Unions celebrate World Day for Decent Work

Thailand

Thailand

In Thailand, thousands of workers, including members of IndustriALL affiliate, the Confederation of Industrial Labour of Thailand, marched to Government House to deliver a letter to the Prime Minister demanding safe and secure jobs, and action to protect workers in the face of Industry 4.0.

Indonesia

In Jakarta, women from the IndustriALL Indonesian Council held a rally urging authorities and employers to ensure decent work, healthy and safe working places and longer maternity leave.

India

In the Philippines, IndustriALL affiliates held a national forum looking at how to strengthen workers’ rights and end the prevalence of exploitative precarious work in the country.

Jordan

IndustriALL affiliates in Nigeria and Pakistan called on Shell to stop precarious work and give workers a permanent job at the oil and gas giant.

Mauritius

In Mauritius, IndustriALL trade unions marched through the streets with banners calling for decent work, an end to violence against women and climate justice.

Pakistan

In South Asia, affiliates in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan all took action in protest at precarious work, while IndustriALL affiliates from all over Latin America marked 7 October at a meeting in Buenos Aires of energy, mining and metal unions.

Buenos Aires

Chile

Garment workers, suppliers and ACT brands agree on Freedom of Association Guideline

The Myanmar FoA Guideline aims to secure constructive relations between employers and workers. By providing workers a voice and representation, the guideline facilitates cooperation to solve workplace issues.

The guideline aims to specify and ensure the practical application of the principles of Freedom of Association under International Labour Standards, and also outlines a timetable to begin to the process of collective bargaining.

The FoA guideline was discussed on 15 November in Yangon, Myanmar, at a round table discussion on Freedom of Association and Social Dialogue in the textile, garment, leather and shoe sector. IWFM and IndustriALL were joined by global brands H&M, Inditex, Bestseller New Look, Next, and Tchibo.

In her opening speech, Piyamal Pichaiwongse, ILO Yangon Deputy Liaison Officer, stressed that “sound industrial relations are built on the principles of freedom of association and collective bargaining.”

Participants used the meeting to address how to make the FoA Guideline a practical tool at factory level and how to work together to raise awareness on making it part of the industry standard. An action plan on how to strengthen cooperation was agreed upon.

Christina Clausen, IndustriALL textile and garment  director says:

“The FoA guideline specifies the conditions to take the next step to develop an agreement for the sector, and it’s only by establishing sustainable structures that we can achieve a collective change in the industry. IndustriALL looks forward to working with our affiliate, the IWFM, national suppliers and the global brands to improve wages and working conditions in Myanmar.”

Twenty-one major brands have signed a global agreement with IndustriALL Global Union to form the Action, Collaboration, Transformation (ACT).  Companies including Hennes & Mauritz AB, Zara-parent Inditex SA and the owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, PVH Corp. have signed on to use their purchasing power to enable better working conditions and push for industry level wage agreements secured through collective bargaining.

The Myanmar FoA Guideline covers:

The parties have agreed on the next steps in the process, including among other things disseminate and explain the content of the guideline to workers and management at factory level, and develop a dispute resolution procedure, as outlined in a signed letter of agreement.

Organizing white-collar workers

Organizing white-collar workers

There is a transformation of industrial work underway as we experience the effects of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). Digitalization, connectivity, artificial intelligence, and advanced technologies such as 3-D printing, nanotechnology and biotechnology mean that more and more workers will be paid for their knowledge of these technologies and fewer will be paid for their physical skills.

One way of describing this transformation is that labour is becoming more white-collar. If the trade union movement is to remain relevant and effective in the future, we must become successful at organizing the growing numbers of white-collar workers.

Only seven per cent of the nearly three billion workers around the world are members of free and independent unions, and union density in private-sector white-collar occupations is even lower. Even fewer are active members of their unions. IndustriALL’s white-collar sector includes approximately 12.5 per cent of its total affiliated membership – and every indication is that this percentage is growing.

While there are exceptions, unions in many countries have seen declines in membership and influence in recent decades. The percentage of workers who are union members in OECD countries (34 of the wealthiest countries in the world) has decreased from 33 per cent in 1980, to 17 per cent in 2013. This is partly due to attempts by many governments and multinational corporations to undermine unions and attack workers’ rights.

Declining union presence in recent decades has led to increasing economic inequality throughout Asia, Europe, North and Central America and parts of Africa and South America.

In order to reverse these trends, unions around the world must organize more and more effectively than ever before – and if white-collar workers are an increasing percentage of the global work force, then their importance to the trade union movement is obvious.

Building workers’ power means making organizing a key priority

This requires a culture change in unions. Unions must invest more time, effort and resources into recruiting new members and retaining existing ones. It also requires unions to focus on building solidarity and actively involving their membership in all union matters.

What is organizing and why should we organize?

Organizing means growing union membership, building solidarity among workers, and increasing the participation of workers in unions.

Recruiting and retaining members are key to organizing. Capital and corporations have more money than unions, but unions’ power comes from their members.

But only increasing a union’s membership is not enough. Organizing also involves building solidarity among workers and getting them involved and active in their union, working together to achieve common aims.

Unions are stronger when they organize and can gain the power and resources to:

Unions that increase their membership, members’ solidarity, and member activism also gain political power. They can mobilize larger political demonstrations, have more impact on political decision making, and have greater influence on legislation affecting workers and unions, for example by lobbying from a base of power. Political influence is a result, rather than a prerequisite, for union power. Worker power must come first. White-collar workers’ rights to safe and secure work, and to organize and bargain collectively, are regularly violated. The recognition of workers’ rights always follows worker action and struggle, it never precedes it.

Economic inequality is generally lower where unions are well organized. Union organizing helps build strong unions and economies with fairer distributions of wealth and power.

Members are a union’s greatest resource.

The more members, the more powerful the union can be.

IndustriALL organizing support

IndustriALL supports organizing projects around the globe, with a focus on encouraging and enabling affiliates to develop a permanent organizing culture and to run their own organizing programs.

Together with affiliates IndustriALL holds workshops, conferences, workplace visits and training to discuss and develop organizing plans. Support is provided for affiliates’ organizing drives including research, mapping, publications and materials. In some cases, particularly in the global south, IndustriALL projects provide financial support to fund organizers’ work.

IndustriALL represents workers in 14 industrial sectors, plus white-collar workers, each with a sector action plan. All sector action plan include building union power through organizing as an objective. Each sector pursues this objective differently.

Focusing on organizing and gaining union density as well as supporting an organizing project covering six Asian countries is part of IndustriALL’s ICT, Electrical and Electronics sector action plan.

IndustriALL supports global union networks in over 20 multinational corporations. Some of these are World Works Councils, which are generally global union networks that the employer formally recognizes and is active in. Many global union networks commit to organize at workplace within their company where there is no, or weak, union representation. They also mobilize solidarity support during organizing drives at their company. It is worth remembering that all of these multinational corporations employ significant and growing numbers of workers who could be described as white-collar workers.

Organizing has been a priority for the global union network in aluminum company Alcoa. The network repeatedly raised concerns with Alcoa’s CEO about management opposing attempts by Alcoa workers in Virginia, USA to organize with IndustriALL affiliate United Steelworkers (USW). Unions in the network also supported these workers during global days of action. In June 2015 the organizing drive was successful when the workers voted to join USW.

IndustriALL does outreach to companies and countries and when necessary coordinates campaigns against them to support organizing. Affiliates frequently notify IndustriALL of companies and countries committing organizing rights abuses. The response generally begins with a letter to the company management or responsible government official demanding that workers’ organizing rights are respected.

If the abuse continues, tactics to pressure companies and countries to respect workers’ organizing rights are used. This can include mobilizing solidarity support from other unions or from the company’s European Works Council, communicating with the company’s customers, online petitions, protests at the company’s annual meetings, and filing complaints at the International Labour Organization (ILO) and with the OECD.

White-collar workers need this kind of support, as do all workers. In the past, some may have believed that white-collar workers had good working conditions and wages without the need for trade union representation, or that they ought to be automatically considered part of the management team. This was never really true, but today it is painfully obvious that white-collar workers experience violations of their rights, production pressures, precarious employment relationships, attacks on wages and benefits, and occupational health and safety hazards as much as any workers.

With the support of IndustriALL organizing projects, unions around the world have organized hundreds of thousands of new members.

IndustriALL has supported organizing through campaigns at some of the world’s largest corporations including LafargeHolcim, Rio Tinto, Gerdau, Tenaris, and Caterpillar.

IndustriALL works with affiliates to negotiate and implement global framework agreements (GFA) with multinational companies. These agreements put in place high standards of trade union rights including organizing rights, creating opportunities for unions to organize across a company’s global operations and their suppliers. IndustriALL has currently signed over 50 GFAs.

Examples of IndustriALL GFAs that unions have used to achieve organizing victories include BMW and Daimler in India, Bosch in Malaysia, and Solvay in the USA.

IndustriALL is building relationships with many brands and retailers, primarily in the textile and garments sector. GFAs with brands are used to promote organizing rights of workers at factories the brands source from. This increases the likelihood that factory owners will not oppose union organizing drives, and if they do brands can be asked to intervene.

IndustriALL is a founding member of the ACT (Action, Collaboration, Transformation) Initiative between international brands and retailers, manufacturers and trade unions. ACT addresses the issue of living wages in the textile and garment supply chain. IndustriALL will use ACT to promote organizing in the sector.

Key principles for organizing

IndustriALL promotes these key principles with affiliates to lay the groundwork for organizing success.

1. Build strong structures

Strong union structures start in the workplace.

This can be an organizing committee, steward structure, women’s committee, health and safety committee, network of workplace communicators and activists, or whatever workplace union structures are needed. These structures provide opportunities for workers to actively participate in the unions and build solidarity, even before the trade union is finally and formally organized or certified, and are critical for recruiting and retaining members.

Strong union structures are also required outside of the workplace to organize effectively. Individual workplace-level unions that are not part of larger union structures are weak in a global economy. Federations of unions are stronger, and national unions can be stronger still as they better enable unions to mobilize the resources to run large, effective organizing programs.

The Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU) was long a federation of enterprise-level unions. A large majority of the unions’ resources were kept at the enterprise level. Leadership of the union then consulted with members and built support for transforming into a national union. This enabled KMWU to shift resources toward regional and national organizing strategies. As a result, the union has been able to achieve organizing victories at giant, anti-union companies including Samsung and has organized thousands of precarious workers.

When there are multiple unions in one sector in a country, they can often become stronger through merging into a sectoral union. In some cases building strong unions with organizing power has been achieved through merging across multiple sectors.

IndustriALL affiliates like Unite in the UK and Unifor in Canada are the result of multiple mergers. Representing workers in numerous sectors, Unite and Unifor are able to run powerful, national organizing campaigns and organize thousands of new members every year.

In many countries where IndustriALL has several affiliates, they come together to form a national council. These councils provide a platform for affiliates to meet, discuss issues of national relevance and plan joint action. Many national councils decide which sectors are priority organizing targets and where organizing projects should be developed.

IndustriALL affiliates in for example Argentina, Botswana, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Mozambique, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uruguay and Zambia are building unity and organizing capacity through national councils.

2. Be democratic and transparent

Workers are more likely to join unions and be active union members if the union has clear rules, inclusive structures, regular meetings and elections, and operates democratically. Unions can increase transparency and organizing success through regularly communicating with workers about the activities of the union.

Travailleurs Unis des Mines, Métallurgies, Energie, Chimie et Industries Connexes (TUMEC) is leading a shift in Congo (DRC) away from small, inactive unions to a large union that serves workers. It runs a member education program including frequent workshops with union leaders and activists. They then share what they learn through frequent meetings with members. Topics include key issues such as health and safety, effective member representation, and why recruiting members is important to building a powerful union. TUMEC has organized thousands of members over the last couple of years.

3. Include

Unity is a fundamental principle of unions. Workers are strong when they’re united. However most unions have historically ignored or marginalized large segments of the workforce. These include white-collar or non-manual workers, women, precarious workers, youth, and migrants.

The composition of the workforce has changed, but not all unions have adapted to this change. Unions must adopt active strategies to include and organize these emerging and marginalized groups. This often requires modifying existing structures or creating new ones.

In order to be effective in organizing white-collar workers, unions must be credible and relevant to these workers. Today, white-collar workers include many women, precarious workers, youth, and migrant workers, therefore the union must also be relevant to these groups and include them in all union structures, like leadership roles, staff, committees, and steward structures.

Unions must also focus on issues that are significant to these marginalized groups. When members of these groups are included in all union structures and programs, unions are better able to do this.

Sometimes unions must change their statutes to remove barriers to precarious workers joining. In Germany unions established bargaining associations for temporary agency workers in order to recruit these workers and achieve equal treatment for them in collective bargaining agreements. Through a strong focus in improving their condition, IG Metall gained 38,000 new members in 2012 among temporary staff.

The constitution of the Confederation of Industrial Labour of Thailand (CILT) specifies that at least one-third of the confederation’s executive must be women. Monthly meetings of CILT affiliate TEAM always have a discussion of women’s issues on the agenda.

4. Cooperate and coordinate

Workers and unions are stronger when they work together in solidarity. Unions can organize more effectively when they cooperate, coordinate and support each other’s organizing work.

IndustriALL affiliates in Uganda formed a national council and signed a memorandum of understanding committing themselves to cooperate and coordinate, including in their organizing work.

Unions can also increase their organizing success by working cooperatively with the broader community. Showing how union organizing success benefits the broader community and offering direct solidarity support increases support from the community.

US affiliate the United Auto Workers (UAW) has worked extensively in the southern USA with the civil rights community, which fights for the rights of blacks and other ethnic minorities. Many of the workers in the auto industry that UAW is organizing in the USA south are black. Civil rights groups regularly hold actions in support of UAW organizing drives there.

To organize groups of white-collar workers, it is especially important to reach out to and be visible within their communities. As an example, try to connect with social and environmental movements that are relevant to the hopes and dreams of white-collar workers – who tend to be younger, better educated, and more diverse than workforces have been in the past.

Hours of work and rates of pay remain central issues, but they are not enough. Today’s workers tend to care about issues such as the environment, human rights, gender issues, and equality. They want their union to care about these issues as well.

5. Don’t compete

Multiple unions representing workers from the same sector should not compete to recruit the same workers at the same time at a workplace. This wastes limited resources and only leads to increased rivalry and conflicts between unions. This disunity can also damage the credibility of unions in general. Unions should reach an agreement to not compete with one another in this way. In almost all countries, there is no shortage of workers and workplaces to target for organizing.

The Ghana Mine Workers’ Union, Ghana Transport, Petroleum and Chemicals Workers Union, and the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Ghana have formed a national council and are discussing ways to limit competition in organizing with each other. They are working on a memorandum of understanding to formalize a non-competition agreement.

In India, unions are historically divided along political lines and different national centres, with capacity to represent the same workers. Unions in the Indian steel sector have a long history of competition with one another, but little success in organizing in the private sector.

The Steel, Metal and Engineering Workers’ Federation of India and the Indian National Metalworkers’ Federation reached a non-competition agreement. The unions have since organized thousands of workers in the Indian private sector steel industry and the agreement has now been extended to the unions in the Energy and Mining sectors.

6. Become self-sustaining

IndustriALL supports projects that help unions around the world improve and increase organizing. However, it is critical for unions depending on IndustriALL support to become self-sustaining. Membership growth is often critical for this transition, but not enough on its own.

Becoming self-sustaining requires that unions develop and maintain an effective program for regularly collecting dues, enough dues to run the operations of the union at local, regional and national levels, including a strong organizing program. It can also require increasing dues paid by members, or even decreasing dues for certain workers in order to get them to join the union. Sometimes unions are so small that being self-sustaining can only be achieved through merging with other unions.

Unions participating in the India steel, energy and mining organizing project have agreed that unions that increase their membership through the project will increase their financial membership to IndustriALL. The unions also commit to provide for the funding and functioning of the new project offices set up in the states where the organizing project is implement.

IndustriALL affiliates from Brazil, South Korea and South Africa have gone from depending on international support to being self-sustaining and supporting other unions abroad, an ideal transition for building union power globally.

Get prepared for organizing

Whether the aim is to organize a new union at a worksite, recruit more members at a worksite where there already is a union, or increase member solidarity and activism, it is important to be prepared.

Target

There are a number of factors to consider in deciding which workers to target for organizing. Unions should prioritize organizing targets that:

Unions should choose organizing targets with the aim of achieving density. Density refers to the fraction of a workforce that are union members. The higher the density, the more powerful the workers and union can become. In many countries, if a certain percentage of the workers at a worksite are union members, management must recognize the union and bargain with it. In other countries, management only bargains with the union if the union has the power to have an economic impact on the company. Often that power comes as a combination of high density and a large number of active members.

Building member density means not only organizing a large fraction of a worksite’s regular, full-time employees. It means organizing a large fraction of all the workers, including precarious ones.

If a union organizes at a dozen workplaces and recruits just a few members at each, it won’t build power. If the union instead targets fewer but strategic workplace sand reaches high member density at them, it can achieve real gains for the workers.

Being realistic and prioritizing winnable targets does not mean targeting only permanent workers. IndustriALL affiliates around the world have succeeded in organizing precarious workers, a necessity as they are a large and growing part of the workforce.

Many of today’s white-collar workers are working under alternative work structures. They may be platform workers, improperly classed as independent contractors or free-lancers. Traditional union organizing is aimed at achieving a sufficient number of members to become certified as the legitimate, or legal, collective bargaining agent in a workplace or workplaces. Sometimes, uncertified unions representing a minority of workers in a workplace, or similar workers distributed over many workplaces, have been effective and have been able to achieve significant gains. Consider the characteristics of the workforce: what percentage would be necessary to have an impact? Can critical union density be achieved for these workers?

Map

Prior to deciding what worksites to target for organizing, it is important to map the sector and area in which the organizing will take place. This includes identifying worksite locations, numbers of workers, gender distribution of the workforce, other unions present, major customers, and other relevant information on the companies owning or sourcing from the workplaces.

Some workplaces have international links that can make an organizing drive more winnable.

Unions should seek answers to the following questions before deciding on the organizing target and before beginning the organizing campaign.

Does the potential organizing target have:

The Bangladesh Accord, initiated by IndustriALL Global Union in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, is an example of the use of brand names to put pressure on employers in their supply chain.

Organizing is strengthened when supported by strategic corporate research. This research analyses companies and identifies ways to put pressure on them to grant workers’ demands. Contact IndustriALL Global Union for information on how to do this research.

If the potential organizing target does have any of these links, IndustriALL may be able to help take advantage of them. This could be through putting the organizing union in touch with other unions at the potential organizing target, or through outreach to the brand or to the company with the GFA.

Develop a plan

Once a union has mapped an area and selected an organizing target or targets, it should develop a plan for the organizing campaign. The plan should identify what needs to be done, who is responsible for what, and when they need to do it by. It should also identify what resources will be needed to carry out the plan.

The more workers that participate in developing and implementing the organizing plan, the more powerful the plan. Spreading the work around to more people also ensures nobody is overloaded.

The organizing plan should include benchmarks, or goals to be achieved by a specific date. These include for instance the number of workers to have as supporters by a certain date, the number of workers to have contact information for by a certain date, etc. clear benchmarks help to determine whether the organizing campaign is on track or whether adjustments need to be made.

Organizing plans must be flexible so that they can be adapted as unexpected situations arise. The union or organizing committee should periodically review the plan and adjust it as needed.

Components of an organizing plan

Identifying worker leadership and building an organizing committee are closely related. It is essential to identify who – among the group of workers you hope to organize – has the potential and motivation to lead an organizing campaign. Build an internal organizing committee around these leaders. Organizing is almost never successful if run by outsiders. With an established committed core organizing committee within the workplace, the union can work through that committee to educate other workers about collective action and solidarity.

Develop list of workers

Identify the workers or group of workers you are targeting. If at all possible, try to obtain a contact list. If none is available, create one as you contact people – and there is no substitute for personal contact. Social media is important, particularly to white-collar workers, but unions are not organized over social media. Recognize that no matter how carefully you identify your target group, the employer will challenge it.

Union organizing campaigns are frequently won on issues. Successful organizing of white-collar workers starts with identifying the issues that workers will mobilize around. What are the goals of white-collar, or non-manual, workers? Do white-collar workers see issues like mobility, parental leave, education, accommodation or health differently than blue-collar union members, or perhaps only with different levels of priority? How can the union help them achieve their goals?

Make the union relevant to the workers: understand their issues, their problems, and their hopes and dreams; and be prepared to explain how the union can help them solve their problems or achieve their goals. While the union cannot solve all problems or achieve all goals, the key difference between a unionized worker and a non-unionized one, is that the union ensures that workers have a voice that will be heard by the employer, and that divisions and competition between workers will not be used to silence that voice.

The workers must believe that the union truly represents, and speaks for them. If a winning issue presents itself, which may or may not be specifically about working conditions, be prepared to run with it. It is a truism that the employers whose workers we wish to organize often place the tools in our hands, by doing something that angers their workforce.

Education program

Teach solidarity by example. This is how the union gains credibility. Employers frequently try to divide workers by shop, job description (including blue collar vs white-collar), class, race and religion. Their goal is to weaken the union organizing effort. Live by the old slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all”. Visible support from the union to a worker or workers in need is, by itself, a powerful education program on solidarity.

Communications

Effective communications to organize white-collar workers means that your target group receives regular information about trade union activities, particularly successes. Engage your potential members in the struggle: for example, have them sign IndustriALL’s petitions, and keep them informed about union actions with an electronic newsletter.

However, do not promise things that can never be achieved. Guard your credibility – in the end, it is the only thing you have got. Always think about any planned action or statement in terms of how it will affect your, and the union’s, credibility – and reject it if the damage to your credibility is too great. The greatest promise a union can make is that the workers will have a voice.

Getting people involved in the planning increases their commitment, and results in a more active, organized membership.

IndustriALL affiliates around the world are stepping up to the challenge and coming up with innovative organizing solutions in diverse environments.

 

The Japan Automobile Workers’ Union (JAW) facing a shrinking and increasingly non-regular workforce, has developed a multi-year organizing plan targeting both regular and precarious employees.

The Ethiopian Textile, Leather and Garment Workers’ Trade Unions (IFTLGWTU), with few financial resources compared to the companies operating in its sector, is leveraging IndustriALL’s relationship with German clothing brand Tchibo to gain access to workers at a factory for union organizing activity.

The Malaysian Electronics Industry Employees’ Union Coalition (EIEU) is responding to an increase in the number of migrant workers with organizing campaigns targeted specifically at them. It is working with migrant workers to address issues they commonly face such as underpayment of wages, and is providing special legal services to educate them about their rights.

With only seven per cent of the world’s workers members of free and independent unions, and even less active members, organizing can seem like an overwhelming task. It is not.

Let’s organize white-collar workers more effectively than ever before. IndustriALL is ready to offer support and the time to organize is NOW. As always, workers are stronger together!

PEPMACO in the Philippines must stop union busting

Unionists are facing increasing repression in the Philippines. IndustriALL’s ten Philippine affiliates have expressed solidarity with the struggle of PEPMACO workers, who are challenging dismissals and fighting back harassment from hired thugs and police.

Contract workers at PEPMACO are objecting to their long-term status as contract workers. The workers became increasingly concerned about their health and safety when the employer forced them to handle unknown chemicals, causing skin injuries.

When PEPMACO dismissed 36 agency workers in January this year and planned to lay off another 200 workers, workers organized and registered the PEPMACO Workers Union on 29 January.

“The employer responded by dismissing key union leaders, and another 148 workers were sacked when they refused to work overtime,”

says Julius Carandang, from IndustriALL affiliate Metalworkers Alliance of the Philippines (MWAP).

MWAP has organized PEPMACO workers since 2018.

The frustrated workers went on strike in front of PEPMACO on 24 June. During the night, a group of thugs allegedly hired by PEPMACO, violently attacked the workers; 12 of them had to go to hospital for their injuries.

Not deterred by the violent intimidation, the workers are persisting and holding a picket line in front of the company.

"

Authorities have not only failed to protect the right to organize, but has repeatedly sent the police to dismantle blockades set up by workers. PEPMACO workers want respect for freedom of association, as enshrined in the constitution and labour laws. MWAP demands that all workers are reinstated as permanent workers and paid back wages,” says Julius Carandang.

“The skin injuries are indeed very serious and the company must take immediate measure to protect the safety of all workers in the factory. The Department of Labour and Employment must conduct a thorough inspection on unknown chemicals used in the manufacturing process,”

says Annie Adviento, regional secretary of IndustriALL South East Asia Office.

Labour contracting is a problem in the Philippines, where the employer currently has space to exploit workers. IndustriALL affiliates in the Philippines are lobbying for the passage of a bill to end contractualization and to guarantee workers’ rights.

Mongolian union calls for implementation of ILO C176

On 28 October, around 140 participants from trade unions, employers' associations, the government, civil society and academics, met to address how to implement ILO’s convention 176 on safety and health in mines, at a conference hosted by IndustriALL’s affiliate Federation of Energy, Geology and Mining Workers’ Trade Unions of Mongolia (MEGM).MEGM president, Buyanjargal Khuyag stressed the importance of implementing C176:

"The convention is ratified and has been in force since November 2015. However, health and safety for miners has not sufficiently improved. It’s unclear whether Mongolian laws and regulations comply with the convention, which is why there is an urgent need for social dialogue."

In a video presentation, Glen Mpufane, IndustriALL mining director, emphasised the importance of a 'rights-based approach' when it comes to occupational safety and health issue, saying:

"Workers have the right to refuse unsafe work; the right to be provided with information and training on the hazards and how to work safely; the right to make and receive reports on accidents and dangerous occurrences; and the right to select safety and health representatives who participate in inspection and investigation."

Participants pointed out that the division of roles between the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Heavy industries and Mining is unclear when it comes to health and safety inspections in mines, and that workers' representatives are not active enough in raising issues in the Health and Safety Committee.

There were proposals to improve the quality of government statistics related to industrial accidents, to provide trainings on health and safety at work with a union perspective, and to change company cultures from "profit first" to "life first".

"Social partners need to work together to ensure that the system of labour inspections is effective and to revise national laws and regulations in line with C176,” said Buyanjargal Khuyag.

MEGM submitted a policy proposal to the Mongolian government based on conclusions of the conference, and are awaiting a response.

Workers urge HeidelbergCement to start a proper social dialogue

The 26 participants from 14 countries representing HeidelbergCement workers across the world came to the Steinbach union training centre of the German construction union IG BAU at the invitation of IndustriALL Global Union and Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI), supported by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

The delegates discussed the overall situation in HeidelbergCement Group and in the cement and concrete production sector across the globe. The sector faces huge overcapacity in almost all parts of the world leading to intense competition. Cement companies are working extensively in digitalizing their production chain. HeidelbergCement is developing and testing a full variety of digital tools to deliver tailor-made solutions for customers.

In response to climate change, HeidelbergCement Group publicly promised to produce carbon neutral concrete by 2050. In the European market, companies are under particular pressure since the price of CO2 certificates, which they have to buy to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, is becoming increasingly expensive.

Unions say that health and safety remains an issue. Some 80-90 per cent of fatalities fall on contractors and third-party employees, clearly showing that these precarious workers need better protection from the company. The proportions of female workers (13 per cent) and young workers (12 per cent younger than 30) is low and must be urgently addressed by the company.

The company’s approach to human and workers’ rights is not satisfactory and is sometimes alarming, such as in Kazakhstan. The participants adopted a declaration of solidarity with workers of the Kazakh cement company Shymkentcement, owned by HeidelbergCement. There are also open cases in Egypt and Morocco, with negotiations ongoing with HeidelbergCement leadership.

The participants unanimously agreed that a multinational company like HeidelbergCement should match its global presence with global institutionalized dialogue with IndustriALL and BWI together with the European Works Council. Although dialogue functions well at European level, this is not the case in other countries.

In their open petition to global corporate management the participants said,

“We believe a company like HeidelbergCement present in 60 countries of the world must go beyond European boundaries and extend the European model of the social dialogue globally.”

The participants urged HeidelbergCement management to contact the global union federations to arrange a meeting where concerns could be addressed in the spirit of good practice and social dialogue.

Alexander Ivanou, responsible for the materials industries at IndustriALL, said:

“This meeting was full of open debates and discussions. I regret that no one from the global corporate leadership attended this conference. This would have been a unique opportunity for them to directly speak to delegates representing their workers all over the world. Our door remains open and through our joint declaration we invite HeidelbergCement to start a proper dialogue.”

Georgian thermal power plant workers gain wage increase after strike

About 200 workers of the Gardabani thermal power plant of Tbilisi hydroelectric power plant ended a six-day strike on 11 November after the union came to an agreement with the employer to increase wages by 25 per cent from 1 January 2020 and to introduce a thirteenth salary. The employer has also started a review of the draft collective agreement submitted by the union.

According to Amiran Zenaishvili, the chairman of the Georgian Trade Union of Energy Workers, workers demanded a 50 per cent wage increase. The wages at Gardabani thermal power plant have not increased since 2014. In addition, workers demanded a 20 per cent increase of nighttime rates; this requirement will be a part of a collective agreement. Amiran Zenaishvili noted the positive outcome of the strike was achieved thanks to the unity of the strikers.

 

According to the union, the 266 people working at the Gardabani thermal power plant earn between GEL 320 (about US $100) and GEL 1,500 (about US $500) per month. In May 2019, the employer had already made an oral promise to raise wages by 20 per cent, but still had not fulfilled it.

IndustriALL regional secretary Vadim Borisov congratulated the workers and the union on the agreement, and said:

“IndustriALL Global Union supports the just demands of the workers for a wage increase. Workers have a fundamental right to earn decent wages, to collective bargaining and to safe and healthy workplaces.”

FEATURE: What are we fighting for?

TEXT: Walton Pantland

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In August 2019, workers at Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Northern Ireland, occupied the shipyard that built the Titanic. The owner was broke; the UK government refused to step in to save the yard. It was threatened with closure. The workers occupied their workplace to demand that the yard be saved, and used to build platforms for offshore windfarms and tidal power installations.

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They defended their jobs and their industrial heritage, but also looked to the future.

What was missing was a comprehensive Just Transition plan – a Green New Deal – to save their yard and create green jobs.

After a nine-week occupation, the yard was saved when a buyer was announced in October.

They defended their jobs and their industrial heritage, but also looked to the future.

What was missing was a comprehensive Just Transition plan – a Green New Deal – to save their yard and create green jobs.

After a nine-week occupation, the yard was saved when a buyer was announced in October.

Crane driver Gordon Brown. Photo: Bobbie Hanvey

There are 170 million members of unions affiliated to the ITUC globally. There are also rival internationals, such as the WFTU, and smaller unions that don’t belong to federations. Altogether, hundreds of millions of workers worldwide belong to unions or some form of workplace organization. This makes the union movement the world’s biggest democratic membership movement. These unions defend rights at work, negotiate pay and conditions, and develop relationships with political parties, governments and business.

Is there a common thread that unites us all?

Same same, but different

Different countries have different industrial relations systems. Continental Europe favours social dialogue, with Works Councils and workers’ seats on company boards. In this power-balancing model, workers’ conditions are tied to the success of the company, the industry as a whole, the national economy and a healthy global trade environment.

The Anglo-Saxon model tends to be more oppositional from both sides, sometimes descending into a zero-sum game: what’s good for the workers is seen as bad for the company, and vice versa, and in the media, unions are presented as saboteurs undermining the public good and conspiring to protect privileged positions.

Politically, Western unions generally support social democracy, and are closely aligned to the centre left political parties that promote social dialogue.

For unions in the global south, anti-imperialism is often a feature of union politics, with calls to support local capital against foreign exploiters. Some unions in Turkey and many other countries are explicitly nationalist. In India, Africa and Latin America, unions sometimes use the language of Marxist-Leninism in their critique of capital.

In the Middle East and North Africa, unions like our Algerian affiliate SNATEGS are engaged in a primary struggle for basic democratic rights, such as freedom of assembly.

And of course, the biggest workforce in the world, in China, has no free unions at all.

Beyond these differences in political vocabulary and style, are unions fighting for the same things globally?

The first recorded strike in human history was by artisans building a mortuary complex for Ramses III at Deir el Medina in 1128 BCE. Since then, workers have taken collective action on many occasions, usually around the same issues: a living wage, working time, health and safety, dignity, and security of employment.

A demonstration in Detroit for a Green New Deal, July 2019. Photo: Becker1999, Flickr

From stonemasons in ancient Egypt to platform-based workers in the pulsating megacities of today, the struggle is essentially the same: for enough to live on, for free time, for a reliable income and an end to precarious work. But we live in interesting times: given the peculiar nexus of crises facing the world today, how do we frame those demands and make them part of a pathway to a better future?

Psychological warfare

Open any newspaper or social media feed, and you are likely to despair. The world is sleepwalking into a multifaceted crisis. For workers, there is a global crisis of employment, with 60 per cent of workers in the informal economy. This is likely to grow as automation spreads. There is a wage crisis in almost all sectors, with the majority of working families living on the edge, just one mishap away from disaster. We have a stagnant economy, threats of war between the US and Iran, and a trade war between the US and China. A No Deal Brexit – Britain leaving the EU without concluding an agreement – could lead to 700,000 job losses in Europe.

Then we have the climate crisis: urgent action is needed right now, today, to prevent catastrophe, but the Amazon is burning and the leader of the most powerful country in the world is a climate change denialist.

There is a crisis of multilateralism, with no ambition from world leaders to find collective solutions. IMF structural adjustment programmes have torn up the social contract, and deindustrialization and austerity are undoing the gains of social democracy.

People’s lives are being destroyed and the outlook is bleak.

Despair, however, is a weapon of the right. People who have lost hope, or who are angry, are easy to recruit to illogical reactionary politics. The unions’ task is to provide hope, vision and a plan for a better future.

The parade of despair is a form of psychological warfare: there are vested interests who want us to believe that resistance is futile, that we are powerless, that we have no hope of changing things. Credible solutions, like Just Transition, the living wage or a Green New Deal, are ignored or ridiculed in the media, while right-wing nonsense like austerity is treated as gospel.

“This is an age of anger, and there is a foment in the world. But we are disciplined. We are not distracted by every crisis,”

says ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow.

“I am optimistic for the union movement, which has always been on the front line, and can now step into leadership.”

Moving beyond defensive struggles

Unions have often been characterized by “rational luddism” – the justified belief that new technological developments threaten jobs and relations of production. This hasn’t worked: from the original Luddites of the 19th century who smashed textile machines to the present, we have not succeeded in halting the dynamic of economic progress.

Our hope lies in shaping the future, not holding on to the past. Automation means that routine jobs will be first in line to be replaced by robots. The workforce of the future will be highly educated, working alongside sophisticated robots. Work is likely to become more specialized and artisanal. We need unions that reach these specialists, as well as precarious, platform-based workers, many of whom hustle between multiple apps and are legally defined as independent contractors.

Chaos under heaven; all is well

There is a global crisis of democracy. The success of the Chinese model of a capitalist economy under authoritarian control suggests the end of the link between capitalism and democracy. But democracy, at best, has only ever gone half way: every four or five years, we’d get a vote on who manages the economic system, but very little say in what the system compromises. Democracy stops at the workplace, and the needs of capital define political priorities.

This is why people have lost faith in parliamentary democracy: it is not improving their lives.

An old Chinese proverb says “Chaos under heaven; all is well.” It means that disorder and disruption is the best time to bring about major social and political change. The liberal economic and political order is falling apart, and the right is taking advantage of it, in what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism” – using chaos to push through political changes, such as privatization, which would be rejected in more stable times.

Instead of restoring the liberal order, we can also use the brokenness of the system to push through change and bring democracy to economic life too. There is a gap in the political market for ideas about justice, equality, dignity and redistribution. The world is ready for bold ideas to address inequality, poverty and climate change.

A demonstration in Detroit, USA for a Green New Deal, July 2019. Photo: Becker1999, Flickr

The global economic order was broken by the financial crisis. Centre right parties, major proponents of the small state, free market model, turned to culture wars and populism to deflect popular anger from their failed economic policies.

They use right wing nationalism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, climate denialism and a host of other bigotries very effectively: working class people, who have seen their living standards collapse over the past decade, have sometimes irrationally grasped at the targets offered to them.

One of the strengths of trade unionism is that it develops progressive politics for practical, rather than ideological reasons. Instead of convincing workers that racism and homophobia are morally wrong, we show how employers divide us by playing workers off against each other.

You don’t have to personally like workers in other countries and from different religions and cultures to recognize that it is in your interest to work together. And when we start working together, we build trust. Solidarity erodes bigotry.

This neatly sidesteps the culture war that the right is using.

The right has reached the end of the road, and has nowhere else to go: they have had to become increasingly extreme and radical to deflect popular anger, leading to existential political crises in the US, UK and elsewhere. These crises threaten democracy, and also the global economy and the wealth that they have sought to protect.

It is our turn now. We have the ideas to address the crises, and we need to boldly proclaim them. The best way to deliver economic and industrial democracy is to give real power to unions. If unions could make a substantive material difference to people’s lives, more people would join and be active.

We need to be bold. The political and climate crisis facing us is too great for timid, incremental change. Our role is not to promote a singular vision for the future, and attempt to rally people around it, but to develop a process that allows people to participate in imagining, designing and building a better future together.

The union movement is not the place for an ideological civil war between rival visions. Our first function is to bring workers together. But bringing these debates into the union movement empowers our members to be part of finding solutions.

We can use the brokenness of the system to push through change and bring democracy to economic life

Developing a vision

In the West, a political consensus is coalescing around the form of social democracy proposed by Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. Proponents argue for public ownership of essential resources, state investment in economic development, and free access to healthcare, education and so on, funded through a tax on the rich.

This is a capitalist-socialist hybrid that treats capitalism like nuclear power: dynamic, but dangerous, with important safety checks needed to prevent it from blowing up the global economy and destroying the planet.

Whether we agree with this vision or not, it is hugely useful, as it provides an alternative narrative to the neoliberal one that has dominated since 1994. Democratic capitalism has failed. The democratic socialist vision is still developing. Unions need to shape the debate. Many of them have begun, like our Australian affiliate the CFMEU with its “Goodbye Neoliberalism” report.

There are many radical ideas for the future which deserve serious consideration. Space constraints restrict us to a rapid sampling: one which doesn’t really align with the labour movement, and two which do.

Basic income

Basic Income is a twist on Keynesian economics that has received a lot of attention over the past few years, and city-level experiments have generated significant media attention. It aims to stimulate the economy, and deal with job losses, by giving everyone a guaranteed amount of money, enough to live on, without the requirement to work.

Unions are suspicious of this idea, because it breaks the link between work and pay, and the withdrawal of labour as a source of workers’ power. It risks rendering a vast part of the population politically powerless, recipients of funds that they rely on, but with no influence on production.

Another objection is that it amounts to a huge public subsidy for the private sector: instead of giving people free money to buy things at market rates, why not use those funds to make things like education, health and public transport free?

The UN Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals are a multilateral attempt to build a better world by 2030. The plan aims to end poverty and reduce inequality, promote gender equality, address climate change and more. All UN member states have signed up to the goals – but unless countries take action, we will miss the targets. The goals fit with a lot of union ideas, like Just Transition. We should all pressurize our national governments to take action to meet the targets.

Green New Deal

The Green New Deal is modelled on the New Deal that pulled the US out of the Great Depression with massive public investment. The policy was copied in other countries, and people today benefit from dams and hydroelectric schemes, roads and infrastructure built in that period.

A Green New Deal aims to spend trillions of dollars to address climate change, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in renewable energy, public transport, environmental cleanup, rewilding and more.

This seems politically impossible, but it has been done before: with the original New Deal, and with the Marshall Plan which reconstructed Europe after the Second World War and facilitated the golden age of social democracy. And much more recently, the financial crisis. It is a question of political will: if we can bail out the banks, we can bail out the planet.

We need to unite, in solidarity, in defense of workers' rights. We need an open and respectful debate about the future.

At the conference of the UK Labour Party in September 2019, the party adopted an ambitious Green New Deal policy, with the support of seven trade unions, including IndustriALL affiliate Unite. The policy calls for zero carbon emissions by 2030, massive investment in renewable energy, a Just Transition to unionized, green jobs, public ownership of resources and enhanced public transport.

"Time is life!" IG Metall members demonstrate for a better work-life balance. Photo: Bodo Marks/IG Metall

Applying union solutions at global scale

These ideas work, and unions have a successful track record of applying them at local level. In Germany, IG Metall successfully argued in a collective bargaining round in early 2018 that workers should benefit from the productivity gains brought about by new technology, and won an agreement giving workers the right reduce their hours to 28 per week for up to two years.

And in Spain, unions representing coal miners won a landmark Just Transition deal in 2018 that will see large scale investment in mining communities, with reskilling, the development of new industries and more.

We need more victories like this, and we need them at scale.

We need to defend democracy – in our unions, and in society – and a create a new, global social contract. We need global multilateralism, such as that promoted by the Sustainable Development Goals. We need state-lead approaches, such as the Green New Deal, with a push towards public ownership and investment in sustainable industry. But not all change can come from the top: we also need grassroots initiatives, such as unions negotiating collective agreements that address these concerns.

Workers needs differ in different times and places, as the balance of power between the state, business and other actors shifts. Unions need the freedom to respond to local conditions. The solution is not to develop a single vision, but an inclusive process, through which a vision emerges through practice.

We need to unite, in solidarity, in defence of workers’ rights. We need an open and respectful debate about the future. With hope in our hearts, and solidarity and mutual respect as our guides, today’s unions can navigate the interesting times that we live in, and open the doors for mass participation in building a better world:

A future that works for all.

A demonstration in Detroit, USA for a Green New Deal, July 2019. Photo: Becker1999, Flickr

PROFILE: Fighting Forward: Home-based women workers organize in Pakistan

UnionHome-Based Women Workers Federation
CountryPakistan
TextG Manicandan

Due to hidden and unregulated work, home-based workers in Pakistan are largely unprotected. The Home-Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF), affiliated to IndustriALL in 2019, has played a critical role in organizing the scattered and isolated group, articulating their rights and winning significant victories for its members.

The working conditions for home-based workers in Pakistan are very poor, and include repetitive and hazardous work. The hours are usually long, sometimes up to 16 hours a day, and wages are low. At the bottom of the production chain, the workers lack access to and knowledge of the market.

Initially, seven cooperatives for garment and bangle workers were started in the Sindh province. These cooperatives provided a platform for women workers to share problems, build solidarity and take steps to address their issues.

A key demand was that the government formally recognize home-based work, set legal minimum wages and extended the coverage of social security legislations to benefit home-based workers. These workers also wanted their concerns to be treated as workers’ issues, rather than being considered gender issues.

The home-based workers decided to form a union in order to gain collective strength, and bargain for higher wages and better working environment with contractors and investors, and to engage with the government to achieve their demands. The home-based workers also decided to play an active role in making the government of Pakistan ratify ILO’s convention on home-based workers.

Organizers established contacts with home-based women workers across the country to understand the problems they were facing. They organized study circles to create awareness of their rights and created home-based women workers groups in different cities in the Sindh, Punjab and Baluchistan provinces.

During this process, home-based women workers engaged with labour department officials, the social security institute and Workers Welfare Board, raising their concerns in series of meetings.

“These events underlined the need for an effective organization to take forward the workers’ concerns,”

says Zehra Khan, general secretary of HBWWF.

Members were recruited on the basis that they were engaged in home-based work, piece-rate workers and self-employed. Anyone can be a member of the union, regardless of religion, colour and caste.

After a series of orientation meetings a core group of ten workers was formed. They received training on labour law and trade union practices by the legal team of National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), an IndustriALL affiliate.

In 2009, the first home-based all women workers’ union was registered, made up of embroidery workers in Quetta. Another union with women bangle workers was then registered in Hyderabad. The HBWWF was registered the same year with a membership of about 1,000. The HBWWF currently has 4,500 members in Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab.

The federation can legally negotiate on the behalf of these workers. Together with the relevant authorities, the HBWWF is working on solutions for covering the workers under government social security schemes.

The home-based workers cooperatives have become a nucleus of activities, as well as a place where women workers from different parts of the city meet union representatives. In some areas, workers are getting better rates due to bargaining by union representatives.

Many women have taken skill and capacity building training, which has empowered them to discuss their issues and to negotiate with investors and contractors on wages.

“This year, the Sindh province announced minimum wages for glass bangle workers, thereby formally recognizing them as home-based workers for the first time. The minimum wage is a significant increase from existing wages. But an announcement alone is not sufficient; we are working to create awareness among workers and taking actions to implement it,”

says Zehra Khan.

A key achievement of HBWWF and its members is the successful lobbying to achieve the Home-Based Workers Act, passed in May 2018, which formally recognizes home-based workers in Sindh. HBWWF is working to replicate it in other provinces as well.

“Now, the HBWWF is lobbying the government and legislators on both federal and provincial levels for social protection for home-based women workers, as well as the ratification of ILO convention on Home Work, C177,”

says Zehra Khan.

REPORT: "It's not a transformation, it's a massacre"

The dramatic heading quotes a French trade unionist trying to describe the current process of deep restructuring in the auto industry.

Others compare current developments with when horse-drawn carriages were replaced by automobiles at the beginning of the last century.

Irrespective of how we characterize this time of change – as an inhuman act or as just another technological evolution – it is highly unlikely that we can stop it.

Instead, we need to focus our resources on managing the change and making sure it unfolds according to our rules: based on a human-centred approach and in a spirit of solidarity, and therefore collectively.

When trade unions demand that human beings should be the focus, it is to avoid this massacre. In practice, this means that the first step taken together with employers, politicians, scientists and others should be to analyse how any changes based on digitalization impacts people.

As trade unionists, we have a responsibility for our current members as well as future generations, and in particular, for the unorganized. Our core target is that we want the employees of today to be the employees of tomorrow. We also need to be relevant for new generations and for those who either cannot or do not want to join a union.

Our vision of trade unions that are able to move the masses must remain intact.

Two major convictions guide us:

Both aspects are central to a global agreement recently signed by IndustriALL Global Union and French car manufacturer Renault, named Building the World of Work Together.

On the topic of reskilling and upskilling, the agreement gives all employees the right to an annual review with their supervisor to identify skill deficits and develop a suitable training plan.

As unions, we need to pay particular care to those who find it difficult to adapt to the changes that digitalization entails, whose abilities to learn and upskill are less developed. These colleagues cannot simply be left behind, even if paid decent compensation. No society can afford more citizens who are not fully integrated.

Special attention also has to be given to managers and supervisors. In many cases, they have the necessary technical skills to manage the transformation but their skills to deal with change from a human resource perspective are often lacking. Ensuring that staff in leading positions are adequately trained is crucial, or the whole process may fail.

The end of blue- and white-collar definitions?

When looking into the details of future work schemes, we must be careful to not just condemn the future. There is both good and bad, challenges and opportunities.

Digitalization may lead to a better work-life balance, less hazardous work places, fewer hierarchies (and maybe a more democratic workplace), and possibly shorter working hours for everyone. At the same time, unions need to protect workers and the bargaining agenda should among other things reflect:

When IndustriALL initiated negotiations with Renault on the new agreement, the company had less focus on the aspects mentioned above. Their main concern was to maintain their attractiveness as an employer for younger generations, which is why the introduction of more participative management and leadership structures is a top priority for them. As maintaining large scale industrial manufacturing is also in the unions’ interest, unions also need to take into account how young people think and how they set their priorities.

The lines between traditional blue- and white-collar jobs have already started to blur and this will continue to a point where it will be impossible to make that distinction. Trade unions who still function along these lines will face severe challenges in the future.

Digitalization, new mobility concepts, green technologies and so on will also create a lot of new jobs, many of them in the IT and service sectors. How can unions make sure that these new jobs will provide decent pay, decent working conditions, health care and the like? How do we stop the trend towards more and more precarious jobs? How do we organize crowd workers?

These questions require a bargaining agenda, but more importantly they require new trade union strategies ensuring that these employees choose unions as their representatives because we speak their language and because we know what their issues are, and because we know how to effectively defend them.

We are seeing a profound transformation in the world of work, one which needs pro-active support from governments. States which have not started to develop relevant industrial policies act irresponsibly, increase future unemployment levels and risk being left by the wayside with all the negative consequences associated with this.

IndustriALL signing the agreement with Renault, witnessed by the ILO

Building the World of Work Together within Groupe Renault

In July 2019, Groupe Renault, its Group Works Council and IndustriALL Global Union signed a global agreement on quality of working life. The agreement, signed by the ten trade union federations or unions represented in the Group Works Council, provides a basis for structuring social dialogue, both at Group and local level. It offers the possibility and encourages the launching of new initiatives, as well as finding relevant pragmatic solutions to improve employees’ lives at work, through the negotiation of local agreements.

Through a sustainable approach, the new agreement addresses many aspects of life at work, and particularly those that enable employees to combine performance and well-being.

This approach, which involves all the Group’s employees, is based on five fundamental principles:

  •             A dialogue on the evolution of the world of work
  •             A collaborative management system
  •             A sustainable commitment to inclusion
  •             Work-life balance
  •             Adaptation of the working environment