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Building union/Amnesty partnerships

Issue date
Speech to ITUC fringe meeting

Shane Enright, AI UK

23 July 2010

Amnesty international is a global movement of three million ordinary people working through national sections in over sixty countries, who are doing extraordinary things to demand human rights and to defend those at risk or in danger for exercising those rights.

Trade union rights and freedoms have been at the heart of Amnesty's work since our foundation. Peter Benenson, a British lawyer, whose appeal in the Observer newspaper lead to the formation of our organisation, included the case of Tony Ambelitos, an imprisoned Greek trade unionist amongst the six cases that he brought to public attention in his article and which lead to a massive public response and the eventual formation of our movement forty nine years ago.

Our own Amnesty Trade Union Network in the United Kingdom celebrated its thirtieth anniversary last year, and I invite you to take the '30 Voices' publication we produced for that occasion.

I hope that we can use the time that we have to look very practically at how we can build partnerships between Amnesty and labour movement at the international level, nationally and at the grass roots.

I would like to do three things in the time I have.

First, I would like to share with you some of the concerns we have worked on together and some of the challenges we face - to map out some of the workers' rights issues we are working on together.

I can't cover all the ground, and although I speak Spanish and French, we are working today in English. I have put a variety of Amnesty's recent reports and calls to action out on the side table for you to look at. If you are interested in any of these, please make a note of the document number because everything is downloadable from our global website at www.amnesty.org. Please don't take away the originals.

Secondly, I want to briefly outline how we work together in the UK, and to describe some of our relationships elsewhere. Owen Tudor from the TUC will say more on this.

Finally, I would like to pose some questions which I hope can guide us to opportunities for improving our human rights impact and helping us reach our goals.

At Monday's side meeting on migrant workers, I heard the refrain 'a worker is a worker is a worker'; we in Amnesty would say 'a human is a human is a human' and we all have universal human rights, irrespective of who and where we are, including the right to organise and form trade unions, and the right to dignity and decent work.

Amnesty works in defence of labour rights in all corners of the globe, but I want to pick out just a few countries to illustrate our concerns and campaigns.

I want to start with Iran, because here the need is pressing and I need to ask you to take urgent action at the end of this meeting, and to join us in solidarity tomorrow.

Three years ago Mansour Ossanlu, the leader of the Tehran bus workers' union came to Europe to participate at meetings of the ITF and the ITUC. Some of you will have met him, as I did, on that trip. His union, one of just a handful of independent workers organisations in Iran, had been arguing for wages to be paid on time, for maternity rights, for part-time workers to have full-time rights, and for an end to casual labour.

For this simple act of representing his members in the organisations to which his union was affiliated- for doing what you are doing here today - upon his return he was abducted, held incognito, suffered eye damage and was eventually sentenced to five years in jail.

When we later learnt that the authorities were denying him the operation that the prison doctor said was necessary to save his eyesight, Amnesty and the labour movement came together to launch an urgent medical appeal. Over five days more than 11,000 appeals were sent - that is more than one appeal a minute night and day for five days. And we closed the appeal after five days because, without precedent, Ossanlu was taken from his cell to hospital to have the operation to save his eyesight.

That's the sort of activism we need, that's the sort of impact we are striving for.

And the Tehran bus workers need our help again today. Saaed Torabian, and Reza Shabahi, two other executive members of the union, have been abducted in the past two weeks, and are being held in incommunicado detention now.

They are at great risk. We have an urgent online appeal on their behalf. Please take action at the web page amnesty.org.uk/iranworkers - the web address in on the flyer inviting you to this meeting. Please also cascade this and forward this to your affiliates and their members. We need to let the Iranian authorities know that we watching them and that we are demanding safety and security for Torabian and Shahabi.

To that end, Amnesty Canada are organising an impromptu photo action outside the Convention Centre tomorrow lunchtime in defence of workers' and union rights in Iran, and Sharan Burrows will be inviting all the delegates to take part when the Congress takes its break tomorrow lunch time.

Please spread the work and please ensure that your delegations take part in this short but important symbolic act of solidarity. The news will reach Iran, we need to stand up and be counted.

Our work in Iran is not just about urgent actions, and it is not just about workers rights; we have been defending the brave women who have organised a million signature petition to demand their rights; we have worked night and day in defence of those caught up in the repression this past year, and we are in regular dialogue with Education International and the IUF as well as the ITF and the CLC to coordinate our activism.

On Burma, Amnesty is redoubling its efforts during this year of sham elections. We have a strategy that focuses on the ASEAN countries and we have shared that with your secretariat. We know it can work: our last campaign led to the early release of seven of the fifteen prisoners of conscience whose cases we were highlighting. This time we are advocating for Su Su Nway, a young activist who was imprisoned for speaking out to the ILO against forced labour in her village. Her health is poor and she is being held in a prison a thousand kilometres away from her home, denying her support, food and medicines that her family could otherwise provide. We are willing to advocate too for imprisoned FTUB members, but need your guidance to do so. It would be good to share the ITUC's strategy on Burma and to work together in the period ahead.

One small example illustrates the imagination of our activism. At the beginning of this week we launched a campaign for our UK supporters to sponsor radios which we can safely deliver to remote communities in Burma, to break through the wall of censorship imposed by the junta. In just forty eight hours 2,000 radios have been purchased - half way towards our target, and a small step towards freedom.

Colombia, regrettably, remains the country of greatest danger to trade unionists. The latest tally we have is, I believe, 26 trade unionists killed so far this year. The situation is not getting better despite the protestations of Uribe. In 2007, in a major report on trade union rights abuses in that country, Amnesty demonstrated that labour leaders and union activist were not being killed - as the government argued - as collateral damage in the internal conflict between state and guerrillas, but rather were at greatest risk when organising at the workplace or in dispute with the employer. Huge strides have been taken in human rights in Latin America, and the end of dictatorships and despotism has seen a reinvigorated labour movement in that continent that recognises human rights not as a matter of second-hand solidarity but of self-interest. We need to work together, to redouble our efforts, to guarantee the right to life, the right to organise, for Colombian workers. Trade policy is beyond our competence, but I understand a free trade agreement with Colombia is about to be signed by Canada and I know that such an agreement is pending in the European Union. You are better placed than we to insist on human rights conditionalities in such agreements.

Turkey too is a country of growing concern, and as the ITUC Annual Survey reveals, the labour rights situation in that country is deteriorating, with no progress towards labour law reform. That is why Amnesty has launched a global postcard campaign demanding that the government meets its ILO Core Labour Standards obligations by implementing the reforms proposed by the ILO committee of experts. Last month, our supporters have sent ten thousand of these cards from the UK - a country supportive of Turkey's EU accession ambitions - and we have sponsored 3,000 for Amnesty Turkey while Hava-Is, the aviation union, and Tekguida-Is the foodworkers have between them ordered a further five thousand for their members. Amnesty sections in other countries are also backing the appeal. You can find copies of this card on our Amnesty stall please join in, please ask the Amnesty section in your country, if there is one, to support this appeal.

In Africa, we remain deeply engaged with the workers' struggle in Zimbabwe. I was privileged last week to be with Gertrude Hambira, General Secretary of the agricultural workers' union of that country - the largest affiliate of the ZCTU - when she explained to the International labour conference delegates the impact of the land-grabs by Mugabe's cronies. For her bravery and for her unions defiance, she has had to flee for her safety. We have taken her story to the 250,000 readers of our Amnesty magazine in the UK, and we will be working even more in defence of her union and her members in the months ahead.

And our shared activism can have an impact. Last summer six journalists and trade unionists of the Gambia Press Union were charged with sedition for criticising the president of that country. We protested across West Africa, we came together with the journalists union in the UK and the TUC to demonstrate in London; we worked together with the ITUC and the IFJ, and two months into their two year prison sentences all six were pardoned. We will be holding another Gambia Action Day on 22 July this year - to demand freedom and fundamental rights in the Gambia, and I invite, in particular, African delegations to join with us in the protests and press conferences we are organising. In the UK we will be joining with the TUC and the GPU to meet with the UK foreign office to seek their intervention and support. Please join us in your countries and communities.

These are just a few examples of the labour rights cases our activists and supporters are working on with you. There are many, many, more besides.

Amnesty does not only campaign for individuals at risk, or demand civil and political rights and the rights of freedom of speech and assembly - we are also demanding economic, social and cultural rights.

In our five year strategic plan which begins this year, we have picked out 'people on the move' as a priority cross-cutting theme - that does not only include refugees and asylum seekers; traditional areas for our activism, but encompasses migrant workers and their rights as well.

There is no better way to defend migrant workers than union organising, but we can back that up with our hard-hitting research and campaigning. Amongst the reports on the side, are examples of our recent work on behalf of women domestic migrant workers in Jordan, a report on the treatment of migrant workers in South Korea, which highlights the deplorable harassment of leaders of the Migrant Trade Union of Seoul-Geongi-Incheon, and a hard-hitting report of our visit to three of the fifteen migrant detention centres in Malaysia, a country where the documented and undocumented migrant workers together account for a third of the workforce in that country. And it is not only in countries of destination where migrants face exploitation and abuse of their human rights. Just three months ago we published a report, backed up by activism, addressing the exploitation and abuse of migrants in transit in Mexico.

We need to do more together to defend the rights and dignity of these workers. One demand that we have been pursuing is to call for more nations to ratify the ILO migrant workers' convention. I was at the UNISON public sector union conference last week chairing a side meeting on human rights in the Philippines - which is now the second most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist - and the action that we invited the participants to take was to press the Philippines government to sign up.

I am conscious that legal instruments and international human rights laws might seem remote from your members in the workplace, but their importance in the adoption and in the observance is familiar territory for our activists. We may not be strong or present in some of the countries of origin of migrants - though our dynamic Nepal section should be working with the unions, for instance - but we are strong and present in many of the countries of destination. We can and should do more together to make sure that a worker is a worker is a worker, whoever they are.

When it comes to the ILO Conventions, our activists and supporters in the UK understand well that the core conventions are fundamental human rights, but we recognise too the importance of other conventions: 111 on discrimination, Convention 169 on indigenous people's rights; 151 on public sector organising, for instance. We can and should work together to reinforce these and to document abuses and shortcomings.

I am conscious too that the ITUC's talented but overstretched trade union and human rights team comprises - I think - eight people, while Amnesty's research and policy secretariat in London is made up of 800. It is my job to harness that expertise and our resources in pursuit of our common goals as well as to encourage shared activism on the day to day human and workers rights challenges we encounter. You can count on me to do the best I can.

Another key component of Amnesty's new strategic plan is a five-year campaign on poverty; this is not a development campaign but rather one that addresses the fundamental human rights abuse that is poverty and economic disenfranchisement. To be frank, I don't think we have fully thought through the implications of this new economic rights work, though there are some valuable projects arising, for instance on maternal mortality in Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and the USA, and in defence of slum dwellers and their communities.

Amnesty UK is arguing within our movement that Decent Work - the ILO core conventions, effective social security, protection from discrimination - need to be cornerstones of any solution to poverty and we are absolutely insisting that 'poverty' is not a problem for 'them' over there, but for us here. The TUC's Commission on Vulnerable Employment shows that in the UK alone there are two million people in precarious employment. This debate is not yet won. We need your help to articulate that argument, and I hope that when your incoming General Secretary meets our incoming Secretary General, Sahil Shetty, that the human rights imperative and potential of the decent work agenda will be high on the list of topics discussed.

I am a trade unionist; organising and mobilising; educating and agitating are my lifeblood. We are nothing without activism, and activism is nothing if it does not mean empowerment.

In Amnesty UK we have had a formal relationship with trade unions for thirty years now, national unions have affiliated to us and their branches have also joined. That means that trade unions in the UK are a core membership constituency, able to vote and attend our governance meetings. At the moment 5.7 million of the TUC's 6.5 million members are represented through national affiliations, and we have a trade union committee that gives voice to their aspirations. You can see our annual reports on the side and these are downloadable from our website.

To bring these relationships to life, last year we signed a partnership and cooperation memorandum with the TUC, outlining ways in which we will collaborate.

One of the targets in the memorandum is to increase branch (local) affiliation by ten percent per year. This membership is still small and there is great potential, and I am pleased that we grew by twenty per cent last year and have set the same goal for this year.

The aim of our union recruitment is not affiliation fees, welcome and necessary though these are - we take no money at all from governments or corporations and 98% of our income comes direct from supporters - but rather the activism that it can unleash. As you encourage your members to think globally and act locally, we can provide another means and motive to do so, and we are good at outreach, we are growing and energetic and our ambition in the UK is to reinforce links in the community between our local union branch affiliates, our schools groups, our traditional local Amnesty groups and our three hundred college and university groups

Perhaps the most significant development in our thirty year history was our decision to extend our network from affiliates to encompass individuals with an affinity for our labour rights work, who we are servicing with email bulletins. I am delighted to report that in the eighteen months since we opened up this route to activism, we have now become the largest specialist network in Amnesty UK, with 11,400 subscribers, all activists who are ready and willing to respond in defence of workers and union rights.

And the outreach works in two directions. We have six hundred Amnesty schools groups across the UK - every time we take a labour rights case to our young supporters we are saying to them that union rights need to be defended and that trade unions are a positive force in civil society.

Our way of working may not be appropriate for other national situations; in Austria our trade union network acts as a specialist local group, in France it is a committee with its own memoranda with national union centres, in Mongolia the model is of bilateral partnership, in Spain, we don't have the direct trade union link, but we do have workplace Amnesty groups that take action in the canteens or shop floors of their workplaces. More often there are partnerships where interests coincide. I am not advocating for any one approach, but rather for us to build and sustain relationships towards common goals.

The third element of our global strategic plan that I want to mention is the concept of partnership. Amnesty is moving away from a patronising model of working for people to one of working with people. That is an opportunity for you, as trade unionists and as key human rights defenders, to tap into our resources and energy and to make common cause.

I have spoken for too long, but I haven't said enough in terms of what we are and can be doing together. I look forward to your questions and challenges.

Thank you. I am proud to be a trade unionist and delighted to be with you today.

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