26 October, 2010IMF finalizes draft guidelines on trade union networks in transnational corporations (TNCs) and looks in more detail at how these networks can lead to organizing and promoting international solidarity.
GENEVA: Using global trade union networks in transnational corporations (TNCs) as a means to organize workers and promote international solidarity was the focus of discussion at an IMF working group meeting in Geneva on October 26 & 27, 2010.
The working group, charged with the task of drafting guidelines on how to build and maintain global trade union networks in TNCs, heard how anti-union approaches by TNCs results in infringements of workers' rights and prevent unions from organizing.
Participants discussed the conditions required for international solidarity to assist with organizing in anti-union environments such as the U.S. Learning from previous experiences and preparing and coordinating union work in different countries was identified as one of the strategies unions should adopt.
The meeting also debated how to negotiate and implement international framework agreements with the support of the union in the mother country and to the benefit of workers globally.
Christy Hoffman, Assistant General Secretary of UNI, Kirill Buketov of IUF and Eric Lee, creator of LabourStart, were guest speakers at the meeting and spoke about corporate campaigns used by unions against TNCs with the goal of organizing and defending workers' rights to join a union.
Participants also discussed how to identify the priority TNCs and the next steps that should be done by the group in the next year. This will include eight network meetings covering Tenaris, Gerdau, Ford, Boeing, Nokia, Philips, Caterpillar and Siemens.
This was the second meeting of the IMF working group on trade union networks in TNCs and included representatives from IMF affiliates in Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway and the U.S. An earlier meeting took place in May 2010.
The draft guidelines will now go to the IMF Executive Committee in December for consideration. In addition a meeting looking at the role of network co-ordinators is being proposed to take place in Brazil in March 2011.