Trade unions and human rights

Speech to the Amnesty Trade Union Conference, 4 April 2008 by TUC Assistant General Secretary Kay Carberry

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you, and my thanks to everyone who has been involved with the Amnesty trade union network over the past few years - to Tom as Chair and to all the committee members.

You have already heard from Kate and from Janek about the work we have been doing together, and in particular the new developments in trade union co-ordination at global level.

There is now more engagement between the TUC and Amnesty than at any time I can remember.

This hasn't happened by magic, it required work.

And I therefore pay tribute to Kate's leadership and Shane Enright's legwork.

Trade unions: the usual suspects

In countries where human rights are abused, trade unionists are always in the firing line.

Kate and Janek mentioned the trade unionists of Iran, and spoke in particular about Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi.

They illustrate the plight of countless others.

What have these two done to bring down the wrath of the Iranian government on their heads?

Their demands were really not outrageous or revolutionary, but basic, economic trade union demands such as wage rises or the payment of wages already due.

But trade union demands are often a threat to authoritarian regimes. They threaten people with power and they threaten the people making money out of poverty and vulnerability.

And something else makes trade unionists vulnerable in a totalitarian state: they are independent and they act collectively.

Kate mentioned that Amnesty shares the belief of trade unions in collective activity. For us, collectivism isn't a choice, it's our very essence.

IBM once advised its managers to report any signs of trade unionism. Its managers said they wouldn't know it if they saw it, so IBM set out the most perfect definition of trade unionism you could ever hope for (and no mention of annual conferences by the seaside, either!)

IBM said that if a worker came into the manager's office and said 'I want a pay rise' or 'I want some training', that was fine. But if anyone used the word 'we', then that was the first sign of a trade union.

One of the most famous groups of early trade unionists in Britain is the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Six agricultural labourers from Dorset, back when Britain was a developing country where only the wealthy could vote.

They weren't transported to Australia for demanding higher wages (actually they banded together to oppose falling wages). They were transported because they took an illegal oath, and it was illegal because it was an oath of loyalty to each other, rather than to the King.

That's what the regime in Iran, like authoritarian regimes around the world, can't stand about trade unionism. Collective strength and loyalty to each other.

Economic strength

That strength, that loyalty, gives us power. It may be the power to make workplace demands like better wages. Or to confront petty oppressions, like unfair disciplinary action.

But trade unions use their power against bigger oppressions too.

Trade unions were at the heart of movements for human rights, freedom and democracy in Nigeria under the military dictatorship, South Africa during the last days of apartheid, and Poland of course.

Trade unions played major roles in the toppling of authoritarian regimes in Brazil and Chile, and more recently secured democratic reforms in Guinea Conakry.

Through the years, too, British trade unions have shown their solidarity with other workers struggling for freedom.

Like the Lancashire textile workers who refused to use cotton from the American south when it was cheap because of slavery.

Or those who helped the Polish trade union movement to establish itself as a movement in the early 1980s, using printing machines which we sent them in solidarity with Solidarity.

More recently, we have pressed governments to take collective economic action against oppressive regimes.

Like the boycott of many key Burmese imports agreed by the European Union last year, or the withdrawal of EU trade preferences used to punish the Government of Belarus for trade union rights violations.

Government action

The use of Governments in the campaign for trade union and other human rights is a particularly timely issue to discuss, because last week the FCO published its latest report on human rights.

It covered the rights of trade unionists in Belarus, Colombia, Iran, Turkey and Zimbabwe, where we still worryingly await the final outcome of what could be a really historic election.

I'd like to send particular congratulations to three new MPs in Zimbabwe who have all visited Britain in recent years as leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions - Collin Gwillo, MP for Zengeza West; Tabitha Khumalo, MP for Bulawayo East and Lucia Matibenga, MP for Kuwadzana East.

The British Government clearly understands that trade union rights are human rights, that the core labour standards of the ILO are an important international benchmark.

Our Government recognises that trade union involvement in human rights goes beyond exclusively workplace issues - our involvement in developing the FCO's LGBT human rights strategy is an example of that.

But there is much more to be done.

The FCO should do more to involve trade unions in its human rights dialogues - as they have done for China and Turkey - and in its human rights policies, such as the rights of the child, where access to education and opposition to all forms of child labour need better recognition.

At the moment, our involvement is piecemeal and haphazard.

As we reach the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this year, and the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the International Labour Organisation next year, the FCO needs to do more to bring the two areas of human rights together - civil and political on the one hand, social and economic on the other.

Capacity building

The FCO isn't, of course, the only department that works internationally.

The TUC would like the Department for International Development to use its influence as a major funder of Ethiopia, for instance, to press the Ethiopian Government to draw back from its attacks on the Ethiopian Teachers Association.

DFID's over-riding objective, which the TUC thoroughly endorses, is to meet the Millennium Development Goals and thus reduce poverty. So DFID at least has the goal of social and economic rights in clear view.

And its Governance and Transparency Fund is a welcome response to the need to balance civil and political rights with those social and economic rights, promoting good governance and human rights.

However, it is a relatively small commitment, and, when the Secretary of State announces the results of the competitive bidding process there will be a lot of very disappointed people.

DFID needs to put more money, and more effort at country level, into ensuring that its good work on promoting growth and support for health services, education and water and sanitation projects isn't wasted by corruption and authoritarianism.

More resources are needed to improve the ability of trade unions and other parts of civil society to hold governments to account and protect their human rights.

Decent work

DFID also needs to give more thought to the sort of growth it is promoting.

That growth needs, of course, to take climate change into account, and we are pleased to see DFID doing more in that area. Unions - both here and in the developing countries where environmental damage does most harm - will be willing partners.

But what about the social side to growth? Will the growth be jobless, as has so often been the case in Africa? If there are new jobs, will they be jobs at any price, informal and unprotected, poorly paid and low skill?

Or will DFID make a clear commitment to what the ILO and the UN call 'Decent Work' - good jobs at good wages, with training for skills, equal opportunities, full labour rights and social dialogue?

Later this month, the TUC Executive will be issuing a call to Ministers to sign up to the Decent Work for Decent Life campaign launched at the World Social Forum last year, and we will be asking them to support our World Day for Decent Work on October the seventh - we also want to see Amnesty involved in the events we have planned for that day.

I have already said a bit about what unions already do about human rights, but I should say something about what more unions could do.

Union solidarity

This is, in part, all about the partnership we are developing with Amnesty to protect trade unionists abroad and campaign for human rights, but it is also about what we as trade unionists can do to help our colleagues in other countries defend their own rights.

Last month, TUC Aid - our development charity - launched an appeal to trade unions to fund practical solidarity programmes in Palestine, Swaziland and Zimbabwe - three countries where Congress has urged us to help trade unions build their capacity to oppose abuses and promote decent work.

Unions are doing more and more to assist their brothers and sisters abroad - in Colombia and Sierra Leone, in Pakistan and Iraq, in Guinea and the Philippines, and I acknowledge the support of DFID in doing much of that work.

Partnership: Amnesty and trade unions

I said earlier how much the TUC values the enhanced engagement we now have with Amnesty, and it's clear from today's agenda that this isn't just a meeting of minds. This is a practical partnership where we divide up responsibilities, and share tasks.

Many of you will be active trade unionists - hopefully you are at least all trade union members, and if not, see me afterwards! - as well as active Amnesty members.

We need to build the engagement of unions in Amnesty. Our national unions are, I think, already mostly affiliated, but we need to get the branches engaged too.

Not just for their affiliation fees, but for the action they would deliver.

I am delighted therefore to hear of the outcomes of the Amnesty Trade Union Network review and the emphasis being placed on building branch activism, on developing new human rights resources for trade unionists, and the encouragement of local links between branches and Amnesty groups and with the Regional TUCs.

More Amnesty-affiliated union branches would mean more trade union campaigning in solidarity with our colleagues abroad - more prisoners of conscience adopted, more urgent actions taken, more twinning with union branches in need.

I am, therefore, happy to commit the TUC today to a partnership with Amnesty. We should agree a strategy for increased engagement, set targets and develop a work programme.

And we should do that internationally as well as nationally. Britain should show the way in which Amnesty and trade unions can work together.

Like Janek, I welcome Kate's announcement of the advisory role that the UK section will take with the global Amnesty movement. It is an important step towards better collaboration at the global level.

I would like to see a partnership - such as the national one I have described - between the International Trade Union Confederation and the International Secretariat.

That won't happen immediately - it needs to grow out of joint action, joint discussion and joint work.

But the lesson of trade unionism has always been that we are stronger together than apart. We achieve more acting in partnership than separately.

Conclusion

I want to finish by mentioning one other thing that the TUC did, many years ago, to promote human rights abroad.

In the early 1950s, years before Amnesty was created, the TUC sent a young barrister to Spain to observe the trials of some trade unionists. He was so appalled by what he saw in court that he gave a list of complaints to the judge. Unusually for that then fascist country, the trade unionists were acquitted.

The man we sent to Spain was Peter Benenson, who founded Amnesty in 1961 as a one year campaign. Like the trade union movement, Amnesty clearly isn't good at giving up - let's never give up, together!