Speech of Carol Beaumont to Founding Congress of ITUC, Vienna, November 2006

Speech of Carol Beaumont, Secretary NZCTU to Founding Congress of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Vienna, November 2006.

Sisters and Brothers,

Greetings on behalf the NZ Council of Trade Unions – Te Kauae Kaimahi – the voice of the workers.  We welcome the formation of the ITUC which will bring increased unity and strength that will work for working people and their families if we truly use this opportunity to build global solidarity – not just in words but in deeds.

I wish to focus on one aspect of the impact of globalization and that is the increasing inequality of outcomes for people – within countries and between countries, between men and women, and between workers in the formal sector and informal sectors. As unionists we are committed to a just distribution of wealth but clearly we are a long way from achieving this goal.

We must look at changing the way we organise to build greater strength politically and industrially.

One aspect of the work programme for the ITUC that I wish to comment on specifically is the challenge of multinational business.  As unions we need to recognize that what we do nationally in terms of organising workers must also occur internationally. Multinational businesses are not limited to one country or one region.  To organise in these multinational businesses we as unions cannot be constrained by national or regional barriers either.  We need to consider what this means for us structurally and organizationally.

We know as unions that what happens to workers in other countries will impact on what happens to workers in our own country. As internationalists we also care about attacks on workers rights wherever they occur.  We need to find concrete ways of organising that builds from these realities. 

In NZ we recently won a very significant dispute with an Australian owned multinational business – Woolworths Australia. That company locked out 600 low paid workers for 3 weeks to starve them into submission. The workers had had the audacity to seek a national collective agreement.  We won that dispute because the NZ union movement, the NZ public, the Australian union movement and the international union movement – ICFTU and the ITF all worked to put pressure on that company and to provide the financial support to ensure that the workers were not starved into submission.  That is globalizing solidarity. 

Currently our Australian comrades are facing fundamental challenges to workers rights. Like attacks on the union movement in NZ in the 1990s these attacks are a deliberate attempt to drive down wages and conditions, destroy unions and to significantly weaken the political opposition to the ruling conservative government. It is not only an attack on workers rights but an attack on democracy as unions are vital to democracy. Our right to organise – industrially and politically is a human right guaranteed by international law. It is not just a workplace right. It is also important at a political level as a countervailing force to corporate power.

The fine fight being waged in Australia cannot be won industrially, it must be won politically.  Their fight must be won in the interests of Australian workers and their families but also because there are implications for others if Australian multinational businesses seek to use this approach elsewhere and conservative political parties representing business interests throughout our region seek to replicate it.

In a democratic country such as Australia there is the opportunity to defeat the current Government and their policies.  As unions internationally we must work to develop democracy everywhere. We must also ensure that we are strongly organized to use our political power in a way that delivers real outcomes for working people and their families not just in our own country but internationally. 

The fight against the causes of inequality is undoubtedly a global one – we can only win by organising globally to challenging those who put profits before people.  As US Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis said last century:
“You can either have great concentrations of wealth, or you can have democracy.  You cannot have both.” 
 
So sisters and brothers we know that progress in fighting inequality and providing decent work for all is not possible without unions.  We need to build recognition of this fact. Workers rights must be strengthened in national and international governance arrangements and we must insist on our right to be involved in dialogue and decision making at all levels.

The role of the ITUC is to ensure that our agenda as outlined in the constitution is delivered by unions by working across national and regional boundaries.  By the work that we do together and the way we do that work we can show that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Let us use this historic event to recommit to globalizing solidarity.

Thank you.