Ei-iE

Education International is taking a lead role in drafting a new blueprint to reassert labour rights around the world.

EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen was one of 200 labour leaders from 63 countries who came together on International Human Rights Day to help develop a plan to better enable workers around the world to organize and bargain collectively. As chair of the Council of Global Unions, van Leeuwen opened the first Global Summit on Organizing, which took place 10 and 11 December at the National Labour College in Silver Spring, Maryland.

"As never before, [the trade union movement] must link globally," van Leeuwen declared. Labour leaders from around the world are "sending a message to corporations everywhere that everyone has a right to join a union."

As part of the Summit, the trade union leaders plan to develop ideas, strategies, and recommendations to combat corporations’ and governments' efforts to suppress workers' freedom to organise and join unions. As well, they will build pathways to enhance cooperation among trade unions across borders.

The Council of Global Unions, which is hosting the two-day Summit, was launched in January 2007 and consists of 10 global union federations; the International Trade Union Confederation; and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD.

Solidarity is the key to future growth of the labour movement, van Leeuwen said, adding that unions must look beyond just organizing new members. "We need to make a concerted effort to forge a new global movement for progress and change," he added. "Free trade unions are vital to a democratic society."

Summit participants conveyed that message to political leaders of the United States on 11 December, when they testified at a forum chaired by members of Congress on the need for the Employee Free Choice Act. The forum is expected to focus on the "crisis in collective bargaining" in the United States and the global "attack on worker rights."

In his remarks to the Summit, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said that attacks on workers' rights around the world have produced dramatic decreases in collective bargaining coverage, weakening labour's power and "ability to provide economic security, not just for our members but for all working families in our countries."

Sweeney said that until basic workers' rights are restored in the United States, "the worldwide attack on workers will not be stopped. This reality, when coupled with the scale of the US economy and decades of free market neo-liberalism, has produced a toxic brew of economic distress and inequality for working families everywhere."

Aidan White, General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, told the conference that as collective bargaining coverage declines around the world, income inequality grows, infant mortality rises, and the social safety net weakens. The collective bargaining process "contributes to the wider public good," White added.