24th Session of the Administrative Council of the International Centre for Trade Union Rights.

On Saturday 7 June 2008, ICTUR hosted its annual Administrative Council discussions in Geneva, Switzerland. The high profile annual event brings together trade unions, lawyers, academics and human rights organisations to make recommendations on strategies and action for ICTUR’s work on trade union rights in the year ahead.

More than 40 delegates attended, including representatives of several global union federations. Trade unions from Australia, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, and Spain also participated in the meeting, together with lawyers and NGO representatives.

Interpretation was provided in English and Spanish.

The meeting was chaired by ICTUR Vice President Professor Keith Ewing.

ICTUR’s activities
The Council approved the report of Daniel Blackburn, Director of ICTUR (copies on request), and the proposals for future activities, which included extending the Trade Union Rights Centres project. ICTUR’s key projects this past year had included:

 Responding to trade union rights violations
 The journal, International Union Rights
 A Spanish language email newsletter;
 A legal project in Southern Africa with global union federation UNI
 Support for the network of Trade Union Rights Centres
 Legal analysis on international labour issues
 Consultancy projects for a number of trade unions and GUFs

Presentations and discussion: Labour rights as human rights
ICTUR President and President of the Australian ACTU Sharan Burrow opened the discussion by reflecting on the fact that even now, in the 60th anniversary year of ILO Convention 87, it remains the case that everywhere trade union rights are under attack, even in democracies. The recent anti-union campaign by the previous government in Australia was an example.

We have friends, Ms Burrow added: Mary Robinson in the Council of Elders and associated with other international human rights initiatives is involved with ITUC efforts to promote freedom of association. We also have some new strategies and approaches which will see unions using a link with the internet search company Google to promote awareness of freedom of association during Decent Work day on 7 October.

The international labour movement could and should, Ms Burrow argued, do more to recognize the skills and advice that its friends can offer: unions need to improve their work with legal experts, particularly by improving their involvement with ICTUR, and by recognizing that the skills and perspectives offered by ICTUR’s global legal networks.

Ms Burrow expressed optimism for the situation in Australia, following the change of government, but emphasized that the world situation is very serious. The discussion on human rights is timely and essential, but Ms Burrow added that recognition was also necessary of the fact that 53 countries or 80 percent of the world’s population have actually seen an increase in poverty: we need a fair share of the world’s wealth through work.

Migrants and in particular low paid women are at particular risk. Rising fuel prices, inequality and the dreadful food security situation also need to be addressed, said Ms Burrow: poverty and inequality are at the heart of questions about human rights.

Guest speaker Shane Enright, Global Trade Union Adviser to Amnesty International, delivered a presentation on the place of labour rights within Amnesty’s human rights work, focusing on practical strategies of engagement and on shared areas of common concern between Amnesty and the trade union movement. The labour movement and Amnesty, he explained, are both activist movements that recognise the power of solidarity, both are democratic and accountable rank-and-file movements, reliant on and responsive to the energy and commitment of members and supporters.

Mr Enright expressed the view that the labour movement and Amnesty International now share an understanding that civil and political rights are indivisibly intertwined with social, cultural and economic rights: that poverty is an injustice, and dignity a right; that racism, sexism and homophobia are fundamental abuses that diminish us; and that equality and self-determination are the foundations for social justice and personal liberty.

Some tyrannies have fallen, but some human rights abuses persist, or have grown or shifted to new terrains. The problems in the Middle East, in China, in Burma, in Zimbabwe, continue to demand attention. Mr Enright said that Amnesty continues to view Colombia as the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist. The UK Section of Amnesty, he said, was proud of its ongoing joint work with ICTUR and others to address impunity. In Iran Amnesty supports the global trade union movement in its calls for freedom for Mansour Ossanlu and Mahmoud Salehi and all other jailed trade unionists. In Cambodia Amnesty is demanding that the murderers of labour leader Chea Vichea are brought to justice. Amnesty has also denounced the repression of trade unionists in Zimbabwe, in the Philippines, in Ethiopia, and called for the murderers of Guatemalan dockworker’s leader Pedro Zamora to be sought and charged.

Concerning proposals for the future, Mr Enright believed that Amnesty should more consistently advocate for ILO core labour standards, and should vocally affirm the leadership and achievement of organised labour on human and workers’ rights. One possibility, he thought, might be to explore the scope for a human rights clause within framework agreements as a possible instrument for corporate social responsibility, and look more widely to opportunities for collaboration on business and human rights projects.

Daniel Retureau of CGT France said that the links between labour rights and human rights exist at a deep, structural level: many of the same rights are set out in core UN conventions as well as ILO Conventions (ie – freedom of association, forced labour, migration). But it is useful to reaffirm these connections. The European Court of Justice has recently introduced a new right, the right to make profits. Lawyers from the CGT and university professors are currently studying this development. The CGT welcomed the guest speaker and Mr Retureau expressed great hopes for cooperation with Amnesty International. Keith Ewing expressed the view that the European Court of Justice was undermining 100 years of democratic progress by recycling 100 year old legal weapons against trade unions.

Souribandhu Kar of AITUC, India complained that in India in recent disputes the judiciary had supported companies not workers: police had violently attacked strikers, and the right to strike itself had been declared not to exist by the court in one recent case. He wished to emphasise that the right to strike is a human right, and that making profits is not a human right.

Carlos Rodriguez, a Colombian lawyer from the CUT, spoke of an anti-union culture in his country that damaged trade unionism by purporting to link trade unionists with illegal groups and also by blaming unions rather than management for industrial unrest or the performance of a workplace.

ICTUR Vice President and General Secretary of the African regional organisation OATUU Hassan Sunmonu questioned why the human rights agenda was often used to promote individual rights over and above collective rights, such as the rights of groups, countries or organisations. Mr Sunmonu argued that discussion of the food crisis was also important: that basic needs had to be considered when talking about human rights. The neo-liberal agenda and the Bretton Woods institutions had played a clear role in creating the food crisis by banning subsidies to agriculture: former African bread-basket countries are now begging after interference by those institutions. The ILO’s Decent Work programme should refer to the satisfaction of basic needs (an ILO programme on basic needs was widely adopted in the 1970s).

Ron Oswald, International Union of Foodworkers, spoke of the war on terror as a camouflage for the subjugation of rights. 800 million are suffering from lack of food and millions of people are dying. Mr Oswald explained that he had recently faced a negotiating team who argued for the removal of the word ‘right’ from an international text speaking of a ‘right to food’. This was astonishing, he said: if people don’t get water they die – that makes it a right. But globally these rights are being subjugated to economic forces. Trade unions need to struggle and mobilise, not just work on getting a paragraph in a document produced by international agencies and then claim victory. When food riots took place in cities governments paid attention. The WTO has systematically and deliberately undermined the right to food, said Mr Oswald. Mr Sunmonu expressed his agreement with that view.

Christine Parker of LO-Norway said that ICTUR and ITUC were producing good research and good information. Members present at the meeting should work proactively to make sure that information produced by ICTUR would be available more widely to unions but also to governments and employers ahead of the 2009 ILO Conference. European Governments, Ms Parker believed, could be persuaded to adopt more helpful positions on Colombia if we can ensure that they have the information.

Kurshid Ahmed of the Pakistan Workers Confederation thanked Amnesty International for their good work. In Pakistan the trade union movement and the judiciary have worked together in defence of human rights during the past year, around freedom of speech and the rule of law. He agreed that the Decent Work agenda should include reference to satisfying basic needs.

Jan Eastman of Education International pointed out that in the 60th anniversary year of Convention 87 it remains the least widely ratified of the eight core ILO Conventions. Teachers, she added, are at the forefront of trade union rights violations in many countries (giving examples of Ethiopia, Colombia, Guatemala and Zimbabwe).

Stephen Benedict of the Canadian Labour Congress, cited a recent example where the trade unions had taken a complaint to the ILO, and the ILO had found in their favour, yet the government had ignored the ILO. Canadian unions had then taken the case back to the Canadian law courts and had been impressed to find that the judiciary had applied the ILO ruling.

Shane Enright said that labour rights are being eroded, and that economic, individual and property rights are being privileged over social rights. It would be a mistake for the labour movement to think of labour rights as separate from the broader human rights agenda: in Iran, for example, the labour movement and other human rights defenders need to join together to expose the relationship between oppression and human rights.

Professor Ewing summarised the findings of the meeting as pointing to a five-fingered crisis:

1) An economic crisis
2) A democratic crisis
3) A crisis of the international agencies
4) A crisis of courts (particularly the ECJ, but to be contrasted by the Canadian example)
5) A crisis of rights (a move to soft law and the erosion of rights)

He proposed three goals:

1) More information on trade union rights to be supplied to governments – ICTUR to create and supply this
2) Take the initiative and use the language of rights to our advantage (start talking about the rights of peoples and collective rights)
3) Return to traditional trade union methods of education and mobilisation

The Council closed with a thanks to the interpreters for their assistance and support.