AFL-CIO and TUC Unite Against Unionbusting

I just got back from a weeklong trip to Britain to sign an organizing protocol with the AFL-CIO counter part, the British Trades Union Congress (TUC). The trip was one of the first concrete steps coming out of our Global Organizing Summit that the AFL-CIO hosted on December 10 and 11, 2007.

On December 10 and 11, 2007 the AFL-CIO hosted the first-ever Global Organizing Summit. Two hundred and forty five labor leaders and organizers from 45 countries took part. The summit was held to define the causes of the global economic race to the bottom and begin to discuss what the global labor movement could do together, collectively to resist and reverse that race to the bottom.

It is now clear that there is a worldwide effort on the part of global corporations and their partners in rightwing government to lower the wages and living standards of workers the world over – in part by making it more and more difficult for workers to form unions and bargain collectively, thus weakening worker power.

This assault on worker wages, living standards, bargaining power started at least 30 years ago in the U.S. and, unfortunately, it has been remarkably successful. While our productivity has increased by 75% since 1973, our wages have stagnated and are now declining. The average CEO in 1982 made 42 times as much as the average worker. Today, it is over 400 times. We have as many people without healthcare – 47 million – as we had in 1965 when we enacted Medicare. And union density – the percentage of workers in unions – has declined from 20% in 1980 to 12.5% today.

The answer to this crisis for workers in America is the Employee Free Choice Act, which would help restore the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. The Employee Free Choice Act would streamline the process for organizing and limit the amount of time employers can abuse, intimidate and terminate workers who are organizing. It would allow for real penalties against employers found guilty of violating the law and workers rights. And it would allow for first contract mediation and arbitration in a dispute.

So, on the second afternoon of our Global Organizing Summit, the entire body went to Capitol Hill for a forum held by the Senate and House Labor Committees to testify why it is important to workers all over the world that the world’s richest economy and most powerful nation restore and honor workers rights to form unions and bargain collectively. As one rank-and-file worker from Malaysia said, “how can we build workers rights in the developing world if the major multi-national corporation in our country come from a culture, a society, and economy where workers’ rights are treated with disdain?”

But it is not just in the developing world where these tactics we in the labor movement collectively refer to as “union busting” are gaining footholds and abusing workers.

One of the United States’ most notorious union-busting firms, The Burke Group, has now opened offices in Britain and across much of Western Europe. And they are employing the same sort of worker intimidation and abuse that they have brought to workplaces across America. They have abused and tried to intimidate British workers in organizing campaigns at Kettle Chips, the airline Flyers, GE Caledomi, and others.

All this is why the British Trades Union Congress, in one of the first concrete outcomes of the Global Organizing Summit, negotiated an organizing protocol with the AFL-CIO. The protocol includes a commitment to:
· Pro-actively share information about the activity of union-busting firms in the U.S. and the U.K., and develop a shared database of union-busting activity.
· Work together to develop and deliver ‘Busting the union busters’ training materials for union officers and organizers in both the U.S. and U.K., and to exchange training and organizing staff.
· Jointly work to lobby governments and relevant international bodies to restrict the activities of the union busters.
· Promote public awareness of this issue in both our countries, naming and shaming where appropriate those employers who use union busters to deny workers their right to organize.
· Work with other union Federations around the world in an effort to tackle this issue.
On February 9, I went to London to sign the protocol and begin to implement it. For a week I spoke to organizers, met with British unions, did trainings, and talked about American style union-busting.

The first day I was there I met with Dr. John Logan with the London School of Economics, probably the world’s foremost global authority on union busting. We talked about his groundbreaking research on union busting in Western Europe.

The next morning, Monday, February 11, I opened the TUC’s first-ever strategic research training. Later, I did an interview with the Financial Times and met with organizers. Monday night I met with the TUC’s Leading Change -- 20 up-and-coming labor leaders preparing for larger roles in the British Labor movement.

Up at 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday. Lots of coffee, a BBC radio interview over the phone from the hotel at 5:40 a.m. BBC has at least four different radio stations. At 6:15 a.m. a car took me from the hotel past Big Ben, House of Parliament, and Westminister Abbey to the studio to do the radio program, Good Morning, Scottland. Later I did the Today Show. And about noon I did BBC World. Turns out Britain was horrified about what is now commonplace in America – abusing and intimidating workers for trying to form unions.

More interviews that afternoon and a meeting with all the organizers of Britain’s teachers union, the ATL. Then on the train to Cardiff, Wales.

They picked me up at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday morning in Cardiff for the drive to Swansea for the Wales TUC organizing conference. There I spoke about union busting, America’s economic crisis for workers and the global assault on workers and workers’ rights. Later I was privileged to meet and learn form two women organizers from CONNECT who had won a contested reorganization fight with Vodafone, one of the world’s largest telecom corporations.

The next day I presented at a seminar at Cardiff University. When president of the Atlanta AFL-CIO I had led the organizing of the 1996 Atlanta Centennial Olympic Games. London is getting the games in 2012. Acknowledging that we operated in much more hostel environment I told the story of the fight for justice in the Atlanta Olympic Games.

When we finished the seminar at Cardiff University I took the train back to London. Friday morning I met with a group of 20 British union organizers again about the 2012 London Olympics and what we had done in Atlanta leading up to the 1996 Olympics. We held a brief ceremony for TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber to sign the protocol next to John Sweeney’s name and I was headed back to the U.S.