Now our Report of Session 4th:

Estonian study circle had the meeting of fourth session on the 28th of April - on the International Day of Mourning of the Perished and Crippled Workers. On the third time ICFTU has arranged the Day of Mourning for the memory of these workers all over the world who were perished and crippled on the reason of the bad working conditions. In Estonia there was one meeting in the capital city and all trade unionists lighted the candle for the memory. During last several years the media showed a big interest about trade union activities and issues, therefore in that meeting there were the reporters from all national TV channels (4) and journalists from all biggest Estonian Daily News.

We started our seminar with discussion about the working conditions of workers all over the world, particularly in Estonia. The statistics about the accident with workers in the workplaces are terrible: in the year approximately 220 000 workers are perished, 1,2 million workers get hurt. Talking about Estonia, we think that these figures don't reflect the right numbers because of not having the statistic about the workers, who are working under the sub-contract, the employee is not responsible for the accidents and nobody is interested in defending sub-contractored workers, even Labour Inspection, who has to make an investigation of accident. A Regulation about the investigation of working accidents was accepted in 1996.

As we promised we discussed some topics about EWC from the third session. In our opinion the Global Works Councils, but the main aim or task can be changing and passing on the information about certain corporation. About EWC or GWC the group had different opinions. The first one was sceptic opinion - Do we really need these new institutions. The world is full of different kinds of organisations and institutions and the "costumers and affiliates" can lose the right direction in finding a right office. Maybe it will be easy to use the excisting institutions and to arrange and adjust the work between them. The second one was a question (maybe it consernes only Estonia): Are the workers ready to participate in the work of EWC/GWC? The study circle members were sure that at the moment it will be very difficult to find a good worker as a representative to EWC, who is able to speak foreign language(s) and also will be competent in labour issues. At the moment it is difficult to find this kind of worker or even trade unionist in Estonia. The language problem exists in our group, because only study circle leader and two other women can speak and read in English.

It is a big problem for Estonian trade unions before joining to EU - which direction to choose - the shopstewards (Model from UK) or workers representatives in EWC (Model from Germany)?

Then we discussed the materials about Codes of Conduct. This topic was new for study circle members and therefore Tiia, using also in additional some materials from the first pilot project, made an informative lecture about Codes of Conduct. Some of the members expressed the positive ideas about Codes. We think that to accept the mother firm to sign the Codes of Conducts in transnational level is a long and complecated process. Unfortunately we couldn't give the ansewere to the question about monitoring - who or which organisation/institution have to do that? We are sure that the Codes are not effective without monitoring.

With best regards,

Tiia Kask