The ITF education programme over the past four years has developed many new areas of activity. It now reaches more deeply into the activist layers of affiliated unions, with a focus on developing stronger international solidarity.

Here, three activists explain how activities such as the annual ITF Summer Schools have interlocked with their own union’s needs.

Later, we reflect on the progress made by three ITF educational projects aimed at consolidating union organisation on the ground.

No longer so distant

Jacqui Roberts is an industrial organiser for the Aviation and Marine Engineers’ Association (AMEA) in New Zealand. She looks after the interests of aviation engineers, administration employees, and has special responsibility for women workers as well as being legal officer.

Among the union’s greatest challenges in recent years was the Trans-Tasman Accord between the management of Ansett/Air New Zealand Engineering Services and the trade unions representing employees of the two companies in the two countries, New Zealand and Australia. In the end, it was never signed off, owing to the collapse of Ansett. But the way in which the New Zealand and Australian unions strengthened their co-operation in that period was one of the experiences which Jacqui took to the ITF Summer School in 2001.

“When I started as an organiser with the union four years ago, the ITF was a distant organisation in the UK. I remember thinking how much paperwork we received: maritime, civil aviation, women. After the AMEA seconded Simon Des Baux to work in the ITF Asia/Pacific regional office in Tokyo it was the first time that I had a good look at what the ITF does. When I went to the Summer School it showed me that the ITF does an awful lot more.

New Zealand is a long way from the rest of the world and AMEA is a small organisation. As air travel is costly, we have never sent anyone to a Civil Aviation section meeting, for example. So email is great. Details on the aviation sector that were circulated by email from the London office after 11 September 2001 were extremely useful and timely. Air New Zealand currently has a proposal to set up a “low cost” airline. The ITF information through the Civil Aviation Section and contacts with other ITF-affiliated unions will help us make informed decisions, to guide and advise our members.

The chance to go to Summer School was very valuable. I learned a lot from the training in campaigning and sharing experiences with the other participants. I think I was able to contribute from what we learned in our Trans-Tasman experience, the way that the Australian and New Zealand unions worked together and came up with a common position from which to deal with the companies.

The friendships made at Summer School have given me very useful contacts. For example, in organising a crèche at Air New Zealand I now know people to contact that have been down that route. I am also aware that in the US and Canada they have 24-hour crèches, so that is something I can follow up. What I have learned is that distance is no problem.

I have found that the campaigning, rather than meetings-based, focus of the ITF is a more proactive approach. The ITF women’s campaign, for example, made me plan a campaign. While I had been thinking about organising a crèche and had mentioned it to some of the managers, I had not formally initiated the campaign. If it hadn’t been for the ITF women’s campaign, then I probably would have let it drift on.”

Global by definition

The decline and collapse of the African inter-state airline Air Afrique has caused the company’s 4,000 workers in 11 countries to develop strong cross-border solidarity.
Akwei Adoté is Secretary General of the joint union body, Air Afrique Intersindicale. He speaks from Togo about the inter-union efforts to protect Air Afrique workers, many of them unpaid for months as the company was allowed to go bankrupt.

“Air Afrique is by definition a cross-border activity. It involves 11 countries mostly in West and Central Africa, and also does business in the Middle East and North America. So we, the Air Afrique workers, have had to organise globally, go beyond national borders. We build global strategies and our local actions are guided by them.

Here in Togo, the government does not respect union rights. Any time that we call for union action in all 11 countries, the Togo government especially tries to intimidate me. But even if they force the workers in Togo to let a plane take off, they cannot be sure that the workers in, say, Dakar or Abidjan will allow it to land. This makes the government back off.

These are aspects of solidarity that I was able to bring to the ITF Summer School in Berlin. It was a time for us to touch concretely what we had heard about through all the other ITF sources, the meetings, the magazines and the website. We heard the stories that turn the theory into reality.

The ITF also supports our activities by sending letters to Heads of State. For example, I was detained in Abidjan on my way to the Air Afrique restructuring meeting in Brazzaville, Congo, in mid-2000. The ITF and many affiliates quickly wrote in protest to the Ivorian government. These letters from abroad do have an impact, making them think the whole world is looking at them. In fact, the ITF website was the first place on the internet to raise our Air Afrique problems.

Right now, the company is on the edge of being declared bankrupt, but the unions were never consulted. We made representations to the judge in Abidjan, and we have lodged a formal complaint with the ILO. The governments are trying to restructure Air Afrique not by negotiation but with harassment and force. They don’t want open discussions about what might be the social plan, but this is vital in Africa where there is no government social support if you lose your job. The ITF helped me to write the complaint to the ILO.

Meanwhile, we have another court action on-going in Lomé, Togo. There, the Minister of Transport withdrew ground-handling from Air Afrique and gave it to another company when he heard the union was preparing industrial action. We have sued Air France for breaking its contract. The union took this step because Air Afrique management is afraid politically, and we are the victims of the damage that will follow.

The weak link in the chain is where unions are too weak financially. My preoccupation is to find ways for unions to become self-sufficient through activities such as
co-operatives and credit unions, and I would like the ITF to help us share this experience.” More information here >>

Linking up the corridor

The European Union is establishing 10 “top priority” transport “corridors” between Western and Central/Eastern Europe so as to open up the transport market. Liberalisation of all the railways is part of the plan. Corridor IV involves no less than nine countries.

Erika Tamás is International Secretary of the VDSzSz (Free Trade Union of Railway Workers) in Hungary. She was appointed by the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) as Co-ordinator for Corridor IV, to build a common response by the unions in all nine countries. She was also the one who took the VDSzSz motion to the 1998 ITF Congress for an International Railway Workers’ Action Day.

“Responding to the Corridor policy is very complicated. The countries in Corridor IV are Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, with a branch going off to Austria, Hungary, then south to Romania and Bulgaria, and finally Greece in one direction and Turkey in the other. Some of these countries are in the EU, some are awaiting entry, and some are far off this. The railways vary technically. Also, the trade union needs are different in the various countries.

According to the Helsinki Declaration, unions have the right to be involved in decision-making on the corridor programme. So, the ETF/ITF has a two-year project involving international seminars and national meetings aimed at giving Central European unions practice in social dialogue and international networking.

At present, the unions are focusing on two things: one, to make sure we get all the information we need and, two, the border crossings. The borders are a key point, especially for railway transport; it is here that locomotives and staff are changed, and freight is checked. The companies want to shorten this time, and we need to make sure that the social impact – especially potential job losses – is addressed.

We are trying to find out how best to build union solidarity. For example, we meet in different countries so as to equalise chances for everyone to attend. It encourages some who may be reluctant at first. I also try to make our work so interesting that they want to be there. Thank heavens for email – almost all of us are using it by now.

But there is no language we all share. In Eastern Europe, language teaching was poor and there was a long period when our borders were shut. For the new generation, it is better. But one of my greatest challenges is to find someone in each union who is willing, with whom I can communicate easily, and who is important enough for the issues involved. We make best progress where union leaders realise that regular international activity by their union depends on involving activists in the field.

We started with the railway unions but now we need to bring in others, especially port workers and truck drivers. They may well have different interests from railway workers, but we will have to deal with this when it comes. I hope we can also involve the environmental activists who are concerned about transport services.

At the ITF Summer School I realised how global we are. It was a whole week to discuss more deeply those problems which are similar, and those which are specific. We can’t get this from meetings where you make a presentation and then listen (or not!). At Summer School, we get to know how others think and this helps to strengthen mutual tolerance.”