AFP, Berlin
The world's newest and biggest trade union grouping, Union Network International (UNI), set up to meet the challenge of adapting union activity to a globalised and technologically transformed world economy, holds its first congress this week.
Founded on January 1, 2000, UNI claims to group some 1,000 individual trade unions with a total membership of over 15 million workers, mainly in service sectors such as telecommunications, banking and finance and the media.
The aim is to provide a "social" response to globalisation. "UNI was created in response to huge changes going on in the global economy and because of the impact of technology on increasingly overlapping industries," its secretariat says.
A total 1,700 people including some 1,000 delegates from 130 countries will participate in the five-day congress which opens in Berlin Wednesday with a speech from the German head of state, Johannes Rau.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has addressed a message of support, as has the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder.
UNI calls itself "the skills and services international" and says it is the global union for the new millennium.
Its notable particularity is the use of on-line technology and modern means of telecommunications to build networks with affiliate unions whose members increasingly work in these domains too.
In a world more than ever dominated by huge private corporations and exposed to market forces, UNI wants, by pooling trade union resources, to give unionised workers a more effective voice with these corporations, governments and international institutions.
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