Red Pepper » Vittorio Longhi

Common cause in labour

admin — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:00:37 +0000

Montage: Louise Thomas
There is no doubt that over recent decades we have witnessed a undeclared ‘war’ against undocumented migrants, as Matthew Carr suggests. And this does not relate only to the migration flow between northern Africa or the Middle East and Europe, but to all the main migration routes: from south east Asia to Australia and to the oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf; from Central America to the United States; from sub-Saharan Africa to South Africa.
This war does not stop at the borders. It reaches to the heart of social life, permeating economic relations and the political and cultural sphere of the countries of destination. In general, these migrants face the hardest working conditions, legal and illegal forms of exploitation and discrimination, along with xenophobic propaganda and racism.
The assault on labour
Most migrants are first and foremost workers. There are about 105 million regular economic migrants globally, some 3 per cent of the global workforce. UN estimates suggest that the undocumented comprise a further 10 per cent.
When we deal with migration policies, therefore, we should take into account their economic meaning and the strong link with labour policies. Noam Chomsky has argued that the past 40 years has seen ‘an international assault on labour’, a constant process of de‑unionisation, flexibilisation and deregulation of rights at work. The result is a new ‘precarious proletariat’, which includes those traditionally on the margins of the labour market, such as migrants, and does not spare young locals. There is a whole generation living in frustration and uncertainty because of widespread use of casual work, general insecurity and rampant unemployment in the absence of former protection.
To put it in theoretical terms, the situation is functional to the creation of a new, global ‘reserve army of labour’, which helps drive down overall working conditions. We could also say that the aim is to consolidate ‘biopower’, the material control and subjugation of impoverished populations.
We are encouraged to think that migrants and casual young workers are two separate aspects of the labour market, even opposed in some cases. Racism and xenophobia are on the increase, especially in the countries that have been hardest hit by the current economic crisis, and migrants are targeted as potential enemies, including by openly fascist vigilantes.
However, these anti-immigrant vigilantes are not the principal threat, as the philosopher Slavoj Žižek points out.:‘They are merely collateral damage accompanying the true threat – the politics of austerity that has brought the country to such a predicament.’
Reassembling resistance
Migrants and local unemployed or precarious workers are united by the same structural conditions of insecurity and vulnerability and should share the same struggles. The protests that took place in 2011, from the Arab Spring to the indignados and Occupy movements, highlighted the widespread dissatisfaction with the current economic and political system.
For the same reasons, a new consciousness is spreading among migrant workers. Albeit in a spontaneous and uncoordinated way, the potential for migrants to participate in and contest political structures is growing. In various countries they respond to attacks by rebelling against humiliation and segregation, and taking part in demonstrations, protests and strikes. They are using new tools for communication – blogs and online social networks – and, with the support of anti-racist movements, trade unions and NGOs, in many cases they are succeeding in revitalising social and labour protests and winning important battles. Two recent examples in Europe show what can be achieved.
Movement of the sans-papiers
In France, there has been a significant shift in the struggle of the sans-papiers movement recently. These migrants, mainly northern and sub-Saharan Africans, have been at the centre of the productive system but outside the political and social system for decades, as though they lived beside the society to which they contributed.
The majority of first-generation migrants, who arrived in France in the post-colonial period, seemed destined to remain in a position of eternal subordination as immigrants, without any possibility of integrating or improving their status. And for years the issue of the sans‑papiers – those who existed without official documentation or sanction, literally ‘without papers’ – was considered predominantly from a humanitarian point of view. Attention was focused on their right to remain and live in France, not on working conditions.
But over recent years a major campaign has been gathering pace to regularise the status of the many thousands of migrants, who actively contribute to a large part of the national economy but who live in the shadows under conditions of constant insecurity and blackmail. In this, the historic French trade union of the left, the CGT, has been playing an increasing role.
The first exemplary dispute, in which the union sided with workers without documents, dates back to 2006, when 22 sub‑Saharan workers went on strike and occupied the Modeluxe industrial laundries of Chilly-Mazarin. After a week’s strike joined by all workers, the position of the 22 was regularised.
Since then a series of protests and strikes has led to the regularisation of tens of thousands of workers, from construction sites to the most exclusive restaurants of Paris. Beyond the documents, however, the value of these actions lies in the fact that they were started by the immigrants themselves, demonstrating an increasing awareness and militancy among the sans-papiers.
A day without us
‘What would happen if the four-and-a-half million immigrants living in Italy decided to down tools for a day? And if the millions of Italians who are tired of racism supported their action?’
This is the question that launched the First of March, A Day Without Us movement in Italy in 2010. It started two months after the French movement of the same name, and was inspired by the US movement from 2006.
The idea came after a series of episodes of open discrimination and xenophobic violence against immigrants, like the one that occurred in Rosarno, in the far south of Italy. A group of young African farmworkers rioted after three of them were attacked by a criminal gang that runs orange picking in the area. The attack was intended to intimidate and avoid paying them. After the riot people from Rosarno formed patrols and seriously injured several Africans, pursuing them to their homes, which they then set on fire. Media reports highlighted the squalid conditions these young men were forced to live in, and brought new accusations of barbarity and racism raining down on Italy.
The idea of an ‘immigrants’ strike’ gained support from national media and developed very quickly through online social networks. A group of journalists and trade unionists, all women, decided to open a page on Facebook and a blog with migrant friends and Italians with direct experience of immigration. The blog included a guide to setting up local committees bringing migrants and Italians together. The initiative went ahead with the support of numerous human rights organisations, magazines, newspapers and opposition parties.
The main trade union confederations refused to support the protest, claiming that the migrants’ strike would have divided workers on an ethnic basis, instead of uniting them. Some trade unionists, however, endorsed the protest and admitted that there was a problem with migrants being represented within labour organisations.
Reclaiming rights
On 1 March 2010, about 300,000 people took part in demonstrations across Italy, with marches filling many squares, from Milan to Rome, and Naples to Palermo. In areas where there was a high concentration of migrant workers and links to unions, some metalworking, textile, food and chemical factories were closed by the strike. Overall, the result was remarkable considering the speed with which the demonstration had been organised, the complete lack of structure and in general the lack of a strong link with the trade unions.
Since then the movement has focused on some specific objectives. These include securing an undertaking to ‘recognise the right to full citizenship of those born, growing up, living and working on the Italian territory’ – an extension from the principle of jus sanguinis, based on the country of birth, to that of jus soli, based on the blood link. Other objectives include the right for immigrants to vote at local elections, equal opportunity legislation and the rejection of special laws for the undocumented.
Above all, the First of March, A Day Without Us movement helped to create a new awareness among migrants about their social and economic role. It showed that migrants can mobilise and reclaim their rights; they can demand representation and push for participation. In doing so, they are advancing the cause of all workers.

Vittorio Longhi’s ‘The immigrant war: A global movement against discrimination and exploitation’ has just been published by Policy Press. See also facebook.com/TheImmigrantWar

Beyond Berlusconi

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:46:40 +0000

Populist and authoritarian, with policies and rhetoric on immigrants and asylum seekers that licence racism; sustained in office by an electoral system made by and for the political class. Silvio Berlusconi’s government isn’t the only present or recent government in Europe that could be described this way.

True, the government of the Partito della Liberta, with fascists in several key ministries and the prime minister controlling almost all the country’s main TV stations, through either his political or his business power, is an extreme case. But the rest of Europe would be wise to pay attention to the way that it is being opposed. In the main, with the exception of the relatively new Italia dei Valori, opposition is not being organised through the traditional political institutions.

It was through Facebook that half a million demonstrators came to Rome on ‘No Berlusconi Day’. And it is through action largely independent of the trade union structures that employees are occupying many workplaces to save their jobs.

Here Red Pepper looks at two such examples of the new opposition forces. Vittorio Longhi reports on a wide informal coalition of church, human rights, media, union and local community organisations opposing the kind of racism that led to the recent forced removal of immigrant workers from Rosarno in the south of Italy. And Giulio D’Orema reports on the work of a brave investigative journalist, Marco Travaglio, who Berlusconi’s allies recently attacked as a ‘media terrorist’.

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Standing with the migrants

‘In the years to come, Rosarno will be a cursed name that will echo in the internet cafes of Lagos, in the Skype communications from Accra, in the intercontinental phone calls with Ouagadougou.’ Antonello Mangano was reporting for the radical Rome-based magazine Carta from the hospital in the citrus-growing town of Rosarno in the south of Italy just after 1,000 or so mainly African fruit pickers had been bussed out of the area after attacks by local residents. The racist violence came after a protest by these casual workers over a drive-by shooting at the squalid camp that served as their ‘home’ outside the city. It’s a wretched story that says a lot about what is happening in Italy at present.

The growing racism is a product of deeper problems, including lawlessness over questions of employment – the fruit pickers have been effectively working as slaves for companies that court documents show to be in the hands of criminal syndicates. Racism, including among the police, is legitimised, if not encouraged, by a government that is virulently anti-immigrant in both words and actions.

‘The left wants a multi-ethnic society – we don’t,’ says Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. ‘We have to be bold and resolute against clandestine immigration,’ says the interior minister Roberto Maroni. Alongside these declarations come immigration laws that make it harder and harder for migrants to live and work legitimately in Italy and that de facto discriminate against migrants in terms of employment and social rights.

The immigration issue has also been linked by the government to that of security, and last spring Maroni introduced new legislation to back up a new ‘hard-line’ approach, driving back to Libya boatloads of Africans intercepted in southern Sicily’s open waters.

The events at Rosarno warn of a wider trend. Since 2007 there have been more than 300 serious violent attacks on migrants, according to a report on racism issued by the NGO Lunaria. The list includes locals launching firebombs at Roma camps in Ponticelli, near Naples, and the beating of a Ghanese student in Parma by the municipal police, who wrote ‘Emmanuel Nigger’ on his documents.

A diverse coalition

So who, then, is opposing all of this? Certainly not the fragmented centre-left parties, who fear losing middle-class support if they show solidarity with migrants, especially at a time of recession and job losses. Nor has the UN, the Council of Europe or even the Vatican’s condemnation of politicians’ racism-fuelling messages stirred the Democratic Party, a merger of former communists and Christian democrats, into action.

Yet there is a wide, diverse and informal coalition of social forces, institutions and media groups launching a counter attack. In 2009, a broad-based national campaign against racism was supported by 27 human rights, left-wing and Catholic groups, the three main trade unions and the UNHCR. ‘Don’t be afraid’ was the slogan written on posters beneath a young Roma boy’s smiling face. The campaign aimed at demolishing prejudice and stereotypes of Arabs, Roma people and Africans, the most targeted groups of migrants in Italy. It also amassed signatures for an anti-racism manifesto based on the principles of the Italian constitution and the universal declaration of human rights.

Since 2008, the Italian journalists’ union has promoted an ethical code, the Carta di Roma, against the biased words deployed when reporting on migration. ‘Refugee’, ‘irregular’, ‘clandestine’, ‘foreigner’, and ‘migrant’ are all used as synonyms by the majority of the media. With the help of university research units, the union has created a media-watch project to report on the portrayal of immigrants and media distortion such as linking immigration to crime and violence.

But it’s at the very local level that some of the most important work is being done to counter racism and integrate migrants. A decade ago, in the small village of Riace in Calabria, just a few miles from Rosarno, the centre-left mayor Mimmo Lucano decided to welcome refugees. After being almost deserted for 50 years, Riace now has nearly 2,000 inhabitants. It has been repopulated and revived by Kurds, Nigerians, Eritreans and Somalis. Lucano also helped to resettle a group of Palestinian-Iraqi refugees from the no man’s land along the border between Iraq and Syria.

This model was adopted by neighbouring villages, including Stignano and Caulonia, which offered houses and jobs to refugees and migrants who arrived in Lampedusa. And in 2009 the regional government of Calabria adopted the first, and only, law in Italy to integrate refugees through small local projects of sustainable development, from housing and tourism to agriculture and artisanship.

Vittorio Longhi is an Italian journalist, writing for Il Manifesto and Repubblica. Antonello Mangano’s full Carta article is available at www.redpepper.org.uk

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Democracy’s watchdog

One of the first moves of Berlusconi’s allies after the Milan attack on the Italian prime minister was to hurl vitriol at an investigative journalist without political allegiance. His name is Marco Travaglio. They accused this journalist, whose characteristic style is a cool, unelaborated presentation of the facts, of ‘instigating a climate of hatred’. They called him a ‘media terrorist’.

This was but the latest failed attempt to discredit and censor Travaglio, who has become not just one of Berlusconi’s most damaging critics but also a well-known public figure. It was typical of the censorship that Berlusconi has tried persistently but unsuccessfully to impose on journalistic critics since the publication in 2001 of Travaglio’s L’odore dei Soldi (‘The Smell of Money’), soon after Berluconi’s election as prime minister. In this bestselling book Travaglio documented Berlusconi’s connections with the mafia. After Travaglio had presented his evidence of the mafia origins of Berlusconi’s initial business capital in a 20-minute interview with comedian Lutazzi, the

newly-elected PM ordered the sacking of Luttazzi and a couple of other popular TV journalists.

Travaglio has persisted, publishing well-documented books (two per year since 2004) about the PM’s legal problems, the threat he represents for freedom of expression and his governments’ wrongdoings. The reward for his work has been a stream of defamation cases – all of which he has won.

Books and regular appearances on the website of Beppe Grillo – the comedian-cum-voice of a disparate movement, symbolically and literally giving two fingers to the political class – did not satisfy the determination of Travaglio and his colleagues to transform Italy’s politics and press. Last September, he and others founded a new daily newspaper, Il Fatto Quotidiano. It now sells more than 100,000 copies per day, mainly as a result of internet promotion.

The paper is based on the principle that the media should be democracy’s watchdog. It gives a voice to those who want laws to be respected, first of all by the politicians that make them. It investigates and exposes MPs from across the political spectrum (although it does not address wider social and economic problems).

The paper is closely associated with the growing opposition party Italia dei Valori. The party was founded by the former judge Antonio di Pietro, who played a leading role in the trials of 1992 that exposed corruption throughout the political class and brought down the parties that had ruled Italy since the second world war, along with the Socialist Party of Bettino Craxi, the political protector of Berlusconi. It was after this that di Pietro, under relentless attack from Berlusconi and his allies, decided to abandon the judiciary and found the party.

Like Il Fatto, Italia dei Valori focuses almost exclusively on issues of democratic representation, corruption and the rule of law. While Berlusconi and his regime is the main target, the party and newspaper are often at odds also with the opposition – for instance, regarding direct government control over state television.

Not of the left

Although Marco Travaglio is one of Berlusconi’s strongest opponents, he is not a journalist of the left. He would resist political labelling, but it is interesting that he comes from the Catholic right. This runs counter to the normal pattern of Italian politics. The public generally sees criticisms of prominent politicians as ideologically motivated. So if someone says that Berlusconi is unfit to rule Italy, it is seen as being because it’s a left-leaning – or possibly a communist – journalist, not because there are very good reasons why the PM is unfit for his job.

Travaglio was born in Turin in 1964 and began his journalistic career freelancing for local Catholic publications. In the late 1980s he worked for his mentor Indro Montanelli (1909-2001), at one point a close ally of Berlusconi. (In 2005 Travaglio published a book with the title Montanelli and Berlusconi, a Great and a Small Man.) Montanelli had been one the most prominent anti-communist right-wing intellectuals for decades. At the time Travaglio began working with him, he was the director of Berlusconi’s daily Il Giornale. Travaglio got a job as a Turin correspondent for the paper.

When Berlusconi entered politics in 1993 – some say to protect his own business interests – Montanelli strongly protested. This was, first, for the obvious reason that his friend had too much media power in his hands, but also because, as he used to say, ‘as much as Berlusconi is a great editor, he would be a disastrous PM – he’s a man who believes in his own lies’. Montanelli abandoned Il Giornale, the newspaper he founded 20 years before, and started a new, short-lived daily called La Voce. Travaglio also joined this venture, until it closed a year later.

Last year was one of Berlusconi’s most difficult in government. Not only has he failed to silence critics – though he has sought maximum advantage from the attack on him in December – but he now faces a threat to his TV monopoly. Ironically, the challenge comes from Sky TV. (Italian leftists give a hollow laugh at the fact that in their country Murdoch is effectively an ally.)

Berlusconi also faces trials for corruption that he is doing his best to sabotage. The case with potentially the most serious consequences is the one associated with the British lawyer David Mills, who has already been found guilty of being bribed by Berlusconi. Here he is stalling, so as to make use of the law passed by his own government requiring that financial charges are dealt with within seven years. Berlusconi has declared that he will also try to change the constitution to ensure that he remains beyond the reach of the law.

There is no doubt that Berlusconi retains great popularity among some sections of Italian society. But he also faces widespread opposition – which is strengthened by the facts so scrupulously put together on the keyboard of Marco Travaglio and now disseminated through the daily newspaper Il Fatto.

Giulio D’Orema writes for Index on Censorship and for the Italian blog http://tripsketches.blogspot.com

Balance sheet of the Prodi Government

admin — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:18:32 +0000

Pacta sunt servanda. This is a Latin expression that means ‘agreements must be kept’ and it has been used repeatedly in recent months by many Italians to remind Prime Minister Romano Prodi that his government has not honoured its electoral promises. To win the last election, Prodi’s centre-left coalition, l’Unione, offered a long list of proposals, most of which it has not carried out. During nearly two years in government, Prodi seemed keener on balancing Italy’s financial budget, following rules on competitiveness dictated by the EU and the world market. For low-income families there have been handouts rather than serious reforms of the labour and welfare systems which could have redistributed wealth.

Labour laws

During the five years of Berlusconi’s Casa delle Liberta coalition government, the centre left promised that once in power it would rewrite the labour laws and abolish the so-called Law 30, introduced by Berlusconi. According to the ILO, the UN’s labour agency, ‘under the pretext of modernising the labour market, [Law 30] caused a serious situation of insecurity in employment.’ According to official statistics, casual and fixed-term contracts are the main means for Italian young workers to enter the labour market today, but it is increasingly rare for these to turn into permanent contracts. Labour market distortions are becoming increasingly pronounced, especially in the south of the country, which is experiencing an alarming fall in the employment rate. The Prodi government’s new Labour and Welfare Act left Law 30 almost untouched, protecting a range of benefits to companies. The Minister of Labour, Cesare Damiano (Democratic Party), a former trade unionist, said that this was the first part of a wider reform and workers would benefit more in a ‘second phase’. Even the leftist trade union, the CGIL, backed the act and the government’s two-phases policy, winning support for it through a referendum among workers. This appeared democratic, but actually the referendum left workers with a choice between supporting the measure or making the government fall.

Public services and common resources

Many of Italy’s social movements were also disappointed at how Prodi dealt with common assets, starting with water. L’Unione’s programme stated that all water services and networks would be nationalised or brought back into public hands, meaning regional and municipal governments. This choice would have reversed the process of local privatisation and liberalisation started in the early 1990s, even by centre-left administrations. L’Unione’s commitment was a response to a national petition signed by 406,000 people. And yet, once in power, l’Unione has done nothing except privatise and liberalise all other local public services. ‘How can you still talk about respect for democracy and support for citizen participation?,’ asked the economist and public-water campaigner Riccardo Petrella in an open letter.

Militarism and international policy

‘I had hoped that under your government our country would have been pulled out of war, any war, as the Constitution foresees. Therefore I did not expect your decision to stay in Afghanistan, nor your policy aimed at involving Italy in the world military-industrial system,’ says Father Alex Zanotelli, a missionary in Africa for the Combonians (Verona Fathers in the UK) and the founder of Italian movements against the war. He too wrote an open letter to Prodi, who had promised the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and said he wanted Italy out of any war. Zanotelli expressed his disappointment at the pro-war policy which in 2007 led to an increase in the defence budget of 12 per cent above Berlusconi’s 2006 budget, to the enlargement of US military bases in Vicenza and Nato bases in Sicily and Naples, and to an agreement to join the US administration’s anti-missile programme together with Poland, thus further dividing EU and provoking Russia. Father Zanotelli also notes that Italy’s international solidarity payments are amongst the most paltry of OECD country. The government could not even find 280 million euro that it had promised during the last G8 meeting for the Global Fund against HIV.

Migration

The Minister of Social Solidarity, Paolo Ferrero (Rifondazione Comunista), tried to rewrite the former, centre-right immigration law, against a tide of anti-migrant hostility. L’Unione’s programme was based on the principles of ‘welcoming, living together, protection’ and was against any criminalisation and demagogy. But the new bill does little to improve the situation for migrant workers, as a residence permit is still linked to a work contract in the highly casualised labour market. The migrant quota system still regulates the immigration flow – there were 655,000 requests for 170,000 permits in 2007 – but it cannot halt illegal immigration with its concomitant exploitation of immigrants. A new law was introduced to bring Italy in line with the EU Directive on refugees and the 1951 Geneva Convention. According to UNHCR spokesperson Laura Boldrini, ‘the bill will facilitate asylum request procedures and will help refugees that flee from wars and persecutions to have better protection’ by providing asylum seekers with renewable residence permits. Last year, nearly 20,000 people reached Italian coasts from Northern Africa and about 500 died while crossing the Mediterranean. Over 30 per cent of them were asylum seekers but just half of them obtained the refugee status.

Vittorio Longhi is an Italian labour and political journalist. He writes for the Italian leftist daily il manifesto and for the CGIL trade union’s weekly Rassegna Sindacale.

A global war on labour?

admin — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:34:51 +0000

Colombia is still the deadliest country in the world for trade unionists: 78 were murdered last year, while 33 died during police repression of strikes in the Philippines and 21 in Guinea. According to the International Trade Union Confederation’s latest survey of violations of union rights, the number of workers and unionists who are killed, arrested or ‘just’ dismissed is increasing alarmingly. Deaths have increased from 115 in 2005 to 144 in 2006 and the various forms of abuse and intimidation do not concern only developing countries but, more and more, also parts of the global North, like Europe and United States.

The ITUC survey seems to describe a situation of ‘war on labour’. Would you say that the anti-union culture is growing among companies and governments, that there is an attempt to deunionise labour globally?

The so-called ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of social standards, pursued by investors and governments alike in many, if not most, parts of the world, is certainly one of the main causes for a steadily rising hostility towards trade unions and trade union action. At the same time, more and more workers worldwide see the advantage of a collective defence of their social and economic interests. So, repression increases while unions grow stronger.

Beyond that, however, the ITUC itself is larger than the international trade union movement ever was before. So it naturally has more access to more information and the increase of information in our 2007 survey reflects that proportionally.

And yet, corporations claim to be more and more committed to the respect of human rights though corporate social responsibility …

Well, there are various views on that, but one view is predominant in the union movement, which is that the best way of monitoring employers’ compliance with national labour legislation and international labour standards in the workplace is to have it done by the workers’ legitimate representatives, i.e. trade unions.

Unilateral management initiatives cannot make up for the failure of governments to fulfil their responsibilities. Nor can CSR [corporate social responsibility] substitute for the role of trade unions in defending and advancing workers’ interests. CSR is only valuable where it helps governments do their job and creates room for workers to organise and to bargain collectively. Unfortunately, in the labour area most CSR activity seems to be directed at showing that it is possible to be ethical while doing business in countries where governments do not permit respect for workers’ human rights.

In regions like Asia, the GDP is growing incredibly fast, but there is still a very poor redistribution of wealth in terms of salaries, better conditions and social services. And your report shows that there’s a heavy repression against workers’ protests. How much are the single companies and governments responsible and how much have the market-driven policies of international institutions like the IMF, World Bank and WTO contributed to this unbalanced growth?

Most Asian governments have prioritised economic growth over the creation of decent work and this has created the current imbalance. These priorities were certainly consistent with IFI [international financing institutions] recommendations. The facilitation of exchanges through WTO liberalisation has accelerated the move of production to Asia and many Asian countries have competed between each other to attract companies on the basis of cheap labour costs, to the detriment of workers’ rights and wages.

The fact that China does not recognise freedom of association and trade union rights is one of the reasons why Asian workers have not received a fair share of economic growth. This applies within China itself, where inequalities are growing exponentially and where the number of social protests is on the rise, but this also applies to the whole continent because of this race to the cheapest labour costs country. It is also important to mention that growth in Asia has had extremely detrimental effect on the environment. China’s environmental degradation is alarming. Unions in Asia are negotiating with their governments and bargaining with companies to address these issues.

Many governments in western Europe, including centre-left ones, are privatising services and deregulating labour in the name of competitiveness. In fact, they do not create flexibility (or flexicurity) but a growing number of casual and temporary jobs. How do you think that trade unions in developed countries should respond on the issue of competitiveness?

On competitiveness, responses have to include training development, lifelong learning or employability as Europe cannot win by competing on the basis of cheap labour costs. It can only remain competitive by investing in its workers, making them better equipped and more productive in the global economy. Trade unions in developed countries have also to work in close solidarity with unions in developing countries to help them build their capacities and bargaining abilities, so that they can demand fair wages and working conditions for the exports they produce and so influence the whole global chain supply.

At the founding congress in Vienna, in November 2006, the new confederation has set out a list of priorities. What is ITUC’s current programme of action?

Our June meeting set out several special action programmes for the ITUC, which will require clear commitments and intensive action to realise. These areas of work we will deal with are migration, for instance, including building partnerships between trade unions in sending and receiving countries. Also, we will work for the organising of workers and trade union recognition in the world’s export processing zones, where some 60 million people, mostly women, are frequently subjected to intimidation and exploitation.

Then we will focus on the role of China on the world stage, in particular given the lack of freedom of association in that country. One example which is high on our agenda right at the moment is our work in the ‘FairPlay 2008′ alliance, which is putting pressure on the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing Olympics organisers to ensure that fundamental rights are fully respected right throughout the supply chains of the sports merchandise sector.

Our campaigns will range from the issues of climate change, to the ‘financialisation’ of the world economy in order to bring about real change in the policies and activities of the global institutions such as the WTO, IMF and World Bank. And through all of this, we will maintain and build our work at the International Labour Organisation, keep gender equality and anti-discrimination actions at the heart of our work, and support our affiliates in reaching out to young workers, who are increasingly under-represented in trade union membership, and thus exposed to exploitation.
In 2008, we are planning to hold an international day of mobilisation, to bring home to the world at large the values and objectives of the trade union movement, and to strengthen even further the bonds of international trade union solidarity.

Useful links

ITUC survey

Vittorio Longhi video on the ITUC founding congress

A global war on labour?

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:04:50 +0000

An appalling total of 144 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers’ rights in 2006, while more than 800 suffered beatings or torture, according to the Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights Violations, published by the 168-million member International Trade Union Confederation. The 379-page report details nearly 5,000 arrests and more than 8,000 dismissals of workers due to their trade union activities. A total of 484 new cases of trade unionists held in detention by governments are also documented in the report.

Colombia is still the deadliest country in the world for trade unionists: 78 were murdered last year, while 33 died during police repression of strikes in the Philippines and 21 in Guinea. According to the ITUC survey, the number of workers and trade unionists who are killed, arrested or ‘just’ dismissed is increasing alarmingly. Deaths have increased from 115 in 2005 to 144 in 2006 and the various forms of abuse and intimidation do not concern only developing countries but, more and more, also parts of the global North, like Europe and United States.

And yet, corporations claim to be more and more committed to the respect of human rights though corporate social responsibility …

At the founding congress in Vienna, in November 2006, the new confederation has set out a list of priorities. What is ITUC’s current programme of action?

In 2008, we are planning to hold an international day of mobilisation, to bring home to the world at large the values and objectives of the trade union movement, and to strengthen even further the bonds of international trade union solidarity.

Useful links

ITUC Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights Violations

Vittorio Longhi video on the ITUC founding congress

Interview: Iraq’s Union of the Unemployed

admin — Sat, 01 May 2004 21:23:00 +0000

Among more than 200 associations created in Iraq during the past year, there is one lay and independent organisation, with its origins in a clandestine left movement which existed under Saddam, that is now challenging the Anglo-American authority. It stands for the rights of the unemployed in Iraq – almost the entire female and male workforce, 10 million out of 25 million inhabitants. Such are the side effects of the massive privatisation imposed by the occupation forces in their aim to deregulate an essentially state-ruled economy. Although it already has 300,000 members, the UUI (Union of the Unemployed in Iraq) is considered illegal by the coalition and by the provisional government, who, at the same time, recognise other associations less inclined to protest and more apt to cooperate. Aso Jabbar, the UUI representative in Europe, tells Red Pepper about his union’s fight for real democracy in the country and about the occupation forces’ attempts to control the rising Iraqi union movement.

What is your union’s position and role in the fight against occupation?

We are openly against the occupation but we are not part of the armed resistance. We are distant from the Islamic political groups that control the resistance. Their political programme is linked to the conservative Iraqi tradition and they are not interested in the improvement of people’s life conditions. We struggle directly – together with the other movements (of workers, progressive women and students) – to defend our rights and to establish a civil, lay, secular society. Our aim is to guarantee to our people safety, real social and political liberties, and the end of poverty created by wars, the regime and the embargo. In this phase of the occupation, our union’s representatives are fighting mainly to avoid the exploitation of Iraqi workers in the reconstruction work which is ruled by Western companies and military forces. The UUI is helping NGOs deliver and distribute aid and medicine to families and people hit by the attacks.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, different unions have been created in Iraq. Yours has a wide and popular support but is considered illegal by the provisional government, although it recognises other unions. What is the basis for this discrimination against the UUI?

The democratisation policy in Iraq proclaimed by the Anglo-American authorities also provides for the control of unions. Through the allocation of funds – more than $5m has been handled by the American confederation Afl-Cio for this purpose – the US and UK say that they want to reconstruct the union movement in our country. But this money might be given only to the associations that are closer to the provisional government, like IFTU (Iraqi Free Trade Unions). Composed mainly of old nationalists and the only union recognised by the coalition, IFTU is also the only candidate to have been accepted as a member of the international labour union confederation and to be recognised by all the other main labour federations, like the European TUC. But IFTU doesn’t seem to act as a real union, they don’t fight – like we do – for aid and subsidies for the poorest families. They are not so keen on the enshrinement in law of rights which are still denied, ranging from free association to the right to strike. Furthermore, their protest action is nearly non-existent; they say they are against foreign exploitation of our natural resources but seem more interested in helping foreign firms to reconstruct rather than defend workers’ rights. However, the fact that they are recognised by the new government is forcing many Iraqis to join them if they want a job.

UUI asked for affiliation to the international confederation (ICFTU) and the support of Arabic Unions (ICATU), and you also appealed to the International labour organisation (ILO) to have a real labour code. What answers did you get?

Apart from promises and good intentions, the international union movement hasn’t answered us yet. We are waiting for the ILO to take up a position against the violations denounced by us, by starting an inquiry into the Iraqi situation. But the ILO is an agency of the UN, which has showed it has no real power in Iraq. Therefore, until the occupation forces are replaced by UN forces, there can’t be any real improvement in civil, human and workers’ rights in Iraq. As far as the Arabic confederation ICATU is concerned, its official position is neutral but in reality the response changes according to the member country. For example, we are fully supported by the Lebanese Union, but others, such as Syria, Egypt or Libya have hesitations, since they fear political consequences for their governments.