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LABOUR: Trade Unions Must Become More Flexible in Changing World
By María Isabel García
CARTAGENA, Colombia, Jun 18 (IPS) - Labour unions need to become more
flexible in their struggle and forge stronger ties with social movements in
Latin America, where informal economy workers virtually outnumber the
formally employed, said speakers at this week's World Social Thematic Forum
(WSTF) in Colombia.
If trade unionists want to be more in step with the global social
movement, they should leave behind their narrow sectorial demands and issues
and engage in a common front with informal sector workers and civil society
groups, labour activists and academics argued at an international trade
union forum held in the context of the WSTF.
As the participants arrived at the parallel gathering Tuesday, the second
day of the WSTF, which ends Friday in this resort town on Colombia's
Caribbean coast, demonstrators outside pounded on drums and shouted out
slogans against the privatisation of Telecoms, Colombia's state-owned
telecommunications company.
The growth of the informal economy, microenterprise, home-based work, and
unemployment as a result of the globalisation of the economy and enormous
technological changes makes it necessary ''for labour demands to transcend
the sphere of the factory,'' Enrique de la Garza, a sociologist and academic
at the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico, told IPS.
A growing majority of workers in Latin America do not belong to trade
unions, which have had a hard time adapting to the new reality, said de la
Garza, who took part in the labour union forum.
The alternative, he said, is ''to come up with a new concept of 'worker'
and 'trade union','' which should become more flexible in order to reflect
changing realities.
''We have to expand the concept of worker and trade union, adopt more
flexible coordination strategies'' that are more in line with today's
circumstances, and even ''redefine the concepts of 'enemies' and 'friends',
methods of struggle, and demands,'' argued de la Garza.
He underlined that the growing ranks of self-employed workers and street
vendors face more precarious conditions than traditional wage-earners, with
the aggravating factor of having no channels for protest or to express their
grievances.
He cited the large, combative organisations of unemployed workers that
have emerged in the past few years in Argentina and Bolivia's coca-farmers
movement as examples of sectors that are not represented in the demands set
forth by the classic labour unions.
''We must find a point of connection'' between these two worlds, because
nearly 50 percent of all economically active people in Latin America form
part of the informal economy today, and there are an increasing number of
social movements which do not have a base in the trade unions, de la Garza
observed.
Julio Carrascal, the president of the Lima-based Andean Labour Council,
said it is necessary to advocate ''a realistic labour movement'' that takes
into account the changes in the makeup of the world of work and workers'
organisations.
With a haranguing tone that recalled the speeches he used to make in his
days as a leader of Colombia's oil workers, Carrascal urged his listeners at
the forum to fight the current economic and social crisis with
''imaginative'' and creative formulas, and to ''compromise, but without
giving up working class demands,'' in order to broaden the spectrum of
alliances.
Carrascal also suggested that the countries of the Amazon basin should
try to negotiate a reduction in foreign debt servicing payments ''in
exchange for the production of oxygen'' through afforestation and forest
conservation efforts.
A third speaker who agreed with the need to make labour practices more
flexible to prevent workers from being left out of the growing civil society
movement was Carlos Cappa, with Spain's Comisiones Obreras central trade
union, traditionally affiliated with the Communist Party.
In Cappa's view, trade unions must not take a stance in the fight against
the privatisation of state-owned utilities that runs counter to the position
taken by the public.
''The important thing is not who provides public services - whether the
state or private concerns - but whether or not they offer full labour
guarantees to their employees, and good services at fair rates,'' argued the
Spanish trade unionist.
Labour unions must maintain a link with non-governmental organisations in
order to operate effectively in the current international scenario, in which
''the United States has returned to 'gunboat diplomacy','' said Cappa.
Over the past decade, as more and more workers have lost their jobs,
profits have become increasingly concentrated in the hands of business
elites and financial operators, argued economy Professor Bethoven Herrera
from the Colombia National University, who spoke about the effects of
globalisation.
With respect to the widening gap between industrialised and developing
countries, the academic pointed out that the United States' budget for
scientific research is equivalent to 2.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product
(GDP), while Colombia's is equivalent to just 0.64 percent of GDP.
He also noted that stockbreeders in Europe receive subsidies equivalent
to seven dollars a day per head of cattle, while 1.2 billion poor people
around the world must try to survive on less than a dollar a day.
Some 3,500 delegates from across the planet have been taking part since
Monday in the WSTF, which is discussing four main themes: democracy, human
rights, war and drug trafficking.
The majority of participants in the trade union forum were delegates of
Colombia's three central unions, whose membership has shrunk over the past
decade due to privatisation schemes and the intimidation and selected
murders of labour activists.
The number of workers affiliated with the largest central trade union,
the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, has plunged from one million to
600,000 over the past 10 years.
Describing the effects of the four-decade armed conflict and the
deteriorated freedom to organise in this South American country of 42
million, Gustavo Gallón, the director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists
(CCJ), said that between June 2002 and May 2003, 293 trade unionists in
Colombia became victims of violations to their right to life, integrity or
freedom of association.
The list included 121 murders and five forced disappearances of trade
unionists, all of whom were targetted due to their labour activism.
Gallón warned that Colombia's right-wing President Alvaro Uribe was
considering holding a referendum that among other things would give the
executive branch discretionary powers to withdraw from international
treaties such as those signed with the International Labour Organisation,
which according to the president are ''legal but not constitutional.''
To back that claim, the head of the CCJ cited the representative of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michel Fruhlin, as a
witness.
Fruhlin, another participant on the panel, underlined that impunity was
one of the main features of Colombia's humanitarian crisis.
Workers in Colombia are currently facing an escalation of the war and a
deepening of the economic crisis, he noted, calling for effective measures
for protecting workers and guaranteeing the absolutely basic right to
organise. (END/2003)
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