Historic Global Summit Kicks Off

by James Parks, Dec 10, 2007

With workers’ rights under attack around the world, some 220 top global union leaders from more than 63 countries kicked off the first-ever global summit on organizing at the National Labor College (NLC) in Silver Spring, Md. They plan to map strategies to restore the balance between working people and powerful corporations that ignore national boundaries and rules in search of the greatest profit.  

The Dec. 10–11 conference, hosted by the AFL-CIO, marks International Human Rights Day, held each Dec. 10 to commemorate passage of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Union members around the world commemorate Human Rights Day, and the Declaration serves as both benchmark and beacon for how well human rights, including the freedom to form unions and have decent working conditions, are respected and protected. 

Fred Van Leeuwen, chairman of the Council of Global Unions (CGU), the summit’s sponsor, set the theme: 

As never before, we must link globally. We are sending a message to corporations everywhere that everyone has aright to join a union.

Stressing that solidarity is the key to the fight to the future growth of the union movement, Van Leeuwen made it clear that unions must look beyond just organizing new members on the ground, but also become a movement for social justice for all and to stand for important values such as human dignity. 

Like a free press, a free trade union movement is vital to democracy. 

Anita Normark, vice president of the Global Unions Federation, said the path to a successful revival of the union movement is to put strategies together that work on the ground. 

One powerful tool in building a stronger global movement, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, is to combine political action with organizing. That is especially critical in the United States where  

President Bush and his cronies have done all they can to destroy workers’rights around the world. The truth is until we are able to restore basic workers’ rights in the United States, the worldwide decline will not stop.    

But rather than wring our hands in desperation or wash our hands of responsibility we need to build strategies for global action. We have to create global strategies not just to bargain with individual employers, but to restore the right to organize for workers all over the world. 

If we work together, we can, we must and we will transform hope into new realities.  

Tomorrow, the global leaders will deliver the message that workers should have the freedom to form unions to Capitol Hill, where they will testify before members of Congress on the crisis on workers’ rights and the need for the Employee Free Choice Act. 

A major example of the power of combining political action with organizing is the recent successful campaign by Australian unions to change the nation’s leadership from a very anti-worker government to one that supports workers’ rights. 

Sharan Burrow, president of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and a leader of the Australian education union, said the political victory was the result of a strategic effort that took three years to complete. Australian unions built alliances with church groups, youth groups and ran a two-year ad campaign that emphasized how the government was hurting the average worker. Workers also made house calls and phone calls to union members urging them to vote for a new government. 

Says Burrow:  

Organizing works. You know organizing works, but we must go forward with tenacity and determination if we are going to win the fight for decant work. 

This afternoon, delegates will meet in small groups to discuss the pressing issues in the global union movement and develop ideas to restore workers’ rights. The group will be divided into three areas for discussion: industrial, political and communications. Using a pre-determined set of questions, facilitators will lead small table discussions to identify problems and submit solutions, which will be compiled, condensed and voted upon by using individual electronic keypads after the entire group reconvenes Tuesday morning. 

At that point, the entire union movement will vote on issues electronically to determine the main priorities in the coming year.

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