USA: In the early morning hours of January 14, the first day of the two-day nationwide strike at General Electric, a picketing worker was struck and killed by a police car outside a GE plant in Louisville, Kentucky. A press statement released by the International Union of Electronic Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA) said that the woman, an employee of GE Appliance Park, was a member of Local 761, and that the union was attempting to learn the facts concerning the tragic event.

USA: The IMF-affiliated International Union of Electronic Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA) will launch a national strike against General Electric tomorrow (January 14) at 12:01 a.m., the first nationwide walkout at the U.S.-based transnational in over 30 years. The IUE-CWA says their two-day industrial action is in retaliation against GE’s imposition on January 1, 2003, of inequitable and unjustifiable health care costs on both its active and retired members. The union argues that workers accepted lower wage increases in the last collective agreement in order to preserve their health benefits, but now GE is attempting to shift US$40 million in health care costs to its workers even though the company is making record profits. In 2001, GE’s net profits amounted to $14.1 billion, and the projected net profit for 2002 is $16 billion. While the IUE-CWA, which with 14,000 active members is the largest union at the company, has the right to conduct national strikes in its collective agreement with GE, the other U.S. unions making up the 14-member Coordinated Bargaining Committee for General Electric — including the IMF-affiliated Machinists (IAM), the United Autoworkers (UAW), the Steelworkers (USWA) and Sheetmetal Workers (SMW) — will honour the picket lines. They will conduct simultaneous strikes over unresolved grievances and take part in other solidarity actions. In a letter of protest to GE chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, IMF general secretary Marcello Malentacchi said the IMF and its affiliated unions fully support the IUE-CWA stand, and “we intend to assist the IUE-CWA and the other American GE unions in this action to the fullest extent we can.” As the U.S. is one of the few countries in the industrialised world lacking a national health care system, Malentacchi urged GE to “join with its domestic unions in seeking a rational legislative solution to the problem, rather than attempting to shift more and more of the burden onto its workers.” The IMF has also asked its affiliates worldwide to send protest letters to GE. Bargaining for the IUE-CWA’s next collective contract at GE will start in May 2003. The present three-year agreement expires on June 15.

BELARUS: Following the IMF’s recent appeal for stepped up support to Belarus affiliates in their difficult struggle against government attempts to destroy the independent trade union movement in the country, the French Federation of Metalworkers (FGM-CGT) has written to its minister of foreign affairs to request French intervention with the Belarus government leadership. The FGM-CGT requested that the Quai d’Orsay demand respect by Belarus authorities for ILO fundamental principles and an end to harassment of leaders of the two affiliates, the Automobile & Agricultural Machinery Workers’ Union (AAM) and the Radio & Electronics Industry Workers’ Union (REI). Among latest examples of the Belarus government’s violation of free trade union rights was in December when, prior to plenums of the AAM and REI, authorities put strong pressure on union members to drop their support for Aliaksandr Bukhvostau, AAM president, and Gennadi Fedynitch, REI president. Members received phone calls and “invitations” to visit local authorities, and files containing forged messages by the two union federations with so-called accusations against the two union presidents were distributed at the entrance to the meetings. The IMF Executive Committee, at its December meeting, issued a strong statement in support of the AAM and REI and their fight to safeguard the independent trade union movement in Belarus. Although Belarus government attempts against the AAM and REI have thus far failed, the unions believe these efforts will continue. The two affiliates are among the last remaining independent institutions in Belarus and have the strong support of their rank-and-file members.

AUSTRALIA: As one of the key priorities for its Campaign 2003, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union has launched a drive for women across Australia’s manufacturing industry to have the right to 14 weeks’ paid maternity leave. Currently, out of 250,000 women working in this country’s manufacturing industry, only 15.4 per cent have access to any form of paid maternity leave. The convenor of the AMWU National Women’s Committee, Anne Donnellan, said that women had contributed a great deal to Australia’s workforce and employers had to recognise paid maternity leave as a legitimate workplace entitlement. Although the United Nations has recognised paid maternity leave as a fundamental human right for all women, Australia is one of the few countries in the world where women must bargain for their right to paid maternity leave. Only two countries in the OECD — Australia and the United States — have no access to maternity leave, and says Doug Cameron, AMWU national secretary, “we think it’s about time Australia really got to the 21st century in relation to women’s rights and the rights of babies.” The union will ask for the minimum of 14 weeks, which is an international standard, at the paid rate for the workshop that its members are employed in, and says that companies will make sufficient savings through improved health of women in the workforce, through the retention of skills and having a far more content and satisfied workforce. In November 2002, General Motors’ Australian subsidiary, Holden, unilaterally gave 14 weeks’ paid leave to women in the manufacturing sector of GM.

How do you protect workers rights where legislation is inadequate? How can you ensure respect for the ILO Core Labour Standards in all facilities of a transnational company? And how do you protect the interests of workers where unions are weak or non-existent?

International Framework Agreements (IFAs) are a relatively recent tool but one now widely used by the IMF and other Global
Union Federations to lay down the rules of conduct for transnational companies. Since they are negotiated on a
global level and require the participation of trade unions, International Framework Agreements are an ideal
instrument for dealing with the issues raised by globalisation.

This is why the International Metalworkers Federation is dedicated to pursuing IFAs in all transnational companies where
our affiliates have members.


The future direction of International Framework Agreements (IFAs) was the subject of discussion at a world conference in 2006. The recommendations arising from the conference and subsequently adopted by the IMF Executive Committee can be found here.

Italy’s three national metalworkers’ unions – the FIM, FIOM and UILM, also representing the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) – signed an International Framework Agreement with Merloni Elettrodomestici S.p.A. in December 2001.

With its signature, Merloni, Europe’s third largest producer of domestic appliances, with subsidiaries across the globe, has undertaken to comply with and promote the fundamental principles and rights at work established in conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

To supervise compliance with the Code, the agreement provides for the establishment of monitoring not only of the company’s own production units and activities, but its suppliers as well, which risk having their contracts cancelled in cases of grave violations.

The company must report on the implementation and status of the agreement at the annual meeting of the European Works Council (EWC) and at the national information meeting provided for by the national collective contract. For countries which are not members of the EWC, representatives of the workers and trade unions at individual plants must receive this information from the local management.

A "Declaration on Social Rights and Industrial Relationships at Volkswagen" was signed in June 2002, by Volkswagen management, the IMF and the Volkswagen Global Works’ Council (GWC).

The Declaration states that the principles of the ILO Core Labour Standards will be assured within Volkswagen.

The VW Declaration deals with the freedom of association, collective bargaining, prohibition of child work and forced labour and non-discrimination, as well as remuneration, health and safety and working time.

Company management will report to the GWC and its Steering Committee, and in cases of reported violations, one of the two will become active and discuss ways to solve the problems. The IMF’s coordinator for the VW Global Works’ Council is involved in this discussion and will bring in the position of the IMF and its affiliated unions.

The agreement is applicable to the entire Volkswagen group – Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Skoda, Rolls-Royce Bentley, Lamborghini, Auto-Europa.

In September 2002, a "Social Responsibility Principles of Daimler" was signed by Daimler and the Daimler World Employee Committee, on behalf of the International Metalworkers’ Federation.

In the agreement, Daimler acknowledges its social responsibility and supports the principles on human and workers’ rights and the environment which form the basis for the United Nations’ Global Compact initiative.


The framework agreement also states that Daimler supports and encourages its suppliers to introduce and implement "equivalent principles" in their own companies and expects its suppliers to incorporate these principles as "a basis for relations with Daimler."

BY STIG JUTTERSTRÖM Liisa Kirveskari is standing in front of the still beautiful, old brick building which once housed the Åström brothers’ leather factory in Oulu, Finland, 600 km north of the capital Helsinki. The building is no longer a factory, having been transformed into a catering school. “This is where I retrained as a waitress, after I had become an unemployed welder,” Liisa told us. The Åström brothers came to Finland from Tornedalen, north of the polar circle in Sweden. They started their leather goods factory in the middle of the 18th century, making shoes, harnesses and saddles, mainly for Russian horsemen. The Åströms became the largest employers in Oulu, with ten per cent of the town’s workforce. Oulu also had at that time the most important tar producer in the world. Now both leather and tar have fled the town, and Oulu has instead become the electronics capital of Finland. It also has the largest concentration of restaurants. Unions are strong, despite the fact that modern IT companies – which normally are not well unionised – have replaced heavy industry. BRUTAL RECESSION Liisa Kirveskari’s career in catering was short, after her retraining course at the former Åström factory premises. “I was a welder for twelve years,” she told us. The recession that started in the early 1990s was brutal to an extent never previously known in Finnish and European history. Two-thirds of the workforce in the construction company where she worked were dismissed. From 1990 to 1992, unemployment in Finland increased from 3.5 per cent to 20 per cent, a total of 500,000 people. The country was not only struck by the same recession as the rest of the industrialised world, but in addition its trade with the former Soviet Union, which accounted for 20 per cent to 25 per cent of total exports, ceased overnight when the communist empire collapsed. Liisa was unemployed for three months, finding only temporary jobs as a cleaner, hospital auxiliary and waitress. EMPLOYERS DICTATED CONDITIONS When the restaurant market was at its height in the mid-1990s, topless waitresses made their first appearance in a Finnish restaurant – in Oulu. Labour market conditions were entirely dictated by employers. Those offered jobs dared not refuse, although the conditions were loathsome; either you accepted the conditions offered, or you had to try elsewhere. “I got fed up with these short-term jobs and in 1994 managed to find a permanent job in electronics, as an assembly-line worker at Nokia,” she said. This former welder from a heavy industry with proud trade union traditions found that interest in unions was far too weak in the youthful electronics industry in which women workers predominated. “The women didn’t dare defend their interests. Since I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, I found that, within a year, I was elected chair of the union branch with 650 members.” Liisa’s union career did not stop at that point. She was elected chair of the Nokia Group national trade union committee in Finland, to which all blue- and white-collar workers and all professional engineers belong. In 1999, she became the first woman regional officer of the Finnish Metalworkers’ Union, with the whole of Oulu county (the same geographical size as Switzerland or Belgium) as her responsibility. THE OLDEST NORDIC HIGH-TECH COMMUNITY Things started improving in 1994, not only for Liisa Kirveskari, but also for the whole of Finland, which began to climb out of the unprecedented slump. Nokia, the former manufacturer of car tires and rubber boots, became not only a world famous trademark for entirely different products and but also the largest European company quoted on the stock exchange. Oulu was transformed from a town relying on heavy industry with tall factory chimneys to a centre for electronics research and production. It has now become the Finnish Silicon Valley. Three leading groups in Oulu work together pragmatically – the town’s politicians, the management of the newly-established university and a number of small entrepreneurs – which led in 1982 to the establishment in a former dairy of a high-tech centre called Technopolis. There are today 5,000 people working at what has now become the oldest Nordic technology centre. The town currently has over 10,000 people employed in the IT and electronics sector. A REGIONAL MAGNET Oulu has become an employment magnet, attracting people from the surrounding region, from the west coast of the Gulf of Bothnia to the border with Russia in the east. The population increased by 3,000 every year during the whole of the ’90s and now stands at over 120,000. The university, built to resemble a large industrial complex, caters to 13,000 students. Research centres have also been created for medical and biotechnical research, financed by private and public money. But the technical faculty still remains by far the largest. Nokia has endowed a professorial Chair. One of the secrets behind the development of Oulu is that the town has managed to attract well-educated young people from the whole of northern Finland. But none of this would have been possible without the “Oulu spirit”, the broad desire to build a modern industrial environment. THE SMALL-TOWN SPIRIT REMAINS One result of this spirit is the Nokia Network, located some 7 km outside the town centre. The company consists of three glass and concrete buildings. The first dates from the 1970s, but extensions have been added in a number of phases during the 1990s. In a decade, the workforce has increased from 300 to over 1,000 people, of whom 685 are blue-collar and 350 white-collar workers. The average age is 32 for men and 40 for women. Pirjo Käyhkö joined Nokia in 1994 after working as a cleaner in the building industry for nearly ten years. Two years later, she became active in the union and is now deputy to the chief safety representative. She works a three-shift system as a checker. “We have no problems recruiting youngsters,” she tells us. “We have a special branch for young people and organise specific activities to get them committed to the union. Young people are good at expressing themselves and enjoy influencing decisions. More than half the branch officers are less than 35 years old. We are very pleased about it.” Pirjo was born in Oulu and thinks that some of the changes have been too fast. “Too much has been pulled down,” she says. But the small-town spirit remains. It is true that some buildings disappeared in the ’60s and ’70s, but enough remains to make it possible to walk around on cobbled pedestrian streets surrounded by lovely three-story houses built of wood or stone. HALF ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 35 “It is exciting living in Oulu with all these new people moving here,” says Kati Kurvinen. She has been working for seven years at the PKC Group, which manufactures cables for the car industry, chiefly for Sweden. Half of the 500 people employed at the factory in Oulu are under the age of 35 years. There is also a growing demand from the heavy vehicle industry and the number of employees is increasing. Future prospects look bright. Kati is very happy with her work at the end of the production line. Her work is independent, working hours on the dayshift are flexible, and she earns the average hourly wage for Finnish women metalworkers of 10 to 11 euros. Although not active, she appreciates the benefits her union membership offers. Petrol is a few cents cheaper with the union card, and she joins in on sea cruises organised by her local union branch. 12,000 NEW MEMBERS EVERY YEAR The number of members in the Finnish Metalworkers’ Union has increased from 150,000 in 1992 to over 170,000 ten years later. Each year it acquired 11,000 to 12,000 new members, an annual net increase of 2,000 to 3,000. The level of unionisation varies from one sector to another and averages 90 per cent. It is at its lowest in small companies, in the IT sector and in the area surrounding the capital Helsinki. When it comes to developments in Finland’s Metalworkers’ Union, the country seems totally different. Whereas in Great Britain, Italy, Germany and France the number of union members has decreased during the last decade, in Finland the growth of the Metalworkers’ Union members has been robust. This is particularly true of young members. More than half – 6,421 out of 11,229 new members in 1991 – were under the age of 25. Erkki Vuorenmaa, the union’s president, explains that these developments are due to a long and deliberate campaign to target young people. He, himself, was originally employed fulltime – at the age of 27 – at the union national level as youth officer, between 1976 and 1982. THE UNION IS POPULAR “We have extensive activities for young members in 100 of our 300 branches, with a solid trade union content,” says Vuorenmaa. “We provide information about the union and recruit at vocational training colleges. We organise union camps for youngsters every year with 6,000-7,000 participants.” He notes with satisfaction that the Metalworkers’ Union is popular. “Opinion polls show that the trade union movement is regularly in the third place in terms of public respect for Finnish organisations. Only the church and the police beat us on that count.” “The reason is because we have become a social movement,” says Vuorenmaa. “The union must never become only an insurance company or a group of specialists.” A TIME OF CRISIS How come that the Finnish Metalworkers’ Union has expanded, especially in the light of what has happened to unions in neighbouring countries? Vuorenmaa’s answer is that the 1990s were an extremely difficult period, with – at its peak – half a million unemployed in this country of 5 million inhabitants. “Every second member was unemployed at some time during that period. Between 1991 and 1995 we had a purely right-wing government, with a finance minister who believed that workers really should not join unions. He thought it better for them to join the union’s unemployment benefit scheme. There was a very strained relationship between the government and the trade union movement.” Vuorenmaa believes that, as a result, union members had a rude awakening and started becoming more ideologically aware. They reacted against the government’s anti-union policies. And, since 1995, the Finnish government has been led by the Social Democrats, currently described as a rainbow coalition with representatives of the conservative Union Party, as well as the former Communists and the Greens. Although anti-union sentiments remain in some places, no one dares challenge the unions as they did in the early 1990s. REPERCUSSIONS ARE STILL FELT The political changes, combined with the Nokia-led export boom and a restrictive wages policy within the framework of what became known as “a comprehensive national solution,” paved the way for increased employment in the country, and with it the growth of membership in the Metalworkers’ Union. “Oulu has been the case in point of this development,” says Erkki Vuorenmaa. But it doesn’t mean that everything in the garden is rosy, not even in Oulu. The industrial crisis and cutbacks in the service sector have left their mark. Average unemployment in the country still hovers at around 10 per cent. In Oulu it is around 14 per cent, and one Finn in three is still long-term unemployed. “The repercussions of the painful crisis of the 90s are still distressing,” says Liisa Kirveskari. She knows that much remains to be done.

GENEVA: I had the opportunity to meet Lula on different occasions – more often when he was not yet Lula but simply Luiz Inácio da Silva, a charismatic union leader in the industrial suburbs of Sao Paulo. I only saw him once after he became a politically important figure, the candidate of the Left for the presidency. Certainly, he doesn’t remember me. How many faces and how many speeches there have been since the founding of the Workers’ Party and his three electoral campaigns! But I remember him quite well, in particular in one very special situation. It was in March 1979, and the military dictatorship was coming to an end after three decades of authoritarian power. A strike was blocking the factories in the ABC industrial zone of Sao Paulo and 80,000 workers crowded the stadium of Sao Bernardo. Inácio da Silva, who had been elected president of the metalworkers’ union in 1975, spoke to the mass. There were no loudspeakers and the words of the future Lula were transmitted like a wave by the people. It was incredible! The workers in the front row repeated the sentences of the union leader to the second row, then the second to the third… and so on to the back of the stadium. Wages, working hours, labour rights and democracy. Two days later the strike was declared illegal, the governor sent in the army and the workers’ leadership met in the church of La Matriz in Sao Bernardo. The bishop declared: “We have to open the door to the people. They are hungry for justice.” Inácio was born in the state of Pernambuco in the northeast of Brazil, the seventh in a family of eight children. When he was six months old, his father, looking for a job, migrated to the south, to Santos, the harbor of Sao Paulo. Seven years later, Inácio made the same trip with his mother and the rest of the family – 3,000 km in 13 days to join the father in Sao Paulo, in one room at the back of a bar. Lula has spoken many times of the humiliation of seeing his father with another woman, of being thrown out of a cinema because he had no jacket, the despair of his mother to find a way to feed her children. “Brazilians have the right to eat twice a day” was one of the main slogans of his presidential campaign. Populism? No, just remembering. Like the great majority of poor Brazilians, Inácio started work at a very early age, in the streets polishing shoes, selling lemons. At 12, he worked in a textile shop, at 15 in a bolt plant. He lost a finger of his left hand in a work accident. When years later during one of his union campaign travels to his northeast and the Amazon he saw many people without arms or legs, he said: “I was lucky to have lost only a little finger.” The rest of the story is known: president of the union, founding of the Workers’ Party (PT), the political adventure. Many years after the big strikes of the 1980s, I saw Lula at a Congress of the National Confederation of Metalworkers (CNM). The union had become important, the PT a well-established party and Inácio known as Lula the world over, but I did not perceive any change in his simplicity and deep commitment to the people. The reason? He never forgot that trip from the north and never failed to remember his own story. In his speech, he invited the union leaders of Brazil’s industrialised south not to forget that “there are people who still suffer from hunger…” Now that the dream is a reality, I like to imagine Inácio da Silva as a man who will never forget having been poor. Someone has said that he’s wearing a tie now, which makes me remember the sentence of a poor peasant who, when I met him, said: “To honour you, I have put on the only tie I have.” And Lula, too, in honouring the people he comes from, the workers and poor of Brazil. Good luck, Inácio.