World Labor Summit Fails to Adopt Strategy
To Fight Multinationals on Worker Rights

Some 220 top labor leaders from 63 countries met Dec. 10-11 in the first worldwide summit on organizing and collective bargaining, at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md. The summit was expected to develop strategies to challenge global corporations on worker rights and their merciless exploitation of human beings around the world.

This was not an unfamiliar issue. For the past 30 years, giant corporations have dominated the planet, using their power and influence to suppress worker rights, crush unions and impoverish people in dozens of countries, often with the collusion of their own governments‹with hardly any opposition from American labor.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was quick to hail the summit as ushering in “a new era in global solidarity in union organizing.” Steven Acuff, AFL-CIO’s organizing director, observed: “There is a global crisis in collective bargaining that is being driven by the United States and is victimizing workers around the world.”

It is worth noting that neither Sweeney nor Acuff could offer specific strategies for effectively confronting multinational companies in the global marketplace, except to continue their whining refrain that the reason workers are not joining unions is because their employers have them so thoroughly scared, they dare not.

Workers in many foreign countries are not buying that line of argument, which they see as tantamount to surrender. They are fighting multinationals over wage cuts, layoffs, pensions, taxes, health care and, of course, the right of workers to join unions and bargain collectively. In their struggles, they have had to face brutal attacks by police and hired security guards.

Unlike most American unions, they use a variety of “industrial actions” to express their disagreement with their employers and their government: 24-hour strikes, sit-ins, national work stoppages and other forms of protest. And they manage to win at least some of their battles.

Decisions on Strategy Are Referred to Top Global Unions

The emphasis of the conference was on discussing the problems of globalization rather than seeking strategies for their solution. The participants found time, on the second day, to visit Capitol Hill for a special press briefing and forum on the need to restore workers’ rights to organize. They gave their support for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which, they were told, is vital for the entire world labor movement.

Conference delegates were made aware that the United States has the lowest unionization rate of any industrial nation. Today, with less than 8 percent of private sector workers organized, the United States is nearly at the bottom of the nations of the world. Emerging nations like South Africa has a unionization rate of 42 percent; Brazil, 36 percent, and Indonesia, 20 percent.

On the conference’s second day, delegates responded to an electronic survey on worker rights and collective bargaining. By better than 90 percent, they agreed that global unions should target specific multinational enterprises to organize and should make a major effort to raise awareness about fundamental labor rights and standards.

Anita Normack, Global Union vice president, said the path to a successful revival of the union movement is to put strategies together that work on the ground. That may take a long time to happen. Participants at the summit will go back to the Council of Global Unions and the International Confederation of Trade Unions for help in developing a plan of action, with no set deadline.

Why Did the AFL-CIO Drop Mention of Global Summit?

Three days after the end of the “historic” summit, there is not a single mention of it on the AFL-CIO web site or its publications and official statements. Hardly any international union leader has considered it worthy of comment. No attempt has been made to keep union members informed about the global problems that were discussed. The issue, which just a week ago was considered so vital to the future of the world labor movement, has all but disappeared.

Was the summit a clever photo-op for the AFL-CIO to promote its languishing campaign for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, whose fate won’t be decided for at least another year and a half? More important, will the U.S. labor movement continue to give multinationals a blank check to export our jobs and deprive us of our rights?

Our weekly column, “The World of Labor,” reports the struggles and victories of unions in countries around the globe. Check our web site: www.LaborEducator.org.