Our Times, June 2006/July 2006, Vol. 25, No.3, pg. 28

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Canadian Business and Current Affairs
Copyright 2006 Our Times Publishing Inc.
Our Times

June 2006 / July 2006

SECTION: Pg. 28 Vol. 25 No. 3 ISSN: 0822-6377

HEADLINE: GLOBAL UNIONS, COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

BYLINE: Bronfenbrenner, Kate

BODY:
Opportunities & Challenges
A HISTORIC EVENT TOOK PLACE at the Crown Plaza Hotel in New York City on February 9-11, 2006: for the first time ever, trade unionists and scholars came together from around the world - from the Global North and the Global South, from every sector of the economy, with every global union federation represented - for the sole purpose of discussing how to strengthen labour's capacity to take on the world's largest multinational corporations through more effective strategic global research and comprehensive cross-border campaigns.
The conference, called "Global Companies, Global Unions, Global Research, Global Campaigns," brought 560 people together, 300 of them not from the U.S., and there were real debates and discussions about strategies, issues, and goals. Divisions fell to the wayside for the three days of the conference, such as the split in the U.S. labour movement, and old Cold War legacies about which unions should be invited to the table. We had speakers from the CUT in Brazil, the FAT in Mexico, NUMSA/COSATU in South Africa, and the general secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) as plenary speakers. And yes, even the secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, and no one ever questioned our choice of speakers.
Yet, most of all what made this conference historic was who was on the floor. From around the world, the people gathered there were representatives from unions, academia, and NGOs that were actively involved in either researching or conducting crossborder campaigns with the world's largest multinationals, a group that has never gathered together in one place before. Most important, it included significant representation from the Global South. And a large part of what the conference was focussed on, both inside and outside the formal session, was a chance to share strategies, make connections, learn from each other, and build lasting networks for the future. That could not happen without bringing everyone into the same room.
So how did this come about and what exactly were we trying to accomplish? Our early discussions had focussed on three areas:
a) how there continued to be a severe shortage of individuals trained in strategic corporate research/
b) how most U.S. unions were failing to research the employer they were dealing with in both organizing and bargaining campaigns. (While some industrial unions had run very noteworthy crossborder campaigns when confronted with aggressive employer opposition in strikes and lockouts, such campaigns were almost unheard of in the organizing context and remained still quite rare in most bargaining campaigns as well.),
c) how even those campaigns that did exist were primarily unilateral in nature, always carried out with the expectation that unions in other countries would come to the rescue of U.S. unions faced with tough foreign-owned multinationals. (Campaigns initiated by U.S. unions to support union organizing and bargaining struggles in other countries remained extremely rare.);
d) and how these issues were not limited to the U.S.
Unions engaged in struggles with employers in the UK, Canada, Australia and, to a lesser degree, some European countries, also tended to seek help from workers in the Global South in support of their fights without reciprocating in kind.
The conference planning committee had 21 people on its first conference call, from unions and universities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia. In the end, we had a total of 16 unions and 15 universities sponsoring the conference, including three Canadian universities, and the CLC, the National Union of Public and General Employées (NUPGE) and the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN).
The goals we agreed upon were as follows:
1) to share and learn from recent union initiatives in strategic corporate research and strategic global organizing and bargaining campaigns in order to more effectively take on multinational companies through global comprehensive campaigns;
2) to expand our collective knowledge and understanding of the changing nature of corporate ownership structures, practices, and strategies for the world's largest multinationals,
3) and to lay the groundwork for building a sustainable global network of unions and academics to continue to work together to effectively engage multinational corporations worldwide.
In order to reach these goals we came up with two more specific commitments:
a) To ensure full participation from the Global South, we wanted to raise enough funds to cover travel expenses for at least 50 trade unionists and academics from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.,
b) In order both to model strategic corporate research methods and to help build and strengthen lasting cross-border networks among unions, we also chose 10 of the world's largest multinationals where there were not yet existing global union networks in place.
That meant we would also need to raise enough money to fund in-depth strategic corporate research on these 10 companies, which were selected based on input from all the members of the planning committee to represent a diverse cross-section of industries and sectors: WalMart (retail), Kraft Foods (processed food), Siemens (electrical engineering and electronics), Exxon Mobil (petrochemical), Suez S.A. (energy and water), Alcoa (aluminum), SSA Marine (marine cargo handling), Bouygues (construction, property development, and telecommunications), Starwood (hospitality), and Sanofi Aventis (pharmaceutical).
Fund-raising became one of the biggest challenges of the conference planning process. Yet, at the same time, it also became an organizing tool because it required getting unions and universities committed to participating in and engaging with the conference. In the end we raised more than $260,000 from unions, universities, and NGOs for the research and travel fund. Most contributions from unions and universities averaged between $3,000 and $10,000.
The bad news is that we were rejected by all major foundations that we applied to, such as Ford, and the Rockefeller Brother's Fund, on the grounds that our proposals did not provide a "positive alternative to globalization." Needless to say, capital was not comfortable with funding a conference that had as its goal strengthening labour's power to take on multinational corporations quite so directly.
Nor did the conference take place without any multinationals taking notice and making at least some effort to interfere. From the beginning we had been worried about visas for our participants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East and wrote numerous letters to consulates and embassies assisting individuals in their efforts to get visas. Trade union representatives coming to the Exxon Mobil session from Bangladesh, then Cameroon, and then Nigeria, were all denied visa applications from U.S. embassies in their countries. In each country the embassy gave a different reason. However, the most surprising one was given to the eight trade unionists from Nigeria who sought to attend the Exxon Mobil session. They were told by the U.S. Embassy that they were being denied visas because the embassy had learned that "it was an illegitimate conference."
It took a week-long battle of repeated letters, emails, and phone calls from the United Steelworkers, Solidarity Center, Cornell University, and our local U.S. congressional representative before we were finally able to win visas for six of the eight Nigerians, and one of the Cameroonians, and even then only when we threatened that there would be international press at the conference and we would be speaking about the apparent ties between Exxon Mobil and the Bush State Department. As for Bangladesh, we did get an apology from the U.S. Embassy stating that yes, in fact it was a mistake, he should have been allowed to come, but it was too late, maybe next time.
Then, on the eve of the conference, Jose Bove, who was going to speak at a panel session at the conference on cross-border campesino movements against Monsanto, was stopped by U.S. Homeland Security at JFK airport and deported without even being let into the country. This did make international news. In fact, it was the only major news story to come out of the conference, despite the fact that press was invited to all the plenary sessions. (Bove was still able to participate in his session via speaker phone, but does not plan to attempt to return to the U.S. any time in the near future.) Yet, Exxon Mobil, Monsanto, and Homeland security not withstanding, somehow, with a lot of free labour and just plain hard work, we pulled it off.
In the end, we had 48 different workshops, and subjects ranged from critical debates on the role of international framework agreements or capital strategies; to more tactical sessions on the use of the media, popular education, or the Internet in crossborder campaigns, to sessions which analyzed cross-border campaigns in specific industries such as logistics, auto, entertainment, retail, or building security, to sessions that examined the particular challenges faced in campaigns in specific countries such as Thailand, India, Colombia, or China, or regions such as Asia or Latin America.
There was also active debate and disagreements. Some trade unionists believed the academics were too distant from what was happening on the ground, and some academics believed the trade unionists were not giving research a chance. There were disagreements between those who believed that international framework agreements were still the most effective high-road path towards freedom of association, and those who felt IFAs had proven to be a false crutch and should be abandoned because they had no teeth and were just an excuse lor employers to avoid a commitment to real collective bargaining. There was debate among those who felt that applying standards developed in the Global North to the Global South without adapting them to the realities of the situation in each country was insensitive to the very different circumstances in which workers and trade unionists had to operate, and those who felt it was essential that we apply the highest possible standards worldwide in order to force companies to maintain a uniform standard wherever they operate.
At first glance it appears that the conference was able to achieve many of its objectives. It brought the audience together that it sought to bring together. There was engagement, skill-building and networking around the issues of strategic corporate research and cross-border campaigns in multiplesubject areas. In-depth strategic corporate research reports were prepared for the 10 target companies (in most cases the first ever strategic corporate research ever done on these companies), and trade unionists were brought together from around the world to put together a network for future strategies with the target companies. This was especially true of the largest groups: Exxon Mobile, Alcoa, and Kraft. But even for the companies with smaller attendance, what was important was that connections were made and networks were established between Europe and Asia, the U.S. and Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa, that had not been there before.
But it is easy to be glib about what we had achieved. As CLC secretary-treasurer Hassan Yussuff said in closing, if we do not take seriously the need to build a truly global labour movement, we are taily at risk of becoming insignificant. He reminded everyone present that the primary obligation of each national organization there was to defend its members' interests and concerns. And this, in a global context - where employers play worker against worker - makes building a global labour movement all the more challenging. At the same time, ultimately, the interests of everyone in the room, including our national organizations, depend on building a global labour movement through the very kinds of strategies that had been discussed and debated over the three days of the conference.
I knew better than anyone where we had fallen short. For one thing, I knew who should have been at the conference but wasn't. I knew that while we had many British academics and a good showing of French trade unionists, it was significant how few European trade unionists were in the room overall. I also knew that there were some U.S. unions that should have been there in larger numbers who weren't (such as the majority of the building trades unions), and key labour movements such as the KCTU from South Korea, who were unable to attend because they had had new officer elections in late January, too late to get visas in time for the conference. The KCTU has been very active in supporting unions around the world and would have made a significant contribution to the conference if they could have been there.
Second, I knew the limitations of each of the company sessions and why. For at least half of the target companies we simply were not able to get enough financial resources committed or union representatives recruited to make significant strides in developing a global organizing or bargaining network or strategy.
Third, unlike what we had originally hoped for, I knew we had no money left after the conference. Worse yet we actually have a deficit, and so have no money to do follow-through on the networks that have been established, to keep the company reports updated, or to make sure that this isn't just one moment in time but is a movement towards something lasting.
But that doesn't make this a lost opportunity. It just means that this is where we have to hand the ball back to the labour movement. And what should be done? 1) For each of the target companies, it will be up to all of the unions involved to build and expand on the networks established and to continue to update and expand on the company research that has already been completed as they move forward with future organizing and bargaining endeavours. This means that this initial meeting should be a jumping off point for future meetings, next time hopefully outside the U.S., that bring even more participants and more research to the table. But it also should mean that any future research, organizing, and bargaining endeavours with each of the target companies will be more global in focus.
2) More of the academics who attended the conference need to become trained in strategic corporate research so that they can help track the changing corporate ownership structures and practices of the world's largest multinationals, and also help provide research support and training to unions involved in cross-border campaigns. In addition, labour academics need to continue to critically evaluate and chronicle the strengths and weaknesses of union and employer strategies in comprehensive campaigns so that unions can learn from both their successes and their failures.
3) Most important of all, unions need to greatly expand their efforts at building global networks at all major multinational companies through worker exchanges, company councils, global solidarity actions, and sharing of information and strategies. However, these cross-border initiatives must be truly multilateral in nature. Their goal ultimately is to stop the race to the bottom and shift power away from global capital towards workers, unions, and communities around the world. Thus, these initiatives must begin to focus just as much, if not more, on strengthening and building union power in the Global South as they do on shoring up union power in the Global North.
If unions and labour academics are able to take full advantage and build on all the information exchanged, ideas discussed, networks established, and strategies put forward, then this conference could be the beginning of a global labour movement that has the power to challenge global capital in the race to the bottom, and win. That is a grand challenge indeed. But we have to start somewhere, and 560 trade unionists and labour academics gathered in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Times Square in New York City, with a snowstorm on its way, seemed a good place to start.
It was a chance to share strategies, make connections, learn from each other, and build lasting networks

Kate Bronfenbrenner is the director of labour education research at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Ithaca, New York. This article is based on a longer talk she gave in March 2006 as the 24th annual Sefton Memorial Lecture, presented by Woodsworth College at the University of Toronto, and the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources. It is reprinted here, with permission from the author, as part of Our Times's ongoing series called "Talking About Organizing." To learn more about the conference discussions visit: www.ilr.cornell.edu/globalunionconference.

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