Get ready for action on White Band Day 2007 - 17 October

White Band Day, 17 October 2007

Global Call to Action Against Poverty

TUC briefing for unions

Support global standards

On Wednesday 17 October 2007, the TUC and unions will be calling on politicians in Britain and across Europe to 'listen to the south' and respond to the demands of the people of the global south for:

decent work including fundamental rights at work;

better public services;

action to prevent and mitigate climate change; as well as

more and better aid, trade justice and an end to debt.

Unions need to get their members involved in the campaign against global poverty again, as they were in 2005 for Make Poverty History. We want union members to lobby MPs and MEPs for the following key proposals:

Global: structural reform at the international financial institutions to make them listen to the south;

European: changes to the EU's trade agreement strategy to prevent Economic Partnership Agreements from harming development or public services, and to include enforceable labour rights in Bilateral/Regional Trade Agreements; and

National: a cross-government agenda for action on international poverty reduction so that every government department is required to say what it will do to help meet the Millennium Development Goals, such as through procurement.

Briefing notes on each of these overall demands and specific proposals will be available on the TUC website by the end of August.

Lobbying campaign

What we want unions to do is:

get members to contact their MPs and MEPs before 17 October by post or email;

ask members to lobby their MPs to sign the Early Day Motion which will be put down for the campaign; and

get members to write to local papers the week beforehand asking people to 'listen to the south'.

Meetings will be arranged by the TUC for MPs in the House of Commons and for MEPs in the European Parliament. Unions will be asked to encourage MPs to attend.

What unions should do

• print an article about the action in the union members'/activists' journal;
• post details of the action on union websites;
• mail or email branches and activists to inform them of the action;
• make a donation (£100 for smaller unions, up to £500 for larger unions, to the campaign for materials and so on);
• ask MPs and MEPs to attend the lobbying meetings on 17 October;
• get union General Secretaries or other senior officers to attend the meetings on 17 October; and
• advertise the TUC white bands, still available at www.tuc.org.uk/whiteband

What else unions will be doing

The International Trade Union Confederation will be lobbying the autumn meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington DC on 21 October, asking for a better deal for the global south.

The European Trade Union Confederation will be meeting on 17 October in Lisbon, Portugal just ahead of the European Union heads of government summit under the Portuguese Presidency.

What else will be going on

White Band Day is being organised by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, an international campaign against global poverty based in the global south, to which the International Trade Union Confederation belongs. Other groups involved in GCAP, and in the British platform which succeeded Make Poverty History, will also be raising development issues around white band day. We would encourage trade union members to get involved in them, too.

To find out about these actions, see www.whiteband.org/GcapSpecials/anti-poverty-day/