The ICTU Solidarity Committee aims to better inform, co-ordinate and encourage links with the Third World, and to bring international trade union solidarity into the mainstream work of ICTU and individual unions. ICTU has two Development Education Officers (Northern Ireland and the Republic) who are developing a three year Education and Action Programme on "Irish Trade Unions and Development Issues".

The project hopes to stimulate a more active and systematic response to development issues within the Irish trade union movement. The key theme is the social reality of work including globalisation, child labour, multinational enterprises, and trade union rights in an international context. The target group consists of trade union officials, particularly those responsible for education and training; committee structures (e.g. women and youth) and shop stewards. Individual trade union members and interested activists are also included.

Specifically, the project ensures that development issues are part of formal union education structures. This involves the production of modules on project themes for use by trade union trainers. It supports and resources activists nationally, facilitating local action on global issues. We raise the profile of ICTU’s work in developing countries both within unions and in the wider community, including production of the newsletters, "Solidarity" and "Common Thread" available on www.iol.ie/solidarity. Briefings and submissions were also prepared on issues such as the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and rights for asylum seekers in Ireland. The project provides opportunities to develop practical solidarity with trade unionists in developing countries, including participation in the Global march Against Child Labour, campaigning with Trocaire on rights for toy production workers in mainly Asian factories, and Jubilee 2000. We have also strengthened existing links with relevant international bodies and trade union congresses.

Challenges

The phrase "globalisation of the world economy", often makes the eyes of your average trade unionist glaze over. This is not to disparage trade unionists’ ability or desire to understand the increasingly interconnected world but merely to illustrate an important by-product of the phenomenon. Even if we understand it, what are we in a position to do given the seemingly invincible driving forces behind it? This disempowering process has been so well executed and promoted that the idea of an alternative is no longer feasible for many.

But alternatives to a world where multinational companies increasingly benefit, while working conditions, poverty and environmental degradation worsen, do most certainly exist. The challenge is to "burst the balloon that there is no alternative" and to empower people to understand current world structures and to struggle for a more just and equal world.

We do this by addressing issues of relevance to Irish trade unionists: privatisation and resultant rises in unemployment; reduction in labour rights; deregulation of labour practices; the feminisation of the workforce; Irish trade unionists as consumers, exploring the link between trade and labour rights and the case for a social clause. Workers in the North are often experiencing the same insecurities as those in the South. This provides development educators with an opportunity to explore global/local links differently, moving away from the traditional charity based response of northern institutions to southern ones. We can move towards a new approach identifying common issues and areas of collaboration.

Irish trade unions must see that these issues are not the sole preserve of development NGOs

and human rights organisations but are part and parcel of being a trade unionist.