Workers Uniting - the world's first global trade union
In 2008, Unite the Union, the largest labour
organisation in the United Kingdom and Ireland and The United
Steelworkers (USW), North America’s largest private sector union,
signed an agreement clearing the way for the creation of Workers
Uniting, the world’s first global trade union.
Workers Uniting will draw on the energies of the two unions more
than three million active and retired workers from the United
States, Canada, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland who work
in virtually every sector of the global economy, including
manufacturing, service, mining and transportation.
The union is crucial for challenging the growing power of global
capital. Globalisation has given financiers license to exploit
workers in developing countries at the expense of our members in
the developed world. Only global solidarity among workers can
overcome this sort of global exploitation wherever it occurs.
In addition to empowering the interests of our unions’ members
our mission is to advance the interests of millions of workers
throughout the world who are being shamefully exploited.
The creation of our new union is only the beginning. We’re
laying the foundations of an even larger and stronger global union
yet to come.
The new global union’s founding constitution calls on its
combined membership to “build global union activism, recognising
that uniting as workers across international boundaries is the only
way to challenge the injustices of globalisation.”
Consistent with this calling, Workers Uniting will “match our
words with action and resources, utilising our collective expertise
and knowledge through collective bargaining, organising, global
political action and international solidarity.”
The two unions have been actively engaged in joint efforts to
advance global union activism, including:
- Extensive discussions about strategies that each of the unions
has adopted for saving manufacturing capacity in their respective
countries.
- Joint collective bargaining efforts with common employers in
the paper, chemical and titanium industries.
- International solidarity projects, such as efforts to protect
the rights and safety of trade unionists in Colombia and
Mexico.
- Participation by rank and file delegations of activists in each
other’s education, rapid response, health and safety, civil rights
and women’s conferences.
- Exposure to the political processes in each other’s countries,
including Democratic Party primaries and Labour Party
conference.
Workers Uniting will be a fully functional and registered labour
organisation in the UK, US, Ireland and Canada, with the ability to
fully represent all of the members of its founding unions. It will
be governed by a Steering Committee with equal membership from each
participating union.
The new union’s staff will be headed by an Executive Director
who will oversee an initial budget of several million dollars, and
a staff that includes Research, International Affairs, and
Communications specialists.
Both participating unions have pledged to have Workers Uniting
“challenge exploitation anywhere in the global economy, since it is
fundamentally unjust and is destructive of decent living standards
everywhere.” Toward this end, the new union, in conjunction with
the National Labor Committee, is creating a Global Labour Rights
Network that will have allied staff on the ground in Central
America, the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and other
regions.
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