IMF - the last twenty years

Post Cold War Union Building

Under new leadership, the IMF immediately addressed these challenges. By December 1990, a "Plan of Action" identified Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary as key transition countries and focused on preparing them for the role independent unions play in democratic market-based societies. In 1991, seminars were held in the target countries as well as Romania and Bulgaria, and in December the first IMF conference in Eastern Europe took place in Brno, Czekoslovakia on the issue of migration. Starting that year, millions of metalworkers in Central Europe began to join the IMF, and by the time of the centenary congress in 1993, metalworking unions from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania were IMF members. The Slovenian metalworkers became members that same year. By 1997, IMF affiliates in this region by-and-large took over responsibilities for their own programs.

The first IMF office opened in Central and Eastern Europe in Budapest in 1997 and efforts turned to South-eastern Europe, where the rebuilding of cooperative relations after years of war and ethnic conflicts was a priority. Affiliations, mostly in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, soon followed. IMF attention then turned to the former Soviet Republics and the Baltic states. Plans for a Project Office in Moscow were developed and implemented over several years. A new milestone was passed with the affiliation of unions in Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine in 1999. In 2001, the IMF Executive was enlarged to include a representative from Central and Eastern Europe. By 2004, the 12 regional affiliates the IMF counted in 2001 had grown to 19, including a first affiliation from Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan).

Since 1989, strong metalworking unions have been built throughout the former Soviet Bloc, but many challenges remain. Entrenched regimes still regard independent unions with hostility, particularly in Belarus, where the Lukashenko dictatorship tries to crush them. Economic difficulties persist in many countries, and even where there has been some progress, metalworkers' gains are sure to be threatened by the deepening economic crisis that began in 2008.

Eastern and Central Europe was not the only world region where the IMF and the movements it had assisted, progressed. In South Africa, combined international and domestic pressures forced the apartheid state to release Nelson Mandela, who was elected to lead the country in 1994. South African metalworkers were already well represented in the IMF in 1989, particularly by the huge NUMSA, but in the rest of Africa, there were only 13 affiliates and none in Mozambique, Angola or Nigeria. That number grew by 2005. Excluding South Africa, there were 24 affiliates in Africa, including important unions in Mozambique and Angola as well as countries on the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, despite this membership growth and a few bright spots, there was no significant economic development in post-colonial Africa.