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The Missing Dimension

Dr. Gary K. Busch - 7/13/2011

It has been a great source of interest to read the erudite and professional reports of think tanks, high-priced political and economic consultants and a host of governmental and non-governmental experts on the subject of the conflicting pressures in international relations without seeing a word about the activities of national and international labour organisations as key players in this process.

The role of international labour in national politics has been crucial to any understanding of the actual engines of change in many of these countries but this dimension has all but disappeared from contemporary analysis.

The types of interactions have changed somewhat from the post war activities in support of conflicting Cold War objectives, where the international labour movements were the battlefields of many conflicts between East and West. Now there are more subtle, but important, conflicts over the effects of globalisation, the impact of the Arab Spring, the rising self-determination of a Chinese working class, and a host of domestic challenges in Africa and Latin America between competing labour movements and their outside sponsors.

Throughout the history of this movement, particularly during the Cold War, governments and political parties have used the international labour movement as one of their principal vehicles for their covert interactions with political parties and governments in foreign nations. The international trades union movement has been, and continues to be, a vital tool of governments in the shaping of the political destinies of foreign political parties and states and has been an important part of most nations' foreign policy system. At one time the U.S. had around sixty people in the CIA (working out of Cord Meyer’s shop) tasked with interacting and reporting on the international labour movements; now there are three and one is part-time. The AFL-CIO International Affairs Department, under the leadership of Jay Lovestone (former Secretary of the US Communist Party) engaged in the subversion of labour movements around the world with the assistance of millions of dollars of US government cash. The Russians had hundreds of people engaged with the international labour movements around the globe. It had an important International Institute of Worker’s Studies. The KGB had a special section of the First Directorate active in the labour movement. Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin left the Chairmanship of the KGB to become head of the AUCCTU (the Soviet labour federation) while still a member of the Politburo and Chairman of the Council of Ministers. It was a serious business.

The British Government funded a large program of activities in the international labour movement with specialists in this field seconded to the TUC and paid for by the British Government. The overthrow of Cheddi Jagan in British Guyana was one of their most successful achievements. The West Germans had two foundations which the government supported to do its international work; the Friedrich Ebert Foundation when the Social Democrats were in power and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation when the Christian Democrats were in power. Most nations had smaller scale projects. Even Argentina under Peron had a Pan-American Labour program. This was a theatre of interaction worldwide which received practically no publicity or international comment. In some countries, like Nigeria, there were three national labour centres, each supported by different international donors.

A principal reason behind the importance of the trades union movement in the political process has been the weakness of political parties. For most nations, political parties are not strong. They frequently lack funds, manpower and organisation. They are capable of generating interest and support from their constituencies during the electoral campaigns but soon after, their continuity and direction is left in the hands of their parliamentary parties. The maintenance of their continued interaction with their membership is most often left to the activities of the voluntary organisations with whom they are associated. These voluntary organisations (trades unions, corporate groups, civic associations or religious groups) maintain the continuity of contact at national level between the members and the parties between elections.

Most often the trades unions have been linked with Labour, Socialist, Social Democratic, Communist or Christian Democratic parties. Indeed, for many years, membership in most of the parties of the left was based on affiliation to the party through the trades union or co-operative movement. These parties only rarely permitted direct personal affiliation. The trades union movement acted as a surrogate for a national party structure between elections.

Because of this close relationship between the political parties and the trades union movement, the work of the national centres (that is a labour organisation whose membership is national unions, not individuals – AFL-CIO, TUC, DGB, etc.) has been almost exclusively political. Trades union leadership at the national level has been deeply involved in sustained interaction with the processes and offices of government. There has been a flow of trades union leaders away from the national centres into high political posts, especially when their party has assumed the responsibility of office. This centralisation of political power in the hands of the national centres has not precluded a strong political role played by lower-level union `barons', but the day-to-day liaison with the political forces of the state has been conducted largely through the medium of the national centres.

It is precisely because the trades unionism practised by the national centres is so intimately involved with the political forces of the state that there has been such an interest in the growth of international trades unionism. The strategic role of the trades union movement within the political and economic life of the nation has proved to be a tempting target for outside interests seeking to intervene in or influence the party.

Trade union internationalism should not be confused with collective bargaining, grievance procedures, strikes or productivity. That is the job of national unions. The politics of labour is separate and different and deals with the politics of the nation.

There is a further level of abstraction above the national centres. That is the province of the ‘labour internationals’. These are organisations which group like-minded national centres into an international federation of national centres. At the end of 1945 there were two internationals functioning; the World Federation of Trades Unions (WFTU) and the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions (CISC). In 1949 the WFTU split between pro-Western and Communist forces. The pro-Western unions formed the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) while the pro-communist unions stayed with the WFTU. The Christians, now known as the World Confederation of Labour (WCL) joined the ICFTU and formed a new federation, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) on November 1, 2006. The ITUC represents 175 million workers through its 311 affiliated organisations within 155 countries and territories. [i]

Since 1956 there has been another international labour federation, the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU) which represents trade unions, such as they are, in a number of Arab nations. Founded in 1956, the ICATU was originally located in Egypt, but was moved to Syria in 1978 to protest Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel. The ICATU was not very important for a long period but with the conflicts in the Middle East becoming so important and the war in Iraq, the ICATU has grown in prominence. Its headquarters are in Tahrir Square in Damascus where it follows a secular policy arguing for a peaceful solution to the mass demonstrations.

Also in Damascus can be found the regional headquarters of the WFTU who pursue a policy virtually unchanged since the days of the Soviet Union. Their view is “In our century, the overthrows of 1989-1991 brought new correlation of forces, which led to USA’s omnipotence. Although we believe, that this omnipotence is temporary, it gives birth to wars, changes to the borders of states, creates millions of refugees, kills innocent people, suppresses the autonomy and independence of some countries and enslaves peoples, turns the UN into a cover of USA’s, UK’s and their allies’ illegalities. Even the official data confesses that contemporary imperialist wars have forced 8.5 million refugees and another 21 million people to change living place within their countries.”[ii] This clash with the West was most visible in Iraq.

For many years the Iraqi labour movement was dominated by the leaders of the Iraqi Communist Party. (ICP) but controlled from Moscow. This lasted until the overthrow of Qassim. From 1972 the ICP remained underground but with strong ties to the Iraqi GUFs (now called General Federation of Trades Unions – GFTU). The Kurds have been isolated from the ICP and the GFTUs and have concentrated their work in maintaining PKK union strongholds in Mosul and Kirkuk. The Kurds make up a powerful if underground Iraqi unionism, both in the PUK and the KDP.

By the time of the liberation of Iraq in 2003, there were only the shells of the GFTUs still in operation in Iraq, plus the well-established communist and Kurdish underground union structures. These two underground structures are those which now are attempting to hijack the Iraqi labour movement and replace the diminished GFTU structures. There is fierce competition among them, not incidentally for the large cash reserves left in the coffers of the GFTUs when their sponsor “Chemical Ali” disappeared from the scene. This battle for control of the labour movement hindered the US attempts to restore order in Iraq and now is challenging the Iraqi Government as it seeks to extend its mandate with the approach of US withdrawal. The money and equipment which is being supplied by the WFTU, and somewhat less by the ICATU, to the Iraqi unionists is an important part of their struggle. The focal point of these efforts is the control of Iraq’s oilfields with the Kurds and the ICP vying for power in this crucial area. The West is doing very little to resist this onslaught as there appears to be no one to support or willing to accept such support from the West.

Although the ICATU takes a more balanced line in supporting the labour movement in Syria in resisting the overwhelming power of the state, the WFTU has no such inhibitions. It supports the Al Assad government and uses its influence to get the Syrian unions to withdraw from any protest. The Western unions do very little. There is a similar conflict over the struggles of the unions in Egypt where the ICATU and the WFTU support the ‘democratic: advances of the Egyptian military’ although the Egyptian unions are struggling against the commercial activities of the Egyptian Army which owns many of the factories against which they are striking.

With this support comes cash, training programs, communications equipment and a legitimacy by virtue of the internationalisation of their support. This is particularly important in that many of these workers are employed in the oil industry.

The political developments in the national labour movements are important, even without outside interference. In many cases, especially in Africa, the labour movements are truly national movements involving almost every ethnic group within the same organisation. These African workers’ movements developed from essentially urban workers fluent in the colonial language and dependent on wage employment as opposed to agriculture. They were almost all public sector workers. In the absence of private enterprise, virtually all employment was in the public sector. That meant that improvements in wages and working conditions required an interaction with the government and its ministers and their budgets. Trades unionism was an intensely political operation. Most of the first round of post-independence coups in Africa was directly the product of the national unions and their temporary allies in the military. The second round of coups was driven more by the military but had a strong labour component. Just now in Nigeria the trades unions are preparing for a major strike against the government to protest the removal of the fuel subsidy. They won this battle several years ago but the new government is determined to remove the subsidy. This will mean lobbying with the ministers and the political parties; pressurising governors; and seeking leverage which the unions can use to stop the removal of the subsidy.

These current developments in Africa are largely the product of competing indigenous f0rces as opposed to receiving orders from abroad from their Cold War sponsors as previously. However there still are substantial funds being directed at African unions by the labour internationals and the Global Union Federations (one of ten blanket international trades union organisations which link national unions, as opposed to national centres). These were formerly called the International Trade Secretariats and are associated with the ITUC... There are the counterparts of the GUFs in the WFTU and the ICATU called Trades Union Internationals. These all run seminars and training programs and assist in the establishment of more effective collective bargaining with the global corporations. Most importantly, the labour internationals and the GUFs have become advocates for their members and assist them when their governments try to pressure them or disenfranchise them.

In some cases the struggle between the labour movements and their governments had a major impact on the way the country is governed. In South Africa, the national centre, COSATU, is one of the “three legs” of the ruling ANC. That is there is an alliance among the ruling ANC, the labour COSATU and the South African Communist Party. In matters like the nationalisation of the mines, the seizure of White farms and a host of social issues this relationship is crucial to the understanding of the dynamics of South African political life. In the Ivory Coat the FPI party was formed out of the Ivorian labour movement and remained in power until the recent French coup against President Gbagbo; himself a former unionist as was his wife. The current preparation for the elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is being shaped by each side of the political spectrum trying to win the support of one of the three major union national centres. The MDC in Zimbabwe, which threatened the rule of the ZANU-PF, was led by Morgan Tsvangirai an erstwhile head of the Zimbabwean labour movement. There are similar examples across Africa, including the UGTT in Tunisia whose organisation and presence led to the beginning of the Arab Spring.

The important role of labour in China is one of the key factors in the economic and political development of the country. While labour disputes are not a new phenomenon in China and mining disasters quite common, in 2010, a number of factors have prompted on-going transformations of the labour landscape. In 2010, labour strikes became viral in nature, and we witnessed an overall increasing trend of incidence...

Workers became more aware of their rights—increasing access to information, knowledge and news-sharing via the internet, and nearly ubiquitous cell phone use among workers, has educated more workers of their rights. With the international media attention on China these strikes received international coverage, and under such watchful attention, brand companies and suppliers were forced to respond. An increasingly severe labour shortage exists in China which has encouraged workers to consider and compare employment opportunities, such that factories with more deplorable conditions will be less likely to retain workers in the future. This is very important because stagnant wages have been matched by an 11.7% increase in food prices. National and local governments have been forced to react to this with minimum wage increases.

Component supplier factories to the multinationals survive on razor-thin margins. Fearful of rising production costs because of minimum wage increases, companies are steadily moving production bases inland, where labour costs are lower, and there is less focused media attention. The labour supply is no longer unlimited, and labour-intensive industries can no longer rely on low-cost labour. This is reflected in the current national trend to gradually increase minimum wages. In 2010, 30 provinces increased the statutory minimum wage. For example in Guangdong province, the minimum wage increased 22.8% in 2010.

There are many indications that the small steps made in 2010 to improve the lives of workers only came about because of workers’ increasing awareness of their rights and willingness to activate those rights. At the same time, millions of Chinese workers continue to labour in sub-standard or hazardous working conditions and suffering under massive overtime demands while not receiving their due living wage. Most of these improvements came through direct support of Chinese labour from abroad (especially China Labour Watch).[iii] The official Chinese labour centre, the ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trades Unions) has done very little to assist Chinese workers but, in the face of the labour movement’s own demands and activism at the factory level, is gradually acting to promote better social programs. In this it is caught up in the massive corruption of regional Chinese Communist Party politics which has largely vitiated its impact on programs which deal with workers’ problems. Nonetheless it is impossible to understand the economic and political changes in China without considering in depth the activities of the Chinese labour movement.

The immediate impact of the end of the Soviet Union was felt most dramatically in the Russian trade union movement. Unions were organized on an industrial as opposed to a craft basis. There were fifteen industrial unions affiliated to the central union organisation the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU). The unions had a state-granted monopoly in their respective industries. This type of organization allowed for maximum Party control and also precluded any choice on the part of union members. The labour movement was a key part of the Party’s control of the government and the economy.

This breakdown of the ‘social contract’ was an important part of the failure of the Gorbachev reforms, as was the gulf between ordinary working people and the official union structures. Perhaps the best example was the Miners’ Strike of 1989. The coal mines of the Donbass in the Ukraine were always a source of dissent in the Soviet Union. The working conditions were appalling. The safety record was worse and the living standards were primitive. The seeming opening of ‘glavnost’ and ‘perestroika’ led the workers in these coal mines to seek an improvement in their lifestyles through their official unions. These official unions were powerless, they said, to make any changes and rebuked the workers for trying to organise themselves outside the established union structures.

The miners formed independent strike committees (‘stachkomi’) in July 1989 and prepared for major coal strikes that summer. The stachkomi demanded to discuss improvements in health and safety and an increase in the wages of the miners. Their strike was successful in that instead of ordering in troops to suppress the strikers Gorbachev and his Politburo met with the strikers and listened to them. A compromise was reached and on October 9, 1989, a new law on strikes was passed in which strikes in key industries like defence and the railways were banned but allowed for balloting of the members and arbitration procedures in other strikes. The law came into effect on October 24, 1989. However, the cat had already escaped from the bag. The 1989 strikes were undertaken outside the existing union structures. The strike committees were made up of only working miners; no managers were allowed. The leadership was largely under the age of thirty-five.

During the strikes, the strike committees met in almost continuous session and took responsibility for the provision of public services. They insured order and maintained and monitored the mines. The power to meet on their own and to negotiate with the government and the Party was a cathartic event after seventy years of repression... Miners' strikes became shock waves helping to topple Gorbachev, bringing Boris Yeltsin to power, and ending the Soviet Union.

As a result the AUCCTU’s Nineteenth Trade Union Conference decentralized the union structure and turned the AUCCTU into a looser confederation: the General Confederation of Trade Unions of the USSR (VKP) under Vladimir Shcherbakov. Despite this, worker protests increased. There were an estimated 2,000 strikes during the years of 1988 and 1989, including the nationwide miners’ strike in July 1989, with a loss of over 7 million work days. The old Soviet trade union federation was dissolved, in 1991 and a new one created by its affiliated unions, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR). It called itself independent to underline its autonomy from the Communist Party, which Yeltsin banned later that year. The FNPR was the only mass national organization, apart from the military, to survive the transition from socialism

These 1989 strikes were a spur to the US to try and establish a dialogue with non-communist Russian unions. They used the AFL-CIO once again as their vehicle. With the outbreak of the 1989 miners’ strikes the new President of the AFL-CIO, Lane Kirkland, decided that the US unions should offer its assistance to the striking miners to help prise them away from the Soviet state. As he had done earlier with Solidarnosc in Poland, he invited the Soviet coal miners to the US and gave them substantial financial support.

“In April, 1992 the Free Trade Union Institute established an office in Moscow, and organized the Russian American Foundation for Trade Union Research and Education. RAFTURE sought to encourage the formation of a new labour centre to replace the FNPR, and trained organizers for raids. It was a creature of U.S. foreign policy, guiding resources to those unions which supported Yeltsin and privatisation. The FTUI paid the salaries of administrative staff in certain independent unions, and started a newspaper, Delo, with $250,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy. Delo campaigned for Yeltsin and for business/labour/government partnership, urging workers not to demonstrate against non-payment of wages”[iv]

The Free Trade Union Institute set up training programs in Russia and Eastern Europe. These offered practical courses in unionism along with a strong political direction designed to support Yeltsin. The FTUI funded a database of union activists and "different anti-democratic union groups," paid for television programs and a labour education program, and set up a public relations operation and an advisory council of trade union leaders. It used $660,000 to set up four radio stations in Russia in 1994. These initiatives in trying to gain control of the direction of Russian labour died when Jesse Helms cut the aid budget which deprived the AFL-CIO of its financial lifeline. Its programs still exist in a small way but they have little direction on the course of Russian labour movements.

There are three major Russian national centres. The All-Russian Confederation of Labour (VKT) is a national trade union centre formed August 17, 1995 and has a membership of 1.27 million. The VKT is affiliated with the International Trade Union Confederation, and the General Confederation of Trade Unions. The Confederation of Labour of Russia (KTR) is another national trade union centre founded in 12 April 1995 and is affiliated with the International Trade Union Confederation. It has around 1.25 million members. The third national centre and the largest is the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR) with a membership estimated between 28 and 31.5 million (down from 70 million at its formation). The FNPR is widely recognized as the de facto successor to the Soviet era trade unions system, although the General Confederation of Trade Unions (GFTC), as the umbrella organization of trade unions in the former Soviet Republics, is technically the equivalent of the former system. In November 2000 it was allowed to affiliate to the ITUC.

In recent years the Russian trades unions have done very well in increasing their wages and improving their working conditions. They have had major strikes against such large employers as Ford and others. However they are being courted by both the United Russian Party of Putin and Medvedev and the fledgling opposition parties. Each wants to use them for the next Presidential campaign. Some of the siloviki and the oligarchs have been in contact with the trades unions in an effort to use their presence in the workplaces to the commercial advantage of the siloviki and oligarchs. The trades unions are growing in political strength as one of the few organisations which operate across the broad expanse of Russia.

There are many other examples which illustrate the point of the importance of concentrating on the political activities of national and international unions. It seems odd that these global companies and their beehive of advisers, lawyers, political risk consultants and specialists largely ignore the role of labour in their discussions and analyses, concentrating instead on the industrial relations aspects of these union bodies if they think of them at all. It is difficult to understand why this is the case.






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[i] For a detailed discussion see Busch, G.K. The Political Role of international Trades Unions, Macmillan and St. Martins Press and Busch, G.K. Political Currents in the International Trade Union Movement (vol 1 and 2) Economist Intelligence Unit.

[ii] WFTU, Platform for the 21st Century

[iii] China Labour Watch Annual Report 2010, CLW, New York

[iv] David Bacon, Where Workers Have to Fight for a Paycheck 16/2/98