IFWEA’s Congress will be taking place next year. What progress has IFWEA made since its 1996 Congress? What political and organisational tasks lie ahead? IFWEA President, Dan Gallin, provides an assessment.

When IFWEA met at its 1996 General Conference, conservative economic doctrine and policy was hegemonic in world leadership circles. Transnational capital, having escaped the demands of political society through globalisation, had declared its own goals to be the general goals of society. It had surrounded itself by an ideological bodyguard in the universities and media and made increasing and largely unchallenged demands on public resources to advance its own interests.

Against this background, and to address this challenge, the General Conference resolved that "strengthening the global organising capacity of the labour movement" had to be among IFWEA’s highest priorities.

This year the situation is very different. The year 1998 might go down in history as the moment when the world once again started losing confidence in "really existing capitalism". There has been the impact of a catastrophic economic crisis. Rebounding from Asia where it pushed tens of millions below the poverty line in a few months, to Russia, to Latin America and now threatening China, the United States and Europe with the potential of becoming a full-blown global crisis, challenges to conservative conventional wisdom are mounting, even within the political and economic establishment.

Yet, even as the crisis unfolds the power of transnational corporations is growing. Megamergers giving rise to giants such as BAT with Rothmans, UBS/SBS, Daimler-Chrysler, BP/Amoco, WorldCom and MCI, Vodafone AirTouch are removing ever larger corporations from the democratic control of unions, public interest organisations or the law. An American commentator writing in Business Week points out that "the big problem with these gigantic mergers is the growing imbalance between public and private power in our society". They have "disproportionate clout on national legislation", are "almost beyond the law" and are "conducting the most powerful private diplomacy since the British East India Company wielded near-sovereign clout throughout Asia."

Strengthening the global organising capacity of the labour movement therefore must remain the highest priority. Unions have been merging too - at national level in many countries, most notably in Germany and the United States, and internationally, among International Trade Secretariats.

Sadly, all mergers of national unions so far remain within national borders. A borderless global labour movement has yet to emerge. When Daimler merged with Chrysler, the Wall Street Journal wondered whether this could mean a merger between the UAW and IG Metall. Too bad they were the only ones even asking the question.

Mergers however in themselves are not a solution. Unions are not corporations but democratic associations. When ever-larger organisations have increased difficulty in maintaining close contact with their members, mergers if not accompanied by structural and political changes, may not only serve to conceal a failure to deal with existing weaknesses but even become a factor in making them worse.

Union strength which can effectively translate into organising workers in transnational corporations depends entirely on the internal democracy of the organisation and on the ability of the members to freely communicate and co-ordinate with each other. Nowhere is this more true than in an international context where communication has always been a problem. International union organisations, despite a long history of co-operation, have yet to develop the ability to respond with strength, immediacy and focus to an emergency.

In the past year, IFWEA and its affiliates have developed International Study Circles as a tool to help build effective international union networks. Having tested them, we will now put them to practical use in co-operation with International Trade Secretariats in the context of transnational corporations. ISCs are not meant to be a magic bullet which will solve all problems of the international labour movement, but they should help strengthen international co-ordination in a cost-effective way by creating permanent links for communication and discussion. This will improve the ability of unions to mobilise their members quickly when international action is called for within a company because the membership will be prepared.

Beyond transnational corporations, th 1996 Congress also set general objectives. It felt that the IFWEA should make its contribution to developing a programme for a global alternative to the neo-liberal model and develop a global political capacity. This means the ability to mobilise public opinion world-wide, for instance in support of human rights struggles.

We believe that some items in this agenda can also be advanced by the use of ISCs, and this year we will launch ISCs on migrant workers and racism, as well as women and the global food industry. But these are only piece-meal approaches to a general agenda which has vast organisational implications: helping the labour movement organise civil society to create a world-wide movement for an alternative world order based on the values of equality and co-operation, with justice and freedom. This means developing a common platform between NGOs with shared interests: democratic and human rights, which include the rights of women, of labour, of minorities, among others; sustainability of life, now and in the future; the organisation of the world economy to serve these purposes.

For IFWEA, the natural first step is to seek the closest possible co-operation with other labour movement organisations. In order to achieve this, artificial barriers inherited from the past must be broken down. They stand in the way of joining forces in the common struggle. We note with satisfaction the progress in the professionalism, the sophistication and the militancy of many organisations. We want to expand our long-standing co-operation with the ICFTU, and we are proud to count four ITSs among our members, with FIET joining the EI, IMF and IUF last year. At national level, we have had the pleasure of welcoming the Canadian Labour Congress, RENGO in Japan (through its Institute of Labour Education and Culture), the KCTU (through the Korea Labour & Society Institute) and the Austrian Trade Union Federation ÖGB (through its social-democratic fraction).

It is in this context that we place our new alliance with SOLIDAR, the international federation of the labour movement development and solidarity organisations. In December 1998, both international federations unanimously decided on mutual affiliation. It was easy to see how closely linked development and education were from a labour movement perspective and how the two internationals and their members could complement and mutually strengthen each others’ activities. Our joint campaign this year will be on the theme of "workers’ rights are human rights" and will focus on the social clause in international trade agreements, an issue around which the ICFTU and others are also campaigning.

Affiliation of these international organisations strengthen the internal capacity of IFWEA to meet the tasks ahead. This capacity has also been substantially enhanced by the increasing strength of IFWEA’s regions, which will be further consolidated in 1999 through a comprehensive programme of regional activities on globalisation.