10 August, 2005ICEM News release No. 76/2001
Unions organising in the Novartis company today launched the first-ever worldwide network of trade unions within a pharmaceuticals multinational.
Run through the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), the network brings together unions representing Novartis employees on all continents.
It will enable them to swap information and strategies, pool collective bargaining data and plan joint action when needed. Electronic networking will play a major part in these exchanges.
The ICEM is gradually building up union networks within major multinationals in its sectors. ICEM-affiliated unions in the company concerned establish and run a network, with unions in the company's headquarters country often taking on a key role.
In the case of Swiss-headquartered Novartis, the union network coordinator is Roland Conus, of the ICEM-affiliated Swiss industrial and construction workers' union SIB/GBI.
"We're often told that knowledge is power," Conus commented today. "That's not quite right. In fact, knowledge plus the ability to communicate knowledge is power. That's what this network is all about. We can tell each other what we need to know in order to negotiate effectively with Novartis. And we can tell the world if Novartis engages in anti-social behaviour. In which case, the company board may have to get used to putting workers and society first and then, but only then, thinking about shareholder profits and executive pay-outs."
That, Conus believes, can only be achieved through global union networking. "Basically, our motto is the same as the company's: Think Globally, Act Locally."
A slimmed-down Novartis is currently ranked ninth in the world pharmaceutical company league, based solely on its 2000 prescription drug sales of US$ 10.7 billion.
The spin-off of its agrochemicals interests into the Syngenta joint-venture with Zeneca in November 2000 - and the job cuts in both companies that accompanied this restructuring - marked the abandonment of the group's earlier "life science" concept.
Pharmaceuticals now account for 63 per cent of Novartis' revenues, but for 80 per cent of its operating profit. Other operating divisions cover consumer health (food chemicals and neutricals), generics, eye-care and animal health.
The company has encountered a number of problems over the past year, says the first issue of the ICEM Novartis Network News. So "management may be tempted to seek scale through acquisition, plunging a joined workforce into yet another round of unwelcome restructuring. In the face of such uncertainty, employees need to be able to count on a well-organised union that can negotiate with management from a position of strength."
For Novartis workers and their unions, the network says, the way forward is clear: "In a global marketplace, union organisation needs also to be global in its reach, but local in its knowledge and effectiveness. It is for exactly this purpose that the Novartis Union Network has been formed."
Run through the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), the network brings together unions representing Novartis employees on all continents.
It will enable them to swap information and strategies, pool collective bargaining data and plan joint action when needed. Electronic networking will play a major part in these exchanges.
The ICEM is gradually building up union networks within major multinationals in its sectors. ICEM-affiliated unions in the company concerned establish and run a network, with unions in the company's headquarters country often taking on a key role.
In the case of Swiss-headquartered Novartis, the union network coordinator is Roland Conus, of the ICEM-affiliated Swiss industrial and construction workers' union SIB/GBI.
"We're often told that knowledge is power," Conus commented today. "That's not quite right. In fact, knowledge plus the ability to communicate knowledge is power. That's what this network is all about. We can tell each other what we need to know in order to negotiate effectively with Novartis. And we can tell the world if Novartis engages in anti-social behaviour. In which case, the company board may have to get used to putting workers and society first and then, but only then, thinking about shareholder profits and executive pay-outs."
That, Conus believes, can only be achieved through global union networking. "Basically, our motto is the same as the company's: Think Globally, Act Locally."
A slimmed-down Novartis is currently ranked ninth in the world pharmaceutical company league, based solely on its 2000 prescription drug sales of US$ 10.7 billion.
The spin-off of its agrochemicals interests into the Syngenta joint-venture with Zeneca in November 2000 - and the job cuts in both companies that accompanied this restructuring - marked the abandonment of the group's earlier "life science" concept.
Pharmaceuticals now account for 63 per cent of Novartis' revenues, but for 80 per cent of its operating profit. Other operating divisions cover consumer health (food chemicals and neutricals), generics, eye-care and animal health.
The company has encountered a number of problems over the past year, says the first issue of the ICEM Novartis Network News. So "management may be tempted to seek scale through acquisition, plunging a joined workforce into yet another round of unwelcome restructuring. In the face of such uncertainty, employees need to be able to count on a well-organised union that can negotiate with management from a position of strength."
For Novartis workers and their unions, the network says, the way forward is clear: "In a global marketplace, union organisation needs also to be global in its reach, but local in its knowledge and effectiveness. It is for exactly this purpose that the Novartis Union Network has been formed."