Ei-iE

Education International, the global voice of teachers and the world’s largest international union federation, is strengthening its support of national unions and workers’ rights by publishing its Trade Union Rights Manual, a guide for union activists around the world. The launch of the Manual is to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 2008.

The Trade Union Rights Manual shows how national unions can draw the world’s attention to local threats to freedom of association, collective bargaining, and workers’ rights. It describes international mechanisms that can be called on to urge countries to live up to their commitments in support of human rights and trade union rights. Focusing on issues encountered by teacher organizations, the manual will be of practical value across the trade union movement.

Around the world, countries have recognized trade union rights as a form of human rights and have committed themselves to supporting unions. To reinforce this support, special committees and agencies dedicated to worker’s rights have grown up in a wide range of international and regional organizations.

EI’s Trade Union Rights Manual shows how unions can take advantage of international reporting mechanisms, both to gain and to contribute information. It gives practical advice on making submissions to relevant bodies: addresses, what to include, how to draft. The Manual includes in appendices the full text versions of no fewer than 20 international conventions, charters and declarations that articulate and affirm the international legal support for democratic trade unions.

With this Manual in hand, union activists will look out on a whole new vista of international support: morally, the unequivocal international affirmation of union rights in numerous agreements; structurally, the various international bodies engaged in protecting rights, their perspectives, their operations, their interactions; and practically speaking, how to bring these vast resources to bear on a local situation or rights violation.

The EI Trade Union Rights Manual can be downloaded here.

For further information, please contact Nancy Knickerbocker, EI Senior Coordinator of Communications, at +32 2 224 0680 or by email: [email protected].