Ruskin, the trade union college, is under siege

Sue Ledwith

Ruskin College, Oxford, UK has long been a home and heart of education for trade unionists worldwide. But no longer.

Just as organised labour is under siege from globalisation everywhere, with the rise in precarious work and falling membership, so Ruskin is under assault. This is a call for solidarity in support of the tutors who have been made redundant as their degree courses for international trade unionists were cancelled.

A petition has been signed by more than 1 000 supporters from the UK, from across the global north and from the global south, expressing shock and anger and urging a management rethink. Some want the unions, TUC, Labour Party and other affiliates and allied organisations to challenge the College’s actions: ‘Let’s have some action NOW,’ wrote one signatory.

Greece under the Troika

Wolfgang Däubler

An interview with Professor Wolfgang Däubler, conducted by Ciaran Cross, researcher for the International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR).

Professor Däubler, could you first explain a little about the situation faced by the Greek economy after the 2008 financial crisis?

The crisis made the problems already existing in Greece even more urgent. And, due to the competition between the different countries in the Eurozone, Greece had limited options. When Greece had its own currency, the drachma, there was a possibility of devaluation – one could devaluate the currency if the country was unable to face the competition. But this possibility no longer exists if you are a member of the Eurozone. And therefore Greece had to look for another form of devaluation – internal devaluation. That means they were economically forced to reduce wage costs.

This was done in a very brutal way. Of course, Greece did not choose this of its own will, but under the influence of the so-called Troika [the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank]. By 2012, they had demolished the whole system of collective bargaining and reduced the minimum wage. Today wages are at 75% of the level before 2010, and unemployment is around 24% to 25%. Among young people under the age of 25, unemployment is 50%. That's a catastrophe. 

How to read the 2 September strike in India?

Anamitra Roychowdhury

On 2 September 2016, ten out of eleven national trade union centers in India went on strike. Only Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) – widely recognised as the trade union wing of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party at the Centre – abstained. Another all-India strike had been organised on exactly the same day in 2015, with the participation of the same ten trade union centers and the notable exception of BMS. It is not only the repetition of the labour protest that is striking, but also that the twelve demands identified by trade unions in 2016 are an exact reiteration of the issues raised in 2015.

In the face of the 2015 strike, central government appointed a group of ministers, headed by the finance minister, to discuss the twelve-point charter of demands raised by trade unions. The ministerial panel convened meetings with the unions on 26 and 27 August 2015 and gave written assurances of regular consultation and to look positively at the demands. The government did not keep its promises and after August 2015 it did not convene a single meeting with all trade unions – only BMS was called for discussion on 16 and 22 August 2016[1]  – nor did it fruitfully address any of the demands raised by them. Instead government introduced myriad labour law reforms that go against the demands raised by workers, such as allowing firms to prepare self-compliance/certification reports and encouraging use of contract labour. In light of government’s failure to immediately and concretely address the issues, the ten unions went ahead with the strike. It is in this context that we must see the 2016 strike.

Labour rights indicators: a new resource for better understanding of labour rights in the world

by Mark Anner, David Kucera, Dora Sari

Is compliance with international labour standards good for economic development, or does non-compliance give countries a competitive advantage? Are we faced with a ‘race to the bottom’ with respect to labour standards? And how might the answers depend on a country’s level of development as well as on the particular industries and labour standards in question? In the absence of clear-cut answers, debates about the impact of labour standards on economic development have only intensified with the rapid expansion of preferential trade agreements including labour provisions as well as debates over such contested mega-regional trade agreements as the now defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which have generated heated discussions in a number of high-level policy forums.

As old as these questions are, we still lack anything like definitive answers to them. Knowing the answers should not call into question the objective of improving compliance with international labour standards, but rather inform the strategy by which this is pursued. In spite of there being a fair amount of research, a key bottleneck in moving forward is adequate measures for many international labour standards, particularly for freedom of association and collective bargaining (FACB) rights which are intrinsically difficult to measure. To address this gap, new labour rights indicators and an accompanying dataset, both focusing on FACB rights, have been launched by the Center for Global Workers’ Rights at Penn State University together with the Global Labour University.

From the ashes: the formation of a new trade union federation gathers pace in South Africa

Stephen Faulkner

There has been great interest in recent trade union developments in South Africa. The trade union movement in South Africa played a pivotal role in the struggle against apartheid, and the main federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), was widely regarded as a new chapter in mass-based, democratic and worker-controlled trade unionism. Indeed, for a time it seemed that the entire organised working class in Africa and beyond was looking forward to radical change by one of the most militant and determined workers’ movements to have emerged, especially given the ruination caused by so-called structural adjustment programmes across Africa and the South.

Sadly, millions of people both inside and outside South Africa are still coming to terms with the disappointment at what was promised in the democratic dispensation. This was dramatically reflected in the 2016 local government elections: in the wake of a series of corruption scandals and worsening unemployment, poverty and inequality, the ANC lost three metropolitan centers to the conservative Democratic Alliance (DA), and the number of votes for the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) rose significantly.

A harsh reality check revealed that the existing trade union federations were increasingly incapable, and even unwilling, to represent the growing needs of workers. Despite its revolutionary rhetoric and despite the wishes of those who sacrificed everything for it, the ANC in government has signally failed to radically transform South Africa. South African capitalism is safe to continue to exploit workers and preside over the most unequal country on the planet.