Organising globally

Trade unions’ aim should be to ensure that worker representation and good employment conditions operate throughout the global operations of the employer company, regardless of country. This has a double advantage: it helps combat casual, opportunistic relocation of jobs abroad, and builds a stronger international framework for industrial relations in the longer-term.

What it's necessary to understand is that the development of prosperity in new areas of the world consolidates existing prosperity. Trade unions must act both in the North and in the South. In the North, employees need to be given access to long-term jobs, through lifelong learning for example and through social protection in the face of corporate restructuring and relocation. In the South, the trade union movement must promote social rights to ensure that the wealth produced rewards the employees affected. This can be done by

Applying international codes of good practice
Signing of Framework agreements
Setting up of Regional and global Works Councils
Developing new trade unionism

UNI's activities therefore involve the following steps:

Reinforcing international trade unionism: encouraging practical solidarity between unions in developed countries and those in developing countries; working to welcome embryonic forms of trade unionism in new industries and new countries, recognising that they may be different from traditional union structures.
Making strategic partnerships: attempting to work with civil society organisations and NGOs which are also concerned with the implications of globalisation; these could include development organisations, environmental organisations and consumer bodies.
Challenging the existing form of globalisation: working to redefine the terms of international trade and to identify alternatives to the present corporate-led form of globalisation; working to mainstream the work of the ILO.

What tactics and strategies can be adopted by UNI's affiliates? Here are some suggestions:

Getting in early: It is much better for unions to engage actively with companies at an early stage in their planning, than to have to respond later when decisions have already been taken to transfer work abroad.
Strengthening union organisation: Unions should treat the advance signs of moves by an employer towards job migration/outsourcing as a positive opportunity to improve levels of unionisation and organisation within the company. This is a time when more workers may begin to appreciate the importance of the collective strength of a union; a well-organised workplace will also assist in any future negotiations or campaigns which are necessary.
Reinforcing the need for adequate lifelong learning: Trade unions have long stressed the importance of ensuring adequate lifelong learning opportunities for workers. This issue becomes even more pressing in the context of global job migration: in general, the higher the skill level involved, the less likely that the job will be subject to migration. Furthermore, the speed of technological development means that work skills now need to be updated much more frequently than in the past. Unions have a good record in many countries of working as social partners with governments and employers' bodies to promote better vocational training and learning. Unions may also want to help their members directly, by offering their own training and learning opportunities.
Looking more closely at the costs and benefits of work migration: The discrepancies in labour costs between developed and developing countries (and within regions of the world, such as between western and eastern Europe) are such that the apparent benefits to companies of moving work to lower-cost destinations can be very high – and consequently very difficult to argue against. Companies should be encouraged to look beyond superficial comparisons, however. One additional issue to be factored in is the possible greater risk to a company's operations of geographical relocation. Levels of customer service and quality may also be affected, not because of the level of competence of remote workers but simply because of differences in local knowledge, accent or culture.
Beyond the single bottom line: Even taking into account the hidden costs of moving work to remote locations, however, on many occasions there will be a clear cost benefit to the company in making a move. Unions may be able to make alliances with civil society organisations and NGOs which are encouraging companies to consider more than the 'single bottom line' (in other words, the financial return). Recent campaigning to promote corporate social responsibility has stressed a 'triple bottom line', where social and environmental costs and benefits of a company's actions are also subject to assessment. It is also worth developing further the idea of stakeholder, rather than shareholder, value.

For examples on the above tactics read UNI's "Global Mobility Revolution"

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