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Summaries of session 5
Finding out about a local TNC operation
Since Session 4 you have been researching a TNC that is active in your locality. Share the results of your research. Evaluate your findings, reflecting on the following questions:
The facilitator records the discussion, especially the key points on useful sources of information and strengthening rights to information.
Experiences of international solidarity
How can international solidarity help in our fight to control TNCs? Study circle members take turns to read out to each other the two case studies:
These show two very different forms of international solidarity to bring pressure on TNCs. One involves the workers and their trade unions in TNCs. The other shows how community activists, consumers, shareholders and workers in one country can work together to bring pressure on a TNC to support workers and democratic rights in another country.
Discuss the examples, using the questions at the bottom of each as a guideline.
End the session by asking the basic question: why is international solidarity important? Put your answers up on flipchart.
The facilitator records the key points of the discussion.
The study circle evaluates the session, using the form provided.
You will need:
Points to bear in mind:
Hopefully the study circle participants will have been able to make some progress in their research on a TNC since Session 4. If so, they will want to pool their information and analyse what it tells them about the TNC. This should also lead to lively discussion about how and where information about TNCs can be found, what the shortcomings are, and the implications for democratic oversight over the activities of TNCs.
The results of these discussions on what useful sources of information were found and ideas for strengthening rights to information should be kept and not put on the Internet yet. They will be used in Session 7 'Building a Strategy'.
It may be that the study circle members will want to continue finding out more and/or use the information they have found. This should be encouraged, and hopefully the case study can be picked up again in Session 7.
This discussion about information exchange hopefully should also lead the study circle into the next themes - building solidarity between workers and communities at home and abroad. While, the group may want to spend a lot of time on their research results, it is important to make time for the readings and discussion on international solidarity.
The two readings on international solidarity show very different issues. To help with the discussions, key points are noted for you on separate sheets.
The main aims are:
Southern Africa's hotel sector is increasingly dominated by big hotel chains from South Africa such as Sun International, Southern Sun, Karos, Protea and City Lodge. All are owned by much larger South African conglomerates - three of them by SA Mutual. After the fall of apartheid, they have spread out across the region. In some cases they have returned to interests they had left during the anti-apartheid sanctions. Elsewhere they have taken advantage of the privatisation of para-statal hotel operations. Or they have simply been expanding, buying up smaller, local hotel interests.
All over the region, tourism is booming and the hotels are reporting huge increases in business. Massive restructuring is underway, involving large-scale investment in new buildings, fixtures and fittings and computerisation. But there is little investment in the workers. On the contrary, the expansion is being achieved by great exploitation. The industry is characterised by very low wages and poor working conditions. There has been massive retrenchment. At the Karos Polana Hotel in Mozambique one-third of workers have been accused of theft and summarily dismissed without retrenchment pay. Many of those who still have jobs in the sector have been shifted to casual status and are being forced to accept flexible working practices at the demand of managers. For example, a worker who is a gardener one day may be in the kitchens the next. They have to work very hard, on long shifts. Workers report great stress.
All of these trends were being experienced by hotel workers in their own localities. But it was not until regional exchange and coordination was built between unions that they were able to see that their own experiences were part of a concerted strategy by the hotel owners. Now the unions can use this as background information when negotiating in their own countries. They have also started to agree joint campaigns across the region.
More than this, they have targetted one of the hotel chains for regional bargaining.
This is a new development which will be resisted by the bosses. So at first they are
concentrating on issues where common standards may be more easily agreed, such as:
From: The Shopsteward, COSATU, South Africa, April/May 1995 and ILRIG.
Neighbor-to-Neighbor is a small organisation made up of committed activists around the USA. It took on one of the largest food TNCs, and it won.
'N2N', as it is called, wanted to highlight US support for military oppression in El Salvador, a small country in Central America. It knew that coffee drunk by Americans was being produced on estates in El Salvador where slave-like conditions and death squads oppressed the workers.
In 1989, N2N launched a boycott against Salvadoran coffee. It targeted the US-based corporation Procter & Gamble which was buying Salvadoran coffee. Beforehand, N2N sent a delegation to El Salvador to be sure that the workers supported the boycott.
In the US, the campaign won support from many different quarters. N2N had a powerful ally in the dockworkers. The International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union turned shipments of coffee away and sent them back to El Salvador. City councils and businesses stopped buying Salvadoran coffee for their workers.
Activists put boycott stickers on coffee tins and shop windows around the country. They built up media coverage, including a TV spot, which greatly annoyed the company. They also targeted restaurants with sustained picketing. The strategy paid off. A big pizza chain switched to another brand of coffee.
Religious networks of shareholders played a key role. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility worked with N2N so that shareholders holding over US$1 billion of Procter & Gamble shares supported the boycott. Soon after, P&G gave in and put advertisements in the Salvadoran daily papers supporting the peace process in the country. Once a peace agreement was signed, N2N called the boycott off.
But the gap between rich and poor in El Salvador continues. So, now the campaign concentrates on building economic justice. "Lasting peace will only come when there are economic opportunities for all", says former N2N worker Matthew Howard. N2N is working with Equal Exchange, an organisation that promotes 'fair trade'. This means promoting trade that is fair for the workers and farmers of the Third World, where the goods are bought at a guaranteed fair price, and training is encouraged.
Now coffee from El Salvador co-operatives is sold in the USA under the label 'Cafe Salvador'. In colleges, restaurants, and churches, US consumers can drink coffee that benefits and does not oppress the poor of El Salvador.
In the European Union, a Directive has given workers the right to form European Works Councils for information and consultation with companies on a Europe-wide basis. European trade unions are trying to convert these into union-based bodies. In some cases they are bringing in trade unionists from other countries too in an effort to build world-level councils. The Swedish engineering company SKF has agreed with the International Metalworkers Federation to such a 'SKF World Union Committee'.
Some International Trade Secretariats are taking a leading role in developing transnational negotiations. raditionally the emphasis has been on just coordinating union responses to a particular employer. But now at least one ITS has started to negotiate with bosses on behalf of its affiliated unions. This is a recent development.
The foodworkers' international body, the IUF, has reached several agreements with corporations. A 'Joint Declaration on Union Rights' was signed in May 1994 between the IUF and the French food and drinks corporation Danone (formerly BSN). This agreement followed six years of negotiations and has been described by the IUF as "ground-breaking".
The agreement guarantees full union rights throughout Danone's worldwide operations, based on ILO Conventions concerning the freedom to join and organise trade unions. It urges local Danone managements and trade unions to negotiate collective bargaining agreements which give trade union representatives equal access to training and promotion. The IUF and Danone have also reached agreements on skills training, access to information, and gender equality.
"This agreement with Danone takes on special importance as it comes at a time of rising anti-union activity internationally and continued refusal on the part of many transnational corporations to face up to their global reponsibilities as corporate citizens. We regard this agreement as an example of a forward-looking approach to international industrial relations." Dan Gallin, General Secretary of the IUF
Another agreement reached by the IUF is with the French hotel and restaurant chain Accor. Accor runs hotels such as Novotel, Ibis, Sofitel and Formule 1 in 132 countries worldwide. The agreement guarantees all 147 000 Accor workers everywhere the right to join the union of their choice, to bargain collectively, and for them and their representatives to be protected from victimisation. See also Hotel Workers Organise Across Borders.
Issues to think about:
"Solidarity works", says the ICEM, the international union body representing 20 million workers in the chemical, energy and mining sectors. The point was proven during the recent campaign by the ICEM's US affiliate, the United Steelworkers of America, against the Japanese tyre company Bridgestone. Then, activists all over the world, whether union members or not, were spurred into action through the Internet.
6000 USWA members at six Bridgestone plants in the USA went on strike in July 1994 for fair pay and conditions. The company replaced the strikers with scabs. The strike ended in May 1995, but still no agreement was reached. Finally in October 1996 the company gave in: all union members got their jobs back. An amnesty was agreed for 40 workers who had been accused of strike-related misconduct. Plus there were across-the-board pay increases, bonuses and many other concessions. It had been one of the longest and toughest disputes in the US in recent times.
What made Bridgestone give in? USWA President George Becker says that the struggle was won by the strength of the USWA workers across America. But he also praised the "incredible assistance" from unions in other countries, particularly in Japan where Bridgestone has its headquarters, Europe and Latin America, in a campaign organised through the ICEM.
Part of the ICEM's campaign was the first ever use of the Internet World Wide Web, the world's electronic communications system, for a union campaign. The ICEM used the Web, to tell people worldwide what Bridgestone was doing and win their support. Anyone - union members or not - reading the ICEM's Web site was asked to 'click' on a Black Flag which would send an immediate protest by computer to Bridgestone. In this way the phrase "to picket, just click it" was born.
As ICEM says, "The Bridgestone dispute was global both in its origins and in the strategies that unions used to bring it to a successful conclusion".
Nike, the sports shoe company, has adopted its own code of conduct. Nike says that its business is based on "trust, teamwork, honest and mutual respect" and it expects its business partners to operate on the same principles. Its code includes respect for local regulations on minimum wages, child labour, health and safety, worker insurance, equal opportunity, the environment and other conditions. With the spotlight still on it, in October 1996 Nike set up a special Labor Practices Department to show its "ongoing commitment to have products made only in the best working conditions in the sports and fitness industry".
Almost all of the 90 million shoes that Nike sells every year worldwide are produced by 75 000 workers in Asia, mostly young women, all working for sub-contractors.
In spite of the company's code, in Indonesia it was found that four of the six factories producing Nike shoes did not even pay the country's daily minimum wage of US$1,20. Sadisah was a Nike production worker in Indonesia until she was sacked in 1992 for helping to organise her fellow workers. Sadisah said "Our company did not pay minimum wages, nor did it meet other regulations such as a ban on wage deductions for meals". At least three of the contractors were using child labour.
A US union researcher working in Indonesia said, "We perhaps naively thought that Nike would treat its workers better than local firms. In fact the arrival of Nike and other shoe industry TNCs made matters worse by turning the minimum wage into the maximum available".
When asked about strikes and military harrassment in its supplier factories, Nike's manager in Indonesia said, "I don't know that I need to know". The US union researcher concluded, "Nike's code of conduct contradicts its strategy in Asia of setting contractors in competition with each other to keep costs down".
Nike is against any independent monitoring of its code. But monitoring will happen anyway. Indonesian campaigners have formed the Sports Shoe Workers' Council to report on Nike's practices there.
A pair of shoes selling in the USA for US$150 has a direct labour cost of only US$4.90. With such a margin Nike profits in 1995-96 alone were US$553.2 million. In contrast to the poverty wages paid to Asian workers, Nike pays the Olympic champion runner Michael Jordan US$20 million a year to promote its products.
Nike Chief Philip Knight is one of the world's richest men. In a letter to Nike shareholders in 1996 he said that the reason for Nike moving into such a repressive country as Indonesia was because the US State Department asked them to. He quoted a US State Department official as saying, "Nike's presence in that part of the world is American foreign policy in action".
When you buy your clothes do you stop to think about the workers who made them? Who are they? How much were they paid? How much profit does the shop make? We all want clothes we can afford. But does that mean cheap wages for the garment workers?
The Clean Clothes Campaign was started in Holland by solidarity activists and trade unionists with links to Asian countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka where clothes are made for Europe. The campaign has now extended into the UK and other European countries, as well as Mexico and Jamaica.
The campaign aims to change the way that clothing is produced. It is concerned with all workers who make garments, whether they are in countries of the South or the North. The garment sub-contracting chain stretches all over the world. The big retail stores of the North place their orders with factories, particularly in Asia, who often sub-contract to illegal sweatshops and homeworkers. All along the way, it is mostly the labour of poor women. But it is the retail stores in Europe who are in control.
The Clean Clothes Campaign asks consumers to think about the working conditions of the workers who made the clothes they buy, and to support demands on the big retailers. The retail stores should be made accountable, says the Campaign.
It has developed a 'Charter of Fair Trade' based on standards of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The Charter says that all workers, whether they work in factories, offices, workshops or at home, must have the following rights:
Garment employers must comply with ILO standards on:
The campaign hopes that enough consumer pressure can be built up to persuade retail companies to sign the Charter. Then the retailers will have the right to use a 'Clean Clothes' label. This label should attract consumers just as 'green' labels have in Europe which show that products are friendly to the environment.
Monitoring will be done by a body paid for by the companies but independent from them, involving garment workers. If a company breaches the code then it will lose the right to use the label.
Such 'Fair Trade' labels is a growing trend in countries of the North where consumers have a lot of power.
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