Organising globally to renew trade union power

The ITF enters its 41st Congress in Durban, South Africa this August. It will be the first time an ITF Congress has been held in Africa. It is an appropriate historic first.

We are entering a turning point for the international union movement. The Congress theme is Organising Globally. It addresses some fundamental realities facing trade unions around the world:

• Unions are losing members and getting weaker.
• Globalisation has fundamentally changed the way things are produced and the organisation of work.
• The need for social justice at the workplace has never been greater
• Global production and its reliance on global supply chains has placed transport workers in a strategic place in the global economy.

An increasing number of unions are recognising the urgent need to re-build workplace organisation. But union internationalism is not something that awaits the rebuilding of unionism at the national level – it is part of the process. Organising nationally can now only be effective if there is organising globally.

The new global economy offers transport workers the potential to build a new force of global unionism. We need to develop the organising strategy to do this. But most of all, we need to ensure we have the determination and the will.