Haiti event at the TUC

Just time for a short welcome for tonight’s event, supported by Prospect, and to express the hopes that all going have a great time. Don’t forget to take your folding stuff!

Tickets for the event are as rare as hens’ teeth – so well done if you’ve got one! – but, even if you can’t attend the event, you can still buy the t-shirt…

The TUC has also published news of how trade union assistance is arriving in Haiti and being used for the good of the people there (and see also Owen Tudor’s post over at Stronger Unions) – so you know your donations are reaching their destination.

Trade union statement to G20 finance ministers

The International Trade Union Confederation and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD have produced a joint statement to the meeting of G20 finance ministers taking place in St Andrews this weekend.

The statement calls for action on the following issues:

– jobs, with fiscal stimulus measures to have a stronger focus on job protection and creation

– a commitment to ‘substantial financial commitments’ for climate change action

– an expeditious timetable for far-reaching reform of the international financial regulatory system

– the building of a new model balanced economy encompassing democratic institutions and open to dialogue with trade unions.

The TUC has also endorsed the statement and written to Chancellor Alistair Darling to encourage him to play a ‘leading role’ in persuading other G20 nations to support the aims of the international trade union movement.

The STUC is running buses to the event from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen – no online details are available at the STUC’s website but can be accessed via the link to travel arrangements on the specific G20 St. Andrews website. A counter-conference event is also taking place in parallel in London and is being organised by Put People First.

Make your voice heard!

World Day for Decent Work

… is today. Trade union organisations around the world are organising events and initiatives publicising the themes of the day. Tonight, at Congress House, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze are joining TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O’Grady for a night of rhyme, rhythm and reason (and food)

WDDW is an initiative of the International Trade Union Confederation, the global confederation of trade union organisations. Decent work issues encompass, amongst others at the global level, migration; discrimination; equality; forced labour; human trafficking; child labour; other core labour standards such as the right to bargain collectively and the freedom to organise; freedom of expression; laws and agreements; the informal economy; climate issues (green jobs); health and safety; social protection; poverty and food crisis; and social dialogue.

More broadly, the context for WDDW is the threat to the jobs and futures of people everywhere as a result of the economic and employment crisis, and their background in decades of deregulation and in the greed and excess of a tiny minority which have pushed the world into the deepest recession since the 1930s. Decent work must be at the centre of government actions to bring back economic growth and fundamentally to reform the global economy so that it puts people first.

TUC joins lobby for a jobs G20

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber is joining a fifty-strong lobby by union general secretaries from around the world of world leaders in Pittsburgh. The aim of the lobby, which will involve several meetings with heads of government and global institutions, will be to argue the point that Friday’s G20 summit should be a summit for jobs, aimed at helping people survive the recession and overcome poverty by facilitating a return to decent work offering good wages.

The ITUC argues as part of the research for its Pittsburgh Declaration that the global crisis will have cost 59m jobs by the end of the year – equivalent to the whole population of the UK – and that unemployment across OECD countries could reach 10% in 2010, and rise still further into 2011. Furthermore, it could lead to 200m more people falling into poverty. In this context, it is unarguable that the G20 must address the need to create work if economic recovery is not to stall as a result of a lack of demand.

The union lobby is a useful reminder of two things:

– that, whatever the technical, economic definitions of recession related to GDP, a recession continues while people are losing jobs – and that this is likely to be for some time after the recession has technically ended

– that an ending to the crisis does not mean an end to discussions about what caused it, from the perspective of preventing it from happening again. In contrary to any quick return to ‘business as usual’, economic policy remains very much a contestable area of public policy. As Barber argues:

Governments need to be talking to employers and to unions – not just when there’s a crisis, but to stop the next crisis from happening. We need millions more green jobs, tougher rules on top bankers’ bonuses, and a fairer global economy – and millions of people around the globe will be looking to Pittsburgh this week for just that.

Honduran telecom trade unionist killed by army truck

A member of the Honduran telecom trade union has been run over and killed by an army truck while trying to block the military’s efforts to bring in private telecom workers to restore services. The worker is believed to be the first victim of the repression of strikers which has followed Sunday’s coup as the army has sought to restore order on the streets and defend its actions in removing President Manual Zelaya from power and sending him into exile. Attacks on media and journalists have also resulted from the coup, according to the International Federation of Journalists, as flagrant violations of press freedom and of freedom of expression have been the consequence of the political unrest despite media workers bravely refusing to allow the army to impose a news blackout.

The coup has been condemned by the world trade union organisation, the ITUC, for whom Guy Rider, General Secretary, said: ‘The ITUC fully supports its affiliates and the Honduran people in their actions to mark their rejection and condemnation of this overthrow of constitutional order.’ The Honduran trade union movement has been at the forefront of public activities denouncing the coup: union confederations CGT, CUT and CTH have all expressed their commitment to the poll and their support for the democratically-elected president, and have called for an indefinite general strike. Honduran trade union leaders have also pointed to lists being drawn up of the social and political leaders to be detained over their support for the poll: such a move could clearly result in serious repression of active trade unionists with consequences that are ‘unpredictable’.

Worrying times. Like all our colleagues in the international trade union movement, we stand beside our brothers and sisters in Honduras as they fight to preserve their democracy in conditions of brutality and threat, and pay tribute to the courage and resolution of people prepared to die, in circumstances in factories even prior to the coup, for their trade union beliefs.

In memory of the 76

This year’s ITUC annual survey on violations of trade union rights has been published today.

The report highlights that 76 people lost their lives in 2008 as a result of their trade union activity, 49 of them in Columbia where the toll was higher by one-quarter than the figure for 2007. A total of 16 Columbian trade union leaders, four of them women, are included in the Columbian total. Governments are often involved and the implications of a global recession are that the situation is not about to become any easier for trade unionists already in such personally dangerous situations: soberingly, the ITUC is already anticipating that the 2010 survey will paint a worsening picture.

Aside of the death toll, the report highlights the ‘widespread and grave’ anti-union practices of many countries across the globe, including the undermining of workers’ rights via poor legislation and weak implementation regimes, as well as interference in trade union activities, bans and restrictions on their establishment. The ITUC comments:

‘Effective implementation of international conventions or even national labour laws and respect for trade union rights continues to fall far short of workers’ rightful expectations. This year again, [we are] reporting assassinations, abductions, arrests and imprisonments, as well as death threats, dismissals, harassments, acts of discrimination and intimidation against trade unionists.’

Nevertheless, the report pays tribute to the fight for solidarity of millions of trade unionists and labour activists around the globe, in spite of the immense personal cost that results from such struggle.

Until such times as no-one faces death, imprisonment, harassment or intimidation as a result of being active in their trade union, or of struggling to get one established, the watchword remains: an injury to one is an injury to all.