Union fight back must centre on organising

April 16, 2011

Unions need to focus on jobs, decent work, organising and powerful workers if they are to challenge the devastating impact of the world economic crisis, said the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Sharan Burrow.

Speaking at a meeting of the ITF executive board on 14 April in London, UK, Burrow reminded transport trade unionists of the “bitter crisis of unemployment and inequity”. She highlighted how millions of workers, especially women were desperate for work and how more were taking on precarious employment or were working in the informal sector. There was a need to promote a drive for secure jobs. “Employment is at the heart of growth,” she said.

The ITUC, she said, would be stepping up its work with the G20 because the situation of working people was getting worse – “It’s their last chance,” she warned. That’s why it was vital that unions should shift the culture and drive “a new growth model” in which social protection was crucial. “We intend to make jobs and social protection the fundamental demands of the trade union movement,” she said.

Collective bargaining rights were being eroded across the world, Burrow said, including in the US, one of the richest economies in the world. “We’re under attack and the only way to fight back is to organise,” she said.

Youth unemployment was a particular concern. “Intergenerational equity means young people have to have jobs,” she said. Unions had to lobby for apprenticeships, internships and wage subsidies for employers, if this situation was to turn around.

She also condemned the banking sector, which had been responsible for the crisis. There was “far too little attention to financial regulation.” The ITUC was demanding a financial transaction tax to ensure that the “greedy” individuals in the financial sector paid for their part in the crisis.

In addition, Burrow recognised the ITF as an action-based body with strategic influence in the global supply chain. She asked the federation and UNI global union, which have already been working together on a campaign to organise global delivery giant DHL, to agree that DHL should be the focus of a coordinated global unions organising effort. This would run alongside a campaign on Deutsche Telekon/T-Mobile, the company that had been selected as a key target at a meeting in Washington, US, in January.