The Trade Union Movement
and the Changing Activity Environment

The conference of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions -ICFTU held in April 2000 accepted that "The powerful forces of globalisation and the era of information technology are sharply changing the activity environment of the trade union movement."

Multinational corporations, economic policymakers and governments are taking the opportunities offered by globalisation and violating labour standards. The achievements of the trade union movement are everywhere under threat. Fending off the danger is not possible without a reinforcement of trade unions at every level: from local communities to global organisations.

The most urgent task in several countries is to raise the level of organisation of wage earners. For various reasons a clear majority are outside the trade union movement. The increasingly uncertain situation of workers has not led to an increase in the level of organisation. Trade unions in developing countries have managed to increase their membership but in many industrialised and transition economy countries membership has even fallen.

One major challenge for the trade union movement is to encourage young workers to organise and to understand the significance of trade union activity.

The projects of the Trade Union for the Municipal Sector – KTV and other Finnish trade unions in the developing countries and Finland's neighbouring regions convey information and skills that help their sister unions to recruit members and safeguard their interests.

One good example of this is the collective project of three Finnish unions: KTV, STTK-J and Super with the municipal, state and health sector workers unions in Lithuania. In the last four years the Lithuanians have halted the decline in membership and improved their ability to safeguard their common interests and education.

Central Trade Union Organisations
and Trade Secretariats

The member organisations of the largest world-wide trade union organisation, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions – ICFTU represent the interests of one hundred and twenty-five million workers. Almost half of these are still European wage-earners. The Christian and other international central trade union organisations are clearly smaller than the ICFTU.

The international trade union movement is based on the ICFTU and on other global confederations, and on international trade secretariats and regional organisations. Many of these secretariats were formed over a hundred years ago, much earlier than the ICFTU. Trade Union secretariats are independent, democratic organisations representing workers in their own sector.

KTV is a member of two international trade secretariats. It joined Public Services International – PSI in 1931, the year KTV was formed, and in 1996 it also joined the International Transport Workers Federation – ITF.

Public Services International – PSI

Public Services International – PSI broadly represents public sector workers. Five hundred and sixty-one trade unions in 145 countries belong to this organisation, representing a total of 20 million individual union members.

PSI is guided by an action programme approved by its congress and defining the central focus of its work.

• PSI defends trade union rights everywhere and organises training, especially in the developing countries. The organisation investigates the situation of public services and privatisation.
• In Eastern Europe and the developing countries the central focus of PSI is to fight for healthcare and social services as well as effective water and energy supplies.
• The important goals are equality and equal treatment of women in the trade union movement.
• PSI lobbies the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – OECD, the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation – ILO.

In the last decade PSI has modified some of its foci and perspectives. Besides the issues that are important to the unions of developing countries, it has raised the issue of

• problems associated with privatisation and public sector reforms in the industrialised countries, and
• influencing the policies of international organisations.

The work of PSI nowadays also has great significance for its member organisations in industrialised countries. In spite of this, PSI still maintains the strongest support for unions in the developing countries. The broad educational activity of PSI in the developing countries is made possible by the financial aid and substantive support of its European member unions. Alongside KTV, the most important donor organisations are the trade unions of the other Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, Ireland and solidarity centres such as the Trade Union Solidarity Centre of Finland – SASK.

New arrivals in the range of PSI activities are water supply and other sectoral campaigns, networking through the Internet and effective information services. Reactions to global problems are rapid and member unions receive global support, for example, in their campaigns involving multinational corporations.

PSI has been willing to adopt new strategies, including campaigning against the privatisation of publicly owned utilities such as water and energy. PSI offers its research findings, publications, campaign newsletters and information about its network to all interested parties.

The Reform Process:
the Millennium Review

The reform of PSI is an example of the efforts of the international trade union movement to find new solutions to the problems of workers.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions – ICFTU began a reform process in spring 2000, the Millennium Review, affecting the entire trade union movement. Its goal is to accelerate and diversify the development of the international trade union movement. The project designers place emphasis on the people and their work within the trade union movement as the key issues. Organisations per se are not the main goal. Instead they are merely viewed as tools in the safeguarding of interests and in solidarity work. The results of the extensive reforms are expected after the year 2001.

EPSU and FIPSU

In the 1990s the Finnish trade union movement increased its influence throughout Europe. The principal dimension of international collective bargaining by the Finnish trade unions was established at that time.

One important organisation for KTV is the European Public Services Union, EPSU. This organisation represents trade unions in the public sector in the social dialogue between the trade union movement, the employers and the institutions of the European Union.

In 1999 the trade unions established FIPSU, the European Association of Finnish public sector unions. In FIPSU the member union define a common European and Nordic policy. FIPSU

• publishes a bulletin EURONEN,
• maintains a homepage (www.fipsu.org),
• distributes PSI and EPSU material translated into Finnish, and
• organises training.

Nordic Secretariat

The changes in the world have not reduced the significance of co-operation between Nordic municipal workers and trade union organisations. The public sector Nordic secretariat brings together over 2.5 million wage and salary earners, belonging to trade unions of various central trade union organisations.

Trade Union Activity
a Matter of Life and Death

Trade union activism is an expression of a desire to work for common interests. Many trade union activists are forced to pay a high price for this every year. The darkest forces of exploitation do not spare even children, as evidenced by the case of the murdered 12-year old Pakistani Iqbal Masih.

There are continuous reports from around the world of arrests and maltreatment of trade union activists who have defended the rights of their fellow workers. Many are denied their rights without due process of law or condemned on trumped-up charges.

123 trade union activists were murdered in 1999, says ICFTU in its summary of the problem. 1,650 organised workers were the targets of violent attacks and nearly 4,000 were arrested. ICFTU has recorded trade union rights violations in 119 countries. In recent years trade union work has been most hazardous in Columbia. In China independent trade union activists may be subject to decades of imprisonment.

In the United States in 1997 at least one in ten trade union activists who organised other workers suffered arbitrary dismissal.

According to ICFTU reports, the number of countries where trade union rights are violated increased in the 1990s.

Iqbal Masih

Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani, was murdered in 1995 at the age of 12 years. Iqbal was shot because he struggled for liberation from enforced child labour. When four years old, Iqbal had begun working in a carpet factory as a forced labourer, because his farmer father could not pay a debt of EUR 12 to a moneylender. The Pakistani government has persecuted people who have called for an investigation into the death of Iqbal, whose work helped to free 3,000 children from forced labour.

Commitment and Practice

By the beginning of the year 2000, 146 countries had signed the International Labour Organisation agreement number 98 seeking to guarantee the rights trade union organisation and collective bargaining. Many countries that have ratified this agreement blatantly infringe these rights, to say nothing of countries that have failed to ratify.

"The work of non-governmental organisations has great influence. Examples of this include the development of environmental values at Shell and the fast food chain Macdonald's. These companies are forced to pay heed to the opinion of ordinary people, as the alternative is to face boycotts and possible financial loses due to falling sales." Quoted from an editorial in the quality magazine Suomen Kuvalehti of 20 April 2000.

Significance of NGOs Reinforced

In an interview in the magazine Kumppani no. 2–2000 professor Raimo Väyrynen emphasised the growing significance of NGOs in the struggle for a just world.

The number of NGOs in Finland grew five-fold in the 1990s. They are currently estimated to number nearly 30,000. According to professor Väyrynen, the significance of NGOs has undeniably increased with their growing numbers. The Internet has made the international contacts and co-operation between NGOs more effective.

"The activity of non-governmental organisations is no longer first and foremost directed at the State, but is now increasingly a dialogue with market forces. The globalisation of the market economy and its consequences have become essential questions."

"I believe that the significance of non-governmental organisations will grow even more in the future, due to information technology and rising public awareness. At the same time the need for non-governmental organisations to crystallise their policies and values will increase. Shouting slogans will no longer get them very far," professor Väyrynen observes.

Lobbying One's Own Government

Professor Walden Bello, who is considered one of the most visible figures in the international non-governmental organisation movement, emphasises that NGO activists must primarily influence the governments of their own countries.

"No global civil movement can produce change by itself. The task of civil society is to influence governments and Parliaments by such means as producing information to show the impact of neo-liberalism and the World Trade Organisation", suggested Bello in winter 2000.

Non-Governmental Organisations
in Developing Countries

A large proportion of the hundreds of thousands of national and local non-governmental organisations operate in Western Europe and elsewhere in the developed countries. The rise of NGOs as a widespread phenomenon in the developing countries began in the 1990s. Partly this was based on the initiative and support of NGOs in the industrialised world, and partly by the efforts of activists in the developing countries. The independence of NGOs in the developing countries has been reinforced in recent years.

NGOs of the North and the South work in close co-operation. Alongside their unifying goals there are differences of outlook. These differences are generally ironed out through constructive dialogue.

Many governments in the developing countries persecute NGOs in a manner equally brutal to the treatment dispensed to the trade union movement. In the present world, however, governments are no longer capable of preventing civil organisations from gaining support.

Broad Co-operation

In recent years there has been increased co-operation between non-governmental organisations and the trade union movement in Finland and in many other countries. This co-operation is based on common goals concerning the environment, equality and social and human rights.

Increased co-operation improves the prospects of success both for NGOs and the trade union movement.

Common Campaigns

In Finland NGOs and the trade union movement have worked side by side in several campaigns pertaining to the developing countries. These campaigns have involved human rights, the level of development funding and many other issues. The state-funded Centre for Development Co-operation – Kepa has served in large measure as the established centre for this co-operation

"There is already more discussion of image control in the modern world than of communication. Image control means the general attractiveness of an enterprise, its leadership image, its financial success, the quality of its services and products, its working environment and its corporate responsibility," observed Helinä Hirvikorpi in the business magazine Talouselämä no. 10/2000.

China and the Human Rights of Workers

Three hundred thousand foreign businesses are now operating in China. About 30 Finnish enterprises had production plants in China by the beginning of 2000. In the latter half of the 1990s only the United States received more foreign investment than China, where many factors have attracted multinational corporations. There is one aspect about which representatives of the business community have, as a rule, been silent. In winter 2000 this was expressed by the Secretary General of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions – ICFTU, Bill Jordan, as follows: "The country offers ideal conditions for exploitation because human rights have no significance and free trade unions are non-existent".

Burning Questions

"The burning questions of the future are: where are the limits of lobbying by enterprises in the corridors of power and where do their responsibilities for the impacts of their operations on the development of the country in question, its people and their human rights begin… For enlightened consumers and members of the public it is no longer enough to whisper that 'we are not involved in politics'. If a company has close relations with a national government nowadays, it is also expected to acknowledge its moral obligations," commented Leila Mustanoja, Executive Director of the Fullbright Centre in Helsinki, in Net no. 2-2000.

A Proper Employer Policy