Sharan Burrow: How can we strengthen the international labour movement?

Text / Anita Gardner

As metalworkers explore a new form of internationalism through the creation of an organization unifying workers across the industrial sectors of the global economy, Sharan Burrow, the newly elected General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, shares her views on how to build a strong international trade union movement.
In recent decades the labour movement has been confronted with an increasingly hostile political, economic and social environment. Corporations have built an international system of production and distribution that links together workers across national borders, but in which workers have no control over the wealth they create.
Corporations have led this process with the support of many governments and international institutions through neo-liberal policies that feature deregulation of capital and labour markets, privatization of public services and assets, a reduction in employment growth, an erosion of social protection and frequent denial of human and workers' rights.
At the same time, the international trade union movement has increased in its scope, representing far more workers today than 20 years ago, particularly through the inclusion of unions from the developing and emerging-economy countries. However this growth in membership has not necessarily been equalled with the strength required at the international level to push back on some of the neoliberal policies that dominate world politics today.
Sharan Burrow, elected as General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) at its Congress in June this year, is well aware of the challenges that trade unions face and has a clear vision of how the international labour movement can and does act with strength. Sharan takes up this leading position after serving ten years as the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions playing a key role in the Australian unions' national political campaign that saw a conservative government thrown out of office largely for its anti-union stance.
ANITA: What is the future of the international trade union movement and how can we strengthen our position?
SHARAN: This point in time, with the current convergence of global issues that we face, is a good point to stop and reflect even as we push back against a globalized world that is not working for working people.
The question of what does the international union movement do to strengthen capacity is one that is multifaceted and involves the individual global union federations and union centres both nationally and internationally. Because if we work in isolation then we do achieve things that are good for workers on a daily basis, but we probably don't realize our potential.
ANITA: How can we build strength through organizing?
SHARAN: Organizing workers is clearly our core business - recruiting members, growing the unions. But if we are going to be successful on the basis of that strength then you do have to have the structures and the capacity to act in ways that engages those members and builds the success of campaigns or bargaining or lobbying of governments, whatever the activity, off the back of that engagement and therefore constructs the power to win.
Organizing is at the centre of everything we do. It is not mutually exclusive to politics. Therefore in progressive governance structures, whether it's elections in national countries or the role of the United Nations (UN), politics sit at the heart of our capacity to influence an agenda. And organizing, whether we are bargaining with a company or delivering that progressive governance, is absolutely at the heart of our power. You can't have union strength and influence - you can't build a new internationalism - if you are actually not organizing to generate the outcomes you want.
ANITA: What is the role of Internationals in this, given global unions are not directly organizing members?
SHARAN: If you're in an exploitative supply chain in a poor and vulnerable country, or you are in a developed country where the employer is simply anti-union, then you are going to suffer exploitation, disproportionately of course in terms of the circumstances in which people are located.
If you think about this from a practical workers' point of view, the piece of dignity that sits at the heart of people's capacity to survive is wages. And the profit take is now seriously disproportionate to wages, which are at an all time low. In terms of the part of the "corporate-take" wages are probably down to 1930's levels. This is a very serious challenge for the union movement.
Equally with wages, the employment challenge is just enormous. We have 34 million more people unemployed than at the start of the crisis. There is about 220 million in total. We have about 100 million people pushed into extreme poverty living on less than two dollars a day. And you don't only have to find jobs for those 220 million, but 45 million young people are entering the labour force every year and we have already got a problem with youth unemployment in every country, disproportionately again in developing and emerging economies.
Precarious employment is becoming the norm for too many people, particularly women and young people. In many, many areas across the world now, both in developing and developed countries, the employment relationship is increasingly abused with fixed term contracts or casual work with no certainty of hours. It is a form or work that has no capacity to generate an annual income.
So even on these fronts, jobs and decent work, if we don't have global strength we are not going to turn around the agenda.
ANITA: Where have we gone wrong? How is it we have got back to wage versus profits levels last seen in the 1930s?
SHARAN: I don't agree that unions are weak. Unions' structures were geared up for national work. And to the extent that the international unions have had a very important place, it has been about international solidarity, but often only on the basis of a transfer of wealth from developed countries to developing country unions.
It has been very recent that we have come to terms with the fact that everything you do nationally now you must do internationally. There is no point in three countries having a collective agreement for their members if you are constantly at risk of having that undermined at the next bargaining round because the company is anti-union everywhere else it has a footprint.
There is no capacity to generate income distribution that is equitable if you don't have collective bargaining rights, based on a minimum wage and underpinned by social protection.
If we are simply transferring jobs backwards and forwards, or we fill jobs by transporting migrants backwards and forwards, rather than the settled migration that we support, then you have a world of precarious employment, precarious income. That is not about dignity, not about respect and certainly not about rights.
ANITA: How can we be more effective in defending rights in the workplace?
SHARAN: If workers are on their own in a corporate structure that does not respect collective bargaining or occupational health and safety standards then they are in a vulnerable environment.
If though, you have a global strategy, backed by national trade union centres, on labour law if it is weak, or the abuse of labour law because governments aren't actually monitoring the victimization or discrimination of workers or are co-opted by the corporate boardroom, then the national campaigns can be successful, absolutely - there are lots of examples of this. And it will be easier if you are driving this everywhere. Are we making progress? Yes, we are.
ANITA: How do you see the role of the International Metalworkers' Federation in this work?
SHARAN: The IMF is critical in this endeavour because it is not only about traditional coverage, but with the potential merger with ICEM (International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions) and Textiles (International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation), you will have across that spectrum access to any and all global supply chains. At one level they will either be brand manufacturers, contractors of brand name products that work with their own manufacturing companies and supply chains, and the supply chains of big retailers. This is a central piece, like middle management, at the heart of the entire organization of global work. Even services hang off this complex jigsaw puzzle. So IMF sits at the centre of a lot of these questions about workers' justice.
ANITA: Why have wages fallen?
SHARAN: Because in many ways our structures were just national and not international. So the dominant American corporate model was driving profits up and wages down and that became more dominant than the European social model. We have seen emerging economies fight to get the basic minimum standards in place. Even where governments have ratified international labour rights conventions we have still seen them not implemented.
Then you have companies now emerging from the developing world: I am thinking of Vale, out of Brazil. Even with all the pro-labour policies of the government of Brazil, here is a private company that was actually privatized from government ownership and its attitude to workers' rights around the world is shocking. We are only going to tackle that when we tackle it in every country, when we hurt their profit base and when the management has a rethink about what it is they should be doing to shore-up productivity and not put themselves at risk.
ANITA: Have we relied too much on "soft" mechanisms at the international level, such as International Framework Agreements or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) guidelines for multinationals?
SHARAN: It is not an either or. We have always employed tactics wherever they work. And sometimes you have to employ a number of tactics at the same time. It seems to me if we have got a complaint on the International Labour Organization's application of standards, then we also ought to make sure that there is a parallel complaint to the OECD, that we are pushing the ILO's multinationals committee, that we are using the UN declaration on multinationals, that we are pushing the company into dialogue to resolve the issues. We should even see if we have got a government who will stand by us and take the dispute to the World Trade Organization's disputes tribunal.
All of these strategies are absolutely critical to consider and include if they will assist in strengthening our hand.
ANITA: Earlier you spoke of women being disproportionately represented in precarious forms of employment. What is the significance of you being elected the first woman as General Secretary of the international confederation and do you think this is an important part of strengthening our movement?
SHARAN: Well I hope that it is a symbol for women that they do have a role in the leadership of their unions. There is no doubt that our unions are stronger when women are incorporated and included in all the decision making structures of our unions: when they are in equal numbers with men in the governing bodies.
But it goes way beyond that. When you recruit a woman, because she is frustrated about her working world, then there is an understanding of not just those issues for herself, but she'll understand what they mean for her children. So you usually recruit a woman and keep her for life. That natural collective instinct women bring to the trade union movement is absolutely incredible. Particularly given that women are overly represented in precarious employment along with young people. Women are overly represented in terms of discrimination; the pay gap is still an appalling story of the lack of capacity of a male-dominated world of work to value women's skills and to recognize them as independent workers who deserve equal treatment.
These are absolutely the main issues, and organizing women is not just a joy because it works, but it is all about strengthening the union movement.
ANITA: What about the question of inclusion of trade unions from the South in international trade union structures? With the decline of membership and power of unions in the North at the international level there has been a real emphasis to bring more and more unions into the structures of our international unions - but not necessarily with an equal voice. How can we address the question of international strength in relation to unions from the South?
SHARAN: If our demand is to build strong, balanced and inclusive economies where the issues of equity are addressed, then we need to make sure that the voices of the trade unions of the South can carry equal weight of those of the North.
Of course there is a resource question - but it is a question where solidarity goes beyond simply being about resources. It is about joint activity, consolidated global activity, where everybody can play their role. Nobody can doubt that many of the trade unions of the South are very, very strong - pick a country, Brazil or South Africa, the courage of trade unions in Guinea and the Congo that are standing up for fundamental rights for democracy. Or the workers themselves, like migrant workers, or workers in China standing up for issues like silicosis, or the call for the banning of asbestos right around the world.
Everywhere we go unions have a capacity to act in their own context - we now have to aggregate that capacity and of course invite young people.
We had a generation of young workers in the North who, if you go back a decade or so ago, were in good jobs and it didn't seem to them that this struggle for rights was such a big deal. They thought they were in a decent working environment - that was at odds of course with many people in the South. But now, post-crisis - with the terrible kind of vulnerability of secure employment for young people - we want to build out of people's frustration and anger and that is where our strength will come from.
ANITA: Do you think that the union structures at the international level are capable of taking on the neo-liberal agenda that we face?
SHARAN: I do. I think there is a convergence of strength of global unions and their national memberships because they recognize the issues are common. Whether or not you have a right to bargain collectively is a common issue where it is denied all around the world. Whether you have a minimum wage, which is a living wage, is a common issue whether it is in America or Brazil, Egypt, Argentina or Colombia. There is no question that workplace rights are being abused in all parts of the world by too many corporations. And overwhelmingly governments are not standing up to them.
We are at a point in time where there is a convergence of all of those things: the corporate abuse of workers' rights, the failure of government to stand up to the neo-liberal model of the Washington consensus, and that growth was the target at all costs, irrespective of whether you got jobs out of it. Added to this is the distribution of wealth through wages that are fair in terms of profits. All of these things are both in the workplace and political, and they are national and they are global, requiring us to act now across the union movement nationally and internationally.
The future of the world of work, the dignity of labour and the rights base that workers should enjoy is only going to be driven by us. If we can organize around these issues and hold governments to account where there have been failures to date then we have got a chance.