Posts Tagged ‘Labor unions’

Brooding isn’t very constructive

Posted: July 5, 2012 in Rights around the world
Tags: , , , , ,
0
English: Loyalist Mural, Donegall Pass, Belfas...

About as helpful as this (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last month a rare spat took place at the International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s annual conference.

The ILO is grounded in the notion of tripartite co-operation between employer organisations, employee organisations and governments.

Year after year, a moment has been taken to highlight the worst violations of trade union rights around the globe.

This year, the employer groups pulled the carpet, and got it taken off the agenda. Union federations reacted with great indignation at this affront to the co-operative process of the ILO.

I beg to differ.

The segment was the affront to the ILO process, in fact I’m amazed it had persisted this long. How are groups supposed to discuss things rationally if one group is forced to sit through a session specifically about how untrustworthy they are? How is that supposed to build trust and co-operation?

Imagine if the roles were reversed: Suppose employers got to play a video every year about the most egregious examples they could find of union misbehaviour.

Or translate the scenario to decisions in your own family. Imagine if, every time you sat down to discuss some major decision, your spouse/parent said ‘Hang on, before we talk about that, we’ll just have to stop for a minute and watch this slideshow about the time you were given decision-making responsibility and screwed it up royally.’ Well that’s pretty much what’s been happening.

The whole scene reminds me of the Orange Order in Northern Ireland, who thought it was critically important to hold annual marches to remind people of a military victory their ancestors won several centuries ago. As a result of their confrontationalism they have the distinction of being the last place on earth where Catholics and Protestants murdered each other over their religious differences. Most other European nations had discovered toleration by the 1700s.

So, far from being “an affront to the system”, last months’ agenda change may actually herald an approach more oriented towards results and less towards grandstanding. Let’s hope.

Related posts:

Where the rubber hits the road: Union organising in EPZs

Posted: March 27, 2012 in Rights around the world
Tags: , , ,
1
Cavite Export Processing Zone

Cavite Export Processing Zone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If union organising can succeed in an export processing zone (EPZ), it can succeed anywhere.

I have hit upon an important article, published in 2006, about successful unionisation in EPZs titled The Squeaky Wheel’s Dilemma.

The very fact that we hear so much about the EPZs of the world (did someone say Shenzhen?) tells us that they have the potential to be organised. It’s something of a paradox. The International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) bewails the state of Batam’s factories yet, relatively speaking, the island is a stronghold of membership. After hearing what McKay had to say, I am no longer surprised.

As human beings, we all want to find the silver bullet. The unmoveable object or the unstoppable force. Time and again it proves illusory or -more likely- creates an asymmetry which is soon rebalanced. Think of what happens in business: whenever a new, highly profitable, product is launched, the competitors are out with imitations to eat up market share, or they might even target the entire company for takeover. Unfortunately labour conditions can’t be fixed once and for all but require continued hard work to be secured and thereafter to be retained.

Labour in EPZs sounds outrageously inexpensive to a business considering relocating. Not only are wages lower but cost of regulatory compliance and risk of industrial unrest are lower too. In addition to being officially red-tape free zones, EPZs also prefer to employ mostly young, rural females in their first job.

The deck is stacked pretty solidly in favour of employers: Labour laws are weak or unenforceable, contracts are short-term, and the workers are migrants with no social ties to the place of work anyway. It’s all a little too good to be true, and it is.

McKay uses Cavite in the Philippines as his example. Despite all of these advantages, companies still require the assent of both the workforce and, moreover, the local authorities to continue their operations. Few will stare down a workforce that is prepared to strike. Also workers have the advantage of being voting residents of the local area, whose authorities can be lobbied into taking action about flagrant abuses. Lastly labour can access international support that can not only provide advice and resources but also place pressure on the company at various levels.

It’s not as dire as it seems. The very fact that we are hearing about Foxconn means that someone is taking an active interest in those workers’ rights and is getting some access to them. The problems are real but capable of improvement.

Source:

Related posts

National self-interest

Posted: November 7, 2011 in Economic Development
Tags: , , , ,
2
Trevor Long, Taken by Trevor Long September 21...

Image via Wikipedia

Events of the last week have brought something home to me: it is no wonder that unions remain national in scope. Whereas transnational corporations are ubiquitous, there are only a handful of genuinely transnational unions (i.e. not counting those with coverage of both the USA and Canada). Even the ambitious Service Employees International Union (SEIU) couldn’t break into overseas markets.

In a world where corporations have highly disciplined unanimity of purpose worldwide, workers have only the ten umbrella global union federations to co-ordinate cross-border campaigns. These are very loosely bound, barely more than forums really. Occasionally they have had successful campaigns where the interests of the workers in all nations are in alignment, e.g. the IUF Nestle campaign, but the central offices (generally located near the ILO in Geneva) have considerably less influence than the national affiliates.

I can see cross-border organising only getting harder in the near future, and here are two recent examples to show why:

  • The Australian airline Qantas is currently embroiled in an epic dispute with three unions representing the ground staff, engineers and pilots. At the heart of the dispute is Qantas’ plan to employ more of its staff overseas.
  • At the same time, the iconic Italian car manufacturer Fiat is threatening to decamp from Italy because skilled workers in nearby Poland will work for €8 per hour rather than €28 per hour.

This offshoring debate isn’t news, but this time around there is a critical difference. It was easy in 1991 and 1992, during the NAFTA debate, to explain that the economy can create new jobs to replace those that move away. In 2011 and 2012 it is a different story. Job security has risen up the scale of developed world workers’ concerns.

In this climate, how on earth can the workers of countries in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia be expected to campaign for those in other countries? It would be okay if their own prosperity was still rising or at least stable, but the generosity of spirit is understandably less when they see their own entitlements under threat – and especially so when ‘offshore workers’ are going to benefit in their stead.

I saw an isolated exception last week when the American United Steel Workers union publicly castigated Freeport-McRohan over the ongoing strike at the Grasberg Mine in Indonesia.

I don’t see a way out of this. The workers of the developing world are going to have to do it on their own. Either that of the global union federations need to alter the way they operate, away from a consensus model and more towards a truly federal model, including a division of powers. Hard to imagine it happening though.

Related posts:

More on the Qantas dispute

More strikes in China … very unharmonious

Posted: September 13, 2011 in China
Tags: , , , ,
0
Chongqing Taxi

Image by foxxyz via Flickr

Evidence continues to mount that the Chinese authorities are deliberately looking the other way when it comes to labour unrest. They don’t really have a choice. They either allow workers to get what they want in the form of moderate wage increases or face massive social dislocation from people who can’t keep their heads above water, financially.

In the last few years the number of known strikes has continued to increase, most visibly amongst taxi drivers in cities including Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Qionghai, Foshan, Mengzi and Shanghai.

The particular issues vary but they are all essentially protesting over the same thing: meeting rising costs of living. In some cities the issue is the cost of fuel, in others it the government’s failure to increase taxi fares, in others it is over the proliferation of unlicensed taxi cabs.

Interestingly not only has this taken place without any sort of crackdown, the mainstream press has been allowed to report on it, suggesting that it is less frowned on.

Demographic pressure

Even though the Chinese labour market seems inexhaustible to the ears of Westerners, it is still fairly mobile and low-end manufacturers are under pressure to find people who will work bottom-end wages. There are now more options out there. Their response has been to move up the value chain, making more high-end goods such as laptop computers and iPads where the output justifies the higher pay. The same progression took place in Japan and then Korea.

Where does China’s anemic official state union fit into this? Hardly at all, it seems. Generally wage increases have been won by ad hoc worker coalitions working on their own. Supply and demand seems to be enough to force up wages when people feel the pressure enough. I wonder what will happen in five to ten years when, analysts suggest, growth slows down.

Sources:

The same Labor Day struggles now take place elsewhere

Posted: September 6, 2011 in Labour History
Tags: , , ,
0
United States stamp: Labor Day

Image by karen horton via Flickr

Happy Labor Day, U.S. readers!

Labor Day and Industrialisation

Labor Day has been a public commemoration in the United States since 1882. It was made a public holiday in 1894 in a conciliatory gesture by President Cleveland after 13 workers were killed at the hands of National Guardsmen in a large railway strike.

The pace of industrialisation in the USA between 1850 and 1900 was immense. That short period saw electricity, the steam boiler, the telegraph, the telephone, the elevator, the reaper, the sewing machine and canned food brought to the mass market by corporations.

Between 1870 and 1900 America’s railroad network expanded from 53,000 to 193,000 miles of track, while the number of large-scale workplaces expanded from 140,000 mills to 512,000 factories (Beatty, Colossus, p. 127).

This growth of the post-Civil War economy had no counterbalance to corporate power, which was a new phenomenon. Politicians were soundly in the purse of the corporations and trade unions were small and weak.

Even peaceful strikes were put down by state militia or federal troops called out by politicians acting for corporations acting for shareholders. And these were not Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch, with their retirement money invested in 401(k) accounts, but the richest 1 percent of Americans holding more wealth than the other 99 percent (ibid, pp. 128-9).

Eerily familiar. As I am typing this, around the world military force has been used in recent days to suppress labour activists in Fiji, Malawi and Colombia. In 2010 union activists were killed or assassinated in 15 countries around the world, and arrested or imprisoned in 50 and I expect the number to be similar this year.

Business won the day, sort of

The antagonism in nineteenth-century America saw corporations and unions taking up philosophically polarised positions. Military force is not exactly conducive to good relations so the result is unsurprising but still tragic. It didn’t have to be this way. Unions are integrated much more closely and co-operatively into management in countries such as Japan, Germany and Scandanavia. How different the world might be if it had played out differently in the USA. As it turned out though,

The corporation stood for the acquisitive principle, the view that individual gain was the master motive of mankind. The union stood for solidarity, the view that men must stand together to be strong, subsuming their individual in the common interest. If freedom was the maxim of the corporation, fraternity was that of the union. Although freedom is more consonant with the American experience than fraternity, a European import, the corporation has never been able to match the moral appeal of the union. Few men would risk their lives for the corporation; many have given their lives for the union. In the same issue of a business magazine featuring a story about America’s top-paid CEOs, one can also read a story about a union organizing campaign marching under a banner like “Justice for Janitors”. No contest here for the moral high ground. (ibid, p. 168)

Source:

Earlier post:

Related articles

Anti-union strategies in sportswear supply chains

Posted: May 10, 2011 in Indonesia
Tags: , , , , , , ,
4
Fotothek df n-04 0000033

Image via Wikipedia

The global union confederation for the textile and garment industry, the ITGLWF,  represents workers in clothing manufacturing companies.

In the last fortnight they published a comprehensive report into the sportswear industry, surveying 83 factories in Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia which collectively employ over 100,000 workers.

A range of shortcomings were documented. All of them are very concerning and I don’t want to gloss over any aspect, so I might unpack this report over a series of posts.

Victimising of union activists

The first problem found was that Freedom of Association is routinely suppressed by means of harassment, bribes, failure to renew short-term contracts and even factory closure.

The right to free association is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and also in Protocol 98 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which states:

all workers without distinction whatsoever, whether they are employed on a permanent basis, for a fixed term or as contract employees, should have the right to establish and join organisations of their own choosing.

Suffice to say, the ability of workers to combine interests and bargain for improved pay and working conditions hangs on the effective exercise of this right, so it is critically important in the economic development of these nations’ citizens.

Sri Lanka has ratified ILO Protocol 98. The researchers found that some companies circumvented this requirement by having the Employer Council (a non-representative body capable of being controlled by the employer) registered as a union. It therefore does not attract the usual due process protections. For example, there is no guarantee of secret ballots for representatives.

As a result union activists are – predictably – victimised and impeded in their work. If they are contract workers, which many are, they find their contracts are not renewed.

In Indonesia interference in union organising activities took a more straightforward form: organisers were denied access to office space, refused allocated time to participate in trade union activities and given unrealistically high production targets to prevent them having any time to carry out union duties.

In the Philippines, workers organising for their rights also faced employer reprisal. Employers also made use of ‘stacked’ employee representative committees. In one case a company resorted to closing a factory of 800 people instead of recognising their union – and is now facing court for doing so.

Overall, employer reprisal was the number one barrier to trade union organising, followed by use of legal red tape.

April 28 – Workers’ Memorial Day

Posted: April 28, 2011 in Labour History, Rights around the world
Tags: , , , , , , ,
2
Memory Lines sculpture in Sydney's Darling Harbour

Lost to workplace accidents

Today, 28 April, is designated as the Workers’ Memorial Day by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

There are over two million fatal workplace accidents around the world each year, many of them sadly preventable. 100,000 die of asbestos-related illnesses alone.

Services are being held around the world to remember those who have lost their lives to workplace accidents.

I attended the one in Sydney. The peak union body here, Unions NSW, has done a fine job of elevating the day above partisan and sectarian divisions. The service was co-presided over by a rabbi, imam, priest and minister. State Government Ministers from the right-leaning Liberal Party and their counterparts from the left-leaning Labor Party were in attendance. Unions and industry groups were both in attendance.

The commemoration was held before the ‘Memory Lines’ sculpture in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. The sculpture is located on the site where Australia’s first steam mill was constructed in 1813, powering a saw mill, grain mill and foundry. Symbolically it is the birthplace of Australia’s industrial revolution. (Despite its proximity to Sydney’s Central Business District, Darling Harbour was an industrial area right up until the early 1980s.)

The emotional focus of the service was the placing of flowers and mementos on the sculpture by families who had lost loved ones to workplace accidents in the previous year. It was very difficult to watch, like attending several funerals at once, however to turn away would be to turn away from the reality. Deaths at work are not statistics, they are the faces above and many more.

Successful global campaign brings Nestlé to bargaining table

Posted: April 4, 2011 in Indonesia
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
1

Indonesian workers at Nestlé’s plant in Pandung have finally won a three-year campaign to compel the company to negotiate pay and conditions with their union.

The “Nespressure” campaign was officially brought to an end when company representatives signed an accord last Monday in Switzerland. Local company and union representatives also signed last Thursday.

Nestlé operates in 86 countries and employs over a quarter of a million people (-Wikipedia).

The campaign was orchestrated by the IUF, the global union confederation for food workers, whose many affiliates echoed the desires of the workers in Pandung in places as diverse as India, Australia, Ukraine and Fiji.

The video below explains the workers demands:

Related posts:

Vietnamese not thrilled by lowest cost status

Posted: March 25, 2011 in Rights around the world
Tags: , , , , ,
2

The My Phong factory. Image: Nam Tuan via Panoramio

Just over a year ago the Vietnamese authorities arrested 3 organisers of a strike at the My Phong factory in Tra Vinh, Vietnam.

In that strike, 10,000 workers walked off the job protesting essentially at their low rate of pay, just USD 58 a month, which is insufficient to cover the cost of living.

The crime of Nguyen Hoang Quoc Hung, Do Thi Minh Hanh and Doan Huy Chuong was to distribute leaflets encouraging people to strike and purporting to form their own employee association without asking permission of the government.

They were sentenced to 9 years jail last October and last Friday the appeals court upheld their sentence.

Nine years in jail for attempting to exercise the right to free association! Disgraceful.

Source:

Related post:

Global economy; Global unions

Posted: February 11, 2011 in Rights around the world
Tags: , , , , , , ,
3

There are ten international union confederations, each of them focusing on a particular economic sector. UNI Global Union comprises 900 national service-sector unions, representing over 20 million workers.

UNI deals with workplace relations matters at the United Nations level hence it is headquartered near the International Labour Organization offices in Switzerland.

UNI sees the way forward as negotiating agreements with multi-national companies. It’s the same principle seen on the shop floor, but taken to the next level: A united workforce gets a better outcome in negotiations than one individual. It stands to reason that a united global workforce will get a better result than a local effort.

UNI is spearheading a push for something called Global Framework Agreements. These are commitments made by multi-national companies that they will observe certain minimum standards in all the countries that they operate, including:

·     Recognising the right to bargain collectively

·     Recognising the right to join a union

·     Not discriminating in employment

·     Observing decent working conditions

These agreements do not set wages; those are negotiated at the national or local level.

By early 2010, 36 Global Framework Agreements had been signed with multinationals including Ikea and the Accor Hotels group. More are on the way. The beginning of things to come?

Older Entries