IMF: building strong unions

GENEVA: A group of IMF affiliates actively engaged in supporting union building work around the world met in Geneva with IMF regional officers, industrial officers and head office staff on September 17 and 18 to examine how to join forces to strengthen IMF's work on union building and collective bargaining.

During the meeting IMF started by giving a report on the background and priorities of the world wide union building and collective bargaining projects that IMF is currently implementing through its regional offices. The externally-funded IMF projects have mainly focused on organising the unorganised workers in IMF industries, including precarious workers, and on building strong national unions.

Participants at the seminar made a commitment to improve the coordination of IMF union building projects, sharing information about the very diverse bilateral union building activities that many IMF affiliates are currently implementing and seeking to identify focal points on which to jointly concentrate future efforts. Participants also reiterated the importance of using the IMF Action Programme as the political framework for all work, centred on organizing and education to strengthen unions and their collective bargaining capacity.

The second day of the seminar addressed the issues of collective bargaining in the context of the financial crisis and the priority of building strong national unions, taking into account  that enterprise unions prove inadequate to respond globally to the situation.  A panel of affiliates and regional officers discussed recent merger experiences in our industries sharing views about the different co-existing national union structures in the IMF. The debate followed by highlighting the need to clarify political principles and objectives before launching merger initiatives, aiming to build commonality of action and strategies and avoid pitfalls such as merging for purely financial considerations. IMF affiliates re-affirmed their commitment to continue working together to strengthen trade unions presence in our industries and to press for national collective bargaining and unity of action..

Recommendations of the meeting included:

• IMF coordinating and collecting information on the affiliates' bilateral activities, mapping out who is working where and disseminating more information on the externally-funded projects, in order to develop a union building network;
• To identify priority countries where synergies can be developed during a two year period and evaluated in 2011;
• On a longer term basis, IMF should identify principles and guidelines for union building and assist national unions organising in transnational corporations to set up union-building networks; and
• To continue sharing experiences and perspectives about building strong national unions, through mergers or common action and collective strategies at national level.

Affiliates from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Spain, United Kingdom and a representative from the EMF participated in the seminar.