Ronald Reagan delivers an ultimatum to air traffic controllers in a press conference. Photo: White House Photo Office
In the labour movement we’re often fond of our history. We preserve certain traditions, we celebrate some holidays, we even have museums displaying our union banners and old pamphlets. Our past inspires us.
We don’t tend to think of union-busters sharing in some kind of nostalgia, but they do – and it sometimes shows up in odd ways.
Recent months have seen a flurry of agreements and undertakings being signed relating to Guatemala.
Whilst the attention of trade unionists around the world has rightly been focused on Colombia due to the unbelievable level of violent attacks our colleagues there are subject to, as I have written before, the situation in Guatemala is also of huge concern and needs our urgent attention.
More than 56 trade unionists have been murdered in the last three years alone and the assassinations are occurring within a culture of almost complete impunity for the killers. Trade unionists in Guatemala and internationally have been attempting to use all means to available to highlight this situation.
Teachers rally in Athens. Photo: OLME
Last week, Greek teachers found out that their services were essential. No news there, of course – as the old poster had it “if you can read this, thank a teacher!” But the language of austerity is becoming more like George Orwell’s “newspeak” by the day. The Greek authorities defined teaching as an “essential service” in order to ban a one-day strike on Friday by the Greek Federation of Secondary Education State School Teachers (OLME).
The Greek Government has invoked these powers already earlier this year to ban a strike by dock workers. International human rights laws and the ILO do allow governments to ban strikes in essential services, but the definition of what’s essential is very narrow – usually only relating to certain functions protecting national security, public safety, public health or morals.
And the Greek Government is increasingly in the dock over taking away people’s fundamental human rights, because it’s the only way to ram through their austerity measures (and, according to one press report, they even get brownie points from ‘the markets’ for taking away workers’ rights.) They’ve been condemned by international union organisations, Amnesty International, and the European Committee of Social Rights, part of the Council of Europe.
We’ve reported elsewhere about the 34 major companies that have already signed the global union Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, in the aftermath of the horrific Rana Plaza disaster. And we’re urging people to help the families of the victims with our TUC Aid Dhaka Disaster Appeal.
But this weekend, we’re also asking you to persuade two other companies to sign up to the Accord and help ensure there are no further atrocities: Debenhams and Gap. Both are involved in discussions with IndustriALL and UNI Global – the worldwide textile and retail worker unions about signing the Accord. We think some public pressure could make the difference and get them to put their words into action.
Three weeks ago, over 1,100 textile workers were killed when the Rana Plaza building collapsed near Dhaka, Bangladesh. By the stroke of midnight yesterday, over thirty of the world’s biggest retail and textile companies (including Tesco, Primark, Sainsbury’s, Next, Marks and Spencer, New Look and John Lewis) signed up to the IndustriALL/UNI-Global Accord on Building and Fire Safety in Bangladesh.
These horrific and historic weeks have shown the power of global solidarity. Emails asking fashion retailers to sign the Accord were sent by almost 1 million people via Avaaz and over 85,000 people via Change.org. When this effort was combined with campaigns by global union federations IndustriALL and UNI-Global and national trade union confederations like the TUC (with our 2p wage campaign that went viral and reached over a third of a million Facebook users), the need for companies to act was overwhelming.
Now it is time for global solidarity to support trade unions in Bangladesh to enable them to play a real part in the safety programmes that the Accord will launch. Today TUC Aid is launching an appeal for donations to help the families of ready-made garment workers in Dhaka. You can give on line, persuade friends, families and workmates to do the same, or send a cheque made out to TUC Aid Dhaka Disaster to TUC Aid, Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS.
When the Health and Safety Executive was set up, almost forty years ago, it was considered important that it had the confidence of both employers and employees and rightly so. For that reason the Health and Safety Commission was set up to agree any new regulations. There were three worker representatives (proposed by the TUC), three employers representatives (proposed by employers’ groups) and up to three others. No decision could be made without the support of both employers and employee representatives. This meant that any changes to health and safety law were seen to have come about by consensus, achieved through a common purpose of improving health and safety in the workplace.
This system has survived almost intact, although there have been some changes. When the Commission was replaced with a Board the membership was expanded from a maximum of 9 to 11, although the three worker and three employer representatives remained. Also in recent years decisions have been made which did not have the support of both sides of industry, such as the decision to exempt some self-employed people from health and safety laws.
Today’s Queen’s speech announced that there will be a new Deregulation Bill. This will, among other things, take those self-employed who pose no risk to others from the scope of the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Now at present the situation is simple. If you are self-employed, you have a legal duty to ensure that you protect others from harm resulting from your work activity. This covers all self-employed people. It is pretty straightforward and it works. There is no confusion and it means that everyone is very clear that no-one can take risks with others safety or health, even if they are self-employed.
The Government now plans to change this so that any person whose work activity poses no risk to anyone else will not be covered. Now that may seem to be common sense – until you think about it for about 2 seconds.
Eric Lee
Sam Gurney
Owen Tudor
Rosa Crawford
Kevin Rowan
Hugh Robertson
