Union Davids Face Corporate Goliaths

TORONTO, CANADA-"Workers and their trade unions are becoming aware that it is no longer possible to go it alone, that to fight for and win their demands they have to be just as highly organized and informed on the international level as the transnational they are struggling against."

These words from Alain Stern of the Confederation Generale des Travailleurs de France (CGT) captured the purpose of the second annual conference on International Trade Union Unity, which brought together nearly 250 trade unionists from the U.S., Canada, and several other countries in Toronto October 29-30. Sponsored by the Labor Research Association of New York and the Vancouver-based Trade Union Research Bureau, the conference focused on labor strategies for combatting multinational corporations.

Representing 55 union coalitions, nationals, and locals from nine countries, participants heard speakers from Latin America, Europe, North America, and Japan summarize their experience with multinationals and list priorities for continuing action. Participants generally agreed labor faces formidable obstacles in its efforts to fight the multinationals. As CGT's Stern emphasized, transnationals have the power to "violate the laws of the land where they operate" and "open and close factories at will."

One participant noted that union officials will often add to the problem. "Trade unions are led and influenced by officials who collaborate with the transnationals and their governments to hold down or cut wages, and slash welfare programs," stated Ernest De Maio, permanent representative to the United Nations from the World Federation of Trade Unions. But resistance movements are growing in response to tax cuts for the wealthy, labor concessions, escalating unemployment, and plant shutdownsnot to mention imprisonment, assassination by death squads, and disappearances common in some countries. "Working class unity is spreading where it it most effective-at the rank-and-file level," De Maio said.

In response to one of labor activists' major needs-information-delegates to the conference called for the establishment of a clearinghouse and information network, to be sponsored by the Labor Research Association. Gregory Tarpinian, director of the New York-based group, said that while plans are not definite, they intend to start a regular publication that compiles union information on contract negotiations, strikes, bargaining positions and priorities, and tactics-corporation by corporation.

Bill Taylor, an Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union leader from Chicago, illustrated the need for such exchange with an anecdote from his bargaining experience. Immediately after concluding contract negotiations with a corporation, he received a letter from a Chilean union which was beginning a bargaining session with the same company. Had he known of the Chilean union's situation earlier, Taylor said, he might have been able to prolong the U.S. bargaining sessions so that the two unions could coordinate their positions.

Beyond the exchange of information, organizing workers of individual corporations across national lines was recognized as another prime goal for conference participants. Unions must not confine themselves to bargaining at the individual factory or even nation-wide level, pointed out Stern of the CGT, because local management cannot make broader corporate decisions, "such as investment, economic policy, or guaranteeing jobs." International labor cooperation is needed "to ensure the representation, and the voice of the workers, at the head office of each transnational," he said.

Stern noted that labor unions had already coordinated corporate-wide communication and action for several multinationals: delegates from Renault unions around the world met in November 1981 and agreed to maintain closer contacts, exchange information, and establish a coordinating and information center in France. At DMC, a France-based textile giant, unions established a coordinating committee and an international delegation presented demands to the head office for union organizing rights and yearly meetings of world-wide union representatives. CGT of France sends a periodic bulletin to workers of Rhone-Poulenc, a textile and chemical multinational. Other joint union efforts are underway for Philips Electronics, United Brands, and the shoe giant Bata.

Words of caution came from one local union leader, however. "We have to take care of our own problems in our own country first," said Ron Weisen of United Steelworkers Local 1397 in Homestead, Pennsylvania. While "a start" has been made on building international labor ties, success is "far down the road," he added.

Pat Perkins, MM's former business manager, is doing graduate work in economics at the University of Toronto.