Morning Star Article by Philip Jennings Gen. Sec. Uni Global Union

From the Morning Star

July 16th

Workers, the time to unite is ripe

by Philip Jennings

With the swearing-in of Senator Al Franken last Tuesday, despite months of Republican efforts to block his election, US workers are perhaps the closest they have been in 30 years to real justice in the workplace.

Democratic senators can now unite to bring the Employee Free Choice Act to a vote on the Senate floor.

Franken is the 60th Democratic senator in the US Senate. Democrats now have the supermajority they need to keep the Republicans from using the filibuster to block legislation they don't like.

A majority of senators and representatives support the Bill. President Obama is also a strong supporter of the legislation and has said he will sign the Bill when it is passed in both houses of Congress.

"By the time the G20 takes place this September, we hope that the US will have passed the Employee Free Choice Act, serving as a model for other countries"

Once passed, the Employee Free Choice Act will give US workers a free and fair chance to form a union, hold anti-union employers accountable and force bosses to stop dragging out contract negotiations.

In the US, workers currently have to win a representation election against their own management as part of the recognition process.

Employers may choose to recognise based on majority sign-up but it is up to them.

The legislation would also restore private-sector bargaining rights in the US which have been stripped away in the last three decades.

Workers would have the right to decide for themselves if they want to join a union and mechanisms would be in place to ensure employers come to the bargaining table in a good-faith effort to agree on a contract.

These rights are sorely needed. According to American Rights at Work (www.araw.org), when workers try to organise:

n 25 per cent of employers fire at least one pro-union worker;

n 51 per cent threaten to close a worksite if the union election is successful

n 91 per cent force employees to attend one-on-one anti-union meetings with supervisors.

Under these conditions, US workers feel like they are under attack. After the passage of this legislation, they will have a sense of stability and security that has been missing from the workplace for decades.

This legislation is vital for US workers, but workers around the world are joining in a global solidarity effort because they know that US labour policy sets the tone for the rest of the world.

The world's workers are now in more peril than they have ever been before. With a truly global marketplace, no-one is immune to the effects of the crisis. The policies that are adopted to deal with it are bound to have a global impact.

For the world's workers, the Employee Free Choice Act too will have a significant impact.

For too long, US companies have taken their anti-union attitudes overseas, looking for the weakest governments and most vulnerable workers to cut their labour costs and boost their profits. Wal-Mart, which employs some two million people worldwide, is known for its anti-union stance in the US and has used harsh tactics in Canada, Mexico and other countries to keep its labour costs low.

Many European-based multinationals, which respect the rights of their workers to organise in their home country, have adopted US policies abroad and will deny employees the right to join a union and collectively bargain.

This is especially true in the US, where companies like British supermarket chain Tesco and German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom have opposed the efforts of US employees to unionise.

The global union movement will not sit by and watch this happen. This is our moment to show solidarity with our US sisters and brothers and mobilise our members globally.

In June, the International Trade Union Confederation called on national trade union centres to organise visits to US embassies so that unions could share their support for this vital legislation.

UNI unions on every continent, from Argentina to Germany to Kyrgyzstan to Ivory Coast to Japan, organised visits and sent letters to their ambassadors.

The embassy visits were our way of showing solidarity with US workers and union activists who are fighting for their rights and have worked tirelessly to pass this vital legislation.

This includes activists who are fired for leading an organising drive, workers who have been forced to sit through hours of intimidating meetings where a group of supervisors tell them their workplace will shut down if they vote for the union.

Take the story of Sara Steffens, a reporter at the Contra Costa Times who helped lead the organising drive for workers at nine MediaNews-owned papers in the East Bay area of California.

After months of intimidation and captive-audience meetings with workers, Yes votes from 230 people were enough to get union recognition for the California Media Workers Guild, which is part of the Communications Workers of America.

Two weeks later, the company sacked 29 people, including Steffens, who is an award-winning reporter. Two-thirds of the dismissed workers were union supporters and not a single worker opposing union representation was let go.

This is not an isolated incident but rather the norm for US companies. Workers who fight for their rights risk losing their jobs for something we take for granted in Europe and in most other democracies around the world.

UNI has been focusing on signing global agreements with multinational companies. These agreements set basic standards for workers' rights and include a commitment from company executives that all employees at all of their workplaces worldwide will have the right to unionise.

Agreements with security company G4S and retailer H&M, among others, have helped US workers. But millions of US workers are not covered by global agreements and are in desperate need of basic union rights.

Even with the massive show of support from US workers and global solidarity from the union movement, it is an incredibly hard fight.

US corporations, led by the US Chamber of Commerce, have spent tens of millions - some estimates put it at hundreds of millions - of dollars lobbying against this legislation.

They have managed to get their hooks into politicians on both sides of the political spectrum.

We know that President Obama supports unions and so we are mobilising global support to show him that passing the Employee Free Choice Act is a truly international issue and that the world's workers are standing in solidarity with their US sisters and brothers.

By the time the G20 takes place in Pittsburgh this September, we hope that the US will have passed the Employee Free Choice Act, serving as a model for other countries who still deny workers the right to join a union.

We know the attacks on unions will not end in the US without proper legislation, and we cannot be so naive as to believe that this onslaught will not spread to countries which presently take union organising and recognition rights for granted.

If we do not fight for union rights everywhere, then we risk losing them anywhere.

Philip Jennings is the UNI Global Union general secretary