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10 July, 2008
At the ICEM’s World Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, in November 2007, a resolution was adopted in support of the World Day for Decent Work. This global day of action and mobilisation – 7 October 2008 – is organised by the Decent Work, Decent Life campaign, led by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Council of Global Unions, Solidar, the Global Progressive Forum, Social Alert International, and the European Trade Union Confederation.
ICEM has a special interest in Decent Work, particularly in view of the Global Union Federation’s strong work over the past several years on Contract and Agency Labour (CAL). For this reason, the ICEM is focusing its 7 October action day events, and the period to follow, on CAL. ICEM is also working together with the other Global Union Federations, through the Council of Global Unions, on the CAL issue.
As part of ICEM’s overall campaign, we will intensify our activities on this date to ensure equal rights and equal treatment for temporary and agency workers. The ICEM will use the Global Day of Action as the start of a global push to organise contract and agency workers. This campaign will run until December 2008.
Affiliates will be asked to give special attention to contract and agency workers during this period, as well as to give priority to the issue as a whole.
Campaign materials will be published to help affiliates address the issue at local, national, and international levels. With this special InBrief newsletter, we would also like to call your attention to the issue of Contract and Agency Labour globally, as well as also within particular work sectors. The aim of distribution the information is to share and to learn from experiences.
In the upcoming months, further useful materials will be published and distributed, and we will also send you information on how you and your union can become active on this issue as the 7 October World Day of Action arrives.
Activities that affiliates can consider doing, include:
• Issuing press communications, highlighting 7 October as a the start of a campaign on organising contract and agency labour workers;
• Active distribution of the ICEM campaign material;
• Organising workshops with members discussing the CAL issue, and coming up with union responses;
• Organising public debates on CAL;
• Go out and start organising campaigns that specifically target contract and agency workers.
The ICEM also continues to call on all its affiliates, and their members, in both developing and developed countries, to sign the call to action at http://www.decentwork.org.
In addition, in the last several weeks, the ICEM has invited all affiliates to fill in an online survey. Through this survey, we aim to gather information on CAL in your industrial sectors and countries. Is CAL a growing phenomenon? How does your union respond? What means and methods are you using to organise temporary workers? The answers will give us valuable information – information to inform other affiliates on best practices and successful strategies used by fellow unions.
Many of you have already filled in this survey, and we would like to ask others who have not, to do so in the near future. If you have not received an invitation to participate in the survey, please send an e-mail to [email protected].