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.

Back in 1981, long before Ronald Reagan was elevated to sainthood, before he “won” the Cold War (helped by Mrs. Thatcher) and was loved and revered by everyone, he was a very conservative and divisive politician.

Just six months after his inauguration, Reagan crushed the powerful air traffic controllers union, who had dared to go on strike for better pay and working conditions.  He did so by bringing in strike-breakers, including military air traffic controllers, and sacking over 11,000 professionals, barring them from federal employment for life.

To trade unionists in the United States and elsewhere, it’s a bitter memory.

To newly-elected ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government in Israel, it’s a source of inspiration.

It was revealed last week that the Israeli government was looking into plan codenamed “1981” which according to the daily business newspaper Globes, derives from “the year in which US President Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers at America’s airports and brought in military controllers in their stead.”

The target in Israel is not air traffic controllers but port workers in Haifa and Ashdod.

The two ports are unionized – bastions of trade unionism despite the relative long-term decline of unions in the manufacturing sector.  As a result, port workers enjoy good pay and conditions which are routinely “exposed” in the right-wing media.

The government plans to build new ports and Netanyahu, his new finance minister Yair Lapid, ultra-right Minister for the Economy Naftali Bennett and the Minister for Transport Yisrael Katz are quite openly relishing a fight with the port workers – and possibly with the broader labour movement, including the Histadrut (national trade union centre).

Lapid, who made a career as a television personality, was widely seen as a bright new face in Israeli politics, but since joining the Netanyahu government has often seemed to try to out-flank his coalition partners from the right.  His comment on the possibility of a port strike was “Let there be war.”

Globes reported that “the government has prepared several responses:  bringing the army and foreign companies in to operate the ports; outlawing of strikes in vital services; warning manufacturers to stock up with materials; and opening up the Port of Eilat and Israel Shipyards for loading and unloading of goods.”

Two days later, there were signs of a government retreat.  While not ruling out using troops as strike-breakers, Transport Minister Katz instead raised the prospects of Israel using the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba, as well as ports in Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, to break any potential port workers strike.

For decades port workers have been on the front lines of some of the sharpest industrial struggles.  Australia’s “war on the waterfront” in the late 1990s left bitter memories – and helped weaken the right-wing Bob Hawke government.  Britain of course had the long-running struggle of the Liverpool dockers.

Now it’s to be the turn of port workers in Haifa and Ashdod who face a determined right-wing government that seems to be inspired by the ghost of Ronald Reagan.

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.

US and Guatemalan unions have filed a complaint under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA )which has resulted in the signing of the les than succinctly titled ‘Mutually Agreed Enforcement Action Plan between the Government of the United States and the Government of Guatemala –Enforcement plan’. Whilst at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva the tabling by the workers group of a request  for a full commission of inquiry into the continued and flagrant breaches of  ILO core conventions in Guatemala has lead to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Guatemalan labour minister and the chair of the workers group.

The MOU sets out three areas in which we need to see concrete progress before the October meeting of the ILO’s governing body if we are to accept the governments verbal commitments on workers’ rights and agree not to proceed with the commission at this stage.

The government has committed to;

• Support the ILO in establishing a permanent high-level tripartite presence in the country to facilitate the development of ‘mature forms of industrial relations’ and the ensure the effective rule of law in regard to the core labour standards and  most crucially freedom of association and collective bargaining
• Institute immediate independent and judicial investigations into the deaths of trade union leaders and activists to identify and bring to justice those responsible for the murders and attacks
• Consult fully with trade unions and take concrete measures to guarantee the safety of leaders and activists so that trade unionists can operate in all sectors across the whole country.

This week as part of a coordinated International Trade Union Confederation mobilisation in support of our colleagues in Guatemala, the TUC has been acting to ensure that these commitments are publicised and the consequences of failing to meet them made clear to the Guatemalan authorities.

Frances O’Grady has written a letter to President Molina noting the sentencing of former dictator Rios Montt to 80 years for on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity during the civil war, but highlighting our concern that the government has only recognised 2 out of 58 most recent murders of trade unionists as being due to their trade union activities. This claim by the government that the crimes are based ‘personal differences’, ‘crimes of passion’ or due to criminal involvement comes despite their admission that they have yet to actually investigate most of them and is strikingly similar to the statements issued by the Colombian government when it seeks to downplay the level of anti-union violence.

In a meeting with British Foreign Office officials on Monday, TUC and GMB officials called for increased British support to end the culture of impunity surrounding the killings, European Union support for the enforcement of ILO standards and the close supervision by EU diplomats of the provisions for protection that should be put in place.

The British ambassador in Guatemala City has a good track record of meeting with trade unionists on the ground, but it is vital that the Guatemalan government remains are aware of the close interest we are taking in the situation there.

In addition in this lobbying work the TUC is supporting organising campaigns at ground level and this week we received the first report on the successful start of an organising and training project being carried out by the SITRABI banana workers union. The project is funded by the TUC and Unite with the support of Banana Link and is training new organisers and supporting the development of national collective bargaining in the Banana industry.

The headline agreements referred to above and the discussions that will occur next month during the ILO conference may prove useful to create the space unions need to organise, but the next 8 months will show whether they are worth the paper they are written on in respect to stopping the killings and attacks and only increased support for unions on the ground will enable them to take advantage of any improvements in the legal framework for organising and building union strength.

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.

The OLME strike was against longer hours (two hours on the average working week), which teacher unions claimed would also lead to the redundancy of many part-time teachers. But the Government has also proposed the forced movement of teachers to remote schools with shortages, on top of numerous other attacks on terms and conditions of teachers, which the union claims will also hit the quality of education in Greece.

Outraged by the ban on the teachers’ union action, the GSEE private sector confederation and public sector organisation ADEDY called on workers to protest in sympathy. But the teachers’ union – faced with threats to their members of dismissal and even arrest - had to call off the action.

Amnesty International accused the Greek Government of violating its international human rights obligations. Jezerca Tigani, Deputy Europe and Central Asia Programme Director said:

“Times of financial hardship don’t absolve governments from their obligations to uphold all human rights, and workers’ rights in particular should not become a casualty to the crisis.”

This latest step – sure to be raised by Greek unions with the International Labour Organisation at its conference next month – follows hard on the heels of the latest finding of the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR), the main supervisory body monitoring the implementation of the (revised) European Social Charter of the Council of Europe in five collective complaints against Greece. The unions had criticised the massive reductions in social security benefits, particularly in relation to pension rights. The ECSR concluded that Greece is in violation of the right to social security enshrined in the European Social Charter.

Bernadette Ségol, ETUC General Secretary, commented that:

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.

Please sign our e-action, and encourage your friends, family and workmates to sign up too. We hope we can welcome both companies to the list of Accord-backing list soon.

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.

The Accord commits retailers to pay for and implement systematic safety programmes in the factories they source from in Bangladesh.  As these safety programs were developed by trade unions, they require factories to involve workers and trade unions at every stage – in governance, factory inspections and staff training in health and safety.  The involvement of workers in safety plans is crucial for them to actually make a difference.

Trade unions in the garment sector remain weak, although recent days have seen significant changes in the law to allow garment workers to freely form unions. As I blogged previously – where unions are weak, workers feel too afraid to speak out about health and safety at work.  We know workers at Rana Plaza were so scared they would have their pay docked for missing a day’s work that even when visible cracks emerged on the walls, they still went to work in the building.  That is why we must strengthen trade unions in Bangladesh to make sure no more lives are lost.

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.

However, the tri-partite principle remained and, as a result, unions at least felt they had a voice after all the law still required the Secretary of State to consult with “bodies representing employee interests” before appointing the three employee board members, and each of these three were active trade unionists supported by the TUC.

Earlier this year there was a vacancy for one of these seats. The TUC supported a candidate who has huge respect within the trade union movement; Matt Wrack, the General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union. Matt is a member of the General Council of the TUC and has a wealth of experience in safety issues. He also has strong links with the world of work.

Last month the Government announced that they were going to appoint someone else. They did so without any meaningful consultation with the TUC, or any union bodies. They hand-picked a retired union general secretary who had not been nominated by a single union (even his own previous union).

Now this is not about the individuals, it is about who can decide who represents workers. If the government can decide this without any discussion with trade unions then it makes a mockery of the whole process. As Hugh Muir pointed out in the Guardian, they could just as easily appoint Norman Tebbit, after all, he was in a union once.

The decision not to appoint Matt Wrack shows exactly what the Government wants, which is a compliant board there to administer the organisation and make sure it delivers what the government wants. It wants to smother any independence and any challenge.

As a result we will end up with a board of professional committee-members, something the Nolan Principles on public life were designed to avoid. The TUC has always nominated people who still have a strong and current link with the world of work. If you look at the present board, with the exception of the TUC nominees, all the other ordinary members of the board of the HSE are either retired or semi-retired consultants. I somehow doubt that this is what Robens* intended when he recommended a tri-partite HSE.

This may seem like sour grapes from the TUC after we did not get our own way, but that is far from the truth. Of course, we understand that the Secretary of State has the final decision, but if the HSE Chair and DWP minister want to maintain trust in the HSE, the onus is on them to show that they have listened to the voice of working people and that the successful candidate carries our confidence.

We care about the HSE, and more importantly we care about health and safety. It was recognised 40 years ago that the most effective regime was one which involved collaboration and tri-partitism. Ditching that model means that the HSE will lose all its independence and become simply a blunt instrument for politicians to use to push through their own short-term agendas, as we are seeing at the moment on issues such as regulation, inspection and enforcement.

The losers will not be the TUC, but the credibility of the government’s claim to have an independent HSE and ultimately the workers whose lives and health will be put at risk.

*Lord Robens produced the report that led to the creation of the HSE.

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.

When are you possibly going to be prosecuted under the existing Health and Safety at Work Act if you are self-employed? The answer is, if you injure someone or put them at risk of injury. The only time the Health and Safety at Work Act can be used is in circumstances whereby the person does put another person at risk. So why change it?

Every self-employed person is still going to have to do a risk assessment and if there is no risk there is no problem. That will not change. What will change is the confusion that it will bring.

Anyone who has tried to explain the change to others will know that it is not easy to get your head around what it means. Self-employed people will be unsure if they are covered, or presume that they are not. Even many people that clearly do pose a danger, such as self-employed scaffolders or electricians will think that they now have nothing to worry about so there is no need for any safety precautions.

Worse still people who control the workplace where self-employed people work (often bogus-self-employed) will wrongly think that they do not have any duty of care to them. Self-employed people who employ others may interpret it as meaning that they are exempt from the law.

Given that the most dangerous industries all have a high proportion of self-employed people in them (agriculture, construction etc.) anything that confuses the situation is a recipe for disaster. The government will say that these people in dangerous industries are not exempted and if you ask who is exempted they come up with examples like a novelist who works in their own home.

Yes, but the novelist in their own home is only covered now if they put someone at risk. That will not change. What will change is that hundreds of thousands of other people simply will not know whether they are covered. It is a recipe for confusion and misunderstanding.

This stupid and dangerous proposal is being done in the name of reducing burdens. How it is going to remove any burdens is beyond me. It does not actually change the situation for those who genuinely do not pose a risk to others and only creates complete confusion for all the other self-employed.

Instead it is an ideological move from a government that is solely interested in deregulation, or even worse, the illusion of deregulation, regardless of the cost. No-one is claiming that it will do anything to improve health and safety and it certainly is not going to simplify anything.

Once last thought on the matter. There is currently a fatality rate of 1.2 per 100,000 for the self-employed as against 0.5 per 100,000 for employees.

If you find this attempt to silence criticism as outrageous as I do, please join nearly 9,000 trade unionists worldwide and take a moment to let the Thai employers and authorities know that we don’t like the way Thailand’s courts are being abused by a bad employer. We’re seeking publicity for Andy’s case, and are pressing the UK Government to raise the issue formally with the Thai Government, as well as working with global unions and the ILO.

IndustriALL General Secretary Jyrki Raina marchers calling for justice for workers killed in the Dhaka tragedy. Photo IndustriALL

I blogged last week about what you can do to help Bangladeshi workers prevent more tragedies like the Dhaka factory collapse that has now claimed over 610 lives and the Tazreen factory fire which claimed 112 in November. Now global e-petition machine Avaaz has joined the union campaign, encouraging its millions of supporters globally to pressurise the multinational brands to sign the factory safety agreement that global union federation IndustriALL has proposed.

Please sign that petition and encourage as many of your friends, family and workmates to do so. The deadline set by IndustriALL is 15 May, so there are only a few days left for the multinationals who have profited out of low wages to do the right thing (you can also make a donation to IndustriALL’s fund for the humanitarian effort in Savar – the area around the Rana Plaza factory).

Meanwhile, the ILO’s tripartite mission to Bangladesh – led by former Prime Minister of Togo and now ILO Deputy Director General Gilbert Houngbo – has issued a concise and hard-hitting set of recommendations to the Government of Bangladesh. The key five points of its strategy are unequivocal and uncompromising:

• labour law reform that would improve protection, in law and practice, for the fundamental rights to freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, as well as occupational safety and health;
• assess by the end of 2013 the structural building safety and fire safety of all active export-oriented ready-made garment factories in Bangladesh, and initiate remedial actions, including relocation of unsafe factories;
• an ILO skills programme for workers injured in the recent tragic events at Tazreen Fashions Ltd., Smart Export Garments and Rana Plaza that resulted in disability, as well as redeploymenta nd rehabilitation;
• recruit, within 6 months, 200 additional inspectors, upgrade the Department of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Establishments to a Directorate with the budget for a minimum of 800 inspectors; and
• implement the National Tripartite Plan of Action on Fire Safety in the Ready-Made Garment Industry in Bangladesh, extended to include structural integrity of buildings to improve health, occupational and structural safety.

The strategy would certainly get the support of Financial Times ‘Undercover Economist’ Tim  Harford. Arguing against a boycott of Bangladeshi textiles (and certainly, no Bangladeshi union has asked for that!), he correctly identifies the key change that Bangladeshi workers need to secure higher wages, better safety standards, and dignity at the workplace – the right to join a free trade union. He concludes:

“One other thing: poor countries need to allow trade unions to operate – unlike in Bangladesh, where union activists have been harassed and even killed. …

“Ultimately, whatever western consumers demand, what determines whether rules about working conditions are upheld is that workers on the factory floor have a voice and some power.”

Sign the Avaaz petition now

Garment workers in a Bangladesh clothing factory. Photo: Jankie

In the aftermath of the death toll in Bangladesh’s worst ever factory disaster last week, much has been written (including by us!) about what needs to be done to prevent further tragedies. Most attention has focused on what the Bangladesh government and multinational clothing companies should do, with a fair amount of blame being mis-directed (more on that in another blog) at cash-strapped, bargain-hunting western consumers.

One element of the online debate has been about what sort of terms and conditions of employment are appropriate for workers in Bangladesh’s Ready Made Garment (RMG) sector. The usual canard about not pricing them out of their jobs has been raised, so I thought I should address that specifically, because it’s being used to attack unions’ and campaigners’ attempts to demand better wages and safer workplaces.

The argument runs like this. The only reason multinational textile firms place orders in Bangladesh is because the price is low, due mostly to very low wage levels. If those wages go up too far, the companies will stop placing orders and people will lose their jobs. That will leave them worse off than they are now.

Some people have argued this aggressively, resisting any increases in wage levels, and insisting that the situation in Bangladesh may be bad, but any pressure for change would only make things worse. The Prime Minister of Bangladesh essentially argued that case when she was interviewed on CNN yesterday. No wonder it’s reported that the Government has apparently expressed displeasure at the arrival of an ILO mission who are taking a tough line (the Government has also refused CNN journalists visas to enter the country, as they have done in the past with our own union, Unite!)

Others argue a much less strident line. On the Guardian Development pages earlier this week, New York-based Maha Rafi Atal argued that campaigners were seeking to impose western wage levels, which would destroy the livelihoods of the workers concerned. She did, let me be clear, spend far longer rebutting the claims of the sweatshop apologists in the right wing media like Alex Massie in the Spectator.

But Maha also hit out – for balance? setting up a straw man? - at campaigners against sweatshops, writing that:

“Pushing not only for raised safety standards but also for wages that match those in the developed world is a tactic that will have the effect of shutting down developing world manufacturing altogether.”

She cites, as evidence, a blog by US academic Erik Loomis, where he argues that US corporates should be held to US labour standards wherever they operate, and suggests that he is therefore calling for the same wage rates in Bangladesh as in the USA (although there isn’t a single wage rate in the US, even under minimum wage laws). I asked Erik what he meant by the relevant line in his blog, and he clarified thus:

“What I’m calling for are legally enforceable international standards regardless of where a corporation chooses to site a plant, with these standards enforceable in the courts of the country of corporate origin.”

And I also checked with the AFL-CIO, our sister organisation in the US, because Maha had told me (on twitter, so I’m not implying this is her detailed position) that the argument she was criticising was not uncommon in North America. Their trade expert, Celeste Drake, told me:

“The AFL-CIO clearly is for rising wages and standards of living for all, and we agree that as wages rise in developing nations, low-wages won’t be one of the factors pulling jobs out of the US to other countries. However, the AFL-CIO has not supported efforts to impose a global minimum wage from the United States, nor to use a global minimum wage standard as a way to block imports from developing countries (moreover, our brothers and sisters in developing countries would not likely appreciate such efforts, which they might see as efforts to prevent their own country’s development).

“Instead, we have strongly supported international labor rights so that workers are empowered to raise their own wages and living standards; we support trade provisions to address labor rights abuses; we oppose austerity measures which reduce social safety nets, employment, and job security; and we promote social protection systems on a national basis (eg minimum wages, health and old age pension systems, unemployment and disability insurance etc), that will help workers everywhere live decent lives.  These policies will help workers as they help grow a global middle class that will increase markets for goods everywhere, creating a virtuous cycle of ever increasing demand—but without imposing a wage level from the US.”

That’s the TUC’s position too. Above all, we want Bangladeshi workers to have the freedom of association and rights to collective bargaining that would allow them to set their own wage rates at a level that would provide dignity and a living wage. Most of the people arguing against that aren’t protecting Bangladeshi workers’ jobs, but the wealth of Bangladesh’s business and political elite, and the bloated profits of multinational enterprises. And people who do care about the textile workers, like Maha, shouldn’t be making their task easier by misrepresenting the union/campaigner case.