I am in London and met Daniel Blackburn the Director of the ICTUR, the International Committee on Trade Unipn Rights at their Internationa Office. Iasked: What are the priorities of ICTUR’s work?
Without question the trade union rights situation in Colombia remains the most serious in the world. Miguel Puerto, a Colombian human rights lawyer and now a member of our staff in London, runs a project aimed at raising awareness through publications and conferences, responding to violations by drafting protest letters, and lodging formal legal complaints through a legal centre that we support in Bogotá and that Miguel himself has taken to the UN human rights Working Groups in Geneva.(see next post).
More generally we try to maintain a dialogue between unions, lawyers, academics and human rights groups from around the world, and to respond to situations where trade union rights are under threat.
I’m afraid to say also that, like many organisations in these times, at the moment we’re also very much focussed on generating income to keep the organisation alive. We remain largely dependent upon small contributions given to us by a large number of subscribers and supporters. Anyone who has a subscription to our journal See our magazine International union rights for regular reports. is playing an important part in helping to keep ICTUR up and running. www.ictur.org
What are the challenges for unions in 2009?
In terms of labour rights there are a few key issues that spring to my mind: obviously frontline work to protect jobs or at least to secure decent severance deals looks likely to be quite important in the current economic climate. More optimistically, the US unions are running an important campaign for a new union recognition law the Free Choice Bill supported by President Obama (but under attack by US corporates…see the AFL-CIO blog on this site and my 2006 paper) that could have implications for union strength and for organising models in the wider world.
Engagement with the Chinese unions remains vital, as does doing more to revitalise and modernise unions generally (see stories on this blog).
Bringing about some sort of sustainable resolution to the recent problematic cases from the European Court of Justice is also a big challenge for us here in Europe. My view is that this latter point will require a political solution through the European Parliament, but one that I think should be grounded clearly in the human rights standards of the Council of Europe.
Is it worse for workers’ rights in recent years or some successes?
Some things get better, others don’t, and new problems keep appearing! But I don’t want that to sound pessimistic: if there is one thing that inspires me here in the office it is looking back over our country case files and seeing those countries where the situation has clearly and tangibly improved, and there are obvious examples.
I think there are always going to be anti-union pressures, so we just have to make sure we keep up the pressure to promote union rights as some sort of balance.
On a long term view I think we’ve done a pretty remarkable job in rallying the international community around a view that at least the core labour standards are fundamental human rights that ought to be respected.
For example, on your Noel Washington CFMEU prosecution we wrote to Minister Gillard and received the reply showing me the letter saying the prosecution has been dropped. We support the repeal immediately of the Building and Construction Act, one of the worst I have seen in the world.
There are serious and large exceptions but overall I think the human rights agenda, and with it the ILO framework of labour standards, is making progress.
How do you see unions responding to the global financial crisis?
In recent years the international trade union movement has consistently sounded alarm bells of disquiet with what appeared to be a growing disconnection between the international financial system and the real world economy. ‘Financialisation’ was picked up by a number of trade union reports, and in particular unions expressed concern around the explosion of new forms of investment based on private equity and the activities of hedgefunds. Major reports examining these issues were produced by the ITUC and IUF in 2007.
Unions are going to be under considerable pressure defending their members at the level of pay, jobs, benefits and redundancies. They are also going to have to make their voices heard in the key debates at national levels, and I think they should probably really go for it: unions can clearly demonstrate their important role, both to workers who may be feeling insecure, and to governments who are going to find it helpful to have buy-in from the unions if they are to implement major policy initiatives.
In volume 16 issue 1 2009 of our journal we have a paper, I cite now, of a common position, this time from the US, (and Obama politics) by Christian Weller and Amanda Logan from the Centre for American Progress ‘A Strained Relationship: Worker Rights and Financial Crises’
‘Many countries have seen rising income inequality amid slow income growth for low-income and moderate-income workers for several decades. Strengthening workers’ income growth through better worker rights is an important ingredient to create strong and stable growth in the long-term. Policy makers also need to pay attention to worker rights during a time of crisis, when profits are under pressure, which can translate into pressure to reduce worker rights. Weaker worker rights however, would make it harder for income, demand and economic growth to resume. A resolution to a major economic crisis requires a sensible policy approach to strengthening worker rights, even though private sector pressures will emerge to weaken such rights.
…good worker protections limit the impact of an economic and financial crisis on people’s incomes and thus on consumption and growth. …South Korea is cited….they refer to the US crisis and cite economic research. Academic research is cited showing stronger worker rights link to increased productivity. As productivity increases, so do profits and, if worker rights are strong, so does wage growth. With stronger domestic demand, incentives for speculative investing are reduced. This results in more stable income growth over the long-run and ultimately more stable and stronger economic growth – just what the financial doctor ordered for the troubled world economy.’
‘Labour rights have a long-term stabilising effect. They tend to reduce one of the inherent long-term economic imbalances – more people having to borrow ever larger amounts.’
There is also an argument from Canadian Professor Eric Tucker drawing inevitable comparisons with the Great depression of the 1930s and the neal Deal policies and the push by unions from below. Peter Bavkis of the ITUC argues that the failure of the right wing economists to predict the massive crisis is damming and calls for a review of the whole financial system.
What is happening with the Indonesian legal centre, TURC?
As far as I am aware the Trade Union Rights Centre in Jakarta is going pretty well. Our formal involvement with them was really just around the initial stage of development, and we helped with some funding issues in their first months of operation. But for the past few years they have been operating without any input from us, although we maintain good contacts and there are good relationships there as friends and colleagues. With help, advice and training from TURC Indonesia’s staff, especially their Director Surya Tjandra and Deputy Director Rita Olivia, we have taken their experience and used this to develop the same kind of model in other countries facing serious trade union rights crises.
The centre we opened in Iraq has closed, in part due to funding issues, but there were also real barriers to carrying out any effective work in the country.
The TURC we opened in Colombia, however, is working extremely well, and I hope Surya and his colleagues are proud to see their model making a difference in Latin America. I’m trying to organise some sort of discussion and development session between the two centres, but don’t hold your breath: the distance and language barriers present significant problems!
What can unions do for you in Australia?
Affiliate to the Australian Committee of ICTUR. We’re lucky enough to have a strong team of committed supports in Australia who run an independent ICTUR Committee which carries out a lot of our work and which for the past few years has supplied our wonderful President Sharan Burrow and a very active Vice President Mordy Bromberg SC. If Australian unions and lawyers can maintain their current level of involvement I’ll be very happy indeed.
I suppose the other thing to mention is that we offer various research and consultancy services. Anyone involved in research on legal, educational or organisational questions that have an international dimension can get in touch with us to talk about how we might be able to help.
Labour rights and the global crisis
No comments yet.