Organizing is key, say electronics unions

SINGAPORE: IMF's conference for the ICT, Electrical and Electronics industries brought unions from 15 countries together in Singapore to debate the major challenges to trade unions. Together with the automotive industry, the electronics industry has been hardest hit by the recent economic crisis. On top of job losses, wage freezes and hours reductions, unions reported how companies are using the excuse of the crisis to force through structural change and increase precarious work. Multinational companies are continuing their policies of outsourcing and movement of production from high wage to low wage countries, putting downward pressure on wages and conditions and increasing precarious work. 

Delegates determined that unions need to continue to develop specific strategies to organize different groups of workers, including women, young people, non-manual workers and precarious workers. Reasserting their commitment to organizing electronics workers, delegates declared that while unionization rates in the electronics industry remain so low, organizing must remain the top priority to improve wages and working conditions and restrict the ever increasing spread of precarious work.

In a special session dealing with sustainability issues, presentations were made on health and safety, climate change and the developing challenge of dealing with e-waste.  Numerous threats to workers' health and safety in the industry remain, including stress, repetitive injuries, noise and exposure to toxic chemicals. Tens of thousands of workers in India are manually dismantling computers, exposing themselves to the toxins they contain, without adequate protection. On a more positive note, a presentation by the European Metalworkers' Federation showed how the electronics industry has a key role to play in addressing climate change by developing applications that can assist other industries in reducing their carbon emissions. At the end of the session, delegates were called on to support the Samsung workers' struggle to make the company take responsibility for the deaths of its workers from leukemia.

The responsibility of multinational companies for labour conditions in their supply chains was discussed in a session introduced by CAFOD, a non-governmental organization based in the United Kingdom that has played a significant role in bringing labour abuses in electronics production to the attention of the public. Delegates discussed how unions and NGOs can work together by sharing information, coordinating their strategies and presenting a unified position to companies, especially on the need for them to recognize freedom of association.

The conference had the exceptional opportunity to hear from the President of the All China Federation of Trade Unions' electronics sector union, the first time that a representative from the ACFTU has attended an IMF sectoral meeting. Dong Xiubin informed delegates that the Chinese unions consider it their duty to urge multinational companies to recognize labour regulations, to organize workers in MNCs and to strictly enforce Chinese labour standards. The majority of electronics production today is located in China.

Copies of the presentations made at the meeting and background documents are published on the IMF website.