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13 November, 2006
A founding Congress in Vienna, Austria, on 3 November gave birth to a new global union confederation for national labour centres. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) was formed, taking the place of its two founding members, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL).
The new ITUC will represent 168 million workers from 306 affiliates in 154 countries. In addition to affiliates from the former ICFTU and WCL, eight other national trade unions, who were not affiliated to a global union organisation prior, are now affiliated to the new organisation. These include Nepal’s GEFONT, France’s CGT, Poland’s OPZZ, Argentina’s CGT and Colombia’s CUT.
ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder
At the Vienna Congress, the new organisation stressed the need to tackle the adverse consequences of economic globalisation and the devastating effect this has had on millions of workers. Specifically highlighted problems included off-shoring, abuse of workers’ rights, and increased levels of poverty.
Fred Higgs, ICEM General Secretary, said the unification of ICFTU and WCL is an “inevitable and welcome development, which we hope will lead to others uniting, creating a single global union confederation.”
He also said that the unity at the national centre level was preceded “by agreements at sectoral level, including the one on integration between the ICEM and the World Federation of Industrial Workers (WFIW).”
Guy Ryder, former head of the ICFTU, was elected General Secretary of the ITUC, while Sharan Burrow of the Australian Council of Trade Unions won election as president. While those two were ICFTU incumbents, at the levels of deputy GSs and deputy presidents, each organisation will have one seat.
Mamounata Cissé (ICFTU) and Jaap Wienen (WCL) became the deputy GSs, while Michael Sommer (DGB-Gemany) and Luc Cortebeeck (CSC-Belgium) will serve as deputy presidents. The new ITUC will undergo a four-year transitional process, after which vice presidential seats and representation will be based on the organisation’s affiliation protocol.
The new website of the organisation is: http://www.ituc-csi.org.