International Confederation Of Free Trade Unions Research Articles

2023 Labour History Review Essay Prize Winner

The relatively new bundle of scholarship gathered under the notion of a ‘global 1989’ has produced an innovative field of research that highlights the necessity of a global approach towards the implosion of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet this literature has neglected the broad range of international and transnational organizations which had an indispensable role during, but also after, the Cold War. Therefore this article attempts to approach the ‘global 1989’ from the vantage point of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). The analysis of this large trade union confederation sheds new light on post-Cold War labour internationalism, which has often been overshadowed by the developments leading up to the establishment of the ITUC in 2006. Furthermore, the article uncovers how the end of state socialism and its global reverberations engendered new fissures, debates, and tensions within the organization. While there might have been a ‘rush to the East’ during the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, globalization – which within the trade union landscape was accelerated by the global 1989 – became a far more pressing challenge during the 1990s.

Women workers’ education at the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions: excavating histories of transnational collaboration with the ICFTU

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (Türk-İş) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) from the 1960s until the 1990s with a focus on the transnational collaboration of activists who organised educational activities for women workers and trade unionists to empower them as rights-seeking political subjects and strengthen their position within the trade union movement. Demonstrating how women’s trade union education evolved within the framework of local politics as well as global processes such as the Cold War and the emergence of a UN-led gender equality regime, it argues that global inequalities, geopolitical differences, and Türk-İş leaders’ ambivalent attitude towards women’s status in the trade union movement led to a loose, sporadic relationship between local activists and those from the west. At the same time, it was often these activists’ sustained efforts towards collaboration and the circulation of their agendas that pressured Türk-İş to invest in women’s empowerment in trade unions. Utilising archival and trade union sources as well as oral history interviews, the article integrates the work of women labour activists in feminist labour historiography, offering a more comprehensive understanding of trade unions’ gender politics in Turkey and globally.

‘A first class medium’: the cautious anti-communism of the ICFTU’s International Labour Film Institute, 1953-1972

ABSTRACT Between 1953 and 1972 the International Labor Film Institute (ILFI), affiliated with yet organizationally separate from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), spread knowledge about, and encouraged the use of, films among Western trade unionists. Holding five formal film festivals, the ILFI also engaged in the collection and distribution of information about films and filmstrips on trade union topics, themes, and successes. Yet compared to other ICFTU forums, ICFTU and ILFI officials were relatively muted on Cold War issues when it came to film activities. When they did discuss such topics, they evidenced a level of uncertainty and confusion regarding how intensely to engage anti-communist messaging in the area of labor films, indicating a concern over how to strike the correct balance between showcasing topics solely focused on labor and engaging Cold War themes. Studying the ILFI and Western labor’s relationship to the medium of film thus reveals both an anxiety among Western labor leaders during the early and middle years of the Cold War over how best to weigh their desire to help workers with their goal of appearing sufficiently anti-communist as well as another way the vagueness of the ICFTU’s slogan of ‘free trade unionism’ impacted the ICFTU’s activities.

Perils, promises and perspectives: nuclear weapons, atomic energy and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in the early Cold War

ABSTRACT In the 1950s and 1960s, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) protested nuclear weapons testing, called for nuclear and conventional disarmament, and simultaneously embraced the promises of atomic energy. The ICFTU also, particularly through its atomic energy committee, pressed the United Nations (UN), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for stronger worker protections and union input at atomic energy sites. Such efforts revealed how a non-governmental organization (NGO) attempted to shape international narratives and standards regarding nuclear weapons and atomic energy, revealing a complex approach to the use of the atom.

Asian Lessons in the Cold War Classroom: Trade Union Networks and the Multidirectional Pedagogies of the Cold War in Asia

Abstract This paper invites us to move beyond an elite, “pedagogical” view of Third World diplomatic non-alignment, by examining trade unions as sites of “subaltern internationalism” in the early Cold War. Trade unions were targets of both communist and anticommunist pedagogical programs, spearheaded principally by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and the rival International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), both of which competed to teach Asians how to be good trade unionists. But despite their ideological designs, I argue that these internationalist structures of the “Cold War classroom” facilitated, instead, unexpected encounters and fraternal connections that were experienced, and are best seen, at the level of the personal. After offering an overview of these Cold War macrostructures, the paper moves to the microhistorical scale to highlight one such set of personal networks that coalesced around a single “trade union expert.” George L-P Weaver was an African-American trade unionist whose pedagogical work took him to Okinawa and Singapore in the 1950s but whose dialogical encounters with Asian trade unionists had transformative effects on his ideological convictions afterward, challenging, in particular, his views on the role of the People’s Republic of China in the Cold War and of the “communism” of Chinese overseas communities in Singapore. In all, this paper suggests that trade unions offer us a rich site in which to recover individual dynamics that challenge and complicate, from below, the binary logics of the Cold War in Asia.

Possibility and Peril: Trade Unionism, African Cold War, and the Global Strands of Kenyan Decolonization

Abstract Trade unionism was at the leading edge of African freedom struggle in the 1940s and 1950s. It was an incubator where different visions of decolonized futures vied for ascendency after WWII. This article analyzes international labor networks and trade union activism in Kenya to explore the entanglements of decolonization and Cold War from Africa in the 1940s to 1960s, an era when competing modes of anticolonial internationalism laid paths to independence. This story is told in two phases. Through Makhan Singh, the article assesses the influence of Indo-African connection, Marxism and the radical left on labor organization over the 1940s. Then, through Tom Mboya, the article charts Kenyan affiliation to the anticommunist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) from the early 1950s. It shows how this internationalist volte-face transformed Kenya’s trade union landscape, propelled anticolonial agitation and, by the late 1950s, wrought irreparable fractures in fledgling pan-African institutions over the very nature of postcolonialism. The article argues that mobile African labor leaders coproduced, domesticated, and molded Cold War networks—that the conduits of early global Cold War agency ran both ways. Singh and Mboya were interlocutors in pluripotent world conversations marshaled for African decolonization. They also helped delineate the terms of global dialogue at a moment of neocolonial peril and decolonizing opportunity. This calls on historians to define alternative chronologies of globalist possibility masked by the tighter constraints placed on African states in the later twentieth century.

‘Second to None in the International Fight’: Australian Seafarers Internationalism and Maritime Unions Against Apartheid

The participation of trade unions in the anti-apartheid movement is a subject which arguably merits more attention. This article brings into focus a group of unionists whose activism against apartheid was in the forefront of key initiatives. Drawing on new research the argument recounts the role of Australian seafarers on the international stage, particularly its association with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), and shows how knowledge of events in South Africa passed from the WFTU to educate the union membership. By the 1980s, Australian seafarers were taking the lead in bringing European unionists together in united action to enforce the United Nations' embargo on oil supplies to South Africa by founding a new organization, the Maritime Unions Against Apartheid (MUAA). Reconstructing these events demonstrates two aspects of significance: the growing importance of monitoring shipping as an anti-apartheid strategy coordinated and led by European unions, which we point out relied on ships’ officers and crews for knowledge, and the breaking down of the ideological divide between the WFTU and the anti-Communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) working together in the MUAA. The article contributes new understanding of connections between anti-apartheid activism and its Cold War context.

Prospects for US-China Union Relations in the Era of Xi and Trump

In October 2013, Richard Trumka, President of the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL- CIO), visited the AllChina Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) to establish formal bilateral relations between unions in China and the United States. This visit signalled an historic shift in labour policy, from Cold War- style hostility to normalisation of relations. Some American labour activists hoped that it might further lead to collaboration on joint activities, such as collective bargaining. That collaboration would be a significant step forward in labour solidarity and building a global labour movement. However since then progress towards building relations has been decidedly slow. There have been only a couple of official exchanges with the AFLCIO , and activities sponsored by Change To Win (CTW), the splinter group of the AFL-CIO that first began relations with the ACFTU a decade ago, have decreased. Some American labour leaders have noted that the ACFTU has become less interested in collective bargaining since Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption began. Now, given Donald Trump’s election as US President with his agenda to weaken the American labour movement and start a trade war with China, it is fair to ask whether there are any prospects for progress in relations between unions in China and the US, and if so where. A Troubled History The root of American attitudes towards Chinese labour have been shaped by race, class, and ideology. Since the nineteenth century there have been xenophobic fears of the ‘Yellow Peril’ represented by Chinese workers, as well as arguments that workers of European ancestry should cast their lot with American business and shut out Chinese workers. These fears were compounded in 1949, when China became a communist state and an ideological enemy, resulting in antipathies that linger to this day. After World War II, the Cold War set in, and the world was divided into two main ideological camps: the communist and the ‘free world’. In 1949, American unions led a split in the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) - a global union that aspired to bring together unions from all over the world into a single organisation—to form the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), an alliance of free world unions. Meanwhile, the WFTU came to be known as the federation of communist unions. The ICFTU consistently criticised the ACFTU for not being a free and independent trade union, and therefore declared that it was not an ‘authentic’ voice of Chinese workers. However, in 1979, when China opened its doors to foreign investment and diplomatic relations with the US were established, the material basis for this divide changed. Multinational corporations raced to China to take advantage of the low-cost labour. Factory conditions were appalling and workers were exploited, causing outcry among international consumer and human rights activists, and drawing criticism of the Chinese government and its unions for not protecting workers. At a time when international labour solidarity might have meant American workers reaching out to workers in China, American unions continued to refuse to have anything to do with Chinese unions, repeating the Cold War rhetoric that they were neither independent nor authentic. Meanwhile, some left-leaning labour organisers worked quietly in the background to coordinate worker-to-worker exchanges between US and Chinese workers, hoping to build solidarity. The Tiananmen Incident in 1989 proved to be a setback for these budding relations. The crackdown on the protests was viewed worldwide on cable news in real time, and its brutality reinforced what many American labour unionists had believed all along— that despite capitalist markets and openness to meeting foreigners, China was still an authoritarian state that did not respect human rights. The AFLCIO response was to support a few Chinese labour activists in exile, and to continue to boycott relations with Chinese unions. At that time, American unions supported campaigns targeting international brands, pressuring these companies to accept corporate social responsibility in their supply chains. The theory was that the brands had power to control labour conditions in factories that manufactured their products. In Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, these cross-border campaigns, mostly led not by unions but by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), had...

Denmark, Scandinavia and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in the early Cold War

This article analyses the role of the Danish and Scandinavian labour movements in the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in 1950–1955. First, it is demonstrated that although the Scandinavians were critical towards the communist regimes in eastern Europe and supported the Marshall Plan, they only joined the ICFTU as a result of the British break-up of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). Next, the Scandinavians, on the one hand, allied with the British and other west Europeans and rejected the ‘negative’ anticommunism of the Americans, while, on the other hand, they supported the establishment of an intelligence network behind the Iron Curtain, gave financial aid to the campaign against communists in west European unions, and supported victims of the East German uprising in 1953. In short, the Scandinavians closely followed the British, remained critical towards the Americans, and challenged the Soviets.

International Women's Trade Unionism and Education

AbstractThis keynote address, delivered in December 2015 at the International Federation of Workers’ Education Association General Conference in Lima, Peru, refutes the standard trope of labor movement decline and provides evidence for the global rise and feminization of labor movements worldwide. Trade union women’s commitment to emancipatory, democratic worker education helped spur these changes. The origins and effects of two historical examples are detailed: the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers held in the United States annually from 1921 to 1938 and the first International Women’s Summer School of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) held in France in 1953. The latter experiment, attended by women labor leaders from 25 countries, energized the Women’s Committee of the ICFTU. It led to the adoption of “The Charter of Rights of Working Women” by the ICFTU in 1965 and helped make possible the election of Sharan Burrow and other women to top office in the International Trade Union Confederation. The address concludes with a discussion of what the history of trade union women’s education teaches about strengthening future labor movements.

A Cold War Thaw in the International Working Class Movement? The World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 1967–1977

Abstract The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) emerged from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949 after Western trade union affiliates in the latter organization expressed major policy differences over the Marshall Plan. For its first 20 years, the ICFTU refused all forms of collaboration with the WFTU, contending that the Federation advocated a politically monolithic Communism with its primary function being the promotion of Soviet policy. The ICFTU's position was disingenuous, given the WFTU's polycentric nature encompassing variants of Communist theory and practice dating back at least to October 1965. Moreover, even when the WFTU Secretariat condemned the August 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the ICFTU still refused cooperation. While a minor thaw between the ICFTU and the WFTU occurred during the early through the late 1970s, it was, at best, tentative, minimal and inconsequential.

English

  Child labour is a sensitive issue in global business. It is a common problem in workplace in Bangladesh particularly in Ready-made garment (RMG) sector. This paper focuses on child labour and how it affects the Bangladesh RMG sector. In fact the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international communities consider child labour as abusive and exploitative. To eliminate child labour, the ILO and other stakeholder promote decent work programme with technical and financial support. These are also discussed in this paper. An extensive literature survey has been undertaken in order to review the working conditions in the Ready-made garment industry. Based on this literature review, working conditions in the RMG sector are below standard according to the ILO as well as this lack of social compliance. As a result, the international communities and buyers declined to purchase RMG product. Compliance of RMG factories is a key requirement for most of the reputable global garments buyers that compliance ensures all labour rights and facilities according to the buyer’s Code of Conducts. Hence Bangladeshi manufacturers must provide themselves with compliance tools in order to maintain the reputation of their industry. Therefore this review identifies the need to improve capacity of the institutions concerned with social compliance.   Key words: Ready-made garment (RMG), compliance, code of conducts, monitoring and verification system, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), International Labour Organization (ILO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Constructing Labour Regionalism in Europe and the Americas, 1920s–1970s

AbstractThis article provides an analysis of the construction of labour regionalism between the 1920s and 1970s. By means of a comparative examination of the supranational labour structures in Europe and the Americas prior to World War II and of the decentralized structure of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), I attempt to defend the argument that regionalism was a labour leaders' construct that responded to three issues: the quest for power among the largest trade-union organizations within the international trade-union movement; mutual distrust between labour leaders of large, middle-sized, and small unions from different regions; and (real or imaginary) common interests among labour leaders from the same region. These push-and-pull factors led to the construction of regional labour identifications that emphasized “otherness” in the world of international labour. A regional labour identity was intended to supplement, not undermine, national identity. As such, this study fills a lacuna in the scholarly literature on international relations and labour internationalism, which has given only scant attention to the regional level of international labour organization.

Integration of Construction Worker Safety and Health in Assessment of Sustainable Construction

DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000651IntroductionThere are many definitions that have been used to describesustainability and the green building concept. To understand sus-tainable practices, a working definition is needed. In academic,social, political, and ecological circles, sustainable developmentis often defined by a quote from a UN-sponsored commissionUN-sponsored commission (World Commission on Environmentand Development 1987): “those paths of social economic andpolitical progress that meet the needs of the present without com-promising the ability of future generations to meet their ownneeds.” From a design, planning, and construction perspective,the Office of the Federal Environmental Executive defines greenbuilding as “the practice of 1) increasing the efficiency with whichbuildings and their sites use energy, water, and materials, and2)reducingbuildingimpactsonhumanhealthandtheenvironment,through site selection, design, construction, operation, mainte-nance, and removal–the complete building life cycle.”To construct a building, resources such as energy and raw ma-terials are consumed. However, during their occupancy, buildingsalso generatewaste andpotentiallyharmful atmosphericemissions.Under the banner of sustainability, designers and builders aretasked with the goal of creating facilities that are energy and waterefficient,accessible,secure,healthy,andproductivewhileminimiz-ing any adverse environmental impacts. Buildings that successfullymeet those objectives are often labeled high-performance build-ings. These buildings often go through third party validation ratingsystems to verify that the design and construction meet a certainminimallevelofaccomplishmentsbeyondtraditionaldesign.Theseevaluation measures often consist of requirements or prerequisitesand elective credits or points that may be incorporated into thedesign and construction process to reach certain minimum levelsof approval and higher levels of prestige. This begs the questionof whether a building that meets current standards of sustainability,but at some point during the process of its construction a workeris seriously or fatally injured, should be considered a high perfor-mance building. At a minimum, should the safety policies of theconstruction firms and the amount of safety training that is offeredto the workers over the course of construction be given somemerit in the evaluation process? The purpose of this paper is topronounce that the safety policies of the builder and the actualsafety performance during the construction of a green buildingshould be considered in the same manner as commissioning orinstallation guidelines.Sustainability is essentially a holistic approach that takes intoconsideration the impact of the built environment on the naturalenvironment. This approach calls for balancing the needs of thepresent versus the needs of the future. The overarching concernof sustainable development is the balancing of the resulting impactof current development projects with the protection of environmen-tal and social resources for future generations. The question inthis context is where the individual safety of the worker that buildsa project fits into this equation. Whereas considerations for aspectssuch as living wage and cultural rights have been discussed on aglobal political level, the consideration of worker well-being andlife has been largely excluded from current discourses within thesustainable built environment movement. This is a major short-coming that should be addressed, given that there should be noconflict between the goals of preserving all valued resources.Protecting the environment and human resources should not beviewed as being mutually exclusive objectives. “Workplace safetycannot be separated from the need to protect the environment”(Mogensen 2006). The challenge is how to implement sustainablepolicy and practices in a manner that generates win-win payoffs forco-optimizing growth, energy efficiency, environmental and con-sumer protection, and worker safety.Sustainability can be viewed as being a moral issue or even anethical obligation. The precautionary principle that is advancedfrom the environmental movement clearly obligates producers,such as builders and building material manufacturers, to maintainethicallyresponsiblepracticesbydemonstratingthattheirproducts,and the processes (e.g., the actual design and construction processof a given building) that are utilized to generate their products,do not pose a threat to human health and the environment beforeintroducing them into the workplace and broader community(Mogensen 2006). For example, the American Society of CivilEngineers has adopted in its Fundamental Canons of its code ofethics that “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, healthand welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the prin-ciples of sustainable development in the performance of their pro-fessional duties” (ASCE 2006). The International Confederation ofFree Trade Unions, which represents 148 million workers throughits 233 affiliated national trade unions in 152 countries, is activelyinvolved in integrating sustainable development concepts withthe protection of workers ’safety and health and workers overallwell-being (Mogensen 2006).Inclusion of Construction Safety and Health inSustainability DefinitionsThe realm of sustainability seems to concentrate on limitingimpacts to the environment, reducing energy, and incorporatingless harmful materials. This general theme is echoed in several

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Trade Unions and the ICFTU in the Age of Developmentalism in Brazil, 1953–1962

Abstract This article examines the relations between the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and its local allies in Brazil during the 1950s and early 1960s. Devised as a tool for uniting non-Communist trade unions worldwide, the ICFTU saw its influence limited by US labor policies toward Latin America and the conditions of labor politics in Brazil, contrary to what happened in Western Europe. The developments on both domestic and international fronts of organized labor had important implications for the political economy of growth and inequality, as the confrontational pattern of labor relations undermined the development of a social compact that could promote economic growth and social reform in postwar Brazil.

Incorporating Japanese labor into the Free World: Cold War diplomacy and economic interdependence, 1949–1964

Japan's trade unions were a crucial battlefront in the Cold War. Western governments and trade unions made every effort to integrate Japanese labor into the Free World, but the ‘anti-communist’ and the ‘social democratic’ approaches competed against each other in their dealings with the neutralist Sohyo. The former hard-line measures by the Republican Administration and the American Federation of Labor merely resulted in the formation of a small right-wing national center Zenro in 1954. After the mid 1950s, international economic interdependence promoted the latter conciliatory policy of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the International Metalworker's Federation (IMF), the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Trades Union Congress, the US Democratic Administration, and the British government. The establishment of the IMF–Japan Council as well as Zenro's affiliation with the ICFTU in 1964 was a great turning point in the process of incorporating Japanese labor into the Free World.

Freedom of association: Battering ram or Trojan horse?

ABSTRACT Integrating core labour standards (CLS) into the operations of the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO has become a primary goal of the international labour movement. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the ILO have persuaded the IMF and the Bank to accept CLS, including freedom of association and collective bargaining. Since they can impose painful sanctions on violators, incorporating labour rights enforcement into the international organizations that regulate the international economy has great appeal for the labour movement. I argue that there are potential dangers in this effort. The ILO's understanding of freedom of association is distinctly liberal and promotes the formation of ‘free’ as opposed to powerful trade unions. In this liberal conceptualization, many labour regulations that enhance labour's power by limiting union fragmentation and increasing bargaining power are considered to be violations of freedom of association. In practice this has meant that the ILO makes policy recommendations that encourage union competition and that discourage centralized collective bargaining. Although framed in different language, these policies mesh well with the agenda of the Bretton Woods institutions. An analysis of Indonesia and Argentina shows how the ILO's understanding of freedom of association has mixed consequences for the strength of the labour movement.

Embedded Internationalisms: Building Transnational Solidarity in the British and Norwegian Trade Union Movements

There has been growing interest in the prospects for a new trade union internationalism in recent years, following the end of the Cold War and the coming together of the main national union organisations into one confederation, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). For the first time in decades, geopolitical straitjackets and defensive nationalistic postures are giving way to more open, internationalist perspectives as unions attempt to get to grips with global capitalism. However, despite some well‐publicised grassroots globalisation campaigns, effective international labour organising and networking remains thin on the ground. One of the reasons for this is that, despite the rhetoric of globalisation and the reality of multi‐layered governance, the “national” space remains the critical scale at which unions operate. Variations in both union organisation and the politico‐institutional context within which unions operate nationally continue to shape international solidarity activities. This theme is pursued in this paper through the contrasting cases of the UK and Norwegian trade union movements. Although both union movements have been subject to similar problems in recent years, in terms of membership decline and the pressures of increasing global economic integration, the different national political and economic contexts within which unions are embedded have been important in facilitating or constraining international strategies.

International Unionism: Recovering History, Reshaping Theory, Recasting Practice?

The potential of international unionism is to provide a political counterweight to the ever-growing power of international capital, which has over the past 25 years rolled back many of the gains made by organised labour during the post-war Tong boom'. The topic is surprisingly under-researched, despite its salience to labour history, industrial relations, political economy and international relations. This may be because it has tended to inhabit the interstices of these discrete, and sometimes inwardly focused, disciplinary areas. In addition, crucial archival material has been lost or was until recently unavailable to historians. These five books all address the topic of international unionism in the global political economy. The first book, by Carew et al, is a major historical study based on the newly catalogued archives of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), published on the fiftieth birthday of the ICFTU in 1999. The second, edited by De Wilde, is a collection of papers delivered in an international conference which addressed the recently released historical material thematically. The third