ITUC Membership in CEE. Tendencies and Challenges

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ITUC Membership in CEE.Tendencies and Challenges

• CEE Organising activities

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I The ITUC represents 168 million workers in 155
countries and territories and has 311 national
affiliates

• Around 49707000 members come from CEE (28 )
• 35 organisations 21 countries

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Challenges Unions Have to Face

• Lack of experience
• There are no professional organisers
• Existing TU structures do not fit to organising
• Financing
• There is no strategic planning
• Not enough activities with youth
• New economy sectors and informal economy
• The lack of basic knowledge about trade union
  rights and ILO Conventions
• Legal obstacles (SMEs, written contracts etc.)

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2001-2007 activities

• 40 national and subregional events
• 1000 participants from 27 states
• 7 national pilot programmes
• 3000 people involved

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4 key factors of successful organising

• It is necessary to remember and use daily 4 key
  factors of successful organising
• to allot and attract more financial means for
  organising
• to involve good professionals
• to prepare and realise the strategic plan
• to mobilise all union members for organising
  activities.

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RECOMMENDATIONS (1)

• It is necessary to prepare a long-term realistic
  strategic plan and mechanisms of its
  implementation
• Structural reforms and changes are necessary to
  adapt existing TU structures to organising
• It is necessary to foresee a long-term financing
  including annual TU budgets,
• Youth activities should not end with the creation
  of a formal structure

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RECOMMENDATIONS (2)

• Professional selection and preparation of
  organisers, formation of a good organisers team
• IT should be used as efficiently as possible
• It is necessary to develop closer co-operation
  with other TU departments
• Organising campaigns in new economy fields and
  informal economy
• Work with migrants
• Use of international information and experience
• Basic education and information on TU rights and
  main ILO Conventions, promotion of the code of
  conducs.
• .

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PERC programme challenges (1)

• Persisting decline of the trade union membership.
  In some countries, the trade union density comes
  closer to 8 of the workforce, and nobody could
  say that this trend would not go downer than
  this.
• Uneven repartition of the trade union
  implementation. In some sectors education,
  public services, in general, but also, in the
  former big-state owned companies, where trade
  unions were traditionally well-represented the
  trade union density is still substantial, but
  this is unfortunately not the case in plenty of
  other economic sectors. In the private sectors,
  in SME in particular, very often in the MNEs, in
  the sector of services, the trade unions tend,
  sometimes, to come close to inexistence. This is
  particularly worrying, considering the evolution
  of the structure of the economy in Europe.

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PERC programme challenges (2)

• Fragmentation and informalisation of the labour
  relations, with the multiplication of temporary
  contracts, multiplication of the employees status
  including the trend to engage employees as
  independent workers even when there is a clear
  and obvious relation of work subordination,
  increase of the number of workers working without
  any contract (informal economy).
• Poor integration in the trade union movement of
  the young workers, of the women, of the minority
  groups.
• Fragmentation of the trade union movement lack
  of interest from the local union to join a
  national TU centre multiplication, and sometimes
  unhealthy rivalries between professional unions
  divisions of trade union centres, related to
  various crisis competition between trade union
  centres, etc.

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PERC programme directions (1)

• Analyse the evolution of the trade union
  membership in the different countries - including
  gender and age composition, in correlation with
  technological, economic and political
  development
• Assist the national unions in designing their own
  approaches and to define where accumulated best
  practices could be further referred to, pilot
  actions initiated, and training programmes could
  be implemented or encouraged
• Support and encourage development of confederal
  strategies which enhance organising, prioritise
  the need for evolution of the structures, their
  professional services and financing, liaising
  with their members and potential members

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PERC programme directions (2)

• Establish cooperation with the EIFs/ GUFs and
  their affiliated unions, on cross-border and
  regional level, be it within certain MNEs or
  targeted on specific professional groups promote
  strategies among affiliated organisations to
  organise, represent and protect the most
  vulnerable working women and men, such as those
  employed by small and medium-sized enterprises,
  migrants and those engaged in informal economic
  relations work for the organisation of workers
  employed in special economic zones and in other
  situations where international support is
  especially important
• Work for the unionisation of young workers, whose
  entry into the job market is increasingly
  insecure, in order to help them attain lasting
  employment, and women, through specific
  campaigning activities and networking.
• Strive against informal economy promote a
  rule-of-law approach in all labour relations
  promote the inclusion of all categories of
  workers in some social protection system
  encourage all the workers that are in a de facto
  relation of labour subordination to organise and
  to join the unions.
• Encourage building of trade union identity, with
  encouraging cross-border representation
  mechanisms and bilateral cooperation and exchange
  of organisers with aim to organise migrant
  workersbetween trade union centres, etc.

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PERC programme activities

• Setting up a task force
• Follow-up on sub-regional basis
• Informal economy activities
• Migration dimension

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PERC task force setting (preparatory meeting),
May 2008

• to map out different organizing initiatives run
  by national centers and to start fixing agenda
  for the task force

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PERC task force setting models identified

• 1. Classic organizing model. The national centre
  is not doing direct organizing, leaving this area
  to its national affiliates. The confederation
  assists and provides general coordination, in
  particular, when an arbitrage between competing
  unions is necessary.
• 2. Solidarnosc model. The national centre plays
  direct role in organizing, through its
  territorial structures, where organizers work.
  Workers are becoming union members through
  regional branches and then their union can
  subscribe to industrial union. The membership
  fees go to regional Solidarnosc branch and then
  to the national centre itself that remits certain
  percentage to national unions.
• 3. Co-acting model. The national centre defines
  the areas of strategic importance and engages
  organizers (directly or through regional
  structures) that work on union setting at certain
  enterprises. The unions join then one of the
  national unions.

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PERC task force setting specific aspects

• Separately shall be considered cases of setting
  new union affiliated to the national centre, in
  particular, of the workers involved in informal
  labour activities. There is a need to bring
  union leaders of these organizations together for
  some further exchange
• Some unions are employing migrants to organise
  their co-natives, in most of the cases these
  organizers have no link with the unions of their
  mother countries, there is a need to facilitate
  cross-border union discussions, to see how these
  organsers are engaged and what can be their
  usefulness for the unions of their mother
  countries
• Vital role of trade union education and training
  in preserving the new organizations and
  upbringing new leaders and the need to review the
  existing materials and to build up some simple
  course / guide on this.

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PERC task force setting conclusions

• promoting enabling environment for organizing, in
  terms of implementation of the international
  labour standards, norms of European social
  charter and principles of European social model
• setting up a platform for exchange of information
  and practices, to analyze different organizing
  and union development strategies, motivation of
  different groups of workers, and labour market
  developments
• training and education, in terms of facilitation
  of internal discussions in unions that priorities
  organizing, and are interested in reforming its
  structures to accommodate this priority, and in
  terms of setting up a basic course on organizing,
  and on preserving organizations
• facilitating global campaigns and building
  solidarity in the specific situations, working
  closely with Global Union Federation and European
  Industrial Federations
• ensuring coordination and targeting of
  development cooperation programmes, and actually
  channeling of resources for strengthening
  national organizations and their organizing
  initiatives

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PERC task force setting next steps

• to continue working on setting up of a task force
  and to work in cooperation with the ETUI-REHS
  team on selected priorities, in particular
• by prioritizing Pan-European MNE that could be
  campaign target on European level
• by contributing to analysis on motivation and
  interests of specific groups and categories of
  workers.

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PERC officers in charge

• Anton Leppik, PERC-HQ, anton.leppik_at_ituc-csi.org
  Sergeus Glovackas, PERC-Vilnius,
  ituc.vilnius_at_post.5ci.lt

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