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Lockout Spurs Global Solidarity
Sunday afternoon. The phone is ringing in my north London flatt “Hi!” says a voice. “My name’s Orlando, I’m from the States. I’m over here with a couple of comrades. We’re going to picket a building in London tonight.”
I poked at my ear, thinking I was having problems with my hearing. Thing is, we usually picket the buildings over here. Americans have buildings in their own country they can picket.
On reflection, maybe I should have been out. But had I been, I would have missed three hectic, horizon-expanding days.
First off, I find myself at midnight on Sunday standing in the cold outside the ABC building just down the road from Madame Toussaud’s, draped in an American placard and handing out a leaflet with a Broadway address. This isn’t what I usually do on Sundays.
And, of course, standing still on a London street means you are instantly a target for every passing tourist who’s lost. I find myself giving directions to passing gaggles of Spaniards and Italians. The Americans from NABET-CWA, on the other hand — Orlando Burgos, Brian Kelly and Tom Rebich — know exactly where they’re going. Direction, they do not lack.
“What we want is publicity and visible support from UK trade unionists,” Orlando tells me.
So that’s what we set out to achieve. And we were fairly successful. The story was on the national press association by Monday morning, and the London Times had a picture and a report of the Big Three and their UK supporters on the Wednesday. Even more importantly, ABC knew all about it very quickly.
But the real lessons were just sinking in. What seemed like an exotic episode — flying pickets over the Atlantic — became transformed into a crying need. We’ve talked about globalization for years: here was the living proof that it was up and running. If companies like ABC — or Cable and Wireless, or BT, or whoever else — have difficulties with employees, they can simply shift the work to another continent. If our trade unions can’t match that, we are going nowhere except downhill.
For me, the arrival of The Three meant that the ‘friendship treaty’ of the CWA and ourselves — which we proudly termed the ‘Atlantic Alliance’ — had actually moved on from being a piece of paper, and become something real.
Something meaningful.
When these new friends and comrades departed for New York a few days later, it didn’t mean that a chapter was closed. It meant we had to start re-writing the book of international co-operation and fraternity.
We won’t forget the day Orlando, Brian and Tom came to England. We can’t afford to.
(Chris Proctor handles media relations for CWA’s sister union in the United Kingdom, the Communications Workers Union.)
I poked at my ear, thinking I was having problems with my hearing. Thing is, we usually picket the buildings over here. Americans have buildings in their own country they can picket.
On reflection, maybe I should have been out. But had I been, I would have missed three hectic, horizon-expanding days.
First off, I find myself at midnight on Sunday standing in the cold outside the ABC building just down the road from Madame Toussaud’s, draped in an American placard and handing out a leaflet with a Broadway address. This isn’t what I usually do on Sundays.
And, of course, standing still on a London street means you are instantly a target for every passing tourist who’s lost. I find myself giving directions to passing gaggles of Spaniards and Italians. The Americans from NABET-CWA, on the other hand — Orlando Burgos, Brian Kelly and Tom Rebich — know exactly where they’re going. Direction, they do not lack.
“What we want is publicity and visible support from UK trade unionists,” Orlando tells me.
So that’s what we set out to achieve. And we were fairly successful. The story was on the national press association by Monday morning, and the London Times had a picture and a report of the Big Three and their UK supporters on the Wednesday. Even more importantly, ABC knew all about it very quickly.
But the real lessons were just sinking in. What seemed like an exotic episode — flying pickets over the Atlantic — became transformed into a crying need. We’ve talked about globalization for years: here was the living proof that it was up and running. If companies like ABC — or Cable and Wireless, or BT, or whoever else — have difficulties with employees, they can simply shift the work to another continent. If our trade unions can’t match that, we are going nowhere except downhill.
For me, the arrival of The Three meant that the ‘friendship treaty’ of the CWA and ourselves — which we proudly termed the ‘Atlantic Alliance’ — had actually moved on from being a piece of paper, and become something real.
Something meaningful.
When these new friends and comrades departed for New York a few days later, it didn’t mean that a chapter was closed. It meant we had to start re-writing the book of international co-operation and fraternity.
We won’t forget the day Orlando, Brian and Tom came to England. We can’t afford to.
(Chris Proctor handles media relations for CWA’s sister union in the United Kingdom, the Communications Workers Union.)