CONFEDERATION OF FREE TRADE UNIONS (ICFTU)
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Trade unions say NO to racism and xenophobia (II)
Because of their race, the colour of their skin or their national origin, more and more people today are the target of serious discrimination at the workplace, on the labour market and in the community. Determined to combat this phenomenon and its impact on the trade union struggle for social justice and freedom, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions has accepted the invitation by the United Nations to attend its World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, from August 31 to September 7. It sees this conference as a unique opportunity to share its experience with other participants and press home its demands on this important issue.
What is the scale of the problem? What are unions on the ground doing to fight it? What is the ICFTU fighting for at the Durban conference? ICFTU Online answers these questions in three instalments.
What are the unions doing on the ground? (By Cécilia Locmant)
Brussels/Durban August 28, 2001 (ICFTU OnLine): In Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, the national centres have set up a range of programmes to combat this phenomenon : the training and organising of the workers concerned, collective agreements to protect them, extended leave, recruitment and promotion strategies defined in conjunction with employers, etc. Here are just a few examples of what national centres are doing to make real progress in the fight against racism.
No to a return to apartheid in South Africa Since the ANC took over the reigns of power in 1994, South African legislation has undergone major developments. The prohibition of discrimination in the work place against blacks, women and people with disabilities is now a reality and employers are obliged to implement corrective measures in the course of negotiations with workforce representatives. In the wake of affirmative action which gives priority to blacks or women with the same qualifications, new laws entered into force in February 2000 to promote equal opportunities and fight discrimination by giving preferential treatment, when awarding public procurement contracts, to companies run by members of the black community. All these steps forward were initiated and supported by the trade unions which, as former opponents of the apartheid regime, are continuing the fight to establish an anti-racial society. The three main South African trade unions COSATU, NACTU and FEDUSA(1) whose founding principles advocate opposing any discrimination based on race or gender, nevertheless admit that a great deal remains to be done.
Another cause for concern for South African unions is the frequency of xenophobic incidents targeting African immigrants. The recent broadcast by the state-owned SABC TV network of a video showing white police officers and their dogs let loose on black immigrants has once again drawn the public's attention to this recurring problem. Shocked and disgusted by the sharp rise in xenophobic acts perpetrated against immigrant workers of African origin, COSATU stressed the need to severely punish employers who exploit this workforce and the police who maltreat them and called for the dismissal of corrupt and inefficient Ministry of the Interior officials. Unions are also pushing for a regional summit to find ways to rebuild and develop the economies of countries in Southern Africa. In South Africa, nearly 500,000 illegal immigrants have been expelled from the country since 1990 - even taking over entire trains, as in the case of immigrants from Mozambique. South Africa has some 70,000 asylum seekers and between 2 and 12 million illegal immigrants.
Early in February 2001, another form of discrimination, in this case affecting HIV-positive workers, triggered a strong reaction from the trade unions. According to the NGO Aids Law Project, which exposed the case and lodged a complaint with the Medical Health Council, South African doctors reportedly tested HIV-positive patients without their consent and subsequently informed the respective employers of their staff members' positive HIV status. Concerned that many people had been publicly exposed as being HIV-positive, which had led to their being ostracised from society and losing their jobs, COSATU called for severe professional sanctions against the doctors at fault and asked the patients concerned to take legal action to expose their case.
Unions in Ecuador combat rise in Inter-ethnic racism In Ecuador, relatively recent events - such as the demonstrations in January 2000 against President Jamil Mahuad in which the Indians actively participated and the highly controversial engagement of Indian professionals in a project financed by the IMF and the World Bank - have heightened inter-ethnic tensions and rekindled hatred and prejudice against indigenous communities. The trade unions, led by the CEOSL (Confederacion Ecuatoriana de Organizaciones Sindicales Libres), have taken a number of initiatives to counter this dangerous trend. They have decided to bring cases of abuse against indigenous people to court and before various bodies, including the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. In an effort to familiarise everyone in Ecuador with what is happening, the trade unions have disseminated information through the media. The trade unions also hope to set up forums to debate racism and analyse its new manifestations. With organisations representing farmers and blacks in the country and human rights groups, the trade union are actively combating this increase in racial violence in many ways, in particular through awareness-raising and information campaigns. The plight of Ecuadorian migrant workers is also of great concern to the trade union centre which denounces the government's inaction about their situation, despite the fact that their remittances constitute the second highest source of revenue for the country.
Canada - CLC leads the fight The CLC's firm stand in favour of a progressive immigration policy, the right of aboriginal people to self-determination, and its fight against all forms of discrimination is far from mere lip service. The 1997 report "Challenging Racism: Going Beyond Recommendations" sets out a "plan of attack" on racism, drawn up in close collaboration with workers of colour and organisations defending the rights of migrants, refugees and other minorities. The plan also foresees important reforms in trade union work, calling for example for anti-racist clauses to be included in collective agreements. The CLC and its affiliates have drawn up a manual on how to integrate anti-racist questions and analyses in trade union training programmes. A new training course on "Anti-Racism: An Organizing Tool for the Labour Movement" was piloted in 1999 and is now on the programme of all CLC training institutes. The Canadian national centre has also created a department whose principal task is to increase the access of people of Asian and African origin to leadership posts. In 1998 it organised its first Conference on aboriginal workers and workers of colour (400 participants), it has a youth sponsorship programme, etc. Looking ahead to after the Durban conference, the CLC has set up a national action network to implement the Plan of Action of the United Nations Conference Against Racism.
Large numbers of immigrants join the AFL-CIO Over the last few years the AFL-CIO, like many other trade unions around the world, has seen its membership drop. In 1999, however, it scored a major victory by recruiting 600,000 new members, many of whom were immigrants from Latin American and Caribbean countries. Up to then, the position taken by the unions regarding immigration policy had been damaging vis-à-vis its new members. However, the AFL-CIO had no hesitation in doing a complete U-turn. It has called for the abolition of the law imposing sanctions on employers and an amnesty for 6 million undocumented workers. Since 1986, the US Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) has forced employers to check the legality of their workers' papers. If an employer is found guilty of exploiting illegal manpower, he could either be fined or sent to prison. In reality, employers do not act as scrupulously as the law demands and are rarely punished for not fulfilling their obligations. Nevertheless, certain employers do not hesitate to use the existence of this law if there is a danger that its immigrant workforce is about to become organised and denounce abuses against them. It is this development that worries the AFL-CIO.
In 1999, for example, Latin American and African workers employed in a laundry in Baltimore tried, with the help of UNITE (Union of Needletrades Industrial and Textile Employees), to put up a united front to denounce racial discrimination and sexual abuse to which they were subjected. Ten days before the vote on setting up a union in the company, the employer announced a check on its staff members' residence and work permits. In October 2000 in Minneapolis, the managers of Holiday Inn Express denounced eight Latin American workers to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) after they had voted to join HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union). Another tactic used by employers is to target trade union activists. In an article in the publication International Union Rights dated April 2000, Jason Coulter of UNITE explained how, a few months previously, one of the four women trying to set up a union in a Chicago-based laundry was personally told by her manager that if she continued along that path, her papers would be singled out for scrupulous checking. By continuing to plead for better recognition of the rights of migrant workers, UNITE and HERE are now trying to protect, under the terms of collective agreements, workers who have no official papers, including clauses obliging employers to inform the union as soon as they hear of the imminent arrival of officials from the INS.
In January 1999, the UNITE textile union and several American human rights organisations lodged a complaint with a Los Angeles court in the name of 50,000 mainly Chinese female employees in Saipan against 17 well-known American distribution companies. They were demanding $1 billion in compensation for the bad treatment inflicted on the female workforce by sub-contractors of these American companies. Saipan is part of America's Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. To encourage economic activity, American labour and immigration laws do not apply in Saipan. Taking advantage of this situation, the territory's Asian entrepreneurs who provide products to US distributors attract female workers to Saipan by promising high wages and secure employment, generally a better life. Instead, the women are in a situation of semi-slavery - paid wages well below the going rates on the American continent, working 12-hour days and 7-day weeks, forced to have abortions, living and working in unhygienic and hazardous conditions and compelled to live in barracks closed off by iron gates. The female employees have no choice but to stay at their posts in order to pay back the astronomical debt agreed in exchange for getting a job there (often in excess of $7,000). Unions are pressing for an urgent halt to these abuses and gross violation of workers' rights.
ACTU defends the right of indigenous peoples The Australian (and New Zealand) population is made up of citizens from very different backgrounds, resulting from various waves of immigration: from Europe, the Pacific islands and Asia. Accordingly, the majority, comprising white colonists, live alongside often underprivileged native populations, such as the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia or the Maoris, in New Zealand. Marginalised in their own countries for years, they have demanded that their respective governments recognise their culture and land rights. Because of a rise in the level of unemployment, in recent years Australia has tightened up its immigration policy and now only accepts a trickle of immigrants, most of them skilled workers.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and a number of its affiliates have amended their rules to enable representatives of indigenous peoples to sit, with speaking and voting rights, on their executive bodies. Under the 1996 Workplace Relations Act, a clause prohibiting all discrimination against workers on grounds of race, skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, political views, and national or social origin has been incorporated into the framework of industrial agreements. Moreover, provisions on periods of leave have been laid down in industrial agreements to take more account of the ancestral customs and traditions of aboriginal peoples. This includes "ceremony leave" (up to 10 unpaid days of leave a year) and cultural leave, the latter to enable a worker to take off one or more days of "cultural leave" in lieu of days of statutory leave on the Australian calendar. In education, too, the Australian trade unions have been actively combating racism. The Australian Education Union (AEU), affiliated to the ACTU, has worked together with Amnesty International in compiling a handbook on human rights. One of the modules of this handbook, entitled "Preventing Racism in Schools and Educational Institutions", is specifically designed for use in schools. The ACTU has worked together with representatives of the different communities and the government to compile a training manual on cultural diversity and racism, entitled "Working in Harmony: the Working in Harmony Model for Cultural Change in the Workplace". In the same domain, ACTU and its affiliates have fully integrated this focus in their permanent training programmes and have produced several manuals.
In France: breaking down the wall of silence and taking political action In France, the labour market has always had a strong presence of foreign workers and the trade unions have fought to secure equal social and representational rights for them, on the same footing as French workers. Since 1982, immigrants are eligible to vote in elections for shop stewards and for works councils; however, they do not always have the right to vote in civil society. For the national centre, CFDT (Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail), the trade unions' fight against racism has become more complicated due to three factors: there are more non-European immigrants (3.5% in 1946 rising to 42.8% in 1982); the social crisis of the last 20 years; and, finally, racism has taken on a strong political dimension with the rising popularity of the far-right party, the National Front. The CFDT feels that too little is being said within enterprises about the growing problem of racism. Trade unionists are as guilty of this silence as employers, because they fear that bringing the subject up may create tensions within union branches. In seeking to break down the wall of silence, the CFDT began, in 1995 carrying out action-oriented research on racism. This work led to new trade union strategies, including awareness-building and more training of trade union teams. Today trade unionists are bolder in confronting the issue at each work place and at getting their members and employers to talk about it. This type of dialogue gives those concerned a greater sense of responsibility, notably through the drawing-up of "equality charters" or codes of conduct in an enterprise, area or sector. Where the offences are particularly serious or dialogue too difficult, the CFDT advises trade unionists to deal firmly with the matter by denouncing the injustices and initiating legal proceedings.
The fight against racism, racial discrimination and all forms of intolerance has been a major focus of the programme of the national trade union centre Confederation Générale du Travail-Force Ouvrière (CGT-FO). It has, within its structure, local reception and advisory centres which provide legal and administrative assistance for workers who have been the victim of any form of discrimination as well as migrants and ethnic minorities. The public authorities are presently creating a network at the national level. It has also set up a free telephone line to enable all victims of or witnesses to discrimination to seek help from experts. The CGT-FO's Equality-Migration Section publishes a regular newsletter. It recently produced a special issue of its 'Law Review' on national and international anti-discrimination legislation. Moroever, the CGT-FO sits on various discussion and decision-making bodies, both national and European, that deal with the issue of racism. It has taken active part in the debate on changes to the French labour code (the burden of proof shall henceforth lie with the person suspected of racist acts, not with the victim).
The Spanish trade union network The Spanish national centres UGT (Union General de Trabajadores) and CC.OO. (Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras) have both set up networks of specialised centres for dealing with the specific problems faced by migrant workers: CITEs in the case of CC.OO. and the Centros-Guia in the case of the UGT. By 1997, there were 100 CITEs and information points across Spain. These centres organise campaigns about legalisation and family groups, while also dealing with a broad range of other issues: negotiating the grant of residence and employment permits, tackling problems relating to employment contracts and access to social security, and handling complaints about discrimination. The centres also organise training for migrants and Spanish workers in contact with migrants. The UGT network, whose centre fulfils similar functions, is also present in most of the regions that have a high immigrant population. Where there are no centres, the union's social services departments give migrants advice and assistance. The two unions also fight against discrimination in collective agreements. At the political level, the UGT and the CC.OO. have launched campaigns to give immigrants from third countries the same rights as EU nationals, to promote access to training, and to fight against illegal immigration by helping workers legalise their situation and taking the traffickers of illegal migrants to court.
The TUC Task Force At the beginning of the '90s, two events pushed the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to re-launch its fight against racism: the rise of the far right (in east London notably with the election of the British National Party onto the Tower Hamlets borough council) and the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, a young black man who was beaten to death on his way home. The TUC and its affiliates carried out various activities: demonstrations, a musical festival aimed at the young and members of ethnic minorities (the Respect festival), and support for the campaign led by Stephen Lawrence's parents for the completion of the inquiry. It created a permanent group to fight against racism against black and Asian workers: the "Stephen Lawrence Task Force". In a report published in September 2000, "Rooting out Racism", the TUC assessed its work so far as being positive, on balance. The trade union has succeeded in combating racism by taking vigorous action at every level of the enterprise: providing training, organising the workers, concluding collective agreements that protect workers against racial discrimination, securing extended leave (to allow workers to visit their home country), defining a recruitment and promotion strategy in collaboration with the employers, etc. The work has borne fruit: in a recent survey entitled "Black, unionised and better paid" the TUC shows that black and Asian workers covered by collective agreements are paid one third more (average hourly wages) than those who are not.
CMKOS, a very active social partner Over the last few years the Czech national trade union centre CMKOS has become involved in the fight against racism at various levels. Concerned at the rising discrimination on the labour market, notably towards migrant workers and Roma gypsies, the CMKOS adopted a resolution at its 1998 congress in which it called on the country's authorities and the media to be more vigilant. At the same time it called on the trade union movement, in particular, to strengthen its co-operation with the representatives of the teaching sector and the civilian authorities in order to improve the living and working conditions of the gypsies. As a social partner, the CMKOS takes part in the work of the government commission for the integration of foreigners in the Czech Republic. In December 2000 CMKOS worked with the government on a "concept" for the long term integration of foreigners into the Czech Republic. These draft proposals are currently being examined by the National Tripartite Council of Economic and Social Agreement whose task is to bring them in line with the conditions on the labour market. Within this tripartite structure, CMKOS has been involved in discussions on how to solve the problems of coexistence between the different communities living in northern Bohemia. The Czech national centre has also been invited to take part in programmes set up by specialised institutions to deal with the question of ethnic minorities. The CMKOS is planning a series of activities with its affiliates aimed at combating racial discrimination at the workplace and in society. ?
(1) COSATU: Congress of south African Trade Unions; NACTU: National Council of Trade Unions; FEDUSA: Federation of Unions of South Africa
Brazil: Black women, prey to all forms of discrimination
As Neide Aparecida Fonseca of INSPIR explains, there is a highly structured social pyramid in Brazil and its black population (47% of the total) are at the very bottom. Discriminated against on the labour market and in political life, they are disadvantaged on every front: low wages, lower category jobs, less social protection, higher unemployment, etc. For the women of this community, the reality of the labour world is grimmer still: in addition to racial discrimination they face sexual discrimination (black women's earnings are lower than black men's yet they often have a higher level of education) and sexual harassment. To fight against these phenomena, the Brazilian trade unions and their affiliates have adopted specific resolutions, negotiated equality clauses and created INSPIR, the Inter-American Trade Union Institute for Racial Equality. Today, trade unionists from all the Brazilian national centres recognise that the creation of INSPIR has facilitated discussions, united the national centres on this issue and contributed significantly to the political strategy of fighting against discrimination. Equal opportunity clauses are based on proposes by INSPIR, and training for trade union legal experts is provided by the Institute. And it is INSPIR which, in partnership with the DIEESE statistics institute, drew up a map of the black population on the labour market, making it possible to analyse discriminatory mechanisms in detail. According to Neide Aparecida Fonseca however, these advances are not enough and to continue combating inequality effectively, INSPIR needs better financial support. At the moment it does not get support from Brazilian national institutions which not only do not recognise the existence of discrimination but who continue to practice it towards blacks and homosexuals. Yet this is against Brazilian law, which bans negative discrimination, and international treaties on racial equality which the government has signed.
The title of the report is "Trade unions say NO to racism and xenophobia" and is available on the ICFTU web site: http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991213208&Language=EN
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