tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1 2013-05-31T19:51:21Z Movable Type 3.32 tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.705 2013-01-21T20:20:26Z 2013-02-02T21:37:09Z

The Strike Wave and New Workers' Organisations: Breaking out of Old Compromises By Leonard Gentle · 12 Nov 2012 Over the past weekend, the striking mineworkers of Amplats gathered at a mass rally in Rustenburg and howled their defiance of a series of ultimatums issued by the company. At De Doorns, farm workers are on a wildcat strike - the latest of a series that has become a feature of the South African landscape over the last three months, knocking Mangaung off the front pages. Something is stirring from below…and it is time we got beyond the fear and trepidation that have become the stock response in the media. After the Marikana massacre President Jacob Zuma appointed the Farlam Commission and also convened an emergency Social Dialogue meeting of Business, Labour and Government in October. The partners released a statement calling on strikers to return to work and for the police to defend law and order and noted that “the wave of unprotected strikes…[could]…undermine the legal framework of bargaining.” So far the Farlam Commission has heard evidence of a police conspiracy, intimidation of witnesses, and a hotline line between Cyril Ramaphosa, Lonmin and the police. But with the strike wave continuing is it not also time to ask: Where did this much-vaunted “legal framework of bargaining” come from? And how virtuous, from the perspective of democracy and social justice, has that system been? South Africa’s Labour Relations Act (LRA), Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) and their associated institutions of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), the Sector Education Training Authorities (SETAs) and National Economic, Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) came out of a series of engagements around the National Economic Forum, the Labour Market Commission and the National Training Board between 1990 and 1995. Like the World Trade Centre negotiations at Kempton Park, which shaped South African political compromises, there was a similar set of trade-offs being enacted within the labour market sphere between Labour (essentially COSATU) and Big Business. Under apartheid industrial relations legislation had been based on the racial alliance between Big Business and white workers, and the suppression of black workers. White workers could form trade unions and use their muscle to establish minimum wages, industrial councils to have industry negotiations and have systems of labour protection and training through apprenticeship and training boards. For black workers, however, strikes were illegal and they were excluded from labour protection and industrial councils. However the illegal strike wave amongst black workers outside Durban in 1973 saw black workers defy the labour laws and eventually set up strong unions and forge Recognition Agreements with large employers. New unions, like the Metal and Allied Workers’ Union, even broke into the Industrial Council system, eventually forcing the apartheid state, in 1979, to amend the LRA to grant African workers the right to form trade unions and to compel employers to deduct membership dues. By the time the labour market negotiations began in the early 1990’s, COSATU wanted the state to legislate a legal duty to bargain on the part of employers, impose centralised bargaining and demanded that the new democratic state should provide a high degree of social protection for workers. Big Business, in turn, wanted maximum labour flexibility, little state intervention and little social protection. These opposing views appeared irreconcilable. The deal breaker was to take labour legislation out of the sphere of criminal sanction and state enforceability completely. Instead the state, and Big Business and Big Labour agreed to a system of what came to be called “voice regulation” and “social partnership”. So strikes and employer lockouts, unfair labour practices, unfair dismissals and incorrect wages, etc. would no longer be illegal but subject to discussion and rational persuasion through institutions like the CCMA. If your employer summarily sacked you or underpaid you, you couldn’t get a labour inspector to reinstate you or have your employer compelled by law to honour a contract, you went to the CCMA where you could get a mediator to try and reach a compromise solution. Similarly, while there was no compulsion on the part of an employer to negotiate, you could invoke the power of your strong union to make life difficult in time for such a recalcitrant employer. And you could strike, albeit only on what was deemed to be a matter of interest (as opposed to unfair dismissal, which is deemed to be a conflict of right, over which you couldn’t strike but had to refer to the CCMA for mediation and/or arbitration). So the labour movement got its plethora of rights, but which were dependent on their real organised power to exercise, because the state was not going to be involved. But Big Business got its demands for labour flexibility because there were no laws involving the state imposing any kind of criminal sanction or legal enforceability. The whole system presumed a scenario whereby Big Business would get the benefits of labour flexibility, industrial peace and skilled labour and Big Labour would get skills, job security, higher wages and a seat at the table of all labour market institutions. But neither the state nor Big Business kept their side of the bargain. Whereas the LRA, the SETAs and NEDLAC were unveiled during the period of the RDP, the government unveiled GEAR and its neo-liberal prescriptions without any consideration of its Big Labour “partner”. And Big Business, instead of seeking beneficiation and skilled labour, took the gap. At least the biggest South African monopolies did -- unbundled, financialised and then jumped ship to London, New York and Melbourne. Making money via releasing “share holder value” on global stock markets was so much more profitable than extending employment and promoting skills, let alone hanging out with its “social partners” in NEDLAC. That left COSATU with nowhere else to go. After responding with anger in the early days of GEAR, the federation has more recently been happy to slag off the betrayals of its tripartite partner, the ANC, while its leaders, organisers and even shop stewards rake in the money involved in attending NEDLAC, SETAs and the myriad other tripartite and centralised bargaining fora. And how did the institutions of South Africa’s industrial relations perform? Well, from the viewpoint of peace and productivity they certainly did their job. Strikes have shown a steady decline since 1995 with only 2010, the year of public sector strikes showing an increase in the number of strikes and days lost, as unions and state departments found themselves at the end of a 3-year agreement in that year. The CCMA in the meantime has increased its case handling exponentially and has become an established part of the industrial relations landscape. But from the side of ordinary working class people the system has been a disaster on every score. Firstly, at the macro level, inequality is increasing and all the indicators show increased unemployment - now peaking at 40% - according to Census 2012; and the increased informalisation and casualisation of workers. The labour peace has come at the cost of the restructuring of the working class towards the very flexible labour demanded by Big Business. But what about the layer of full-time workers who have permanent jobs and are the backbone of the trade unions today? It turns out that, apart from those who benefit from the perks of sitting on the various negotiating fora, it didn’t work for them either. In the main, company-level wage negotiations have settled on and around the annual inflation rate. And seeing that this is a figure roughly representing cost of living increases over the year past, this means that real wage levels have been eroded. And what about the achievements of the Bargaining Councils? Well, the statistics on centralised bargaining are revealing. In the history of the labour movement this was supposed to be a powerful means to even things upwards - to win victories in enterprises or sectors where the workers were strong, and then have that victory extended to companies where the union was weak via the ministerial signature extending the agreement to non-parties. So for years employers resisted centralised bargaining or Industrial Councils (as they were called then) fearing that it would push wage costs up. In 1995’s LRA the industrial councils were rechristened Bargaining Councils and the compulsion on the part of the minister weakened so that s/he had some discretion in this matter and only if there were thresholds reached in terms of employer and union representativity. So what has been their performance? In cases of holidays, working hours, maternity benefits, etc., Bargaining Councils have either settled on the minima already enshrined in the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (meaning no protracted negotiations and strikes were needed when workers already had these rights established in law) or, shockingly, have reached settlements where these are actually below the minima set in the Act. The average weekly working hours have gone up from 44 hours to 45 -- a mass increase in the working year without a commensurate increase in pay. In other words, far from Bargaining Councils being instruments used by the unions to level conditions upwards they have become instruments for the employers to level conditions downwards! Cape Town’s Labour Research Service’s 2011-2012 Bargaining Indicators had this to say: “The BCEA looks more like a ceiling than a floor of minimum conditions. Put another way, actual conditions of employment tend to cluster around the legislated minimums. We see few significant upward variations.” In COSATU’s internal review tabled at its recent Congress, some 60% of members express dissatisfaction with wage increases negotiated. Overall workers’ wages and salaries as a percentage of national income have been dropping every year and were overtaken in 1999 by profits. In other words there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the era of the current industrial relations system. If the striking workers of the last three months are - horrors of horrors - challenging this system of industrial relations, then they are doing us all a service for which they should be applauded and not condemned. Internationally, the trade union movement has often gone through periods of stagnation and co-option only to be revived by internal rebellions against the established industrial order. Trade unions originated in Britain as “trades unions” – where the older term, “trades”, referred to the skilled trades of craftsmen. The movement arose from two sources: one conservative and protective of the old guilds and craftsmen resisting the hordes of newly proletarianised, deskilled workers; the other a militant offshoot of the 19th century radical Chartist movement. The first shop stewards were factory (or “shop”)-based representatives who led a radical democratic movement against the craft unions in the late 19th century and established the modern labour movement. Similarly in the USA, the older craft-based American Federation of Labour (AFL) experienced a revolt by industrial workers in the 1920s against the sweetheart nature of the AFL and its protection of skilled white workers. These militant industrial workers, newer immigrants and many Blacks – grouped under the Congress of Industrial Organisations - fought the labour elite and forced it into an amalgam, the AFL-CIO, which is still America’s trade union centre today. So worker rebellions against “their own unions” and against the “legal framework” for collective bargaining have a distinguished history. Since Marikana there has been a strike wave of some 100 000 workers across the country – from the platinum province, to the coal and gold mines of the North West, Gauteng and the Free State, and from the workers at Kumba in the Northern Cape; to Toyota in KZN; and even home-based textiles workers in Cape Town. And now farm workers in De Doorns. A common feature of these strikes has been that they were led and driven by self-organised workers’ committees in defiance of the existing unions and of signed collective agreements made with these unions. This exercise in self-organisation was even to impact on existing procedural wage negotiations – notably the transport sector, where employers and unions were about to reach an agreed wage settlement only to find that membership on the ground rejecting the proposed agreement and forcing through a protected strike. The appellation, wildcat, may invoke images of an unruly mob. The appearance of a Julius Malema at Marikana may play to perceptions that striking workers are easily swayed bumpkins willing to believe any snake-oil salesman. And the demand for R12 500 may appear unreasonable and outrageous to commentators who can’t credit workers with any power to think for themselves. But what has been the most striking feature of the strike wave – particularly in the mining sector - has been the level of sophistication displayed, with no full-time organisers, no back up offices and no administrators; and against all the whole gamut of the state and civil society - from the mine owners media, to the political parties and the trade unions themselves. For example AngloPlat declares, a month ago, that it has dismissed 12 000 workers. Then it says that they can return but by their imposed deadline. Then it meets with NUM and Solidarity, where they sign an agreement for a return to work. But still they can’t get back to full production and they can’t bring in scabs. The workers simply say “the Strike Committee speaks for us” and defy AngloPlat. With each back down by management the strength of the Committee is enhanced until, against all the procedures enshrined in the LRA and the collective agreements with NUM, they are forced to sit down with the Strike Committee and recognise its de facto power. As at Lonmin – where the company was forced by the power of its strike committee to pay a 22% wage increase – the workers at Lonmin and AngloPlat have changed the face of industrial relations in South Africa. And this has been repeated at AngloGold and across the mining sector. As ever there are no guarantees and the best efforts of the striking workers may be defeated by the sheer range of forces lined up against them. But for now the Strike Committees across the mining industry have formed their own structure, the National Strike Committee, and within this there is lively debate about where this initiative will go and what its strategic orientation will be -- whether a broad labour front or a new union or a mass enlistment in one of the existing registered unions. The strike wave has been greeted only with doom and gloom in the mainstream media. Strangely enough, the same media and many commentators have also lined up to speak to the threat to democracy posed by an increasingly authoritarian and beleaguered ANC leadership. Business figures such as Nedbank Chairman Reuel Khoza were lauded for having the “courage” to speak up, while World Bank luminaries like Mamphela Ramphela are celebrated for “speaking the truth to power”. So why when striking workers challenge this self-same intolerant government and the whole cosy edifice of the current order they are treated to this discourse of fear and loathing? Surely it is time to celebrate the possibilities for an expansion of democracy represented by the current strike wave? Or is democracy only an effete experience for the well to do? Gentle is the director of the International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG), an NGO that produces educational materials for activists in social movements and trade unions. Published by the South African Civil Society Information ServiceA nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question: How do we make democracy work for the poor? ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.703 2013-01-21T20:49:37Z 2013-01-21T20:53:13Z

www.democraticleft.za.net The Democratic Left Front was formed as a non-sectarian and non-authoritarian anti-capitalist front in South Africa. It was formed at the Conference for a Democratic Left held in Johannesburg in January 2011. It has played a notable role in solidarity campaigns, most recently around the Marikana massacre, the miners strike in Amplats, and the farmworkers strikes. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.707 2013-02-04T18:23:18Z 2013-02-04T19:09:25Z

Download file This article first appeared in the Global Labour Journal, Volume 4, Issue 1 (January 2013), http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/...

Download file This article first appeared in the Global Labour Journal, Volume 4, Issue 1 (January 2013), http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.708 2013-02-14T19:01:52Z 2013-02-14T19:18:53Z

Why Organized Labor Must Stand Against the Keystone XL Pipeline by Mark Vorpahl Spurred by real urgency over the corporate driven ruin of the environment, a growing social movement is taking shape that will be on display this Sunday, February 17, when tens of thousands descend on the streets of Washington, D.C. in a show of power titled "Forward On Climate." What is the target galvanizing these forces? The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, to be built by TransCanada, which would carry crude oil extracted from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, some 2,000 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico for export. What is the outcome hoped for by those who will attend? That President Obama reject the project, finally and definitively, when it comes up for his approval this winter. Protests, blockades, arrests and disruptions of the pipeline's construction have been ongoing by activists and landowners in East Texas since last summer. Now, the "Forward On Climate" rally marks a huge step forward to enlarge the movement. This is not your typical environmental protest in defense of a limited ecosystem. Rather, the potential consequences of the XL Pipeline's operations are global and catastrophic because of climate change. And that's why organized labor needs to stand up now in an alliance that has the power to defeat it. Getting Perspective To get some perspective on what is happening to the climate let's looks at some data: According to scientists, the average temperature of the planet has already risen just under 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880. The last two decades of the 20th century were the hottest in 400 years and, according to a number of climate studies, possibly in several millennia.The 10 warmest years on record have happened in the last 15 years. According to the Global and Environment Institute at Tufts University, extreme heat waves have been steadily rising over the last 50 to 100 years. They are now happening at a rate two to four times stronger, and are projected to escalate to vast extremes over the next 40 years. The annual number of hurricanes has been escalating. There was an average of 3.5 hurricanes a year between 1905 and 1930. Between 1995 and 2005 this number increased to an average of 8.4. Globally the atmosphere over the oceans is 5 percent wetter, setting the stage for massive floods. Rapidly melting Arctic ice and glaciers will lead to the submerging of coastal cities and islands due to rising sea levels. According to Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency, after examining the rise of carbon emissions: "When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of about six degrees (11 degrees Fahrenheit)" by 2100. Considering the consequences we are already experiencing with a 1.4 degree rise in average temperature, an increase of 11 degrees could transform the planet to such a degree that it would put the survival of most species, including humanity, in peril. How will the operations of the Keystone XL Pipeline affect this trend? The Alberta tar sands contain enough carbon to raise carbon emissions in the atmosphere by more than half of their current level.In the words of NASA leading climatologist, James Hansen: "If the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over for the climate. There is no practical way to capture CO2 while burning oil." To call the course we are on suicidal vastly understates the matter. There is a wide consensus among scientists that our climate is teetering on the edge of extreme and irreversible change. This danger is being propelled by our addiction to carbon-based fossil fuels -- and more specifically, to the mechanisms of corporate greed. The world's top five oil companies have made more than $1 trillion in profits since the turn of the century. This money buys influence, steering national policies and international relations towards the goal of their further enrichment. This influence runs into sharp conflict with what is needed to prevent a global catastrophe. With all the oil, coal and gas that is available, 80 percent would have to be left in the ground to keep the temperature from rising above an extra two degrees Celsius, the limit recognized by the Copenhagen Accord. That translates into $20 trillion in big energy’s assets. Collecting and increasing these assets is the entire purpose of the energy companies’ existence. Corporate profit rather than human need is the impersonal motor force of this system. All the scientific data in the world along with appeals to the big energy owners' consciousness will not stop the machine from seeking to maximize profit regardless of the devastation. If this force is to be stopped, it will take a social movement of those who are the primary victims, that is, the majority of humanity. And it will take a movement led by working people who can issue the challenge: that if those in charge of the economy don't find a way to reverse course, it will be us who take control and get the job done. Where Does Labor Stand? In the U.S., unions are the primary organizations to defend and promote the interests of workers. Consequently, the role of Labor in opposing the Keystone XL Pipeline is an issue of paramount importance towards developing the popular strength to make a decisive impact. Where do the unions stand now? AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stated at the UN Investor Summit on Climate Risk, "The AFL-CIO has not taken a position on the Keystone pipeline — unions don't agree among ourselves." It is extremely rare for someone in Trumka's position to comment on such a division. As disappointing as this situation might be for many, it is evidence of a needed dialogue taking place within Labor's leading bodies, and of equal importance, among the working members and labor’s allies. Significantly, the Transport Workers Union (TWU), the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and National Nurses United have come out in support of the February 17 demonstration against the XL pipeline. The Communication Workers of America (CWA), the United Auto Workers (UAW) and others also favor stopping the pipeline. On the other hand, the Laborers Union and the Building Trades Council have come out in strong support of the pipeline's construction. These union bodies have been especially hard hit by unemployment. As a result, they have been quick to take the bait of several thousand jobs that the XL Pipeline's proponents are dangling. Laborer's President Terry O'Sullivan defiantly stated, "I am repulsed by our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women." In a letter to Hillary Clinton, union leaders supporting the XL Pipeline stated it will "spur the creation of 118,000 jobs." However, as Bloomberg Businessweek reported in an article, "The Questionable Economics of the Keystone XL Pipeline": "Clearly, the construction of the pipe, most of it below ground, will be a huge undertaking. The estimated numbers of people it will employ in the process, however, fluctuate wildly, with TransCanada raising the number from 3,500, to 4,200, to 20,000 temporary positions and suggesting the line will employ several hundred in an on-going basis. The U.S. State Department, which made its own assessment because the pipeline crosses the U.S. - Canada border, estimates the line will create just 20 permanent jobs. One advantage of a pipeline, after all, is that it's automated." None of these sources would have any reason to underestimate the number of jobs the pipeline would create, regardless of how widely they diverge from the 118,000 figure cited in the letter to Clinton. It would appear that the leaders of the unions supporting the XL Pipeline are being sold a questionable bill of goods in order to get them behind the project. Isolating Themselves The problem with the approach of these unions, however, is not simply that they have the facts wrong in regards to how many jobs the XL Pipeline will create. Clearly the effects of climate change and the XL Pipeline's contribution to it should be of tremendous concern to all workers, including the members of these unions. By prioritizing their memberships' short-term interests above the interests of all others, the XL Pipeline union supporters are putting themselves at odds with the health of working class communities in general, popular consciousness, and scientific consensus. They are isolating themselves. If they continue to hold this line, it will likely result in diminishing public support for their contract fights and, therefore, less leverage to use against their employers. They are not only acting against their membership's long term interests in countering climate change, they are weakening their union's ability to fight against their employers' greed and win. A False Choice These union leaders are caught in a false choice between supporting job creation or promoting environmental health. However, this is just not the case. A report by Blue Green Canada, an alliance of labor, environmental and civil rights group, found that "if the $1.3 billion in government subsidies now given to the oil and gas sector were instead invested in renewable energy and energy efficiency, Canada would create more jobs: 18,000 more." The same is true in the U.S. Energy efficiency retrofitting of buildings and the development of renewable energy are "shovel ready jobs" that, if pursued on the necessary scale, could provide full employment. The main obstacle standing in the way of such a program is the argument that it cannot be done by the private sector because there's not enough profit in it. A publicly funded program would be required, like a modern day Work Projects Administration (WPA) of the 1930s New Deal era, only on a grander scale with the aim of reversing climate change as well as providing jobs. Yet no politician would touch this plan out of fear of big business's opposition to being taxed to pay for it. And therefore it will take the power of an independent social movement which unites Labor, environmentalists and working people in general to make them do it. One way of funding such an ambitious but necessary program would be with a carbon tax. This could act as a fee on the production, distribution and industrial use of fossil fuels based on how much carbon their combustion emits. It should be aimed exclusively at big business. If this is combined with scientifically based regulation and community oversight, as well as the subsidizing of green energy alternatives, it could go a long way towards transforming our current energy systems into a more sustainable model. If the social muscle can be built up to compel the passage of such legislation, it will still not be enough to guarantee compliance because you cannot control what you don't own. Attempts to circumvent and sabotage such restrictions to their profit-making can be expected by Big Energy and their owners' partners in the 1%. As their efforts continue to result in the endangerment of the climate, it will then become necessary for the social movement to further organize itself and force these corporations to be operated as publicly owned utilities. Only in this way could they be transformed to run according to social and environmental need rather than the 1%'s profit. February 17 may be remembered as a significant point in the evolution of such a powerful force. If President Obama rejects the XL Pipeline, that would be a significant victory for those who have hit the streets in the interests of humanity. Regardless of the potential outcome, those organizing around the issue of climate change can only rely on their own collective efforts in building the largest movement possible independent of corporate-funded politicians. At best, the two main political parties in the U.S. can only deliver too little too late because of their dependence on financial contributions from big business. Consequently, the "Forward on Climate" movement needs to build its power broadly by connecting and highlighting the dual issues: stopping climate change and providing full employment with a Green New Deal. Mark Vorpahl is an union steward, social justice activist, and writer for Workers’ Action – www.workerscompass.org. He can be reached at Portland@workerscompass.org This article appeared in truthout (messenger@truthout.org) of February 14, 2013.]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.709 2013-03-30T17:07:52Z 2013-03-30T18:51:40Z

Note: for technical reasons, this report has been shortened: some endnotes and quotes in the original Vietnamese, far more extensive than the English reference, have been left out. The full text can be obtained on request from the CPVW (protectVietworkers@gmail.com) or from the GLI (gli@iprolink.ch). Research Report on the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL)(November 2011) Published by the Committee To Protect Vietnamese Workers (CPVW) Ul. Waryńskiego 3-00- Warszawa, Poland; Tel: +48 606 831 600 website: http://www.protectVietworkers.com e-mail: protectVietworkers@gmail.com Enquiries: Mr. Trung Doan, Secretary, protectVietworkers@gmail.com Contents INTRODUCTION 1 THIS REPORT, AT A GLANCE 1 VGCL’S LEADERSHIP AND ROLES 2 WHAT VGCL DOES AND WHAT IT DOES NOT DO 3 IS VGCL LIKELY TO EVOLVE TO BECOME MORE LIKE A REAL UNION? 7 APPENDIX 1 – VGCL stationing officials at large factory to prevent strikes 8 APPENDIX 2 – Articles from VGCL’s Vietnamese-language website 11 1. INTRODUCTION We report on our research into the nature and activities of VGCL, Vietnam General Confederation of Labor. Our research is based mainly on our analysis of all the more than 140 articles that can be obtained in relevant Sections on the Vietnamese-language side of VGCL’s extensive website. The 19-page Appendix 2 contains these articles and our summaries. 2. THIS REPORT, AT A GLANCE Although calling itself a union confederation, VGCL and all “unions” under it bear little resemblance to many unions elsewhere. It tries to prevent workers taking industrial disputes and promptly attempts to resolve disputes as soon as they occur. Many of its activities are about receiving and implementing directives from the ruling party and its organs, namely the government, National Assembly, and the Fatherland Front. The key directive is the Communist Party Central Committee’s Directive 20/NQ-TW on mobilising and organising workers. VGCL also gives many awards to honor good workers, helps some poor workers obtain housing, and runs societal programs such as promoting traffic safety. While VGCL has been frank and open about its role in preventing and resolving industrial disputes, some strike leaders suspect that VGCL officials quietly cooperate with the police to hunt them down. In our research, we found a VGCL report in which VGCL President asked the Security Ministry to arrest and punish strike leaders (see 32 in Appendix 2). Over the years, in private discussions with some overseas unions, VGCL representatives have said that there are progressive officials within VGCL, and that it would change. Will it become a union in the usual sense of the term? We have found little evidence for, and much evidence against this. For a brief look at Vietnam’s labor situation, see these quotes below from VGCL website’s interview with Dr. Đặng Quang Điều, head of the Factory Workers and Union Institute (see 37 in Appendix 2). See also the Institute’s research paper at 55 in Appendix 2): “According to reports from VGCL unions, in the first 6 months of 2011, in 23 provinces there were 440 strikes, a 3-fold increase compared with 2010, of which 81% are in FDI enterprises .. FDI enterprises’ claim that Vietnam’s wages are high is baseless. The average wage in the ASEAN region is 0.76USD/hr, in our country is 0.2USD/hr and the highest among FDI enterprises is 0.42USD/hr. This shows Vietnam’s wages are low by regional and world standards. And workers are double-hit with high inflation at 11.7%, much higher compared to countries in the regions .. The reality is that workers’ wages are very low, meeting only 60-70% of their minimum living needs .. In reality, wages of most enterprise-union officials are paid by enterprises, they do not want to protect workers lest that directly impacts on their job ..” 3. VGCL’S LEADERSHIP AND ROLES VGCL leadership All of VGCL’s top leaders, all leaders of unions under it, and all union officials at all geographical levels (communes, district, province) and at enterprise or industrial zone levels, are Communist Party officials. Just as with many other organs of society, there is a Communist Party Branch within VGCL, headed by one of the Vice Presidents, Mr Nguyễn Hoà Bình (see 6 in Appendix 2). VGCL roles VGCL's role includes "responsibility to implement the Party’s directions and policies and to contribute to the Party’s development", including introducing new people to be admitted as party members. It is under the oversight of the Communist Party: “The Party oversights the way VGCL implements the Party’s directions and policies”. The above quotes are from an extensive, 144-paragraph section in the Our Roles And Missions link on VGCL’s website. On its English site, only 6 paragraphs remain, they do not contain such details. 4. WHAT VGCL DOES AND WHAT IT DOES NOT DO What VGCL does Externally, VGCL manages labor-related foreign relations. This includes · Liaising with international union bodies. Our information is that VGCL has made informal inquiries about affiliating with ITUC . So far, one of VGCL’s unions, VUIT , has succeeded in being affiliated with a global union federation, the IMF ; · Receiving labor-related overseas aid and cooperation, such as asbestos-related aid from Australia’s Union Aid Abroad APHEDA, seafarers’ training from Japan’s RENGO (see 68 in Appendix 2), etc. Oxfam recently ran a seminar on living wages calculation methodology (see 52 in Appendix 2); · Liaising with the ILO . VGCL helps run the ILO Better Work Vietnam project. ILO Vietnam manager Rie Vejs Kjeldgaard was recently presented with an award and reportedly said “Vietnamese unions at all levels always protect workers' rights and entitlements, stand with them, represent and speak for workers” (see 2 in Appendix 2. See footnote for our comments); · VGCL has hosted several labor-related international conferences, including a previous and a forthcoming union conference linked to ASEM (see 1 in Appendix 2). Internally, VGCL is focussed on liaising with and implementing directives from the Communist Party and its organs. Each year, it holds many conferences, seminars, and meetings to promulgate the directives, plan their implementation, and review progress. These activities include: · Prevent strikes. VGCL runs lunch-time meetings at large companies in restive provinces to warn workers against going on strike. State media do not document these meetings, but workers in Binh Duong told us about one such meeting in early 2011. At the Textile & Garments Union’s Hanoi conference in September 2011, a VGCL Vice President gave it a top award for, among other things, “building stable and harmonious industrial relations” (see 70 in Appendix 2). At the large 66,000-strong Pou Yuen shoe factory, in October 2009 VGCL’s newspaper Lao Dong reported that VGCL stationed some 675 officials throughout the floor and “Thanks to the omnipresent web of cadres, which discovers workers’ grievances in a timely manner to deal with them, for many years there have not been massive labor conflicts.”. This news item can no longer be found on Lao Dong website, but in Appendix 1, we provide its full text and our translation; · Urgently resolve strikes once they have started. In his report to the Fatherland Front’s Central Committee Secretary, VGCL Vice President Nguyễn Hoà Bình (who also leads the Party’s VGCL Branch) reported that VGCL had “Resolved industrial disputes” (see 8 in Appendix 2). VGCL’s Lao Dong newspaper reported in July 2011 that the President of VGCL unions in Binh Duong industrial zones said “[W]hile previously employers tended to cooperate when his union officials and relevant authorities came to resolve strikes, these days some have not cooperated. Some do so because they wanted to use the strike as an excuse to sack all workers, close down the business, avoid creditors, and avoid paying tax” (see 61 in Appendix 2); · Reporting to the Party’s Fatherland Front, which oversees all mass organisations. At a September 2011 meeting with the Fatherland Front head, VGCL reported on its activities, which included “[We have] resolved industrial disputes .. [A]ctively implemented the Party’s policies” (see 8 in Appendix 2); · Public statements at the National Assembly. VGCL President said in July that “As a National Assembly Member, I have asked the Government to urgently raise the minimum wages, or face an increase in strikes and explosive reaction by workers in industrial zones. Factory workers typically get 96 – 144 USD/month, while VGCL’s own estimates are that they need 144 USD/mth or more to live on. These wages include not just the basic wage but also many supplements, therefore if they take a day off, the withdrawal of supplements plus penalties can halve their wages” (see 59 in Appendix 2); · Lobby with the top echelons of the ruling party. At a meeting with the National Assembly President, one of the party’s top 3 men, VGCL President presented him with a report reviewing 3 years of VGCL’s implementation of the Party Central Committee’s Directive on labor mobilisation. The report then raised an extensive list of requests, most notable is Request No. 13 (see 32 in Appendix 2): “We request that the Public Security Ministry, and city and provincial police forces work to unearth and punish the gangs of ‘underground thugs’ who provoke workers to strike” (Our emphasis) The list also includes requests about: Maintaining VGCL monopoly by ensuring that the Labor Act does not allow formation of non-VGCL unions and provincial authorities cannot encroach on VGCL’s operations and finances in FDI and private enterprises; Processes of selecting officials and coordinating with various Party and government organs; Youth Union; Laws on paid time off for union training courses; Laws on workers’ compulsory insurance schemes; Separate minimum wages for factory workers from other types of workers and raise the former’s to prevent strike; Fund VGCL’s new headquarters and museum; New law to forbid landlords raising rental prices for factory workers; Require large factories to build accommodation for their workers; Set prescribed retirement age for female factory workers at 50, and at 45-50 for those in garment and seafood industries; · Promulgate and implement the Party Central Executive Directive on labor mobilisation plus other directives from the government or National Assembly. These include: Conferences to explain the draft Labor Act and the draft Union Act (see 3 in Appendix 2); Training courses for VGCL officials (see 4, 7, 9 in Appendix 2); Conferences with VGCL’s direct-report union bodies to review Directive work programs (see 10 in Appendix 2); Monitoring relevant activities in the National Assembly (see 17, 42 in Appendix 2); Directive-related work at VGCL’s direct-report union bodies (see 25, 26, 29, 30, 67 in Appendix 2); Conferences to promulgate Party Congress decisions to 900 top VGCL officials (see 45 in Appendix 2); Political education of union officials and others (see 29 in Appendix 2); Government guidelines on training government officials (see 38 in Appendix 2); Reviews by VGCL performance by the National Assembly President, with endorsement and comments by Party’s Central Office (see 43 in Appendix 2); Train technical and apprenticeship trainers (see 54 in Appendix 2); And various assorted activities (see 73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 87 in Appendix 2); · Seminars and numerous awards on gender equality and mobilising women workers in implementing the Party’s Directive (see 8, 15, 20, 63, 64, 65, 66, 69, 78 in Appendix 2). For example, in 69, VGCL’s Women Workers Team reported the State bank union as saying at its September 2011 conference that “The task of encouraging female workers to contribute to the nation’s industrialisation has progressed well. Workers have been trained in technical matters as well as being given political education”; Behind VGCL Vice President Nguyễn Thị Thu Hồng is VGCL’s “Serve country, serve family” slogan for one of its competitions for women workers · Housing and microloan programs for poor workers. (See 16, 18, 19, 31, 41, 44, 48, 56 in Appendix 2); · Complaining about employers pocketing premiums for workers’ compulsory insurance schemes. (See 12, 40, 51, 58, 72 in Appendix 2); · Competitions and awards on traffic safety. (See 24, 28, 71 in Appendix 2). Many of these competitions are quite involved, with the competing teams using elaborate stage musicals to entertain judges and audiences; · Elections for National Assembly and People’s Committees at various levels: Some VGCL officials are selected by the Party to be elected, and VGCL implements a mobilisation program to ensure high turnout (see 46, 47 in Appendix 2); · VGCL’s Lao Dong (Labor) newspaper’s Jobs Expos (see 50 in Appendix 2). What VGCL does not do VGCL does not approve of any industrial action and has not initiated any. Its top officials are on record as denouncing strike organisers, ranging from being foolish to provocateurs, and calling for them to be punished. Although some Union Institute scholars or mid-ranked VGCL officials have publicly said that struggling workers had no choice but to strike, VGCL has never organised any strike, go-slow, work bans. None of the many strikes reported on state media, and the unreported ones we are aware of, have been organised by VGCL. 5. IS VGCL LIKELY TO EVOLVE TO BECOME MORE LIKE A REAL UNION? Genuine yearning, or scripted charm offensive? We are aware of 3 separate instances where high- or mid-ranked VGCL officials confided in foreign union officials that they were unhappy about being state-run, and that there is a significant minority of progressive officials within VGCL hoping to evolve VGCL into a real union. One instance involved Vietnamese union officials saying so on their visit hosted by a friendly Australian union, several years ago. Another involved VGCL officials saying so to a visiting Asian representative of a global union federation recently. And an ITUC worker recounted being told so when we learned that VGCL had informally made enquiries about becoming an ITUC-Asia Pacific affiliate. Are the above instances separate or part of a scripted charm offensive? Taking the professed sentiments at face value, we think the likelihood of VGCL evolving to become a real union is low. VGCL likely to change only if and when the whole regime does An analysis of the push (by workers) and pull (by progressive, closeted officials) factors, and of the power imbalances (the ruled’s versus the rulers’ strengths) supports the above assessment. Both factors are too weak to cause change against the backdrop of the huge power imbalance. An analysis of motives leads to the same conclusion. The ruling party fears that with independent unions foreign investment would drop and, with it, the party’s huge financial profits arising from land sales, permits, taxes, etc. Also, the experience of Poland’s Solidarity is noted by Vietnam’s rulers, who closely study regime changes around the world to learn avoidance lessons. A micro-analysis of stakeholders also leads to the same conclusion. The Party’s VGCL Branch would not allow it because there is nothing to gain and everything to lose. The powerful Security Ministry would not allow it because it complicates its task. Provincial People’s Committees would rather get a piece of the pie by controlling some of VGCL’s finances (eg. in FDI companies) than see VGCL advocate for workers’ interests. And so on. Analyses such as the above can always be counteracted by arguments such as “But Burma also looked hopeless”, or “This is now, but who knows what will be”. The strongest reason for our assessment is that VGCL officials’ private confessions have been expressed for many years. As far as the old ones are concerned, their predictions for the future (ie. the past several years) have not played out, VGCL has not changed at all. We therefore see no reason to be more optimistic about recent ones. VGCL, like the Communist Party that formed and runs it, has been successful at maintaining its power and stability. Despite decades of huge underlying pressure from millions of people working exhausting hours for subsistence wages and complaining daily of their miserable lot, VGCL has not evolved to distance itself from the ruling party or work for workers’ industrial interests. VGCL is so intricately interwoven into the web of interests, power and money behind Vietnam’s power structure that it can change only when the whole web changes. APPENDIX 1 VGCL stationing officials at large factory to prevent strikes This Appendix is referred to on page 4 of the report, SubSection “What VGCL does”. Below is the October 2009 news item on VGCL’s Lao Dong newspaper about a strike at a Pouyen plant, disclosing that it has 675 people on the factory floor to prevent strikes, with our English translation. The paragraph mentioning the number of VGCL officials is highlighted in yellow. See the end Notes about the original item’s disappearance from Lao Dong and our search for it. 600+ Pouyen workers at Pouyen Vietnam Pty Ltd Ho Chi Minh City stopped work to demand production bonusLao Dong no. 228 09/10/2009 Updated: 8:17 AM, 09/10/2009 Pouyen Vietnam workers queuing to get paid!(LD) – On the morning of 8 October, at the Pouyen Vietnam Pty Ltd (100% Taiwan owned, specialising in export shoes at D10/89Q National highway 1A, Tan Tao, District Binh Tan, Ho Chi Minh City), more than 600 workers at the assembly plant A5 stopped work when they discovered that their pay slip did not include the production bonus (ranging from 81,000 to 108,000 dong/month).Pouyen manufactures sports shoes bearing major brands such as Adidas, Reebok, Nike, Puma .. This is also the company with the largest number of workers compared to companies nationwide: The number of workers at the company itself is 66,000 (of whom 90% are migrant workers), then there are about 13,000 workers at satellite companies supplying parts and accessories to Pouyen.About the union’s manpower, presently the number of workplace cadres at the Pouyen company has reached 675, located in every production team, supervising the 47,000 union members among the 66,000 workers. Thanks to the omnipresent web of cadres, which discovers workers’ grievances in a timely manner to deal with them, for many years there have not been massive labor conflicts.However, on 17 September, at the Hoa Cong C3 factory, more than 500 workers self-organised a stopwork to demand an increase in the shift allowance and the way production targets are set. According to workers, because the targets are too high, workers must work an extra 4 hours a day just to meet them. Those who do not meet the targets have their wage deducted.Furthermore, the company’s calculation of bonuses do not accord with the extra hours that workers work. This stopwork lasted until 20.9 and workers’ requests have been resolved. The stopwork on the morning of 8.10 by 600 workers at the assembly plant A5 (specialising in Puma shoes) was for a similar reason, with workers saying: Up to 8.2009, if a production line achieved 1,600 pairs of shoes/month then each worker got a production bonus of 81,000-108, 000 each.But in September 2009, suddenly the company not only stopped this bonus but also unilaterally increased the target to 2,000 pairs/line. Because the target before that had already been so demanding, workers already had had to work from 6 am (instead of 7 am) to 7 pm instead of 6 pm to meet the target, without getting overtime payment for those 2 hours, so [with this even higher target] workers must fight back.Mr. Trần Vĩnh Hoà, Human resources head, said: Once workers have got used to the new [shoe] designs, the company will gradually increase the target to 2,400 then 2,700 pairs/line/month. Workers already stopped work when it was increased to 2,000 pairs/month.At the Pouyen Vietnam Pty Ltd, we saw that after receiving the credit cards, thousands of workers queued up, this shows the very heavy financial pressure on them. Payslips show that the average total pay packet was about 1.6 million dong/month (including overtime for working 70 hours).At 12.30pm on the same day, the company announced that it agreed to pay production bonuses ranging from 80,000 to 100,000 dong, to be paid in the October 2009 pay packet, and to keep the production target at 1,600 pairs/line/month. Those who returned to work that afternoon would get the whole day’s pay.However, workers did not accept this and asked: “Why is it that other plants get production bonuses from 200,000 to 300,000 dong/month and you give us such a low offer?”, then they went home. At 16 hours on the same day, the company relented and set the production bonus to 100,000 dong for everyone and to pay the day’s full pay to everyone, to be paid on 15 October.According to economists, Pouyen Vietnam is showing instabilities because its wages are too low, the “pacifying” techniques used to date don’t seem to be effective anymore because they cannot make up for the money shortfall in workers’ [daily] lives. Note on disappearance of this article from Lao Dong’s website: We first found it in October 2009 as part of our regular sweep and archiving of labor news from Vietnam’s state-run media. Despite an exhaustive search, we are now unable to find the original news item on the Lao Dong Online website. · A search using laodong.com.vn’s search box did not turn up this item. In particular, after fruitlessly searching using phrases, we searched using a single search term (“675”), the search turned up 209 URLs, none of which was this news item; · Lao Dong’s website laodong.com.vn does not allow browsing to previous publication dates; · A Google search on 01/9/2011 did not turn up this item at Lao Dong, but at another news site which quoted the source as Lao Dong · A search at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine found nothing because in October 2009, the Archive scanned this site only twice, on the 3rd and 7th October, before this news item was uploaded. -End of Appendix 1- APPENDIX 2 Articles from VGCL’s Vietnamese-language website We found these 140+ articles tedious to read because of “officialese”, but our method explained below removes the tedium for the reader. We hope the reader would browse some of the headings and highlighted texts to gain a deeper understanding. For example, 36 reported Vietnam’s Prime Minister as wanting high overtime limits – something foreign investors have been urging, 12 explains the problem with compulsory workers’ insurance schemes, and 49 is a frank admission about bribery. How to use this Appendix This Appendix is referred to throughout the report. It contains the full text, in Vietnamese, of each article we can find – 80,000 words in more than 140 articles. Although we read each article, providing a full translation here is not practical and probably not necessary. We therefore do it this way: The “Section” headings are the link texts on VGCL’s website, in both English and Vietnamese. SECTION – VGCL activities 1. VGCL’s meeting with Friedrich Ebert (FES), German union council about organising union conference before ASEM 2012 meeting. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=4&m=5403 2. Award ceremony to honor head of ILO Vietnam office. Ms. Rie Vejs Kjeldgaard was quoted as saying “Vietnamese unions at all levels always protect workers rights and entitlements, stand with them, represent and speak for workers” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l2=1&c=22&c2=22&m=5410 3. VGCL conference in Hanoi on the draft unions bill and labor bill. 2 VGCL Vice-Presidents explain the union bill’s main features and on the labor bill’s more noteworthy features http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5409 4. Opening ceremony for conference on training of VGCL officials. A highlight of the program will be to be debriefed about the Communist Party XI Congress. Also, a program was launched to seek donation from workers for charity purposes by texting to their mobiles http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5370 5. National seminar on housing for migrant workers. Vietnam News Agency reported that the conference, held jointly with ministries, talked about statistics and various needs, such as the need for townplanning and funding. However, the report did not say whether any decision or program eventuated http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l2=1&c=229&c2=229&m=5391 6. Talk on gender equality. It was attended by, among others, “comrade Nguyen Hoa Binh, VGCL Vice President and Secretary of Communist Party’s VGCL Branch” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5385 7. Meeting of working group to draft training manual for enterprise-based unions. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5380 8. Meeting between Communist Party’s Fatherland Front’s Central Committee Secretary with VGCL leadership. VGCL leaders reported on VGCL’s activities, which included “Resolved industrial disputes .. [A]ctively implemented the Party’s policies” and raised issues which VGCL asked Fatherland Front to bring up the line to the Party’s leadership http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5355 9. VGCL University opens union administration class for 80 union officials http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5344 10. Quarterly conference of union bodies reporting to VGCL http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5338 11. Opening ceremony of union museum in Tuyen Quang province. “Nearly 60 years ago, the VGCL formulated several important policies to mobilise workers to unite and increase productions for the war effort” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5302 . 12. VGCL meeting with the state’s workers compulsory insurance body (BHXH). BHXH reported that in the first 6 months of 2011, employers paid BHXH 1.4 million USD in insurance for 9.6 million workers. These represent only 65% of eligible workers, because many employers make deductions from wages but pocket the money. Causes of this problem include: The law’s monetary penalties are well below bank’s interest rate, and BHXH does not have its own inspectors. Further, banks do not transfer money from employers’ accounts with them to BHXH, despite an agreement between BHXH and the State Bank to do so. VGCL and BHXH heads agreed with each other that in the future they need to work more closely together to deal with this problem. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5297 13. VGCL Conference. Discussed options for using VGCL’s charity funds, and pay scales for certain classes of union officials http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5296 14. Visit to Tuyen Quang province by a VGCL Vice President. Nguyen Thi Thu Hong proposed a new name “Tuyen Quang Government Officials Union” for a local union, and gave 240 USD to a local school http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5281 15. VGCL and Women’s Union: Review of 3-year cooperation agreement. Activities included “Serve country, serve family” competitions, gender equality education http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5266 16. Conference reviewing 5-year program of helping workers on housing. A total of 21 million USD was raised from various sources http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5246 17. VGCL head debriefs VGCL on first term of Communist Party’s XIII National Assembly. “The process of nominating people for Ministry positions has been detailed so that Assembly members can democratically elect them and express the Assembly’s confidence in them”, and “National Assembly is expected to pass the new Labor and Union Acts in May 2012” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=22&m=5243 SECTION – Local VGCL news 18. Tra Vinh VGCL increases to 960 USD per house for subsidised housing. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l2=1&c=227&c2=227&m=5399 19. Khanh Hoa VGCL housing fund manage hands over 16 houses to poor workers. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5400 20. Ceremony to honor employers who employ many female workers. This is part of Entrepreneurs Day http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5368 21. Ceremony commemorating 25th year of Union sports building. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5366 22. Thanh Hoa VGCL’s ceremony marking 65 years. “Since then [1946], Thanh Hoa VGCL has carried out the role given to it by the [Communist] Party”. “Moving forward, we are to maintain unity and focus on programs such as ‘Work better’, ‘Be creative at work’” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5365 23. Da Nang VGCL’s meeting between enterprise-based unions. To improve its effectiveness, “many present agreed that the unions need to work closely with the government in all aspects of their work” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5361 24. Vinh Long VGCL’s competition on promulgating traffic laws for road, rail, aid and sea traffic. Competing teams included unions and they not just debated but also “wrote songs or poems”, and performed “lavish” shows, including the “’Drive with all your heart’ show by the Health Services Union” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5360 25. Tra Vinh VGCL actively promulgates laws to workers. “Workers face difficulties because wages are low, pressure at work is high, therefore we need to focus even more on educating them about laws such as Union Law, Labor Law. Doing so, we aim to prevent industrial disputes, resolve them, and thus build a harmonious and stable industrial relations” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5356 26. Hanoi VGCL’s conference reviewing 3 years of implementing the Resolution 20-NQ/TW of the Communist Party’s Central Executive. VGCL reported that “Immediately after the Resolution, we put into place an implementation program which has been promulgated to 100% of union officials”. Attending the conference, a top official from the Communist Party’s Hanoi branch urged the Hanoi VGCL to “work harder on educating workers on the Party’s directions” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5345 27. Khanh Hoa VGCL’c ceremony commemorating 66 years of union participation in the revolution. “We need to push harder on propaganda to workers about the revolution” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5341 28. VGCL Vice President visited Thai Nguyen to review progress on traffic safety. “He emphasised the need to push harder in educating workers to obey traffic laws” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5340 29. Thai Nguyen VGCL’s conference on Education Union’s activities. “We have closely cooperated to raise union officials’ and lecturers’ political education”, and “we have actively taken part in contributing to the Party’s development” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5336 30. Conference and signing of 5-year Coopeation Agreement between Hanoi VGCL and Hanoi Communist Party Branch. “During the last 3-year Cooperation Agreement period, we have worked hard to organise competitions to raise workers’ effectiveness and creativity, to help employers to better compete” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5332 31. Hai Duong VGCL reviewed its implementation of the microloan fund. “Up to August 2011, we have given 28 loans worth 48,000 USD to help 135 workers” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=227&m=5328 32. VGCL Executive Committee’s comprehensive list of requests to the Party, government, and National Assembly. At the end of this report, request number 13 says “We propose that the Public Security Ministry, and city and provincial police forces work to unearth and punish the gangs of ‘underground thugs’ who provoke workers to strike”. The list also includes requests about: Maintaining VGCL monopoly; Processes of hiring officials and processes for coordination with various Party and government organs; Youth Union; Laws on paid time off for union training courses; Laws on workers’ compulsory insurance schemes; Separate minimum wages for factory workers from other types of workers and raise the former’s to prevent strike; Fund VGCL’s new headquarters and museum; New law to forbid landlords raising rental prices for factory workers; Require large factories to build accommodation for their workers; Set prescribed retirement age for female factory workers at 50, and at 45-50 for those in garment and seafood industries; http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=248&m=5074 SECTION – Politics, society 33. VGCL attends conference organised by the Government’s Council for Simplifying Government Procedures. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l2=1&c=228&c2=228&m=5392 34. Opening ceremony of the XIII National Assembly. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5390 35. Vice President, Deputy Labor Minister, and VGCL President visited Binh Duong. “enterprise unions told the dignitaries that given the hyper-inflation, workers are miserable, and to unite workers the unions need more funding” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5376 36. Conference to hear government’s comments on 9 draft laws. “In relation to [the revised Labor Law] prescribing a limit on overtime hours worked, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung commented that this should be flexible so that workers who have the necessary endurance and the need to make ends meet can work longer hours. In relation to the draft proposal to increase pregnant workers’ leave, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung commented that the law should be flexible so that if the women need to make ends meet they can come back to work earlier.” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5334 37. VGCL website interviewed head of Factory Workers and Union Institute. Dang Quang Dieu said “According to reports from VGCL unions, in the first 6 months of 2011, in 23 provinces there were 440 strikes, a 3-fold increase compared with 2010, of which 81% are in FDI enterprises .. FDI enterprises’ claim that Vietnam’s wages are high is baseless. The average wage in the ASEAN region is 0.76USD/hr, in our country is 0.2USD/hr and the highest among FDI enterprises is 0.42USD/hr. This shows Vietnam’s wages are low by regional and world standards. And workers are double-hit with high inflation at 11.7%, much higher compared to countries in the regions .. The reality is that workers’ wages are very low, meeting only 60-70% of their minimum living needs .. In reality, wages of most enterprise-union officials are paid by enterprises, they do not want to protect workers lest that directly impacts on their job .. To address these problems, first, we need to form more enterprise unions and VGCL needs to educate and train them. Second, there needs to be a [government-prescribed] regime for job protection and for giving special benefits to union officials” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5309 38. Prime Minister signed Decision 1374/QD-TTG on training and development of government officials for the period 2011-2015. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5256 39. 260 new industrial areas formed during this year’s first 6 months http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5255 40.. Trial of first cooperation agreement between the tax office and the Ho Chi Minh City office of BHXH (compulsory workers’ insurance). Every 6 months, the 2 agencies will meet to coordinate. “In response to BHXH’s question about why there are 120,000 businesses but only 80,000 pay the insurance fee, VGCL Ho Chi Minh Vice President explained that many are family businesses or shell companies and therefore it’d be unfair to accuse the tax office and VGCL of not ensuring that they pay their due” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5238 41. 42 housing projects will start in the second half of 2011 http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5204 42. First working session of the XIII National Assembly begun. “The National Assembly will set out 11 days out of its 14.5 working days for the process of electing top office holders such as President, Prime Minister, National Assembly leaders” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5183 43. Report by Communist Party’s Central Office on National Assembly President’s Review of VGCL’s implementation of the Party Central Executive’s Resolution no. 20-NQ/TW on union matters. Over the past 3 years, VGCL has worked hard to implement the Party’s Resolution, but there is work to be done http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5144 44. Ho Chi Minh City’s People Committee aims to meet 50% of workers’ accommodation needs in 2015 http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5089 45. Seminar to promulgate the XI Party Congress’ decisions to VGCL officials. More than 900 VGCL officials attended, including 20 from the Party’s VGCL Branch. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5023 46. Da Nang VGCL actively works to urge workers to vote in forthcoming national elections. “Ms Lan, a worker, said ‘Thanks to the enterprise union promulgating news about the election, after a hard days’ work I and fellow workers eagerly attended to learn about the elections, and I now understand better about my rights and responsibility regarding the elections” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5012 47. Many VGCL officials are nominated by the Party for election to the National Assembly and People’s Committees at various levels http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=228&m=5008 SECTION – Workers, jobs, wages - 48. National seminar on housing for migrant workers. Vietnam News Agency reported that the conference, held jointly with ministries, talked about statistics and various needs, such as the need for townplanning and funding. However, the report did not say whether any decision or program eventuated http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l2=1&c=229&c2=229&m=5391 49. Seminar organised by Interior Ministry and financed by UNDP on reform of government officials’ wages. Participants at the seminar in Hai Phong, including Party officials in various organs, agreed that low wages led to corruption: “therefore government officials use all means to land jobs involving dealing with citizens or enterprises so that they can take bribes” . This seminar is part of the process of finalising proposals to send to the Party’s Central Committee next April http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5347 50. Jobs expo in Hanoi. Organised a few times a year by VGCL’s Labor newspaper, this year 68 enterprises took part, with 1520 positions to be filled. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5346 51. Hanoi-based enterprises fail to pay 43 million USD in compulsory workers’ insurance. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5335 52. Seminar organised by Oxfam England on living-wages methodology. ILO, enterprise, and government officials attended. “Living wage is a new concept which to date has not been fully defined” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5329 53. Seminar on wages and unionism in the textile & garment industry. This is the first cooperation between VGCL and Asia Floor Wage Alliance. Attendees included AFWA, Labor Ministry, and VGCL as well as textile union officials http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5287 54. VGCL training for technical education and apprenticeship trainers. “During 2010-2011, VGCL’s network of 42 training centres have trained 54,405 people” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5284 55. Research article on minimum wages by an official at the Factory Workers & Union Institute. “In our country, the minimum wages are only 19-26 cents USD/hr, which is 1/20 of EU’s and 1/3 of many SouthEast Asian countries” .. “The minimum wages can cover only 36-55% of the minimum required for living” .. “In the same industry and the same geographical area, profitable state-owned enterprised pay 2-3 times the wages of FDI and private enterprises” .. “Foreign expatriates get much higher pay than domestic workers at the same companies” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5262 56. VGCL President visits workers’ quarters being built by Phu My company. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5259 57. Multi-ministry meeting regarding proposed adjustiments to minimum wages. Vice Minister Pham Minh Huan said “This time, we propose to prescribe the amount of money that employers must pay for each meal, at 0.72 cents USD” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5250 58. Report by Labor Ministry on Unemployment Insurance scheme. 7 million workers have paid into the scheme, representing 75% of all who ought to. In the first 6 months of 2011, in Ho Chi Minh city 30,345 persons applied for unemployment payments http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5203 59. VGCL President attended Da Nang VGCL’s 14th Conference. Dang Ngoc Tung said “As a National Assembly Member, I have asked the Government to urgently raise the minimum wages, or face an increase in strikes and explosive reaction by workers in industrial zones. Factory workers typically get 96 – 144 USD/month, while VGCL’s own estimates are that they need 144 USD/mth or more to live on. These wages include not just the basic wage but also many supplements, therefore if they take a day off, the withdrawal of supplements plus penalties can halve their wages”. The president of VGCL’s group of Da Nang industrial zones unions expressed frustration that “There has been much talk over the years but no action, leading to low wages and resultant lack of trust in my unions” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5191 60. Analysis article on VGCL’s Lao Dong newspaper: Low allowance for meals leads to food poisoning. Author Vo Tuan (probably a reporter or columnist) opines that because companies allocate only 38-38 cents USD per worker per meal, it is inevitable that chefs buy unhealthy ingredients http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5170 61. Meeting between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committees about workers’ issues. “Strikes used to concentrate during special periods such as Tet or when the minimum wages were adjusted, but now they take place any time” .. “Most of the time, when a strike occurs, VGCL has taken the lead and coordinated with relevant authorities to resolve them. But recently a number of strikes in Ho Chi Minh, Dong Nai, Binh Duong have seen the phenomenon of provocateur (including some who are not workers)” .. “Mr Bui Thanh Nhan, President of VGCL unions in the Binh Duong industrial zones, said that that while previously employers tended to cooperate when his union officials and relevant authorities came to resolve strikes, these days some have not cooperated. Some do so because they wanted to use the strike as an excuse to sack all workers, close down the business, avoid creditors, and avoid paying tax. A worrying phenomenon is that of several employers jointly setting wages, thus workers cannot find higher-wages alternative employers” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5169 62. Ho Chi Minh People’s Committee submitted proposal to Prime Minister on closed-down businesses. Under existing laws, when a business closes down or the owners flee to avoid paying creditors and workers, the People’s Committee must lock up, guard and administer the properties they leave behind. But in several cited cases, the cost of doing so far outweighs the properties’ value. The proposal aims to minimise their cost and give workers high priority among creditors http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=229&m=5165 SECTION – News From union federations and major companies unions 63. Agriculture union’s Women’s Day ceremony on gender equality. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l2=1&c=26&c2=26&m=5397 64. Petrol company union’s seminar on women’s role in Vietnam’s industrialisation http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5388 65. Education union’s conference on gender equality http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5372 66. Education union’s ceremony to honor excellent female teachers and students http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5371 67. Building union’s meeting on promulgating directives by government and Party http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5351 68. VGCL Vice President and Japanese RENGO representative present awards to graduates. “As part of this cooperation between Vietnam and Japan, since December 1998 there have been 1388 graduates from 28 training courses, raising sailors’ technical capacity” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5349 69. State bank union’s conference to review women’s issues. “The task of encouraging female workers to contribute to the nation’s industrialisation has progressed well. Workers have been trained in technical matters as well as being given political education” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5348 70. Textile & garments union’s ceremony marking 15 years anniversary. VGCL Vice President praised the union for “building stable and harmonious industrial relations”, and “the government awarded the union a high award” http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5323 71. Shipping industry union’s competition on implementing VGCL’s policy on traffic safety measures http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5298 Ảnh: Đ/c Nguyễn Văn Tích - Phó chủ tịch thường trực Công đoàn CNTT Việt Nam, trao giải nhất toàn đoàn cho Đoàn 1 Công đoàn Tổng công ty CNTT Nam Triệu 72. Union seminar on promulgating policies about workers’ health and unemployment insurance schemes http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5294 73. Postal union’s Conference. The conference heard about results from various competitions to mobilise union officials and workers, and formalised personnel changes in the union leadership http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5282 74. Education union’s 3-day training seminar for 300 of its officials http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5265 75. Postal union’s Traditional Day. Participants interacted with former workers who, facing the difficult environments they worked in, found ways to overcome them, and thus are examples for today’s workers http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5244 76. Postal and telecommunications union’s burial ceremony for remains of 7 postal workers who died during wars http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5205 77. Shipping unions’ conference reviewing its implementation of the 2008 Communist Party Congress’ decisions on unions. As part of its duty to find suitable members for the Party, since the Congress, the union has nominated 833 workers, of which 576 have been admitted as Party members http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=26&m=5186 78. Agriculture union’s ceremony commemorating Women’s Day http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l2=1&c=26&c2=26&m=5397 SECTION – Newly released official documents 79. VGCL’s document promulgating National Assembly President’s decisions on union matters http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l2=1&c=225&c2=225&m=5325 80. Prime Minister’s Decision no. 70/ND-CP on minimum wages http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=5285 The documebnt sets out matters such as: The 22 types of VGCL documents; Archival requirements; The 4 types of reports and which ones may be sent electronically; Paper and font sizes .. http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=5273 81. Party Central Committee’s document on salary supplements http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=5252 82. Prime Minister’s Decision 57/2001/NĐ-CP on allowances http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=5251 83. VGCL document 1049/HD-TLĐ on salaries and allowances for union officials in non-government sector http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=5162 . 84. Prime Minister’s Decision 54/2011/NĐ-CP on allowances for long-serving teachers http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=5143 85. Government Decision 34/2011/NĐ-CP on disciplinary measures for public officials http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=5115 86. Finance Minister’s Decision 92/2001/TT-BTC on assistance to workers at state companies http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=5103 87. VGCL’s Guideline 649/HD-TLĐ on unions’ competition programs http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=5022 88. Labor Ministry’s Decision 12/2001/TT-BLĐTBXH on state companies http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=4933 89. VGCL document 1049/HD-TLĐ on temporary arrangements on salaries and allowances for union officials in non-government sector http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=4928 90. VGCL’s Guideline 549/TLĐ on allowances for union officials http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=4900 91. VGCL’s Guideline 567/TLĐ on union libraries http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=4899 92. Finance Ministry’s Decision 48/2011/TT-BTC on allowances for certain types of workers http://www.congdoanvn.org.vn/details.asp?l=1&c=225&m=4864 SECTION – Opinion and research articles Most articles here are from the Factory Workers and Union Institute, containing interesting statistics and arguments. We have not provided summaries or quotes, because they are not official VGCL documents. However, the articles are here as insurance against loss and for future reference. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.710 2013-03-31T15:39:29Z 2013-03-31T15:43:37Z

The above English text of Piotr Siuda's story was published in Russian Labour Review (Moscow). For more information contact the publishers at (cube@glas.apc.org) or by mail at 21-62 Volzhsky blvd., 109462 Moscow, Russia. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.711 2013-03-31T15:45:30Z 2013-03-31T15:46:58Z

PIOTR SIUDA: WITNESS By Alexander Shubin Visitors to the Institute of Humanitarian and Political Research in Moscow were often surprised to find that on the wall alongside a portrait of human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov, there hung tha photo of another, lesser known man. This man was Piotr Siuda.The fates of the two men were strikingly similiar, despite all the apparent differences between the two. Both were witnesses to the events of the century, thorns in the side of official history who knew its secrets well and who wouldn't remain silent. Piotr Petrovich Siuda was always proud of his father, an old Bolshevik who was killed in a Rostov jail in the 1930s. In 1990 he reproached us, his anarcho-syndicalist comrades, for our venomous critique of bolshevism. "There were some honest people amongst the Bolsheviks." Of course there were. The leaders of the Bolsheviks deceived their own people. For most of his life Siuda considered himself a non-party bolshevik and fought with the Communist Party. The beginning of his fight with the party began with the Novocherkassk tragedy which, for many years, it was a crime to even mention. The tragedy we are speaking about occurred on June 1-3, 1962 in the south Russian city of Novocherkassk. On June 1, 1962, prices were raised throughout the Soviet Union. There was a strong reaction in many cities in response to these measures. There was an especially strong protest at the Novocherkassk electrolocomotive plant; a strike grew out of this protest. The bravest and most resolute of the workers spoke to their co-workers who had gathered on the square. One of these speakers was Piotr Siuda. It was a triumphant day for Piotr and the realization that the working class could rise from up off their knees remained with him for the rest of his life. On the evening of June 1, Piotr Siuda and other active participants in the strike were arrested by the KGB and removed from the city; the authorities were trying to roun up the leaders of the strike. On June 2 the army opened fire on the strikers and the inhabitants of Novocherkassk who had gathered at the central square and were holding a rally. Dozens of people, including children, were killed. Then the authorities carried out a wave of arrests. They shot seven of the "instigators" of the strike and imprisoned many of its participants for many years. The eyewitnesses of the tragedy were warned that if they wanted to be released from prison they would have to shut up. Piotr Siuda's mother saved him from the firing squad. She sent a letter to one Mikoyan, a member of the Politboro and reminded him of the tragic fate of Piotr's father. Mikoyan knew him from the revolution. Siuda was spared and instead sentenced to 12 years in a labour camp. In the camp and later on after he was freed, Siuda gathered information on the tragedy, checking facts and analysing the events. (The Novocherkassk prisoners were released before their sentences were up, having already been held for a number of years.) Siuda came to the conclusion that the social structure of the USSR closely resembled fascism and that the only way to overcome this was through a workers' revolution. He wouldn't speak his mind openly. (He first began to think this way sometime in the '60s.) But he also couldn't keep silent. When the Soviet army was sent into Afghanistan, Siuda wrote a letter of protest which he sent to all the main people in the government. The letter was sent back to the local party with an order to take care of Siuda. But what could they do? Banish him? Where to? Novocherkassk was even farther away from Moscow than Gorky where they sent Sakharov for a similar crime. Throw him in jail? That was senseless; it didn't break him the last time. They decided to use simpler tactics; they waited for him one night and beat him, repeatedly kicking him in the head. This time he was saved by his wife, Emma, who found him in time, dragged him home and nursed him back to health. (She by the way had helped him gather information on the events at Novocherkassk.) Piotr had collected an enormous amount of facts and testimony concerning the tragedy at Novocherkassk. This was done secretly as it was still the period before glasnost. When he showed up in the spring of 1988 in Moscow, his information caused a real explosion amongst the members of the "informal" movement, comprised of young people who opposed the Communist Party. Siuda wanted to make the secret known to others. It was unbearable for him that he had to keep these facts secret for so long. Many of the people who heard the story from us acted in disbelief. "It can't be," they would say. Even people who had been to Novocherkassk in 1962 hadn't heard of the tragedy. The government protected its secrets well. But all the facts that Siuda had gathered were consistent and were even collaborated by court documents of the trials. At that time Obschina, the Moscow anarcho-syndicalist journal, published the story of the Novocherkassk tragedy. The print run of that special issue of Obschina was a then unheard of (for samizdat) 200 copies. It looked like a fat wad of cigarette paper (as that was how classic samizdat looked like in those days) but it was sent all over the country and read from cover to cover by many people until the paper would fall apart. People started to reprint the story in other underground publications and soon the official press was printing it as well. After this crime committed by the party and the State was exposed, public opinion of the Communist Party took a turn for the worse. The party could not recover from the effects of the expose. Siuda had dealt it a fatal blow. Piotr Siuda was always far from the establishment. He was a real representative of the people and he never strived for power. He could have easily become a deputy but he became an anarcho-syndicalist instead. Anarcho-syndicalism suited Piotr's character. He was uncomprimising and fearless. He did not fight for power but for the advancement of ideas. His primary ideal was the liberation of the workers. But he did not believe in this liberation at the expense of others. When one of the many Marxist-Leninist "workers" groups proposed that he fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat, they were met with harsh words of criticism. Any dictatorship, he felt, was a new road to slavery. For Siuda anarchism was more than a passing fashion - it was the crowning jewel of ideological development. Piotr Siuda came alive when public political activity started up in 1988. He turned Novocherkassk into a national center of agitation. With the help of his wife Piotr printed and sent out hundreds of letters and articles. He ran sort of an information agency for the workers and the syndicalist movements. Dozens of "pilgrims" went to visit Piotr on Privokzalnaya St. where he lived and became part of his information network. 1989 was the heroic year of perestroika. The hypocrisy of the leaders was not yet evident and nobody could predict what would be the outcome of it all. Representing KAS (The Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists) at a rally commemorating Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, 1989, Siuda said that "The Novocherkassk tragedy could happen again just as long as the armed vanguard, the CPSU-KGB continued to exist." Now the CPSU is out of power and the KGB has a new name, but it is still the armed agent of the nomenclatura. The tragedy can still be repeated. The first months of 1990 were perhaps the most meaningful in the life of Piotr Siuda. He spoke at demos, mailed out information and started an investigation into the fates of those who were wounded in 1962. New anarcho-syndicalist groups popped up in the region. The workers of the Donbass got up off their knees. On May 5th, 1990, Siuda was busy organizing a free trade union in Novocherkassk. In the evening he was found lying in the street. He died before an ambulance could arrive. The official cause of death is listed as hemorrage of the brain. Siuda suffered from low blood pressure which is one reason why this version is highly suspect. There were other strange facts. His family was lied to; they gave them an incorrect time of death. Everything was carried on behind closed doors in a secret manner. The doctor of course "didn't notice" any injuries which would attest to violence. They called me to pick up Piotr's things at the police station. The evidence showed that there were traces of "an unknown substance" on his clothes.[Translator's note: an apparent reference to blood.] The briefcase filled with documents that he had been carrying had disappeared. There were witnesses who saw Piotr running from some people. But the witnesses were threatened and told that they had better not say anything. People can think of many reasons why he might be killed. Siuda attacked the KGB and the local CPSU in the press and tarnished their image as reformers. He also was involved in the labour movement and the epicenter of the miners' strikes was nearby. Suida was a threat to many people. The people guilty of carrying out the Novocherkassk tragedy were still alive and there was still the matter of the disappeared wounded. The night before Piotr died he announced that he had found out where the victims of the tragedy had been buried. Siuda's funeral was attended by friends and family, anarcho- syndicalists from various cities and by local democrats. There was a commerative rally held at the factory, by the very place where the protest at Novocherkassk had began. Nearly thirty years had passed since Piotr first escaped death. This time was not spent in vain. tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.712 2013-03-31T15:48:45Z 2013-03-31T15:49:48Z

LESSONS OF NOVOCHERKASSK By Alexander Tarasov The crisis of the Stalinist pseudo-socialist empire and of the Stalinist pseudo-socialist ideology, which has been breaking down before our eyes, has passed through three stages. The first one was manifested by the death of the Leader and Master himself and reached its peak in 1956. This stage was expressed by the XX Congress [at which Khrushchev delivered his famous "secret speech" on the crimes of Stalin], by the Polish and Hungarian crises, and by the prisoner revolts in the camps. The second one began with the "cultural revolution" in China, and reached its peak in 1968 with the Polish events, the "Prague spring" and the Red May in Paris. The third and, as in the case of syphilis, the final stage, the invasion of Afghanistan and the formation of "Solidarnosc" in Poland. This stage led to the breakdown of the Soviet block and to the August bourgeois revolution. In the history of this crisis, especially of its first stage, Novocherkassk occupies a special place. Of course that city was not the only place where the workers rose in revolt against the CPSU regime. Besides Novocherkassk there were Karaganda, Temirtau, Alexandrov, Murom, and other cities. The events in Novocherkassk cannot be compared with the heroic armed insurrection of the Poznan workers in June, 1956, or the Hungarian political strike of November 3-10, 1956. But, on the other hand, the Novocherkassk revolt was a mass uprising of workers who were officially considered to be part of the bulwark of the regime. It did not take place in the border regions of the Stalinist empire, but in the center itself - in the USSR and, moreover, in Russia. Nor were these revolts of prisoners, who were afraid of nothing because they had nothing to lose, like in Vorkuta, Norilsk and Kengir. Nor were these just spontaneous outbursts of the people's indignation at the militia's petty tyranny, like in Murom or Alexandrov. Nor were these troubles deliberately provoked by the authorities, like in Temirtau. Novocherkassk was the first experience in post-war Russia of mass action by a conscious section of the working class to protect their economic and political rights. The extreme and extraordinarily tough reaction by the authorities to the Novocherkassk revolts indicates how seriously the highest officials in the Soviet regime took these events and how frightened they were by them. Novocherkassk was also significant because the workers' actions took place not in some frontier region (like Karaganda and Temirtau), where the bulk of the population consisted of migrants, young people who had arrived by special recruitment, and former prisoners, but in an old industrial region, where people had roots, where they had lived for centuries and acquired connections, families, property - where they had a lot to lose. Besides, Novocherkassk, as well as the whole Don, had suffered the mass repressions at the time of the destruction of the Cossacks, and the hunger of 1932-1933 which could not but leave a heavy load of fear on the mass consciousness of the local people. P. Siuda directly characterized Novocherkassk as "the slough" (P.Siuda's letter to the author, 14.08.88). All the more amazing is the enormous number of participants in the Novocherkassk events and the absolute support given to the strikers and the demonstrators by the citizens, the organized character of the actions, and the absence of hooliganism or looting, etc. Of course the Novocherkassk outburst was spontaneous. The participants in the events presented limited demands and were naive in their belief in the "good tsar" (in the person of N.S. Khrushchev). But at that time it could not be otherwise. No opposition movements with developed programmes existed in the country. Almost all the people were sure that the social order established by Stalin was really socialism. Khrushchev's reforms, the "thaw", had inspired great expectations in the people. It was bound to take the Novocherkassk tragedy, the overthrow of Khrushchev, the strangling of the socialist dreams of the "Prague spring", and the shooting of the workers' demonstration at the Baltic seaside of Poland, for the scales of the Stalinist dogmas to fall from the eyes of the politically active minorities in the countries of the Soviet block, so that they stopped believing the tall tale about their living in "socialist" States which "represented the interests of the working class", and so that they began, following the example of previous generations of revolutionaries, to create opposition organizations and movements. But events of Novocherkassk were a lesson for the ruling regime as well. No doubt that Novocherkassk had become a trump in the hands of the Stalinist "hawks" against Khrushchev: Look, they said, these are the results of playing with reforms! Novocherkassk had undoubtedly also weakened the reform wing because the bloody reprisal united the influential ally of Khrushchev, A.I.Mikoyan, with the "hawks." It would not be an exaggeration to say that Novocherkassk was the first toll of the bell for Khrushchev's regime (the second one was the Cuban missile crisis). We might also ask: could the Novocherkassian workers have won? Strictly speaking, they certainly could not have, i.e. they could not have changed the Stalinist pseudo-socialist order or even simply the existing regime. But with a different relationship of forces within the CPSU at the political summit of the USSR, they could undoubtedly have achieved a certain liberalization of the regime, as the Poznan workers had managed to do in 1956 when they brought to power W.Gomulka with all his reforms. To say nothing of the fact that in a different ideological climate and correlation of political forces the particular demands of the Novocherkassians, i.e. lowering prices, increasing the wages, improving the provision of food, were very likely to be satisfied. (The story which also took place during Khrushchev's rule, about the strike of Odessa dockers who refused to load the food products lacking in Odessa on the ships bound for Cuba is quite well known. The authorities met the demands of the strikers and sent the food to the city stores.) But no one is capable of changing the past, and Novocherkassk will continue to be remembered both as an heroic event, and as a tragic one. tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.713 2013-03-31T18:05:43Z 2013-03-31T18:08:44Z

China’s workers demand a better trade union China Labour Bulletin (Hong Kong) March 22, 2013 China’s workers have demonstrated remarkable solidarity and organizational ability for several years now in strikes and protests across the country. They have demanded and in many cases obtained higher wages and better working conditions from their employer. Moreover, they have done this on their own and without the help of the trade union, which is usually seen as ineffectual or merely a tool of management. Today however there is evidence that workers are no longer simply ignoring the union in their struggle but instead are demanding that it shows solidarity with them and does a much better job in protecting their rights and interests in the workplace. Over the past few months, for example, Chinese workers have demanded the ouster of a democratically-elected but under-performing trade union chairman, gone on strike in protest at a wage agreement negotiated by management and union, and demanded union assistance in their quest for equal pay for equal work at a state-owned enterprise in the revolutionary heartland of Yan’an. The response of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions to these worker initiatives was generally guarded but not unsympathetic, suggesting that while the official union clearly has not yet got up to speed with the rest of the workers’ movement in China, at least pressure from workers is now forcing the union to reassess its role and the way it interacts with the people it is supposed to represent. In May last year, the employees at Japanese-owned Ohms Electronics in Shenzhen were given the chance to democratically elect their trade union chairman. They chose a senior manager named Zhao Shaobo, largely because they felt at the time that he was best placed to convey their concerns to the company. But just nine months later, on 28 February, after Zhao failed to effectively intervene in several contract disputes involving long-serving employees, workers posted a notice on the factory gate demanding he be removed and new elections held. More than 100 employees signed the petition and it was duly taken to the district trade union office where officials promised to consider the request and come to a decision within one month as required by law. Meanwhile, the under fire Zhao Shaobo made a staunch public defence of his record as union chair, saying the accusations against him were unjust. At the Nanhai Honda automotive plant, site of one of the most important and ground-breaking strikes in recent Chinese history, about 100 junior staff went out on strike again on 18 March in protest at a new pay deal agreed by management and the union that would have given them a mere 10.2 percent increase in salary, while senior workers would get 19.8 percent. The next day, management increased the offer for junior workers to 14.4 percent and the strikers returned to work. Although some union officials at Nanhai Honda reportedly criticised the workers for going out on strike, one local union official did say that the work stoppage had actually advanced the negotiations between workers and management and was thus a useful adjunct to the collective wage consultation system already in place at the company. Two months earlier, around 600 auxiliary workers at Yanlian Industrial, a state-owned oil company in Shaanxi, sent an open letter to the provincial trade union in Xi’an stating that they would go on strike from 17 to 21 January if management refused to discuss their demands for equal pay for equal work. The provincial trade union federation had supported the workers in a dispute the previous month over management plans to reclassify auxiliary employees as agency workers, a move that would have eliminated the job security they enjoyed at the state-owned enterprise. This time however union officials were more circumspect in their support of the workers’ demands for equal pay. The acting chairman of the enterprise union, for example, said: “Our trade union should represent workers’ best interests. But although equal pay for equal work is a government policy, it is still difficult to implement.” Throughout much of the reform era in China, the workers’ movement and the trade union travelled separate paths, barely if ever coming into contact with each other. Perhaps now, with worker activism on the rise, there is a chance that those two paths will begin to converge. But for that convergence to really bear fruit, both workers and the trade union need to develop a new set of practical skills. The trade union is taking small steps in the right direction but it still has much to learn about running an effective and genuinely representative workers’ organization. But once the union begins to attain these skills, it will start to gain the trust of the workers, who then in turn will be more willing to learn new organising and bargaining skills themselves. As such, at present, there is clearly both a need and an opportunity for the international labour movement to get involved in China. By exchanging information, offering practical help and skills training, international unions can help Chinese workers and union officials to fully appreciate how trade unions really work and understand how they can effectively work together in the future. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.714 2013-03-31T19:55:36Z 2013-03-31T20:09:09Z

The Crisis of the European Welfare State An interview with Asbjørn Wahl Vladimir Simovic and Darko Vesic (VS and DV): Norway is considered as one of the most successful (economically, socially, etc.) countries in Europe and beyond. As such Norway is usually taken as a model for other countries to look up to. But the real question would be is Norway an exception in this age of neoliberal capitalism and the crisis it generated? Asbjørn Wahl (AW): Norway is currently in a better position than most other countries in the world. There are two important reasons for that. Firstly, Norway is well-endowed by nature. Particularly, we are for the time being a wealthy oil-producing country (but also rich in fish resources and hydro-electric energy). This gives the government a huge annual surplus which most countries can envy us. The oil and oil-related industries also create jobs at a rate which keeps unemployment among the lowest in the world, at about or under 3 per cent. This low unemployment rate means that the trade unions are still relatively strong at the bargaining table. Secondly, Norway was already among the most developed welfare states when oil was first found (in the 1960s). The balance of power in society was in other words of a sort which made it possible to socialize most of the oil revenue, different from the situation in many other oil-producing countries where big oil companies and/or local elites are able to expropriate most of the extraordinary high economic rent and profit from this industry. There has therefore neither been necessary, nor politically possible, to implement the same sort of harsh austerity policies in Norway as we can see in most of the rest of Europe. The relatively big public sector then, contrary to mainstream neoliberal theory, also contributed to stabilizing the economy and reducing the negative effects of the financial crisis from 2008, and extra oil revenue was put into the public economy in 2008-2009 to further dampen the effects of the crisis. On the other hand, also in Norway we have seen more or less soft neoliberal policies pursued by governments – both right and so-called left – over the last 30 years. Liberalization, deregulation and privatization have taken place. The pension system has been reformed and thus weakened (reduced pensions for most people, less redistribution from the top to the bottom, more individual risk etc.). So-called New Public Management methods have been introduced in the public sector, so that for example the hospital sector has been more market-oriented; inequality and child poverty has increased, and so on. All this has taken place in a more modest way than in the rest of Europe, but the direction is the same. My view is that the currently favourable situation in Norway is rather fragile. The country is deeply integrated in the European and World economy and thus strongly influenced by the neoliberal offensive. A further set-back in the world economy can hurt Norway's export heavily. If so, unemployment will increase rapidly and the trade union movement can thus be weakened considerably, a trade union movement which is still deeply embedded in the social partnership ideology, and thus less able to mobilize for more confrontational struggles if and when that becomes a necessity. I often frame the Norwegian situation in this way: Yes, it is true that the Norwegian welfare model for the time being stays on the upper deck of the global ship. But it may be the upper deck of Titanic. VS and DV: Similarly to this specific position of Norway today, we can say that specific historical conditions enabled the rise of welfare state after Second World War. Can you tell us something about the emergence of the welfare state? AW: The history of the welfare state is very much linked to the class compromise between labour and capital which developed in most of Western Europe in the 1930s or immediately after World War II. [Ed.: see “Rise and Fall of the Welfare State”] Thus the rise of the welfare state also in Norway was strongly influenced by global power relations (including the Russian revolution and the following existence of another, competing economic system in Central and Eastern Europe – including the need for capitalists in the West to gather support from its own working-class in the Cold War against the Soviet Union). Simultaneously, there were also many national peculiarities which gave the welfare states different forms and contents in the various countries – and also different levels of developments. Even if there were many similarities in the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden and Norway), there were therefore also differences here. Norway has historically never had a strong upper class, neither during feudalism nor under capitalism. In a small and sparsely populated country small peasants have formed an important, independent and self-confident group. In the 1930s, we had a very strong growth and strengthening of the trade union and labour movement – based on a class alliance of workers, small peasants and locally based fishermen who owned their own boats. One of the effects of this development was that fascism never became strong in Norway. Another effect was that the main employers’ association decided to strike a deal with the trade union movement (in 1935) – the then formalization of a mature class compromise. At about the same time, the Labour Party won sufficient support to form its first government in Norway. It was on the basis of this compromise and these power relations that the welfare state was developed in Norway. “At the global level it was the threat of socialism which made capitalists in Western Europe go for a class compromise (as a lesser evil in their view). We should also have in mind that the welfare state was never the demand of the working-class before it was established. What the working-class fought for was socialism. ” Thus, global and national circumstances played together to form the preconditions of the welfare state. At the global level it was the threat of socialism which made capitalists in Western Europe go for a class compromise (as a lesser evil in their view). We should also have in mind that the welfare state was never the demand of the working-class before it was established (not even the notion ‘welfare state’ existed). What the working-class fought for was socialism. As we know, this was not achieved. The welfare state then became the result of the historically very specific development which rather led to the historic compromise between labour and capital. Thus the welfare state itself is a compromise of interests. That is also the reason why the welfare state is so many-facetted and full of contradictions. While it represented enormous social progress for most ordinary people, it is maybe time now also to remind a rather modest labour movement that the welfare state does not represent, and has never represented the emancipation of the working-class. VS and DV: In the given circumstances of contemporary class dynamics is it realistic to expect the return of welfare system which was dominant in the third quarter of the 20th century? AW: My view is that the era of the welfare state is over, or at least it is coming to an end now. What we see particularly in the most crisis-ridden countries of Europe, is the systematic destruction of the welfare state. The rise of the welfare state was, as mentioned above, the result of a historically very specific development which can hardly be copied in any way. The welfare state then became possible due to comprehensive regulations and restrictions which were imposed upon capital (capital control, regulation of financial markets, bank regulation, a rapid expansion of public ownership in many countries and – not to forget – democratic reforms which gave ordinary people more influence in politics). The changes of power relations in society which we have experienced since the neoliberal offensive started around 1980 have abolished most of these regulations, so the power structure on which the welfare state was based, has already disappeared. What we experience now is more or less the harvesting period of capitalist and right wing political forces, in which they exploit the new balance of power to get rid of the best parts of the welfare state (not all of it – it was the result of a compromise, so it does also reflect capitalist interests here and there). To fight for a re-establishment of the welfare state in the current situation is therefore relatively meaningless. Of course we have to defend what we achieved through the welfare state, but our more long-term task is to re-establish our vision of another society, a society which is directed toward meeting peoples’ needs – and the strategies to get there. VS and DV: For the time being it is certain that the system is moving in the different direction – austerity measures, imposed under the pretext of crisis, eliminate the last trace of welfare state. Is the crisis used as an excuse to concentrate the power in the hands of the dominant class? AW: Yes, it certainly is. I see that many politicians and trade unionists, also on the left, today say that the austerity policy of the Troika (the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) as well as of most governments in Europe is mistaken, because it will not contribute to regaining economic growth and creating jobs. They therefore try to convince the Troika and EU politicians to change policy. I think that is a grave misinterpretation of the situation. The short term aim of the Troika is not economic growth and jobs, it is actually to abolish the welfare state and defeat the trade union movement. At least, that is what is going on. VS and DV: Dominant interpretation of the post-socialist reality in Serbia is that we are still on our way to the "genuine capitalism" and that EU integration is going to resolve most of the economic and social problems of our society. From your point of view what does the EU represent today? AW: This sounds like a political fairy tale to me. What is “genuine capitalism”? Is it the post World War II welfare capitalism (which is now history), or is it the much more harsh, brutal and crisis-ridden capitalism we see unfolding around us today (and which Samir Amin has named “generalized monopoly capitalism”)? To believe that EU integration will create a prosperous future for Serbia, given what is now going on in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, the Baltic countries, Hungary, Bulgaria etc., really requires a big portion of unfounded optimism. Even if the EU was established already in 1958 (the EEC), and with more positive aims, the EU of today has got most of its form (pacts and institutions) and contents during the neoliberal era, something which is strongly reflected in its power structure, its policies and legislation. It therefore aggressively acts in the interest of capital. Neoliberalism and austerity policies are more or less constitutionalized in the EU today, and Keynesianism (or traditional social democratic policies) is banned by law (interestingly enough supported by all the social democratic parties in the EU). The fact that the EU already from the outset had a deep democratic deficit, has given it an important advantage in this regard. Furthermore, over the last couple of years the EU has moved rapidly toward a more and more authoritarian supranational state body in the interest of primarily financial capital – a development which is extremely dangerous seen in the light of recent history in Europe. VS and DV: We witness mass mobilizations and protests all around EU. Trade unions have major role in these events. Can you tell us how much have trade unions and their strength and position in society changed in last half a century? How much austerity measures, imposed by the troika, further paralyze trade unions and leave workers without their basic weapon for protection of their rights? AW: The trade union movement is under enormous attacks in Europe today. The European Court of Justice has limited the right to strike. Collective agreements in the public sector have been set aside by governments in at least ten EU member countries, while wages have been cut, all without negotiations with trade unions. Legislation is being introduced at national level in a number of countries in order to limit the right to strike and to be able to use more extreme measures to curb strikes by police forces and so on. In addition to this, capitalist forces are given ever more power in society, and regulations are introduced at the EU level, something which makes it easier to exploit the enormous wage gap between Eastern and Western Europe for social dumping in the west. This has provoked increasing mobilization and struggles from trade unions and social movements in many countries. However, the trade union movement in Europe has been strongly weakened during the neoliberal era and fights from a very defensive position. High unemployment and enormous loss of union members represent an important part of the picture. So far there has therefore not been possible to develop a coordinated cross-European resistance, even if the 14 November actions last year represented an important step in the right direction – when trade unions in six EU countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta) carried out a joint general strike while unions in many other countries mobilized for demonstrations. Both at the European and national level, most trade union confederations are strongly influenced by the social partnership ideology, putting a meaningless high priority on so-called social dialogue in a situation in which employers mainly have withdrawn from the class compromise and gone on the offensive to attack – day and night – what they previously accepted in the name of the social pact. In the current situation, this represents a dead end for the trade union movement. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has even launched a new ‘Social Compact,’ that is a new class compromise, as its main aim for campaigning. It seems as if they aim to convince employers and politicians that a new class compromise (of the post World War II sort) will be “in everybody's interests.” Given the enormous struggles and the shift in the balance of power which took place prior to the previous compromise, this sounds pretty uninformed, to put it mildly. VS and DV: What would be your suggestions for further organizing? Is it possible to bend the stick, which is now significantly on the side of capital, back to balance? But in the end should we be satisfied with the balance or continue to push things forward? AW: I should have liked to say that I have the answer, but there is no quick fix. We are very much on the defensive today, and it will take time to organize, to mobilize and to build the social strength necessary to be able to meet the confrontational attacks from capital and states – and thus to turn the tide. There is a lot of organizational work to do among workers, including the growing groups of precarious and informal workers, unemployed, youth and so on. Then we have to build strong social alliances, firstly in the trade union movement itself – and then with other social movements (the on-going Alter Summit process is an interesting project in this regard at the European level). Based on what I have already mentioned, the trade union movement will also have to break with its social partnership ideology, which in reality today represents an un-workable reminiscent of a class compromise which is already history. This will require quite a lot of internal discussions in the trade union movement. However, reality itself will assist us in this discussion, as the massive attacks which are now being launched upon the best parts of the welfare state, upon workers, women, youth – and not least upon the trade union movement, will provoke resistance in ever more groups in society. This is the start of a new era of social struggle. Social models, however, cannot be copied, neither from previous phases in history, nor from country to country. Social models are the concrete results of struggles and power relations in society. Therefore, there is no ‘back to balance,’ in the meaning of a re-establishment of the post war class compromise and the welfare state. That is what we did have, but we do not have it any more, exactly because such a social compromise was not, and can never be, a stable balance. The reality that we are now losing the welfare state is proof enough that we did not go far enough last time. The main problem was that the question of ownership was not addressed in full. Social ownership of banks and other financial institutions as well as of the means of production will therefore have to be put on the agenda again – and democracy, real democracy, to correct previous mistakes in the emancipatory struggles of the working-class. • The interview was conducted by Vladimir Simovic and Darko Vesic from Centre of the Politics of Emancipation (CPE), Serbia, and translated by the Transform Network.It also appeared in The Bullet, published by Socialist Project in Toronto.]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.715 2013-04-04T15:54:08Z 2013-04-04T16:01:05Z

European Trade Unions and the Struggle for Public Services Christoph Hermann The public sector is a key battleground for a progressive trade union strategy and for an alternative to neoliberalism in Europe. On the one hand the existence of a public sector is a continuing example that a not for profit driven production of goods and services is not only possible in the 21st century – it is also preferable. On the other hand in many countries the public sector is the last stronghold of organized labour. Even though public sector workers are under continuous pressure, in many places they still enjoy significant job security and comparably decent employment and working conditions. The importance of the public sector can also be seen in the fierce attempts to sell off the remaining public assets in the crisis countries in Southern Europe. In other parts of Europe the public sector has suffered from excessive welfare cuts included in the austerity packages. However, the current attack on the public sector is only the latest chapter in a long struggle for public services. In this struggle European trade unions have adopted a variety of strategies to defend the public interest. Initially many public sector unions called for strikes to prevent privatization. However, strikes rarely stopped politicians from proceeding with their plans. Supporters of privatization – including major right-wing newspapers – portrayed striking public sector workers as selfish and backward looking, defending an outdated and deteriorating system. What supporters did not mention was that the poor state of many public services was not the result of workers’ ignorance or the lack of competition. It was the result of years of underfunding, following right-wing tax cuts and austerity policies. However, since the unions rarely raised the problem of service quality, pro-privatization arguments resonated well with the public, weakening the support for the striking workers. Strikes were also problematic for another reason – since the disruptions mostly hurt service users, they alienated the most important allies in the struggle for public services. Concessionary Bargaining Following the defeat of strikes, unions frequently turned to concession bargaining. Initially they negotiated early retirement schemes and golden handshakes to avoid forced layoffs; later this was complemented by the acceptance of pay cuts and other losses for newly hired workers. The problem with concession bargaining is not only that once the process has started it is difficult to stop it – many union reps believed that the threat would be over after a first or second round of concessions, only to find out that management always came back and asked for more later. Since the ‘give backs’ were not distributed equally among staff members, concession bargaining also introduced splits in a previously relative homogenous workforce. The splits emerged between ‘older’ and ‘younger’ workers as well as between core and outsourced staff (the latter employed by subsidiaries or private partners). Fragmentations are particularly harmful because they undermine workplace solidarity and thereby weaken the capacity of trade unions to withstand further threats. The abolition of public sector monopolies and the admission of two and more providers forced public sector unions to start organizing workers at competing work sites. For many public sector unions this posed a double challenge: since public companies often operated as quasi closed-shops with new employees automatically joining the union, union staff had little experience with organizing new members. At the same time workers at the competing service providers were different from the traditional workforce. They were young, female and in many cases had a migrant background (in several countries migrants were excluded from the public service if they were not in possession of the national citizenship). Existing union staff had problems to connect with them. There were some promising attempts to bridge the divide – including Ver.di's (United Services Union) campaign in Germany to organize the new competitors in the postal sector – but the cultural differences proved rather persistent with the effect that new competitors still have much lower unionization rates than the former monopolies. In addition to striking and organizing, public sector unions also put considerable effort in lobbying. At first, they lobbied their national governments to delay privatization processes; later on lobbying focused on the European Commission and the European Parliament with the goal to ensure that social provisions were included in the European liberalization directives. Such provisions, for example, allow authorities to take employment conditions into account when they tender public service contracts. There were some successes as in the postal and transport directives, but in general the language remained vague and the adoption of effective measures was left to the member states. The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) also failed to reach the adoption of a public service directive, which would have excluded public services from the scope of the internal market.$ New Forms of Resistance Given the limited success of earlier strategies, trade unions started to experiment with new forms of resistance. First they realised that without public support they will not be able to stop privatizations. Then they found potential allies in a number of social movements and civil society groups that opposed privatization because of the negative effects for service users. The most prominent example is the mass protest against the Bolkestein Directive, which led to exclusion of healthcare from the legislation. Similar activities took place on the national and local level – including a series of referenda against the privatization of healthcare and water. The positive outcome of these campaigns makes it clearly a more successful strategy than the traditional forms of struggle. However, sometimes the success proved temporary. In several cases politicians came back with a new plan for privatization. The contingent nature of the outcome makes this strategy extremely resource intensive. Trade unions and their partners not only have to spend considerable time and money to build the initial campaign, they also have to keep the coalition together and sustain the interest of the supporters even after the campaign goal was met. While in the past most of the campaigns were defensive in the sense that trade unions and allied groups fought off the threat of privatization, there are also an increasing number of pro-active campaigns – such as EPSU's ‘turning the tide’ – demanding a renewal and strengthening of the public sector as an alternative to the private economy. At the local level such campaigns were aiming at taking back privatized services into the public realm. The result was a series of ‘re-communalizations’ of water and waste services, after municipalities had found out that privatization rarely improved service quality, but almost always was more expensive than public provision. ‘Re-communalizations’ are extremely important as examples of effective alternatives to privatization. However, except for the nationalization of failing banks (which had other reasons) de-privatizations have so far been limited to the local level. As such they hardly challenge the general thrust of privatization in Europe. Another set of strategies (which so far have mainly been used outside Europe) combine traditional tactics with new objectives. Collective bargaining cannot only be used to improve working conditions. The improvement of service quality can also be made a bargaining task. American nurses, for example, negotiate staff-to-patient-ratios as part of their collective agreements. In a similar way, service disruptions (strikes) can be organized in a way that they affect decision-makers rather than service users – e.g. by dumping waste in front of a city hall instead of leaving it piling up in the streets. Another form of disruption, at least in the long-term, is the refusal to collect service fees or to cut non-paying customers off the service. The combination of traditional tactics and new objectives, as well as the strengthening of the link between service producers and service users make these strategies particularly promising. • Christoph Hermann is Senior Researcher at the Working Life Research Centre in Vienna and Lecturer at the University of Vienna. He is the co-editor of Privatization of Public Services Impacts for Employment, Working Conditions, and Service Quality in Europe, Routledge 2012. This article first published on the andreasbieler.blogspot.co.uk blog and in The Bullet, the e-bulletin of the Socialist Project in Canada. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.718 2013-05-15T12:16:11Z 2013-05-15T12:18:49Z

http://energydemocracyinitiative.org...

http://energydemocracyinitiative.org]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.727 2013-05-27T16:32:45Z 2013-05-28T16:36:39Z

GLOBAL LABOUR INSTITUTE Activities Report 2011 Introduction The Political Situation The outstanding events of 2011 were the rise of unexpected and powerful social movements against the prevailing social order: the Arab revolutions and the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Arab revolutions, popular uprisings against entrenched, corrupt and oppressive dictatorships, started in Tunisia in December 2010, spread to Egypt in January, to Libya in February, to Bahrain in March, to Syria in April and to Yemen in June. So far, only the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen have succeeded in overthrowing their dictators: Tunisia has succeeded in establishing a stable democracy, in Egypt there is a stand-off between the democratic movements and the military, which retains considerable political power, Libya and Yemen are as yet unstable, in Bahrain the democratic movement has not yet prevailed and Syria is bogged down in a civil war with an uncertain outcome. The effect on the labour movement have so far been limited. In Tunisia, the leading national center, the UGTT, in a breathtaking turnabout, ignored its long-standing support of the Ben Ali dictatorship and joined the democratic movement. Other national centers have appeared (CGTT, UTT) but do not appear to have gained any traction. In Egypt, two trade union organizations appeared in the course of the democratic uprising. In January, the Federation of Independent Egyptian Trade Unions (FITU) was formed, the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress (EDLC) was formed in October, with the support of 149 trade unions. At present, the FITU and EDLC together represent more than 300 trade unions, both older unions that have defected from the ETUF and new unions that have formed since the revolution. However, the formerly state-controiled Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), although greatly weakened, remains in place. Our comrade Kamal Abbas, co-ordinator of the Center of Trade Union and Workers' Services (CTUWS), a veteran organizer of labour opposition to the Mubarak regime and a leading supporter of the EDLC, is facing a six-months' jail sentence for having "insulted" an ETUF official at the 2011 International Labour Conference (in fact, he publicly challenged the right of the ETUF official to represent Egyptian workers). The GLI participates in the international campaign to get the Egyptian authorities to drop these charges. In an inspiring display of international solidarity and awareness, demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the center of the democratic uprising, expressed their support in February for union workers in Wisconsin, fighting state Republicans to keep their collective bargaing rights, and, in October, for the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States. The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which began on September 17 in New York City, grew into a national and international movement, branching out with hundreds of groups organizing Occupy protests in their own communities. With its slogan "We are the 99%" it succeeded in shifting US politics to the Left, pushing the far-right "Tea Party" off the headlines. Neither the trade unions nor the traditional Left played a leading role in the OWS movement which was initially organized by mostly young activists without previous political or organizational experience. However, a number of unions eventually joined, first in New York (the Transport Workers' Union, SEIU locals, Workers United, United Federation of Teachers), then in California (ILWU). AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka declared his support on September 30 and on October 5, and SEIU president Mary Kay Henry was arrested with OWS activists in the October 5 action. In some instances tensions developed between unions and OWS activists over tactics, but also important mutually supportive actions. With many other civil society organizations joining, OWS became a mass movement in the United States and spread internationally. On October 15, global demonstrations were held in more than 950 cities in 82 countries. Some protests were only a few hundred in number, whereas others numbered in the hundreds of thousands, with the largest in Madrid numbering half a million (over a million in Spain). In an unusual but welcome statement, ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow, on November 17, pledged the support of the ITUC: "We support and defend the right to demand change. It is working people who will bring the world out of the economic crisis, not the bankers. We should not believe that the financial system can remain an invisible power all on its own. We will re-build the economy for the 99%. Unions around the world support and join in these efforts and are inspired by the daily examples of the 99% standing together. We are the 99%". It is not clear what action, if any, the ITUC is prepared to take to give its support a practical content. In Europe, the protest movement targeted the "austerity" policies which both right-wing and social-democratic governments have imposed on the peoples of their countries in response to the financial crisis of the Euro-zone. Not only the protesters but, according to several opinion polls, a majority of the European population, has caught on that the debt crisis is the result of political decisions and that "austerity" is a code word for a wholesale assault on the working class (or, in current jargon, the "middle class"): the dismantling of social protection, wage cuts, pension cuts, undermining labour rights including the right to strike, privatizing and liberalizing public assets, etc. – the whole neo-liberal package. In 2011 the labour response has been weak. In Greece, the country hardest hit, the trade unions have fought in isolation. The ETUC, in a situation that calls for a European general strike, has been unable to produce more than advice to governments on how to save capitalism from itself and raising demands which everyone knows will be ignored. The ETUC congress (Athens, May 2011) did adopt a proposal of the Spanish confederations (CC.OO. and UGT) to examine the feasibility of co-ordinated strikes or a general strike, but with most affiliates clearly unprepared to take such action. Even the modest proposal of the Swiss Trade Union Federation, to launch a European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) entitled: “For a Europe without wage dumping – Priority for basic social rights over economic freedoms” could not be adopted over the objections of some confederations (France, Italy, UK), who said that such an action was not "part of their traditions". In the Swiss political tradition, of course, such initiatives are frequently used by the unions and the Left to overturn anti-worker legislation, to raise awareness and to mobilize the union rank-and-file. Under the Lisbon Treaty, an ECI can be launched with a million signatures, and would have the same effect at European level. It would give the EU a mandate for legislation ensuring the precedence of basic social rights over so-called "economic freedoms" throughout the EU, and it would be a first step for co-ordinated union resistance at European level. The general political situation in 2011 is a paradox: never since the 1930s has capitalism been as discredited as it is today. Its crisis as an economic system and as a model of society is generally acknowledged, even by conservative commentators, reflected in opinion polls and in the financial press. Yet, even now, this crisis finds the labour movement and most of the Left disarmed, unable to mount a serious challenge or to propose a credible alternative. This is a consequence of the ideological war which has been waged, over the last twenty years or more, by corporate capitalism against labour and the Left in the old industrial heartlands of Europe and North America, together with deindustrialization and the weakening of trade unions. Most of the labour movement, feeling secure in the post-war social compromise, failed to understand what was about to happen. Some still don't, and are looking for national solutions. Much of the socialist movement has succumbed and capitulated, depriving the labour movement of its historical compass. The working class outside of the old industrial heartlands has not yet taken up the slack: in Latin America, where the trade union movement has largely recovered, in China, where a new labour movement is emerging, and in other countries were the labour movement is active and militant. Corporate capitalism, discredited as it may be, and as afraid as it may be, but shameless and provocative as always, is in control of the mechanisms of repression and of the media to relay its poisonous message. In the coming struggles, the labour movement will rediscover its politics and its international calling. The GLI will make its modest contribution to this process. The GLI in 2011 An important development in 2011 has been the work undertaken jointly by the GLI UK and the GLI Geneva to prepare for the International Summer School planned for July 2012 at Northern College, UK. This is meant to be a political summer school for trade unionists and the objective is to create a space for a discussion of the politics of the international labour movement, on how to resist the neo-liberal onslaught and how to fight back. The summer school is supported by Unite the Union and other British unions and is sponsored by three international trade union federations (BWI, ITF and IUF), also with participation from the IMF. Approximately eighty participants from twenty countries are expected. At the 2011 International Labour Conference the GLI, together with WIEGO and the IUF, actively assisted the International Domestic Workers' Network (IDWN), in terms of co-ordination and logistics, and helped secure the Domestic Workers' Convention (C.189). We are now campaigning with the IDWN for its ratification. The GLI continues to be active in WIEGO: Karin was "on loan" from WIEGO to the IUF as IDWN co-ordinator up to August 2011 and subsequently returned to her position as WIEGO representative in Europe; Dan serves on the Advisory Committee of the WIEGO Organization and Representation Program. The GLI continues to campaign for the ratification of the ILO Home Work Convention (C.177). Together with Center Praxis (Moscow), Dan has prepared a Russian edition of Wilebaldo Solano's book "The POUM in the Spanish Revolution", for which he has written an introduction, and, with Svetlana Boincean, IUF representative in Moldova, a Romanian edition of his brief history of the labour movement. Both publications are expected to become available in 2012. In 2011, the GLI intervened in 47 urgent actions in defense of trade union rights, mostly on the request of LabourStart but also of the IUF and of the Asian Human Rights Commission. Meetings DG = Dan Gallin; KP = Karin Pape January 14 (DG) Swiss Workers' Aid, General Membership Meeting, Zürich February 18 (DG) Erstes Forum Gewerkschaftsforschung Schweiz - Zur Rolle von Forschung und Lehre für die gewerkschaftliche Arbeit der Schweiz (Forum on Trade Union Studies in Switzerland – Role of Research and Teaching for trade union activity in Switzerland), Fribourg May 12-13 (DG): "Beyond Precarious Labor: Rethinking Socialist Strategies" a conference sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics of the City University of New York (CUNY) and the Socialist Register (co-sponsored by the Committee on Globalization and Social Change), New York June 1 –17 (DG and KP):100th International Labour Conference (the 2011 ILC was exceptional insofar as it involved the GLI (in particular KP), in coordination with WIEGO and the IUF, in intensive activities in support of the domestic workers, and in particular of the International Domestic Workers' Network (IDWN), in their successful struggle to secure an ILO convention for domestic workers. June 10 (DG): Meeting with Kamal Abbas and Rahma Refaat (Center for Trade Union and Workers' Services, Egypt) , Geneva August 2 – 3 (DG): Joint Board session of the 3 GLIs, Geneva WIEGO March 3-5 (DG): Workshop: Organizing Informal Workers: Building and Strengthening Membership-Based Organizations,. Bangkok March 26-27 (DG): International Conference "Legal Regulation of the Work of Self-Employed Home Workers", Sofia April 2 (KP–speaker; DG): "New Rights for Domestic Workers", conference co-sponsored by UNIA, Denknetz (union think-tank) and Swiss Workers' Aid, Bern. August 17 (DG, KP), Organization and Representation Program, Conference Call October 9 (KP): Organization and Representation Program Advisory Committee October 10-11 (KP): WIEGO Board Meeting October 12-15 (KP): WIEGO Staff Retreat Accra, Ghana Collège du Travail January 21 (DG); June 8 (DG); October 19 (DG), Committee, Geneva Solifonds May 5 (DG), Bern; November 3 (DG) Zürich Pages de Gauche January 28 (DG) Editorial Committee; April 20 (DG), Editorial Committee; June 17 (DG), General Assembly; September 30 (DG) Editorial Committee, Lausanne Olten Committee January 29 (DG), November 19 (DG) Publications A shorter version of The Labour Movement by DG appeared in the anthology Global Activism Reader, edited by Luc Reydams, The Continuum International Publishing Group, New York and London, 406 p., 2011 (ISBN 978-1-4411-7955-5) Secretariat Karin Pape has resumed her role as WIEGO adviser for Europe in August after leaving her position as co-ordinator of the International Domestic Workers' Network, which has been taken over by Elizabeth Tang. In her WIEGO role, she remains actively involved with the domestic workers' and home workers' movements. She continues working part time in the GLI as an administrative assistant. As in the past, Oscar and Nora Payuyo have been responsible for cleaning and maintenance. Finances Ms. Mariane Grobet-Wellner has kept the GLI accounts in the period under review. Mr. Roland Laube (BERO Treuhand AG) was appointed as auditor by the GLI Board at its August meeting. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.726 2013-05-28T16:27:13Z 2013-05-28T16:30:03Z

GLOBAL LABOUR INSTITUTE Activities Report 2012 Introduction The Political Situation The push by the "Troika" (International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank) to impose "austerity" policies on society in Europe, which is replicated in North America, has continued throughout 2012. Although resistance has been mounting, in the form of general strikes in Southern Europe, the "Occupy" movement, the "Indignados" in Spain and elsewhere, and in the form of student strikes (Chile, Italy, Canada), the trade union movement and the social movements are as yet nowhere near the point where they can stop and reverse this assault . Greece has been particularly hard hit. It has been described as a "laboratory" of the "austerity" policies, meaning that it is a test run of how policies imposed by international capital, leading to a drastic drop in living standards of an already poor population, to an equally drastic curtailment of trade union and democratic rights and to the sell-out of national assets can be successfully carried out. The labour movement has of course resisted (22 general strikes since 2000) and there is a possible positive outcome: a decisive victory of SYRIZA, the Left coalition (soon to become a party) in the next elections (at the latest in 2016, but probably before). A SYRIZA government will, however, immediately face external and internal threats. The external threats (from the "Troika") may, in the best of cases, be voided by the international solidarity of the European Left, although the listless responses of the Northern European unions to the crisis so far means that they have not yet understood that they are next in line. The internal threats will come from the army, which has an ultra-conservative leadership and a history of taking State power through military coups. The police has been infiltrated by the neo-Nazi "Golden Dawn". The first task of a SYRIZA government will therefore have to be to change the leadership of the army and of the police. The outcome of such a showdown is at this stage uncertain. The Greek Communist Party (KKE), once a leading force on the Left, has declined into sectarian irrelevance, although still strong in the trade union movement. It is now clear that the objective of the "austerity" programs is to make the economies of Europe and North America "competitive" in global terms, i.e. to permanently lower labour costs and corporate taxes (by dismantling the welfare State). This means reducing labour rights and conditions to the lowest global denominator. Statements by some representatives of the ruling class are relevant. A leader of the French employers' organisation already in 2007 announced that what needed to be done was to repudiate the program of the National Council of the Resistance (NCR) in order to "join the world". The NCR program (1944), which was that of the first post-war French governments, provided, among other democratic rights, "the restoration of free trade unionism in its traditional rights and endowment with broad powers in the organisation of the economic and social life” . . More recently, Mario Draghi, a former Goldman-Sachs banker and now European Central Bank president, declared in February 2012 that the "European social model has already gone". For Draghi, regardless of the outcome of any elections,.new governments of whatever political colour will have no alternative but to adopt stringent austerity policies, push through structural labour market "reforms" and further dismantle welfare systems. It is now equally clear that such a program can only be carried out by imposing authoritarian regimes wherever resistance represents a threat to such policies, which will eventually be everywhere. The imposition of unelected technocratic governments (as in Italy), the militarization of the police, internal security legislation and extra-legal government action (as in the US), point in that direction. The issue is therefore the survival of democracy in the industrial countries which were its heartland since the end of the Second World War. In a prescient article, Alain Supiot, a French academic at Nantes University, wrote in 2008 that Europe was being won over to the "communist market economy": "…this hybrid system borrows from the market wholesale competition, free trade and individual utility maximisation, and from communism its “limited democracy”, the instrumentalisation of the law, an obsession with quantification and the complete disconnection between the rulers and the ruled." (on the GLI website under "Europe") Greece again provides a telling example: in 2010 half of the port of Piraeus, the largest port in Greece, was leased to Cosco, a Chinese State.owned shipping company, which, according to a New York Times report (October 10, 2012), "quickly converted a business that had languished as a Greek state-run enterprise into a hotbed of productivity". It has achieved this by a "sharp reduction of labour costs and job protection rules". Cosco pays workers seven or eight times less than under the Greek union contract, and uses "employment sub-contractors that hire temporary, unskilled, nonunion workers desperate for jobs and exploit them by paying low wages." Batsoulis, a leader of the Dockworkers' Union, contends that Cosco is also saving money by cutting corners on workers' safety. Union workers who resist are fired, as he was. "If you are a worker for Cosco, you know suddenly how it is to work in the Chinese Republic" he says. The NYT article says that "the top-to-bottom overhaul that Cosco is imposing on Piraeus is what Greece as a whole must aspire to if it is ever to restore competitiveness to its recession-sapped economy" and: "Greece's troika of foreign lenders … has made similar arguments. Among other things, they are urging Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to end blanket protections for workers and unions and to require Greece itself to operate more like a productive modern business." While all of this is happening (and much more: Chinese migrant workers hired by the Italian silk industry, extensive landgrabs by Chinese companies in Africa, massive investments world-wide, sometimes with workers brought in from China), Chinese workers in China itself and elsewhere are becoming increasingly militant and organized. An observer of the Chinese labour movement, who five years ago believed that the ACFTU was the only show in town, now writes: "Today, the Chinese working class is fighting. More than thirty years into the Communist Party’s project of market reform, China is undeniably the epicenter of global labor unrest. While there are no official statistics, it is certain that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of strikes take place each year. All of them are wildcat strikes: there is no such thing as a legal strike in China. So on a typical day anywhere from half a dozen to several dozen strikes are likely taking place." There are, in fact, official statistics: open social conflicts (on labour, land requisition and environment issues) are now officially assessed as reaching 180,000 a year. These mounting struggles for freedom, social justice and rule of law all provide new and substantial challenges to regime stability and authority of the Chinese Party-State. Migrant workers in the coastal areas, and even more so the growing working class in industries that have moved from the coast to the interior, are becoming a political force, with a shift from law consciousness to rights consciousness. Chinese workers now tie their material demands to demands of a more political nature, asking to participate in running the workplace and exercising their collective rights even before they have been legally guaranteed. Many workers are now asking for independent collective representation and in May a direct election of trade union representatives was held for the first time at an electronics plant in Shenzhen. The Shenzhen Municipal Trade Union Federation subsequently announced plans to hold elections in another 163 enterprises in the city. Will an independent Chinese labour movement arise in time to overthrow "market Stalinism" and to rescue European and North American unions from destruction at the hands of authoritarian "free market" regimes? Can the European Left mobilize enough popular support to stop the neoliberal project in its tracks? Will the world labour movement be capable of creating practical links of solidarity between the unions in the old industralized countries and the rising Chinese working class? These may be the most important questions of the foreseeable future. The GLI in 2012 The highlight of 2012 was of course the first International Summer School of the GLIs, held at Northern College (UK). a highly successful event with 86 participants from 26 countries. A report is available on the GLI UK website and hard copies can be ordered from the web. The summer school clearly met a strongly-felt need among unions for a space for a free discussion of the problems facing the international labour movement, from an independent socialist and radical perspective but without sectarian limitations, at the same time conveying much needed knowledge and background information about the movement, its history and its politics. The GLI network has proven that it can provide such a space. As a result of this experience, there is now an interest of establishing GLIs in other countries, also with a perspective of regenerating the labour movement politically and organizationally. Comrades from SYRIZA are working on building a GLI in Greece, a GLI is also in preparation in Bulgaria and Center Praxis in Russia, a research and education center established in 1998, has joined the GLI network. There is also interest in the GLI "formula" in other countries, but without a specific focus as yet. Meetings RF: Romain Felli; DG. Dan Gallin; JK: Joëlle Kuntz; KP: Karin Pape; DS: Dave Spooner; SS: Sean Sweeney; RW: Rebekka Wyler,) February 18-19 (DG, KP, DS): Critical Labour Studies 8th Symposium, University of Salford, Manchester (DG speaker on: Informal economy workers and the international trade union movement: an overview) (KP speaker on: The Struggle For Domestic Workers' Rights) (DS speaker on: Building an International Network of Home-Based Workers) May Day (DG, RW): May Day Committee and Zurich Trade Union Council, Zürich (Guest speaker: Kamal Abbas, CTUWS, Egypt) May 3-4 (DG): Global Labour University, Workshop: The Power of Labor in MNC Global Production and Service Networks, Berlin (DG speaker on: Flexible Strategies to Meet Transnational Corporate Power) May 12 (DG, KP): IUF Women's Conference, Geneva May 14 (DG, KP) Steering Committee, International Domestic Workers' Network, Geneva May 15- 18 (DG, DS, KP, RW): 26th IUF Congress, Geneva May 30-June 15 (DG, KP): International Labour Conference, Geneva June 1 (DG): Aspasie (Geneva Sex Workers' Support Group), Conference: Sex Workers and Trade Unionism, Geneva July 9-13 (RF, DG, JK, KP, DS, SS): GLI International Summer School, Northern College, UK September 27-28 (RF, DG, JK, KP, DS): GLI Board Meeting, Geneva October 3-4 (RF, DG): Swiss Trade Union School Movendo: Two half-day courses on transnational corporations, Morges (Vaud) November 3-4 (DG): Symposium: The Resistance of Trade Unions and the Left Against Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism, Moscow (Sponsored by the Russian Confederation of Labour VKP, Memorial, Center Praxis and GLI) November 5 (DG): Center Praxis: Book launch: Russian edition of Wilebaldo Solano: The POUM in the Spanish Revolution, Moscow November 23-24 (DG): Colloque: Le syndicalisme dans ses dimensions internationales, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels November 29 – December 1 (DG): UNIA Congress, Zürich WIEGO February 23-27 (DG, KP, DS) International conference “Building HomeNet in South Eastern Europe”, Sofia (DS speaker on: Organizing in the Informal Economy) June 3 (DG, KP, DS): Advisory Committee, Organization and Representation Program, Geneva June 5-7 (DG, KP): WIEGO 15th Anniversary Retreat, Bellagio (DG speaker on: The Future of Organizing Informal Workers) Collège du Travail Committee: March 8, April 25, June 18, July 5, September 17, October 10 (Geneva) Pages de Gauche Committee: January 21, March 30, June 15, September 21, December 7 (Lausanne) Solifonds Committee: April 10 (Bern ) Publications A Romanian edition of The Labour Movement by Dan Gallin (500 copies) was published for the GLI by Svetlana Boincean in Chisinau (Republic of Moldova) in February. It was distributed to the Romanian Workers' Delegation at the 2012 International Labour Conference. The Russian edition of Wilebaldo Solano's book El POUM en la Historia was published by the Center Praxis, as a joint project with the GLI, in November (1000 copies). The GLI had participated in the translation costs with a contribution of EUR3,500. The book launch took place in Moscow on November 5, with the participation of Julia Guseva, translator and editor, Dan Gallin and Richard Greeman, of the Victor Serge Library. The original plan was that Solano would write a preface to the Russian edition. Unfortunately, time was not on our side. Solano died in Barcelona on September 7, 2010, at the age of 94. On the request of his widow, Maria Teresa Carbonell, DG wrote the preface. The GLI UK published a report on the GLI International Summer School held in July: hard copies can be ordered from an e-book publisher (see: http://global-labour.net). Secretariat The secretariat suffered a grievous loss through the unexpected death of Oscar Payuyo. Oscar was responsible, with his wife Nora, for maintenance and clearning of the GLI office, but in addition was immensely helpful in establishng the office and building its infrastructure. Oscar was hospitalized with a respiratory ailment on April 17 and died that night of heartfailure. He was 62. Karin Pape has worked principally as WIEGO adviser for Europe, where she remains actively involved with the domestic workers' and home workers' movements. She continues working part time in the GLI as an administrative assistant Finances Ms. Mariane Grobet-Wellner has kept the GLI accounts in the period under review. Mr. Roland Laube (BERO Treuhand AG) will audit the 2012 accounts. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2013:/en//1.730 2013-05-31T19:25:12Z 2013-05-31T19:51:21Z

Trade Unions: The Difficult Path to Solidarity in One’s Own Interest By Steffen Lehndorff In both the ideals and the rhetoric of trade unions international solidarity plays a major role. Trade union practice, however, is first and foremost focused on the context of those nation-states, in which they were able to achieve their most important victories in the 20th century. It is those achievements within the national framework which are being undermined with the help of the EU and its institutions (Wickham 2012). Since 2010 the most radical programme of austerity in the entire history of the EU has been imposed on the crisis-ridden countries in the name of Europe. For the time being the trade unions and the masses of their members in Germany and the group of the other so-called ‘core countries’ of the (by now shrinking) Eurozone, particularly in Northern Europe, could have the impression of living in another world. Conflicts around trade union policy are becomming more differertiated among the differnt countries. Yet, the policy of fighting the crisis in the EU, which at the same time increasingly exacerbates it, confronts traditional models of trade unionist policy with its limits defined by the nation state. From the great recession to the great aggression While in the first stage of the current crisis, i.e. the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008/2009, most European governments had resorted to active crisis-management measures, in the second phase, the intensified crisis of the Euro system since 2010, governments adopted a policy which aggravated the crisis. Largely on the initiative of the German government, elaborated by the EU Commission and in coordination with the IMF in the framework of the Troika, an authoritarian interventionism was established, which is putting massive cuts of state expenditure and further deregulation of the product and job markets at the centre of a new economic and political management (Bieling 2012; Leschke et al. 2012). It is based on a concept comprising the entire range of the standard neoliberal programme of ‘structural reforms’ and deals in no way with the dramatic need for reform, in particular in the countries on the periphery (see the analyses of countries in Bosch et al. 2009 and Lehndorff 2012). Those ‘employment-friendly labour market reforms’ (European Commission 2012) are primarily implemented in the countries on the Euro-periphery, notably in Greece and Spain (for surveys see Clauwaert/Schönmann 2012; Hermann et al. 2012). Thus, following the requirements of the Troika, the Greek government has enforced the general privilege of company-level agreements over centralised sector-level agreements. In companies without any trade union representation, company agreements can also be concluded with ‘other groups of employees’. In addition, all procedures involved in the declarations of general application of collective agreements have been suspended. Also, in 2012 the statutory minimum wage based on a national wage agreement was cut by 22 % (for those under 25 years of age by 31 %). In so doing the government has overturned the previously practiced negotiation of the minimum wage between the central collective bargaining parties and removed one of the most important pillars allowing trade unions to influence general minimum standards up to now. The dismantling of the systems of collective agreement and interest representation in Spain also includes the general privileging of company agreements over centralised agreements. In addition, employers are allowed unilaterally to ‘opt out’ of the minimum standards of the centralised agreements if there have been losses for two quarters. If no agreement can be reached on the application or change of collective agreements, forced arbitration is introduced through the Ministry of Labour with the involvement of a trilateral commission. Employers can now terminate employees without prior consultation with the representatives of the employees’ interests. This combination of relaxing the rules on protection against dismissal and curbing the power of the works councils has deprived the trade unions of crucial areas of its influence. In both countries the trade unions are not only losing fundamental institutional power resources but also their traditionally strongest political allies. Most social democratic parties have from 2010 become so enmeshed in implementing the dictates of the Troika that they have manoeuvred themselves politically out of the running (without more radically left parties gaining ground anywhere with the exception of Greece). This increasingly forces trade unions to depend on their own potential: their organisational strength, their ability to call strikes and their political ability to mobilise and build alliances. To a certain degree they have been able to do so: Of the 118 general strikes that have taken place in Western Europe between 1980 and 2011, 24 have occurred just in the years 2010 and 2011 (Hamann et al. 2012). Yet, for the most part in contrast to their previous experience, trade unions are now increasingly coming up against a brick wall. Starting in 2012 at the latest these general strikes have partly had the effect of being impotent protests no matter how high the participation rate and how strong public sympathy is. Thus the trade unions find themselves in new and unfamiliar company. The mass protests in Spain, Greece and the other crisis-ridden countries were essentially – at least in the beginning – distant from the trade unions. Of all the groups of employees, the young, who in Spain and in Greece are hit hardest by the crisis, have the weakest ties to trade union organisations. The trade unions, as Hyman (2007, 206) had already presumed before the outbreak of the crisis, found themselves to be ‘outsiders in a terrain where until recently they had been assigned the comforting and rewarding role of insider’. Now they have to seek ‘often uneasy cooperation with other social movements that have never acquired the respectability gained by trade unions in most countries.’ The sleeping giant? It is possible to grow into this kind of unfamiliar role only slowly. This happens, for example, to the extent that trade union members get involved as individuals in neighbourhood movements where they (can) act as little as representatives of an organisation as can members of any other social organisation or party (Fernández Steinko 2011). Equally unfamiliar is involvement in areas such as the educational and health systems, which have up to now not been bastions of trade union influence. There, however, big protests are developing as a response to the austerity measures. These protests do not just consist of classic industrial actions but are organised as part of broader social movements. Yet, as a consequence of the widespread feeling that employees of the public sector are privileged, divides have to be overcome here too (Muñoz de Bustillo/Antón 2012). Trade union members in Germany may well have the impression that they are living in another world. Yet the pendulum is swinging back. From a Greek or Spanish perspective the German trade unions convey an image of strength. This is only partly due to their size. In the decade before the crisis, the degree of trade unionisation in Germany dropped by about 10 per cent to 19 per cent - more than in almost all other Western European countries. Only in very recent years have industrial trade unions succeeded in slowing down or stopping membership decline. The impression of strength is really based on the role trade unions play in the German institutional system, which seems to give them a political influence going far beyond their actual organisational power. Yet these possibilities of exerting influence within the institutions have greatly diminished since the 1990s. This can be observed in a particularly impressive way by studying the development of wages. Starting in the 1950s (West) German industrial trade unions never link their wage demands to productivity increases in the industries, but to the growth of the entire economy, in order to avoid the continuous widening of wage gaps between the sectors. As a consequence of ‘pattern bargaining’ wage increases were aimed at in economic sectors which lay above the rate of productivity increase in those specific sectors. In order for this to work, there had to be additional mechanisms to redistribute from sectors with a high rate of increase in productivity to those with a lower rate; in this the taxation system played a major role, in particular for the public services sector. This redistributive framework was operative well into the 1990s – since then it has been dismantled step by step. This process had many facets: shrinking collective bargaining coverage, numerous local departures from centralised collective agreements due to pressures from outsourcing and relocation, far-reaching abandonment of a system of declarations of general application for collective agreements, privatisation of public services, substantial reduction of tax revenues by relieving higher incomes and income from capital, deregulation of temporary work, the encouraging of mini-jobs, the weakening of unemployment insurance, pressure exerted on the unemployed to accept job offers with disadvantageous terms, de-facto introduction of a combined wage for low wage earners (state subsidies to support very low or poverty-level jobs taken by the unemployed) – thus many of the institutions which brought about a degree of social equality and redistribution, quite impressive under capitalist conditions, were seriously damaged and partly destroyed. As a consequence, Germany today has one of the biggest low-wage sectors of all Euro-countries and is the only EU-country in which average wages during the 2004-2008 economic growth phase did not rise but fell. The trade union wage policies, which were exposed to the all-pervasive political and medial headwind of the ‘debate on Germany’s national competitive position in the world’, certainly played a role in this damage. But if between 2000 and 2012 the increase of the average real negotiated wages lay 5.5 per cent below the rise of productivity for each employee, and the average real wage per employee had decreased by a further 9.3 per cent, this signals that the lion’s share of the negative wage development is a result of the dismantling of labour market institutions. It was particularly as a result of Agenda 2010 that German trade unions were deprived of a significant part of their institutional power resources. Important elements from the EU’s catalogue of ‘employment-friendly labour market reforms’ have been enforced against the, at times, highly impressive, yet politically powerless protest of the trade unions. From a European political perspective, this power shift had a remarkable consequence. Before the Eurozone was created, the fear was occasionally expressed that within the currency union jobs could be endangered in one country due to wage dumping in others, because wage policy would then become the only remaining macro-economic regulating screw for influencing price competitiveness. These allegations have been substantiated, yet in a way entirely different from what was imagined, because the ‘social dumping’ had its starting point in Germany. Today, and with low social standards to begin with, the countries on the periphery are forced to imitate the German path and even considerably to exacerbate the course taken. Thus the defeats of the German trade unions up to the mid-2000s and the considerable weakening of their institutional influence have become the problem of trade unions in the other Euro-countries. This triggered a race to the bottom in dismantling institutions with social balancing functions, a development which will sooner boomerang on the German trade unions and their possibilities of exerting influence in the institutional framework. Outlook: European solidarity as a defence of one’s own interests The countries of the Euro are drifting apart dramatically both socially and in terms of their economies. Also the gap between the sets of problem trade unions are facing in individual countries is huge and, realistically speaking, broad cross-country solidarity movements are hardly imaginable at present (which does not mean that attempts at developing them are superfluous). It is obvious that a basic change of direction, to bring to a halt or even reverse this process of drifting apart, is needed, and is possible, on the EU-level in particular. In view of the attempts by the EU-Commission to draw the trade unions – for example, in the framework of a ‘trilateral exchange of opinions about the development of wages’ – into its destructive policy of ‘structural reforms’, the challenge to the trade unions is to take a more oppositional stance at this level too, and in fact they are tending to do so (Janssen 2012). However, this does not solve the problem of how they can bridge the gap between this level of politics and their respective national fields of conflicts. It is the conditions themselves which force the national trade union organisations to develop a European policy as part of their respective ‘domestic policies’. The crisis management exacerbating the crisis turns the weakness of the ones into a problem of the others and can drive all of them toward marginalisation – some sooner, some later. This is crucial for the development of European trade union solidarity. If up to now the dominant impression was that the working people in Germany (as well as in the Netherlands, Austria or Northern Europe) were not immediately affected by the spreading social misery in the South, the pendulum is now beginning to swing back. In policy papers such as ver.di’s Manifesto for a European Policy, IG-Metall’s Setting the Course towards a Europe of Solidarity and the German Trade Union Federation’s Marshall Plan for Europe the reciprocal effects have already been identified and alternatives proposed. So far nobody knows yet what relevance these programmes can have for the practical activity of the unions and how the gap between them and the daily practice of the unions can be bridged. Despite national differences, the challenges are surprisingly similar in all the countries. The trade unions always have to struggle first against the crisis-management policy on a national level. This also holds true for Germany. The boomerang the government in Berlin is throwing at the countries hit by the crisis will very soon land on the toes of German employees in the shape of increasing wage competition – unless this is counteracted by a new regulation of the labour market in Germany. And the painful effects of the debt brake and Fiscal Pact will in the years to come be increasingly evident also in Germany, on the municipal level in particular, so that active redistributive policy via tax reforms will move to the very top of the political agenda. In this setting, the political autonomy of trade unions is required. This means going beyond the mere defence of earlier achievements and developing independent alternatives, not in order to replace political parties but out of the insight that the parties have to be pushed into taking the ideas of the trade unions into account. It is the role of a ‘constructive veto player’ (Urban 2012), which does not necessarily belong to the tradition of the Southern European trade unions. The German trade unions are certainly quite used to the constructive aspect of this approach but are less familiar with political mobilisation for a veto than are their Southern European sister organisations. In recent years German trade unions have criticised the system more sharply than they had previously done, and they have presented important reflections on new urgently required political changes of direction. Tackling the doubtless difficult task of mobilising for a big redistribution initiative and a new labour-market order would be a further radical step: from criticism of the system to the practice of constructive criticism of government. In other European countries trade union members will immediately understand what this has to do with their own working and living conditions and with Europe. The German trade unions must not be silent with their members regarding this link. A different course in Germany would let all the others breathe more fresh air. For the time being, political changes in Europe will be brought about or promoted by changes in individual member states. And that is why for good reason all eyes are on Germany. Social reforms in Germany are not everything for Europe, but without them there will be nothing. Note This contribution is a considerably shortened version of my article ‘Verschiedene Welten? Gewerkschaften in der europäischen Krise’ (“Different Worlds? Trade Unions in the European Crisis”), which was published in the journal Das Argument in May 2013. Therefore most of the original references are not included here. Literature Bieling, Hans-Jürgen (2012): ‘EU facing the crisis: social and employment policies in times of tight budgets’. Transfer 18(3), 255–271. Bosch, Gerhard / Lehndorff, Steffen / Rubery, Jill (eds.) (2009): European Employment Models in Flux: A Comparison of Institutional Change in Nine European Countries. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Clauwaert, Stefan / Schömann, Isabelle (2012): ‘The Crisis and National Labour Law Reforms: A Mapping Exercise’. Annex to Working Paper 2012.04. European Trade Union Institute (ETUI): Brussels. Fernández Steinko, Armando (2011): ‘May 15 and the Spanish Revolution’. http://transform-network.net/journal/issue-092011/news/detail/Journal/may-15-and-the-spanish-revolution.html Hamann, Kerstin / Johnston, Alison / Kelly, John (2012): ‘Generalstreiks in Westeuropa 1980-2011‘ [General Strikes in Western Europe 1980-2011]. In: Gallas, Alexander / Nowak, Jörg / Wilde, Florian (eds.): Politische Streiks im Europa der Krise. [Political Strikes in a Europe in Crisis] Hamburg: VSA, 107-113. Hermann, Christoph / Hinrichs, Karl / Brosig, Magnus (2012): Die Finanzkrise und ihre Auswirkungen auf Sozialstaaten und Arbeitsbeziehungen – ein europäischer Rundblick. [The Financial Crisis and Its Effects on Social Welfare States and Labour Relations – A European Survey] Wien: Forschungs- und Beratungsstelle Arbeitswelt. Hyman, Richard (2007): ‘How can Trade Unions Act Strategically?’ Transfer 13(2), S. 193-210. 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