In touch with possibilities

BY JESPER NILSSON The world's largest trade union body resides on two floors in an austere steel and glass building in Brussels' business district. It has a staff of 70, plus a further 60 throughout the world, extensive policy and research activities, many publications and newsletters in a variety of languages. Guy Ryder, 46 and British, is the general secretary. Taking up his position one month ago, he has barely settled into his large but brownish-dull office facing a courtyard in the very core of the building. Liverpool-born, Ryder, who was never a worker but has an impressive track record of trade union work at national and international levels, is an eloquent speaker. In clear, well-formulated, barely-accented English, he lays out his vision about the ICFTU, this strange animal that so many know so little about. Originally shaped in 1949 as a reaction to the communist-dominated WFTU, today it affiliates national trade union centres from all over the world. Q: The ICFTU is a huge organisation, nominally representing 157 million trade union members in 148 countries. Is this just a play with large figures, or is there power and impact behind it? A: The ICFTU does have influence, it does have impact, and we are able to make a difference in many national trade union situations. But also at the international level, trying to make a difference in the international policy environment. So my answer is "yes". These aren't figures in the air; they matter. If we didn't have that membership base, then we would not be listened to. And we would not deserve to be listened to. What we have to do is to translate that force of numbers into a force of argument and into impact. And I think, over the years, the ICFTU has performed pretty well in doing that. But we have to look at the new circumstances, circumstances particularly on globalisation, and assess how we could do that even better. One of the things we have to try to do is to bring the national and international dimensions of trade union work closer together. I think those of us who have worked in Europe see that the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has, in a sense, succeeded in bringing the national and European levels at least into contact - to a much greater extent I think than we've seen elsewhere in international work. Q: The ICFTU in 2005, how will it differ from the ICFTU of today? A: What we can say with some confidence is that we will have advanced along the process of the "Millennium Review", and the "Global Unions' project" which is connected with that. What we have to try to do is to ensure that we in the international trade union movement - widely defined - are using our resources to the maximum effect, to advance the interests of working people. Q: Can you briefly explain what the Millennium Review is? A: The mandate for the Millennium Review, launched at our last World Congress in 2000, is quite far-reaching. It really encompasses the future of the international trade union movement: the activities we think shall be undertaken, the manner in which we undertake our work and the structures we use. We have already achieved a wide range of recommendations. In the first place, this encompasses the Global Unions' initiative, which I mentioned. It also gives us a mandate to go further and discuss future relations with the Christian World Confederation of Labour and look for the best possible action with the European Trade Union Confederation, ETUC. We are examining ways in which we might be able to interact most effectively, and in very concrete ways, in terms of sharing facilities and making common use of resources. Moreover, we have to identify our role in trade unions' organisational efforts, in campaign work, in the field of youth, in the field of women. Another area is that of communications. I regard communications as perhaps the key element in bringing together the national and the international in the trade union world. Those are some of the areas. I think that it's very difficult today to predict how far forward it will go. I think it has good momentum behind it; I think we've achieved quite a lot, and I think of it very much as an ongoing work. Q: The Global Unions' project is a sort of "virtual" organisation, encompassing the ICFTU and its affiliates, the trade union secretariats (like the IMF) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC). What is this concept good for? A: We are using the Global Unions' project to do two things. One is to underline and to reflect what is already happening. The ICFTU is working more and more closely, more and more systematically with its partners who share our values. So the Global Union group actually gives substance to this cooperation. And secondly, it gives visibility. It's something that we can communicate very easily. If we say 'Global Unions' I think it strikes a chord - with the public, with the government, with workers. So what we are doing is in fact trying to create a vehicle which is going to take our cooperation forward, enabling us to provide a better service and to better achieve our goals today than we have done in the past. Q: You dwell on organisational issues and forms of cooperation. But what about the substance, the service to be provided by the ICFTU? A: I think if you go to any trade union at any level and ask them what their major problem is, they are certain to tell you: "organising workers". All over the world, trade unions will tell you: "Well, we have a problem attracting young people." "We have the challenge of organising women workers." "We have difficulties because of the fragmentation of the labour market," etc. etc. So the imperative to organise is common to the whole trade union movement. Now, you cannot be farther away from the point of organisation, yet still be in the trade union movement, than the ICFTU is. So the conclusion that I draw is that the ICFTU has to create conditions which will enable and facilitate organisation - an international enabling environment for trade unionism! Q: What does that mean, in concrete terms? A: It means defending the right to organise where that right is threatened. It means intervening along with our Global Unions' Federation partners on multinational enterprises, to make them more open to organising efforts. It means looking at the informal economy - the unprotected and vulnerable workers - to see how they can be brought into contact with trade unions and be organised. So, in effect, you pick up the national imperatives of organisation and you translate them into the international arena. And it is up to us to pick them up, in each of their forms. Women workers, informal economy, trade union rights, intervening with the international institutions to have them facilitate the right type of environment. So it's multifaceted. Q: You mentioned multinational enterprises. But many Global Union Federations (trade union secretariats) consider work with transnational companies as their domain. And they are not very keen in having other partners in that field. A: I think you're right. In many ways, dealing with individual multinational employers is properly and quite rightly the domain of one of the Global Union Federations, depending on the sector. But we have ourselves a fairly extensive role to play. It could be the policy background to these individual company contacts, for example the whole field of corporate social responsibility with Codes of Conduct, the ILO Declaration and the OECD Guidelines on Multinationals. These all form part of the environment which can help contacts with individual unions to be undertaken via Global Union Federation colleagues in optimal conditions. We think that the ICFTU, in fact, is servicing Global Union Federations in their proper contacts with multinationals. And I think this is part of the partnership. We each define our role and we work in a complementary fashion to get the results. Q: Back to the ETUC, with whom you share affiliates, but not structure. Trade unionists on a European level may consider the Millennium Review sort of an ambition of the ICFTU to make the ETUC part of its structure. And they don't like this idea. A: I don't see it in those terms. I don't see it as a structural debate. What we have today is a global trade union international, the ICFTU, and a regional trade union body, the ETUC. And they are not organically linked in any constitutional relationship. What I want to do with our friends in the ETUC is to ensure that the work that we do, and the work that the ETUC does, is absolutely as complementary as possible - that we don't duplicate each other's work, that we don't in any way cross wires in the work we do. So that if we do one piece of work, and the ETUC does one piece of work, the sum totals two, not zero. And frankly, I don't think this is either controversial or difficult. Q: If you look at this question from another angle, what are the weaknesses of the ICFTU today? A: I see a number of challenges. One thing is communications internally within the ICFTU and its different structures. I want to see the ICFTU in Brussels working very effectively with its own regional organisations. We had a policy of decentralisation in 1996; what I want to see is a Global Trade Union Agenda, articulated regionally. Such an agenda would of course take on certain characteristics according to the region in which it is applied. But it is the same agenda. Q: Shall we interpret this as the ICFTU decentralisation of 1996 has gone too far? A: No. I think the decentralisation of 1996 basically addressed our project work, operational activities. We were administering quite a lot of that work out of Brussels, and the 1996 Congress felt that the proper thing would be for that type of work to be done on a regional level. I think they were right. The problem we have does not come from that, but I've detected, after a month here, the need for us to work in a much tighter network. It's about information, it's about bouncing ideas off each other in a much more fluent and open way. I want to see more of that. And inside this building I want to see much more cross-fertilising of ideas and information. And, by extension, it's exactly the same thing with our colleagues in the Global Union Federations, ETUC, TUAC and others. I think really we have a lot to do just to make sure that we are informing, consulting and working together. Q: Once again, what are today's weaknesses... A: I'm not sure it is a weakness today, but it's an area we can always improve upon: We have to work out the proper relationship between on the one hand lobbying - our contact with international organisations, and what might be called mobilisation and campaigning on the other. I think we have to reconcile the different parts of our work and link them together much better; it's an integration of what we do with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, WTO, ILO on the one hand, and our capacity to really relate and to inject all of these issues at national level with all our affiliates. And mobilise them when we can. We have the example of the November 9 day of action, which coincided with the first day of the Doha ministerial meeting of the WTO. I think we need to look at that and see what we can learn from it. I think the general feeling is that it was a pretty good first attempt, but we can do better. I see us operating at these different levels. Yes, we lobby. Yes, we are an influence group in international organisation, but at the same time we shouldn't have that existing apart from the national level trade union mobilisation that we can achieve. So, not as weaknesses, but areas that can be developed. Q: The higher up you get in the trade union structure - for example confederation level in a country - the more talk there is about very large projects and visions. Perhaps this "big" perspective is fairly easy to air, because you can do a lot of talking before you must act. And it is much harder to do anything here and now, on a concrete basis... A: Yes, I think that risk is real. If you step up the rhetoric too loud, and in fact it gets beyond what in realistic terms you can deliver, then you run the risk of what I've referred to as overreaching and underachieving. What I think we have to do is to make a fairly hard-headed assessment of what we really can change, what we really can affect in the world. The level of our ambitions and objectives has to be in touch with our real possibilities. I don't say that we should lack ambition, but I agree, there is a danger that the rhetoric of what we are saying about globalisation, about the world of work, is not in the same ballpark as our real capacities to change things. If so, we run the risk of not being credible. And I think we should be very careful about our credibility. Q: This assessment of ICFTU possibilities, when will it be finished? A: There are a number of time horizons which I'm working towards now. The first is our Steering Committee in June. We then have our Executive Board meeting in November, and the third and final time horizon is our next World Congress, which is in 2004. I'll be looking already at the Steering Committee to set out some framework of ideas about the direction I believe the organisation should be moving in, and hopefully be able to get some firm decisions on whatever proposals I then have at the Executive Board. But I think we are really looking to our next World Congress as a real review and strategic building period. Q: Quite an ambitious timetable... A: Some people think it looks a long way away, but given the size of the issues we have to deal with, it's about right.