On 14-21 August 2002, the ITF Congress meets for the 40th time in the 106 years of the federation’s existence. This time it is being held in the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre located right on the waterside in the spectacular setting of Vancouver harbour, and hosted by the ITF’s Canadian affiliates.

Congress is the supreme authority of the ITF. It sets the policy, priorities and direction for the next four years and elects the federation’s President, Vice Presidents, General Secretary, and the Executive Board which is responsible for seeing that Congress decisions are carried out. Congress is also the sole body with the power to change the ITF Constitution.

Every paid-up affiliated union (at the beginning of 2002 there were nearly 600) is entitled to send delegates. The number of votes each union has varies according to the strength of its declared transport worker membership. Unions can bring with them non-voting advisers. Also present will be observers from non-affiliated organisations including the other nine International Trade Secretariats (ITSs) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) plus several guests of honour.

By the time that staff of the ITF Secretariat and regional offices plus the host unions and the interpreters have been added in, the total number expected in Vancouver in August will be around 1,200. Congress is a huge feat of organisation, which has to be undertaken by ITF Secretariat staff working with the host unions.

The plenary sessions of Congress are chaired by the ITF President. This is currently Umraomal Purohit of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation who was elected at the 1998 Congress in New Delhi. Plenary sessions are open to the public and the press.

Individual conferences of the ITF sections – seafarers, dockers, fisheries, civil aviation, tourism services, inland navigation, road transport, and railways – also take place over three days of the Congress. Their main purpose is to decide each of the sections’ work programme for the next four years and elect the Chair, Vice Chair and committees to oversee this work. They are closed sessions.

There are also meetings on women transport workers, urban transport workers and the flag of convenience campaign over the Congress period. The whole of Congress is simultaneously interpreted into English, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese and, for the first time at this Congress, Russian.

So what is there to talk about?
A clear progression can be seen through the ITF Congresses of the past decade, as the federation faces up to the challenges for transport workers in the rapidly changing global economy.

The 1994 Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, decided that a first step was to ensure that the ITF structures, especially the section committees, function more effectively. The basic document underpinning this emphasis was entitled “Transport Workers: Beyond 2000”.

Four years later, the 1998 Congress in New Delhi, India, approved “Mobilising Solidarity” which is probably among the most radical analytical documents to have come out of an ITS.

This looked in depth at the relationship between the ITF Secretariat and affiliates, and encouraged a shift towards mobilising grassroots members for active and effective campaigning.

This helped to strengthen the campaign days and weeks of action by ITF sections such as “Zero air rage” in civil aviation, “Fatigue kills” for road transport workers, and “Safety first – not profit” for railway workers, activities which have had marked success.

Globalising solidarity
The theme of the 2002 Congress in Vancouver, Canada, is “Globalising Solidarity”, building on the “Mobilising Solidarity” programme of activities of the previous four years. It focuses on continuing developments in the transport industries worldwide, and on what further changes are needed in the way that the ITF works, and with whom it works most closely, to strengthen the union response to globalisation.

A number of key motions are being put by the Executive Board before Congress. These motions look at the rise of global logistics and intermodal corporations in the international freight transport industry, along with damaging changes in the employment status of transport workers (greater casualisation, contracting out, etc) and intensified pressures on workers. It recognises the need for new forms of solidarity among workers along the “transport chain”.

The motions address changes in the international trade union movement and the development of “Global Unions”. This includes the ICFTU’s “Millennium Review” which is reassessing how the major institutions of the international trade union movement relate to each other, so as to create a more dynamic global unionism.

They look at how the union movement relates to the wider world of popular movements and non-governmental organisations concerned with how to control the globalisation process. An ITF action programme is proposed to build active links and broad alliances with movements and NGOs (non-governmental organisations) that are supportive of trade union goals. They draw on the lessons of “Mobilising Solidarity” to examine how to build even closer co-operation between the ITF and its member unions.

According to General Secretary David Cockroft, the Congress is a very special occasion: “It is always impressive to sit together, to debate, and to be with your union colleagues from all around the world from all the different transport industries. There is an enormous feeling of strength; of being part of a truly global union organisation.

“But being at the Congress is also being part of a very crucial decision-making process. The Congress does serious business; it elects the leadership; it sets our direction for the next four years.

“There are real choices to be made and it is important that we can see and feel that we are all together on these decisions. If you are not at the Congress, then you miss that.”