Global Labor Strategies

Argentina's “Recuperated Workplaces”

What happens when a group of workers take over their workplace and try to run it without private owners, professional managers, or the government?  10,000 workers in 200 workplaces in Argentina are trying to find out.

Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein’s movie “The Take” provided many non-Argentineans an introduction to Argentina’s movement of “recuperated factories.”  But beyond that information has been difficult to get.  Now a new book edited by Marina Sitrin called “Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina” (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006) provides a revealing portrait of the movement.

Egyptian Textile Worker Strike: The Story Behind the Story

In a previous blog we described an unanticipated upheaval by 27,000 Egyptian textile workers in Mahala El-Kobra (also translated as Mahalla al-Kubra) that occurred at the end of last year.  Faced with denial of their year-end bonus, fearing privatization of their company, and disgusted with the corruption of their employers, they walked off their jobs, closed the plants, and demonstrated.  After three days the company restored the bonus and they returned to work.  This blog provides some of the background on Egyptian textile workers and the Egyptian economy in the era of globalization.

Less than a year before the Mahala El-Kobra strike, an article in the January, 2006 edition of the publication Business Today Egypt anticipated what was coming.  It warned that with labor unions and professional associations {“syndicates”] mired in their own political battles and interested only in offering social services, “workers are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and striking for their rights.”

Philippine Toyota Workers – an Update

Almost a year ago we reported on the struggle of a group of auto workers employed by Toyota’s subsidiary in the Philippines. Their actions involved some highly innovative approaches to the problems globalization.

The backstory: In March, 2001 the Toyota Motor Philippines Corporation Workers Association (TMPCWA) won a certification election granting them the right to be recognized as sole bargaining agent for the rank and file workers of the Toyota Philippines Corporation.  Toyota subsequently unlawfully dismissed 233 workers, including the entire union executive committee.

Immigration Raids and the Politics of Fear

The cruelty—the utter contempt for common decency and common sense—of this government was on full display last week when agents of the Department of Homeland Security’s division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), some in riot gear, stormed into six Swift & Company plants in Cactus Texas; Grand Island, Nebraska; Greeley, Colorado; Hyrum, Utah; Marshaltown, Iowa; and, Worthington, Minnesota. They detained 1282 day shift workers, roughly 10% of the entire workforce. Workers on other shifts were left to worry.

Inside the plants workers were separated into two groups: US citizens and non-US citizens. Non-US citizens were herded on to buses and transported to deportation centers, some in distant states. Families were wrenched apart. In some communities children were left in school at the end of the day with no one to pick them up. Immigrant communities were in shock.

The raids were clearly calculated to spread terror. Michael Chertoff head of the Department of Homeland Security ominously put it this way:

It’s going to be a deterrent to illegal workers.  It’s going to cause them [immigrant workers] to say that, you know, this happened in Swift, it could easily happen somewhere else. In fact, I’m pretty much going to guarantee we’re going to keep bringing these cases.”

Rebirth of Unions in Russia

Boris Kagarlitsky

Boris Kagarlitsky has been an activist, journalist, and scholar of Russian
labor and social movements since the days of the Soviet Union.  He is no
stranger to international solidarity; during the attempted coup of October
3, 1993 he was thrown into a Moscow police lockup, but was released after
phone calls from around the world -- particularly the San Francisco Bay area
in the U.S. -- demanded his release.  In this article he connects the
stirrings of labor in Russia to the development of globalization by
employers -- and by labor.

The Rebirth of the Unions
By Boris Kagarlitsky

Few people in the Soviet era understood the need for trade unions. Sure, the
unions collected membership fees and distributed free trips to sanatoriums
among the workers, but apart from that no one could clearly explain what
function they played. The early 1980s brought sensational news from Poland,
when workers formed Solidarity labor union, not controlled by the Communist
Party, and threw down a challenge to the ruling communist bureaucracy. Yet
this was less a trade-union dispute in the Western sense than a political
one.

China’s Emerging Civil Rights Movement

In April of this year, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China met to discuss “The Lot of Chinese Workers: Do China’s Labor Laws Work?” It’s a fascinating read and is available here.  The CECC is a government body created by Congress in 2000 to monitor human rights and the rule of law in China. At the committee's most recent hearing, they took testimony from Han Dongfang and Robin Munro of the China Labour Bulletin, concerning China’s emerging rights defense movement – the so-called Wei Quan Movement, which translates in English to “Defending Rights.”

While rooted in Tiananmen Square protest movement, according to Robin Munro “this is the most significant development” in the last 25 years.

Alternative Worker Organizations: Taking the Alliance Global

On August 10th, the AFL-CIO reached what is being heralded as "a historic partnership agreement" between the Federation and the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON).  The hope is that this pledge of cooperation "will pave the way for AFL-CIO central labor councils and state federations and NDLON’s day laborer worker centers to work together on issues ranging from workplace rights to immigration to health and safety and other job-related concerns."

Service Sector Organizing and Globalization

Will organizing in the service sector revive the labor movement? Are service sector jobs somehow immune from the forces of globalization? These ideas are widely held in some corners of the labor movement.

In the wake of the recent UAW convention—which spotlighted the decline of manufacturing unions—New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse takes up these ideas in an article in the June 16th New York Times. He writes:

[There is a]….little-understood development: the nation's private sector is divided into two very different labor movements. The first comprises manufacturing unions, like the auto workers and machinists, which are on the defensive and on the decline. The second is made up of unions for the expanding service sector, which are upbeat and on the prowl for hundreds of thousands of nursing home aides, janitors, [and] supermarket cashiers….

The manufacturing unions have been devastated by globalization, with many companies insisting that America's unionized factory workers are overpaid and their benefit packages too rich compared with overseas workers Delphi, the beleaguered auto parts company, has repeatedly trumpeted this assertion as it called for cutting its workers' $27-an-hour wages in half.

In contrast, the service-sector unions are largely immune to globalization — just try to outsource the job of a hamburger-flipper, hotel housekeeper or bedpan-emptier to China. Helping to make service-sector unions optimistic about attracting more members is the perception that workers like hotel housekeepers and janitors are underpaid and have skimpy benefits. Moreover, many of these workers are immigrants, who are often more enthusiastic about unions than native-born workers...

Even as manufacturing workers are seeing their wages and benefits slashed or their jobs moved abroad or automated out of existence—precisely because the wages and benefits that made these jobs decent are no longer competitive—many in the service sector still see the manufacturing unions as a model.

In a way, said Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, the service-sector unions hope to imitate the manufacturing unions of old.”Our goal is to move service-sector workers into the middle class," he said. "The manufacturing unions did that for factory workers. It took them 20 years to do that, and we hope to do the same thing.

Those who argue that service unions can avoid the effects of globalization might want to take a second look. Indeed, there are at least six dynamics at play in the global economy that they will need to pay attention to as they try to make low wage jobs into “middle class” jobs.

1. The size and vigor of the low wage labor market in the US is due in large measure to the fact that there is an adequate supply of workers to fill those jobs at the low wages on offer. If wages rise, many of those jobs will disappear—either they will be scraped as unnecessary or they will be automated. No one bags groceries in higher wage Europe, parking lot attendants are uncommon. Personal service jobs such as house-cleaning or domestic landscaping—which employ many in the US—are much rarer, as well. If wages rise, expect hotel rooms to be designed to be cleaned quicker and with fewer workers. And in the retail industry, Wal-Mart and other companies are already experimenting with chip technologies that will make many check-out cashiers a thing of the past. Some jobs have already disappeared: today there are few gas station attendants left and live-in household help once common among the well-off went out of fashion after World War II as wages increased.

2. Many more jobs can be outsourced than is apparent at first glance. Greenhouse says “…try to outsource a hamburger flipper..” well MacDonald’s is coming close to doing just that as it experiments with centralizing drive through order takers in sites far from the restaurants where the orders are being placed.  While, it is certainly true that many jobs require face to face contact and can’t be outsourced, all kinds of business processing jobs in the service sector certainly can be and will be if wage and benefit costs climb.

3. While many jobs can’t move, workers can. Globalization is triggering a massive migration of people in search of work. Unions in the service sector have staked much of their plans on organizing immigrant workers. Now we in the US are in the midst of a major debate about immigration, the outcome of which will shape labor markets here in the future. Demagogues are trying to build a backlash against immigrant workers. As we have argued, in several past blogs, these demagogues could succeed in dividing immigrant and non-immigrant union members. To prevent this the labor movement must begin to build a transnational alliance of unions and social movements to create a worker friendly immigration reform program.

4. Wages and working conditions are set by the power of workers as a whole, so that a decrease in wages and bargaining power of manufacturing workers buffeted by global economic forces also affects service workers.  If service sector unions forget this they will repeat the mistake that the US labor movement has historically made by focusing on one sector of the workforce, rather than the workforce as a whole. When manufacturing was the driving force of the economy, manufacturing unions showed little solidarity with workers in the service sector thus allowing the growth of a huge low wage work force and foregoing the possibility of achieving social and political gains on critical social issues such as universal heath care, mandated vacations, or adequate pensions. They also allowed the growth of a large pool of low wage workers available for work in higher paid jobs—inevitably the law of supply and demand helped suppress wages. Service unions will undermine their own power if they make the same mistake and ignore what's happening in the manufacturing sector. 

5. Many firms in the service sector are global corporations with operations and profit centers in many countries. This enables global companies to resist workers demands for better wages and working conditions in any one workplace. In addition, global companies generally develop global supplier chains, complex—often contingent—employment relationships, and the union avoidance strategies that make organizing difficult. And, as a last resort—because of their global reach—these companies can simply close operations in a particular area when necessary—as Wal-Mart did in Quebec when workers managed to organize a union.

6. All over the world, globalization has triggered a process of “competitive liberalization”. Pensions, social welfare and unemployment insurance laws, labor laws, and public services are put into competition in an effort to reduce taxes and regulations to attract mobile capital and jobs. The corporate giants that dominate the global economy in both the service and the manufacturing sectors will continue to invest resources in shaping public and political discourse to further undermine the power of workers. Because of this roll-back in laws and regulations, service sector unions face an even more difficult task than manufacturing unions did when they organized. Reversing this process requires reaching beyond conventional organizing in any one sector and moving to a broad class based approach to unionism.

It is, of course, a good thing that service sector unions have made recruiting new members a high priority. But only through global labor cooperation—and ultimately a global labor movement—can the conditions be created for doing so effectively. Indeed, the executives of global service companies may smile when they read that service sector unions in the US think they are "immune to globalization."   

M.O.

Labor Internationalism

Tesco, the 3rd largest supermarket chain in the world, has announced that it’s moving into the American market.  Tesco employs over 100,000 union members in the UK and touts its “partnership” with the retail workers union USDAW.  Tesco even encourages workers to join the union when they are hired and gives the union easy access to workers for recruitment purposes.

But according to the Financial Times, things will be different when Tesco opens in the US.  Tesco has placed help wanted ads for HR management personnel that read: “….the incumbent has primary responsibility for management of employee relations; maintaining non-union status and union avoidance activities.”  Tesco’s first stores will be non-union and the chain aims to stay that way. 

What’s more, Tesco’s first stores will open in Los Angeles where the UFCW fought a bitter four month strike only a few years ago.  The issue in that strike was the demand for give backs by unionized supermarket chains in the face of Wal-Mart’s planned entry into the local market.

Tesco is following an established pattern by global corporations of leaving any progressive employment practices back home when they travel. US and European companies with relatively good labor practices and unionized workforces have long set up sweatshops or cut deals with suppliers with terrible labor practices around the world. And when non-US based companies locate in the US, they usually adopt union avoidance practices, after all “when in Rome…”. Just look at the automobile industry, where Asian and European auto companies have successfully resisted unionization in the US regardless of home country practices. 

In the past US unions have sometimes successfully organized non-US based  firms that were initially resistant to unionization. For instance, 3 years ago Swedish retailer H&M, a company that is solidly unionized in Sweden, opened as a non-union firm in the States. UNITE launched an aggressive organizing campaign and with the help of Swedish unions was able to reach an agreement with H&M that led to the unionization of the company’s main warehouse in the New Jersey.

We can expect that the UFCW will launch an organizing drive at Tesco, and that it will reach out to unionized workers in the UK for help. But what would be the basis for cooperation? Why shouldn’t UK workers see the company’s expansion into the profitable US market as an opportunity for them to get a bigger share of the profits? And will the USDAW risk it “partnership” with Tesco on risky solidarity actions?

There are, of course, good reasons why workers in the UK should support their fellow workers in the US.

•    It is essential to stop the non-union juggernaut at work in the global economy promoted by global capital. The HR practices—including union avoidance tactics—that firms like Tesco learn and in the US will likely migrate to the UK in time.

•    The profits that Tesco makes in the US are much more likely to increase the capacity of the firm to resist the demands of its UK workforce than they are to be distributed in the form of higher wages.

•    Finally, there are shared values of solidarity. Trade unionism stands for more than just reciprocity. We don’t cross a picket line even if there is little likelihood of reciprocal behavior in the future because we believe in bonds that go beyond pure self-interest. Pure self-interest is, after-all, one of the dominant values of modern society that we seek to change.  Challenging narrow self-interest as the driving force of society should be a core value of a new global labor movement.

These common interests and values would be far more obvious if workers employed by the same firms and industries had a well developed infrastructure and a dense network of communication. But this is not the case. Instead, relationships usually are built only when unions confront immediate challenges that require international campaigns. This lack of pre-campaign relationships puts labor at a tremendous disadvantage and sometimes allows companies to play workers off against each other.

Labor needs to take a tip from the global corporations it confronts.  Giant firms dominate key industries and do business around the world, while unions are nationally based with little cross-border contact. When a fight breaks out that requires cross-border solidarity, union relationships must be cobbled together on an ad hoc basis, built essentially on blind faith with no legacy of past cooperation. The kind of pre-existing relationships that would make strategic planning and action a natural response to Tesco’s move do yet not exist.

For a global unionism to be capable of taking on the giant corporations, unions must begin with relationship building long before the battles begin.  If we’re going to take on corporations like Tesco, we can’t wait till they attack us to start building trust and sharing information, strategies, tactics -- and our commitment to common values.

From Campaigns to Movement

Second of two parts. A version, with citiations, of this blog by GLS staffers Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith appears in New Labor Forum, Spring 2006: www.newlaborforum.org

While the obstacles to global labor cooperations must be taken seriously – but they are not insurmountable.  In this blog we give a few examples of promising strategies for effective international union cooperation, and some suggestions for next steps.. 

Horizontal cooperation
Traditionally, unions have relied on Global Union Federations (GUFs – formerly called International Trade Secretariats) to link unions in broad industrial categories like transportation workers and service workers around the globe.  While these organizations have often played an important role in promoting international labor cooperation, they have two problems.  First, they are very small, severely understaffed organizations that are equipped to stimulate but hardly to conduct the vast work of international labor cooperation.  Second, they are largely bound by rules of protocol that require communication between workers in different countries to pass from an affiliated national union or federation in one country through the international organization to the affiliated national union or federation in another country.  This cumbersome procedure can impede as well as promote contact and cooperation among those who work for the same company or in the same industry or occupation in different countries.

More horizontal links are possible.  In 2002, French union representatives on the board of France Telecom noticed that a declaration of insolvency for its recently-acquired German subsidiary MobilCom was on the agenda for the upcoming meeting.  The union representatives interpreted this as part of a “rectification plan” to make employees pay for the huge debts incurred by the company’s global acquisition binge during the high-tech bubble.  The French unionists immediately tried to contact German workers at MobilCom through UNI, but found that its German affiliate had no members at MobilCom.  But some French union activists remembered meeting people from the German metalworkers union IG Metall at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre.  A few emails later they were directly in touch with some IG Metall members at MobilCom.

Soon German and French workers developed an aggressive plan to expose France Telecom’s plans. The energy of the French response helped activate the German workers, who had limited experience with unions.  Rallies were held with both German and French workers participating. Pressure was put on the German government to help the German company, saving it from imminent closure.  An agreement for more orderly cutbacks and a good severance plan were negotiated.

The MobilCom story indicates how horizontal channels of communication can make possible direct cooperation among workers in different countries.  Alain Baron, a union representative for the French union SUD-PTT on the France Telecom Board, observes,

“The cross border unity established in the France Telecom group is indicative of a new social climate. The attacks of the multi-nationals on jobs, their ability to relocate, do not often meet with an adequate response from the unions. Enclosed in their local routine interests, bogged down in inter-apparatus negotiations, the traditional unions often find it hard to establish contacts which can mobilize employees in several countries against the same employer.  The international structures of trade unions, when they exist, are in general too distant from the union activist on the ground.”  He adds that new venues like the World Social Forum are important to establish worker to worker links.  “The easiest way to cross the Rhine was through crossing the ocean.”

Strategic alliances
Often international labor cooperation is a matter of time-limited campaigns that leave little international linkage behind when they are victorious or abandoned.  Unions also need to consider strategic alliances – commitments between unions with strong common interests to work together on common projects on an on-going basis.

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) has been at the forefront of building bridges with their Mexican counterparts.  In the early 1990s, faced with the passage of NAFTA, the UE entered into what it called a “Strategic Organizing Alliance” with the Mexican Frente del Trabajo (FAT).  Together the two unions instituted regular worker-to-worker exchanges, published a monthly electronic periodical, built worker centers and joint organizing teams, and regularly informed their members about what they were doing and why it mattered to them.

The UE/FAT alliance worked to ensure that workers on both sides of the border benefited from coordinated activities.  FAT members, for example, traveled to Milwaukee to provided support for the UE organizing campaign at a local foundry, where they allayed Mexican immigrant workers’ concerns that the UE might be similar to “company” unions they knew all too well in Mexico.  On behalf of FAT members, the UE filed the first complaint under the Mexico-US labor rights “side agreement” that accompanied NAFTA – charging General Electric and Honeywell with labor rights violations.  It has also built a tri-national alliance between unions in the US, Canada, and Mexico to enforce the organizing rights of Mexican workers at the Echlin auto parts company.

Framework agreements
About two dozen global firms with more than two million workers have signed “framework agreements” that resemble the Quebecor agreement described earlier in this article.  These agreements differ from corporate codes of conduct in that they are negotiated with unions and provide for some kind of union participation in implementation and monitoring.  The “Declaration of Social Rights and Industrial Relations” signed by Volkswagen, the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) and European Works Council, for example, requires the company to provide its workers worldwide with the right to form unions, protection against discrimination, a safe working environment, and minimum wage standards consistent with local conditions.  Volkswagen was pressured to accept the agreement by Western European workers who already have those rights; as Robert Steiert of the IMF puts it, the agreement is most important for “workers at plants to be built or taken over by Volkswagen, especially in lesser developed countries.”

Such agreements are no panacea.  So far they cover only those workers directly employed by the companies, not the growing number of workers employed by suppliers contracted by the firms. In the VW agreement, the company pledges to “encourage” its suppliers to abide by the agreement, but it does not stop Volkswagen from contracting with labor rights violators.  The auto unions see the need to tighten this language as an important next step. Indeed, if they do not find a way to extend decent wages and standards throughout the supplier chain, they will find that they represent fewer and fewer workers. 

Framework agreements are made between big international bureaucracies on both sides of the labor-management divide. The communication that they foster is more likely to be among high union officials and top company officials than among workers, shop stewards, and local union leaders in different countries. This can limit both the effectiveness of the agreements and their capacity to build a movement.  Implementation and monitoring of framework agreements can be difficult where no union exists in a workplace. 

But, in part because of the limited staff and resources of the federations that sign them, some of the framework agreements have led to the development of global networks of participating unions to directly monitor them.  These networks and the general flow of information which often results from these agreements help workers identify common interests, common problems, and discrepancies in company policies.

Some US trade unionists dismiss framework agreements because they usually have not lead to new members—the primary focus of US trade union strategy. In contrast, many trade union officials and activists we talked with in Europe who have experience with framework agreements see them as a first step in global union coordination at the firm or industry level. 

Some next steps

Here are some concrete steps unions can take to make international labor cooperation less haphazard and more proactive:

Create efficient communication channels at all levels
•    Increase exponentially the amount of information flowing among workers and their organizations at all levels.  This will require significant resources for everything from research to translation services.  Regular information exchanges with unions in other countries can be facilitated by internet-based knowledge networks; a Global Labor Solidarity E-Newsletter presenting experiences and analyzing lessons of cooperative efforts; and periodic conferences.  Communication-- swapping stories and reflecting on issues, strategy and tactics-- should involve local unions, staff at all levels, and the membership.

•    Institute regular work-to-worker exchanges: Traditional labor connections are funneled through national and international federations.  But to build support for the radical shift toward a global labor movement, workers need to be continually “rubbing shoulders” with workers from other countries who work in the same companies, industries, and occupations.  Such exchanges will not only build trust and solidarity, but also position workers to assist and encourage their own unions to go global.

•    Build trust overseas by offering concrete services to workers and unions in other countries: One way to overcome suspicions and cement relationships is to begin offering services to unions and their allies abroad.  At a recent conference on outsourcing, for example, Indian unionists asked US unionists to provide on-demand information about US companies.  Latin American labor networks have similarly requested regular updates on American trade policy and political developments.  Initiating networking overseas by offering such services will begin opening doors and building the trust needed for on-going coordinated action.   

Create global networks and alliances before the battles begin
•    Start reaching out to potential allies. Unions need to connect with national and local unions to build relationships far in advance of asking workers in other countries to commit risky acts of solidarity.  Such pre-battle networking should also include foreign civil society organizations and allied government officials.

•    Develop “intelligence” about countries, unions, and industries around the globe to spot new trends and construct new strategies. As any global corporation knows, going global requires staying abreast of an increasingly complex set of variables, such as national labor laws, political developments, and economic conditions.  Seeking regular “intelligence” about specific countries and global industries can ensure unions that they are not “flying blind” in the global arena.

•    Utilize immigrant members.  15% of the US workforce are immigrants.  They are playing a critical role in the growth of unions in low wage service industries.  They also form a vital resource for forming links to established and nascent labor movements around the world.  Unions should provide resources to help them utilize their ties with their home countries to promote on-going international connections.

Connect the local and the global
•    Build a global strategy at the local level.  Today even local unions must confront global corporations either at the collective bargaining table or in organizing campaigns as multi-national corporations extend their reach in the economy.  Unions should develop a set of practices and protocols at all levels to build global perspectives and global action into local campaigns. This should include creating task forces of workers specializing in bringing international pressure to bear in local campaigns through direct contact with unions and workers in other countries. The Quebecor and FranceTelecom campaigns described above are examples of how global actions can help local campaigns.

•    Establish educational programs about globalization so that workers can participate in an informed way in building a global labor movement. Unions need to begin telling workers the facts demonstrating what they already know viscerally: globalization is affecting their lives and is here to stay.  Such education is politically essential for dialogues about shifting resources into global networking and campaigns.

Take the offensive on global public policy issues
•    Promote alternatives to neoliberal policies at local, state, and national levels.  Globalization has baffled both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.  This is an opportunity for unions to take the lead in defining solutions to outsourcing, contingent work, privatization, and other public policy issues.  By framing public debates, developing expertise, and proposing alternative solutions unions have an opportunity to be perceived as innovative and aggressive in solving workers’ problems.

•    Utilize immigrant members to educate the public, media, and politicians.  Immigrant workers are a rich source of knowledge and experience about the global economy.  They can help labor spearhead a progressive global agenda on migration in the global economy; develop alternatives to destructive trade deals that harm workers in both the North and the South; and launch a new discussion about human, labor, and citizenship rights in the age of globalization.

Unions have tried, with varying success, to utilize international solidarity in particular struggles.  Building a global labor movement next requires something further: proactive approaches designed to make international communication and cooperation part of the daily practice of the labor movement at local, national, and international levels.