation, lighting fires and not just putting out fires”
These were the striking words from Professor Elaine Bernard, the head of the Labor and Worklife Program, at Harvard Law school, who gave a presentation at ITF house entitled “Organizing and the Future of the Labour Movement”. This was presented on 15th July 2008, for the purpose of educating ITF staff, given the central role that organising occupies within the trade union movement and in the ITF work programme Organising Globally.
Professor Bernard began by assessing the decline in the global union movement, by looking at union density and contrasting it with union collective bargaining agreements coverage. She contrasted the USA which has higher union density but limited collective bargaining coverage to European countries such as France and Italy, which have lower density but higher collective bargaining coverage which is in part explained by legislation.
She outlined some of the well known factors behind union decline including, globalization, privatization, liberalization, the transformation of employment relationships from full time to irregular employment, impacting negatively on unions particularly within the private sector, where anti-union practices have also become common place.
Professor Bernard, added that another key factor contributing to this decline is the fact that union growth levels have not kept up with those of the workforce, leading to an imbalance and therefore a loss of union bargaining power given the limited union representation. The doubling of the global workforce through the entry of China and India in global capitalism has further contributed to the imbalance.
In trying to stem this decline, many unions and Global Union Federations (GUFS) are focusing on organising.
“Create the future, by building union power” which encompasses “economic, social, political [and] technical power through numbers, density, skills & strategic workers” is what Professor Bernard defined as organising.
Her definition of organising is broad and all encompassing but she stressed that “organising is about growing the organisation, lighting fires and not just putting out fires”, which has become the norm for many trade unions.
She added that unions need to encourage the participation of the membership who in the main have joined existing unions and have not had the experience of building a union from scratch, which demands an understanding of the role of the union. She emphasised that one of the critical mistakes made by unions when adapting to a new approach is to focus on the structure instead of the strategy. It is the strategy that should inform the structure. She explained that it is easier to deal with the structure than dealing with how to realise the strategy. She also outlined the dangers of many unions relabeling their existing activities such as campaigns, mobilisations or actions as organising instead of undertaking the radical changes and the necessary shifts in perspective.
What the role of GUFs should be in supporting unions adapting to an organising approach was also touched on including coordination of strategy and organising activities, providing education to affiliates on how to organise and capacity building.
Questions and comments from the floor included:
The need for the ITF to adapt a flexible approach to organising and not only a one model fits all approach, given the diversity of the ITF membership.
The need for affiliates to recognise that the ITF cannot do the organising work for them and that it is affiliates who have the direct relationship with the membership and workers.
Other issues included the difficulty of the ITF giving up some areas of work in order to focus on the organising globally agenda.
The newly appointed industrial and regional coordinator commented that even within the ITF there was a need to light the fires again and use the vast talent within the organisation, which has recently been neglected due to the internal ITF restructuring process. He committed him self to ensure these fires were lit again!
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