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Workers' Fight Needs Global Battle Plan, Panel Says
Globalization means that fighting for workers' rights is no longer a fight contained within national borders, said an international panel of labor activists speaking at the CWA annual convention.
"The necessity of building an effective global labor movement has never been more important than it is today," said Barbara Shailor, director of international affairs for the AFL-CIO. "To represent our members, to organize, and to bargain, we must be able to work effectively across borders, coordinate with unions in the same companies and together commit to organize multinationals across the globe."
Those companies may behave like "Dr. Jekyll" in one country and "Mr. Hyde" in another, said Franz Treml, executive vice president of the world's largest union, the 2.5 million-member Ver.di in Germany, representing telecom workers.
Treml applied the analogy to the behavior of T-Mobile, a good employer in Germany that makes an effort to work with the union, but is a starkly different type of employer elsewhere, including the United States.
"In other parts of the world, T-Mobile sometimes acts in a shameful way, treats employees improperly and uses any means to stop them from organizing," he said, calling such behavior "unthinkable in Germany."
He said he and other Ver.di members "are angry and bitterly disappointed by how T-Mobile works" in the United States. They have written more than 4,000 letters of protest to put pressure on the company, demonstrating that workers will stick together internationally to fight for their rights.
Maria Xelhuantzi, a leader of the STRM union in Mexico, also called the Telefonistas, pointed to positive talks her union and CWA have had with SBC and Telmex. SBC owns 8 percent of the company. Meeting in San Antonio recently, the unions and management discussed evolving technologies, jobs of the future, training strategies and other issues affecting members in both countries.
The alliance has been successful, and she hopes to build on it.
"We need to take it to higher and deeper levels of integration and solidarity," she said, noting the increasingly tough battles workers all over the world are facing.
"One of the most painful truths in our time is that the situation for workers has worsened in the last years in every country," she said. "The race to the bottom in wages and in work conditions, unemployment, loss of collective rights and collective bargaining, the attacks against health care and pension funds occur everywhere, every day."
"The necessity of building an effective global labor movement has never been more important than it is today," said Barbara Shailor, director of international affairs for the AFL-CIO. "To represent our members, to organize, and to bargain, we must be able to work effectively across borders, coordinate with unions in the same companies and together commit to organize multinationals across the globe."
Those companies may behave like "Dr. Jekyll" in one country and "Mr. Hyde" in another, said Franz Treml, executive vice president of the world's largest union, the 2.5 million-member Ver.di in Germany, representing telecom workers.
Treml applied the analogy to the behavior of T-Mobile, a good employer in Germany that makes an effort to work with the union, but is a starkly different type of employer elsewhere, including the United States.
"In other parts of the world, T-Mobile sometimes acts in a shameful way, treats employees improperly and uses any means to stop them from organizing," he said, calling such behavior "unthinkable in Germany."
He said he and other Ver.di members "are angry and bitterly disappointed by how T-Mobile works" in the United States. They have written more than 4,000 letters of protest to put pressure on the company, demonstrating that workers will stick together internationally to fight for their rights.
Maria Xelhuantzi, a leader of the STRM union in Mexico, also called the Telefonistas, pointed to positive talks her union and CWA have had with SBC and Telmex. SBC owns 8 percent of the company. Meeting in San Antonio recently, the unions and management discussed evolving technologies, jobs of the future, training strategies and other issues affecting members in both countries.
The alliance has been successful, and she hopes to build on it.
"We need to take it to higher and deeper levels of integration and solidarity," she said, noting the increasingly tough battles workers all over the world are facing.
"One of the most painful truths in our time is that the situation for workers has worsened in the last years in every country," she said. "The race to the bottom in wages and in work conditions, unemployment, loss of collective rights and collective bargaining, the attacks against health care and pension funds occur everywhere, every day."