(The following article is from the August 1-31,  2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

By Kimball Cariou

     The month of June saw an interesting contrast of strategies expressed by the two main global federations of trade unions.

     On June 16, the general secretary of the World Federation of Trade Unions, George Mavrikos, spoke at the International Labour Conference in Geneva. Excerpts are reprinted below; the WFTU leader gave a searing critique of global capitalism, and announced that the body, which has affiliates in 95 countries with over 70 million members, will hold a world-wide day of action on September 7th.

     A few days later, over 1,000 delegates gathered in Vancouver for the second Congress of the International Trade Union Confederation. The ITUC was formed in 2006 ago by the merger of the Cold War-era International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labour. Today, the ITUC has affiliates in 156 countries with 175 million members, including the Canadian Labour Congress and the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux in Québec. Another affiliate is the Christian Labour Association of Canada, notorious for cooperating with employers to undermine collective bargaining rights.

     The newly-elected general secretary of the ITUC is Sharan Burrow, the former leader of the Australian labour movement, who served as ITUC president for the past three years. Coming out of the Australian teachers' union, she built a reputation as a militant labour leader during years of struggles against that country's right-wing governments.

     The ITUC Congress was marked by divergent views around the current economic crisis and the fightback. While the leadership is dominated by social democratic forces which are reluctant to name and condemn capitalism, ITUC affiliates include a number of national trade union bodies where Communists and other left-wing activists have a powerful influence.

     Interestingly, many delegates from these unions were delighted to meet Canadian communists at a June 22 public rally called by the ITUC outside the Vancouver Convention Centre. Delegates from Chile, France, Namibia and other countries posed for photos with a Communist Party of Canada banner, and copies of People's Voice and the CPC's leaflet on the economic crisis were snapped up quickly.

     Inside, there were some sharp debates around strategy and policies. Many delegates gave enthusiastic applause when the Spanish unions announced plans for a general strike in September, and some urged similar actions on a wider scale.

     The ITUC leadership instead called for a "mobilisation of affiliates on key international issues." This means following up on the "positive experience of the first two World Days for Decent Work," events which saw actions in many countries in 2008 and 2009. A resolution adopted at the Congress instructed the ITUC General Council "to build on this so as to make the World Day on October 7 a strengthened, expanded and truly global event..."

     The choice of different "days of action" by the WFTU and ITUC is paralleled in Greece, the flashpoint of confrontations between the working class and the global bosses in recent months. The impetus for a series of general strikes and mass demonstrations against the neoliberal policies of the social democratic government of Greece has come from the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), a communist-led labour body affiliated with the WFTU. Under pressure from their memberships, the larger Greek labour federations which represent public and private sector workers have extended support to some of these actions, while trying to maintain close links with their allies in the PASOK government. This "balancing act" is seen in other countries where social democratic parties are imposing the demands of big capital, such as Spain.

     The ITUC Congress also reflected this dichotomy. For example, in its main resolution, the Congress deplored "the enormous damage inflicted on working people by the gravity of the current crisis which comes after decades of the operation of a model of globalisation that has been anti-worker, anti-poor, and anti-development. The current direction of government policies threatens to lead to a fundamental and reactionary change in the nature of our societies, dismantling hard-won achievements of union struggle and collective bargaining. Congress calls on the ITUC and its affiliates to redouble their resistance to this deeply regressive trend."

     The resolution hints at the policies of social democratic parties in power with the following sentence: "The inability or unreadiness of governments to subject finance to effective regulation would mean an intolerable subjugation of the democratic process to the powers of finance."

     The resolution never names the "model of development" as capitalism or imperialism. Instead, it assumes that this model can be modified: "Now the people must benefit from globalisation. It is time now to move forward from the crisis to global justice."

     Even better, it goes on to claim that "the crisis also offers new opportunity to realise the objective set out in the ITUC's founding programme of changing globalisation fundamentally to make it fair and sustainable."

     How this goal could be achieved without a fundamental transformation of the capitalist economy is never spelled out. Instead, the resolution identifies "seven priorities in the ITUC's strategy for global social justice."

     These include the following campaigns: promotion of "jobs-intensive anti crisis strategies"; universal observance of fundamental workers' rights and an end to all forms of gender inequality at work; defence of public services against austerity policies aimed at satisfying financial markets rather than the needs of people; "effective and adequate regulation of financial markets" and an international tax on financial transactions; a "sustainable low carbon future" for the global economy; a new development model to ensure that all countries benefit fairly from social and economic progress; and initiatives for governance "which replace today's market fundamentalism with a commitment to policy coherence for a social dimension in globalisation, with decent work as the overriding policy objective..."

     To achieve these goals, the resolution urges the labour movement to become more inclusive of women, youth, migrant workers, and those in the informal sector. It also stresses that the "maintenance and strengthening of peace is closely related to the achievement of social justice," and calls for an end to "the high and growing levels of military spending which divert resources from meeting pressing human needs."