Virtually invisible: the international union merger
Peter Waterman is an expert on international labour affairs. He worked for the WFTU (1966-9) and as an academic specialised on labour and other internationalisms (1972-98).

From International Union Rights, volume 13.3.

At a conference in Vienna, November 2006 there will take place the puzzling unification of some major international and national trade unions. Unlike previous such new creations, particularly those following World Wars One and Two, this one is occurring without any upsurge of social protest and labour self-confidence, and with little public knowledge.

Although the parties involved talk about the creation of a new union international, the word ‘merger’ seems rather more appropriate. This is for two reasons.

Firstly, what appears to be taking place here represents a largely administrative merger between two Western European-based international trade union centres of the social-reformist tradition. These are the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL). Given the serious effects on them of neo-liberalism and globalisation – in both membership and financial terms – this makes some administrative sense.

The ICFTU (1949), inheritor of the international Social-Democratic tradition, is here the major partner, claiming some 150 million members. The WCL (1968) descends from the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions (1920), is of Social-Catholic inspiration, and claims some 26 million – largely in Latin America. (The WCL, however, severely exaggerates its own membership figures, and is to a large extent a development project of West-European Christian Democracy, without whose funding it would collapse. Within Asia it operates as a ‘spiritual’ brotherhood, the BATU).

Other international organisations involved, such as the European Trade Union Confederation (1974) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (TUAC 1948) are similarly social-reformist and based in Western Europe. The unification also involves the trade-specific internationals (e.g. public service or agriculture) of the ICFTU and WCL. Some of these have already merged. However, these tend to complicate the merger because the Global Union Federations associated with the ICFTU in the Global Unions network, are much older than, much bigger than, and autonomous from, the ICFTU, whilst the WCL equivalents are functional departments of the organisation. Moreover, the WCL has for some years been trying to organise, and claiming to represent, workers amongst the non-waged majority of the world’s working class – something with no equivalent within the ICFTU/Global Unions family. Finally, the WCL seems to wish to prevent the global or regional merger reaching down to national level. The role of the ETUC in the whole process needs emphasis in so far as it provides some kind of model of a unified union body, being formally autonomous from the international centres and having long included national unions of both the Communist and Catholic tradition.

Secondly , the word ‘merger’ seems appropriate because of the analogy with the contemporary corporate world, in which it is the boards of directors who are involved, whilst those lower down the hierarchy are either uninformed, passively observe or – where more actively concerned and involved – may at best express some opinions or hope for the best. In this particular case the merger has been virtually invisible to member unions, to the 176 million or so of union members claimed, to world public opinion in general - and even to that progressive part of such in the new ‘global justice and solidarity movement’.

This virtual invisibility has also been true of ‘virtual reality’. Bearing in mind the number and quality of international union or labour websites, and the ease of publication on them, this invisibility is puzzling, at the very least. Neither on the site of the ICFTU, the Global Unions or the WCL has it been possible to find more than a few meagre messages on something supposedly of significance to tens of millions! This invisibility extends even to the otherwise excellent and autonomous site, LabourStart. Indeed, an inquiry about this lack, addressed to the Press Office of the ICFTU, produced only a reference back two years to a resolution of its 2004 Congress! Information poverty here goes to the point at which a relevant article by the ICFTU’s Joint General Secretary was only published in Medellin, Colombia (Oliveira 2006).

I was apparently fortunate in being thousands of kilometres from Brussels, base of both major centres involved, whilst writing this piece! It seems to have been in Latin America that there has been most interest in the merger – at least at regional level. This may be because of a recent rise in labour and other social protest in Latin America. Or because it is here that the WCL has some presence. Here, in any case, there has been expressed most concern about the political content of the merger, the autonomy it will allow at regional level and its implications at the national one (Consejo Consultivo Laboral Andino 2005).

The obvious tension in Latin America is between the regional organisations of the ICFTU and the WCL. The regional body of the ICFTU, the ORIT (Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores), is actually a hemispheric organisation, including the major national union centres of the USA and Canada. That of the WCL, the CLAT (Confederación Latinamericana de Trabajadores), is restricted to Latin America. This does not, however, mean that the CLAT is more radical than the ORIT. The ORIT has itself been so much more assertive than its mother organisation in Brussels that the ICFTU has ignored its (hardly revolutionary) Labour Platform for the Americas (2006). This relative radicalism has certainly led to expressed concern about a unification hatched in Western Europe (Jakobsen 2005).

One should not, finally, discount the influence in Latin America of the World Social Forum and its regional spin-offs, most of which have taken place in the sub-continent. The WSF has provided not only a site at which some of the (closed-door) union negotiations have taken place, but have also suggested more holistic alternatives to globalisation than have been traditionally offered by the major union internationals. Involvement in general social protest may have itself stimulated Latin American union concern about the content or ideology of a unification that is likely to continue a model forged in Western Europe during the years of both the Welfare State and the Cold War - both of which have pretty much disappeared.

The Cold War requires mention because this unification excludes, Cold-War fashion, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), a Communist-dominated organisation that has reproduced the misfortunes of its sponsoring bloc, but that still has some sentimental following (sentimental since its policies are not notably more radical than those of the ICFTU/WCL). Within Latin America, the WFTU is largely dependent on the Cuban state and its unions. But the WFTU has national affiliates elsewhere in the region, and these are predictably critical of a unification which excludes their tradition (Pacho 2005). Such concerns have emerged from Communist-oriented unions elsewhere (Majumdar 2006). But these are either iteration of 50-year-old Communist ideology, or formal objections without any new ideological or strategic elements. So neither the addition nor the exclusion of the (ex-) Communist unions seems likely make much difference to the new organisation.

Questioned about the coming merger, a North American international labour-rights specialist in Vienna said he knew nothing about it though he hoped to attend it.

Asked for a sentence on whether the event would be significant for the labour movement internationally, a Latin American with 10-20 years experience in international unionism, replied with one word, “no”.

A veteran South-Asian labour organiser, currently engaged in labour and social movement solidarity in the region and more widely, was certainly aware of the coming merger. He suggested it would have no positive effect at either regional or national level. He considered it a Western and top-down initiative, with any unifying prospects locally being obstructed by national union leadership concerns “to keep hold of their assets, such as buildings, and their foreign project funding”. Moreover, the exclusion of WFTU affiliates meant inevitably leaving out major national union centres in the region.

A highly-experienced and qualified European observer commented:

“what is the politics of the new International supposed to be? No one knows...but I fear it might be a divorce from any sort of explicit ideology, although I guess they won't be able to escape from the subliminal, immanent ideology of the trade union movement which is obliged to wage the class struggle whether it wants it or not, or even knows it or not. It will probably be couched in human rights terms”.

The only extensive analysis, by a former activists of the French CGT-FO, concludes:

‘This proposed merger has turned its back on the great founding principles of proletarian internationalism, based on the understanding that society is divided into social classes with opposed and contradictory interests - that is, on the one hand, the exploiters of wage labour and, on the other hand, the exploited who are forced to sell their labour to survive [] All the sectors involved in this trade union unification project would be well[] advised to reflect before heading down a road that could lead to a dead-end with totalitarian implications’ (Sandri 2005).

The CGT itself, however, has been playing an active part in the unification process (Confédération Générale du ravail 2006).

Given the extent to which the international unions have been themselves infected or affected by the global justice movement, a totalitarian outcome seems the least imaginable of scenarios. The human-rights orientation seems more likely. The founding event may tell us more. But further stagnation, disorientation or ambiguity seems likely until and unless an open global dialogue about the merger takes place. A stimulus to such may be provided by the resources below.

Resources
Consejo Consultivo Laboral Andino (2005): Reflexiones sobre la unidad internacional sindical. Lima: Consejo Consultivo Laboral Andino / Programa Laboral de Desarrollo. http://www.ccla.org.pe/publicaciones/cuadernos_integracion.php

Confédération Générale du Travail (2006): Introduction de Bernard Thibault au CCN du 17 septembre 2006 sur l’ adhésion à la Confédération Syndicale Internationale. http://www.cgt.fr/internet/

Jakobsen, Kjeld (2005): La nueva central mundial: Pan y rosas? in Consejo Consultivo Laboral Andino. Reflexiones sobre la unidad internacional sindical Lima, Consejo Consultivo Laboral Andino/Programa Laboral de Desarrollo (pp.64-9). http://www.ccla.org.pe/publicaciones/cuadernos_integracion.php

Labour’s Platform for the Americas. 2006. http://www.gpn.org/research/orit2005/index.html

Majumdar, Chittabrata (2006): Problems of International TU Unity, Working Class ( New Delhi), June. http://citu.org.in/wclass_june06_a3.htm

Oliveira, José Olivio M (2006): Nueva Central Sindical Mundial y los desafíos para el movimiento sindical de las Américas, Cultura & Trabajo (Medellín), No. 68, pp. 15-17.

Pacho, Valentín (2005): La utopia de la unidad sindical, in Consejo Consultivo Laboral Andino.. Reflexiones sobre la unidad internacional sindical. Lima: Consejo Consultivo Laboral Andino/Programa Laboral de Desarrollo. Pp.20-29. http://www.ccla.org.pe/publicaciones/cuadernos_integracion.php

Sandri, Roger (2005): Some News on the Future ‘Global’ Union Organisation, ILC International Newsletter N°. 163, pp. 3-6. http://www.eit-ilc.org/us/articles.php? lng=en&pg=560.