Free Trade Unionism Nixed in Much of Middle East

Bill Doherty, 84, Executive Director of the American Institute for Free Labor Development, AFL-CIO

William Charles “Bill” Doherty Jr., who led the AFL-CIO’s outreach to trade unions in Latin America for 35 years, died August 28 after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. He was 84.

Born in Belleview, Ky., the oldest of nine children, Doherty was raised in the Washington, D.C. area where his father, William Charles Doherty Sr. was president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, and later the first U.S. ambassador to Jamaica. He graduated from St. Paul’s Catholic Academy High School, where he met his future wife, Jane Catherine Donovan, a Boston native.  He worked as a Capitol Hill police officer while completing his degree in philosophy at Catholic University of America, where he played defensive lineman for the football team. He also attended Georgetown University School of Linguistics and Georgetown Law School.

Doherty’s life was defined by his Catholic faith (he spent a brief period of his life in the St. Charles Seminary, studying to be a priest) and his conviction that democratic trade unions held the key to freedom and prosperity around the world. His work with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the Postal Telephone and Telegraph International (PTTI) and the AFL-CIO’s American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), took him to 129 countries over his career.

After serving as an aerial photographer with the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, Doherty assisted in rebuilding the trade union movement in Germany, supporting the anti-Nazi, dissident labor leaders and nascent democratic trade union movement that is today known as the Confederation of German Trade Unions (Deutscher Gewerteschaftsbund, DGB).  He served in Belgium, Europe and Latin America as an AFL-CIO representative to the PTTI, an international trade secretariat.

When President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress was initiated in 1961 to support labor’s international role in nurturing democratic trade union movements abroad, Doherty was the logical choice to serve as AIFLD’s Director of Social Projects, and later as Executive Director.  He led the AIFLD under the direction of four AFL-CIO presidents, retiring in 1996.

Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Jane Catherine Donovan, eight children and 25 grandchildren.

Welcome to the CFTU website!

We’ve designed it to keep you better informed about developments in the continuing struggle of workers everywhere to establish and maintain the right of Freedom of Association – the right to form and join unions of their own choosing, run by people they elect.

The CFTU has been active in recent years in attempts to assist workers in Cuba struggling to assert that right – in the face of their government’s insistence that only one union, guided by the Communist Party, can represent them,  and against the background of continuing imprisonment and harassment of those who think otherwise.

Cuba is not the only country in the world denying workers their rights.  Sadly the list is long – Burma, Vietnam, North Korea, China -  to cite a few.  But too many trade unionists in the free world are unwilling to speak out, apparently believing that somehow these regimes will transform themselves into democratic societies and that through contact with free world unions, the non-representative unions in those police states will remake themselves into legitimate unions. Such a belief flies in the face of 90 years of experience to the contrary.

The recent hunger-strike death in a Cuban prison of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a 42-year old brick mason serving a 26-year sentence for his political activities, and the long hunger strike of  dissident journalist Guillermo Farinas, provide eloquent testimony to the determination of those heroes to see their country free and democratic and observant of all the rights of free people.

Our committee believes that neither dictatorships nor their hand-maiden unions ever yield power willingly and that free trade unions must not be complicit in the denial of freedom of association to workers.  Rather, we believe that those who are joined in the struggle to assert workers’ rights in the face of dictators, those who risk imprisonment and harassment, need and deserve our moral and material support.  We hope you will join us in those struggles.

Tom Donahue, CFTU Chair

Chengdu, China - Miss Chen stares curiously at the iPad. Even though she works overtime in a factory in southwestern China that manufactures them, she’s never seen the finished product.

“Wow, I want it,” said Chen, brushing her finger across the glossy screen with curiosity and amazement.

A CNN report states that the 18-year-old student from a village outside of the southern megacity of Chongqing is one of more than one million factory workers at a Chinese company that helps manufacture products for Apple Inc.’s lucrative global empire, which raked in a record $46.3 billion in sales last quarter.

At a factory about an hour west of Sichuan’s capital Chengdu, Foxconn Technology Group, one of Apple’s biggest manufacturing partners. Foxconn employs hundreds of thousands who work day or night shifts, eating and sleeping at company facilities, as they help build electronics products for Apple and many other global brand names, such as Amazon’s Kindle and Microsoft’s Xbox.

Chen’s name has been changed for this story. She told CNN that all her Foxconn colleagues have been instructed not to talk to any reporter or “criminal liability shall be investigated according to law.”

Rights groups like Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin and Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior say that Foxconn’s stringent military-like culture is one of surveillance, obedience and not challenging authority. Workers are told obey or leave, CNN reports.

It’s an oppressive culture that labor groups say contributed to a slew of suicides in 2010 at the company’s Shenzhen plant, prompting Foxconn to install nets in an effort to prevent employees from jumping.

Foxconn is a part of Taiwan’s Hong Hai Precision Industry Co. which supplies iPads and iPhones. Foxconn recently released a statement defending its corporate practices, stating its employees are entitled to numerous benefits including access to health care and opportunities for promotions and training.

“Foxconn takes our responsibility to our employees very seriously and we work hard to give our 1.2 million employees in China a safe and positive working environment and compensation and benefits that are competitive with all of our industry peers in that location,” said Foxconn in an email statement to CNN.

In response to questions from CNN, Apple released this statement: “We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. We insist that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made. Our suppliers must live up to these requirements if they want to keep doing business with Apple.”

After three weeks of applying more than 4,000 stickers a day onto iPad screens by hand and working 60 hours a week in an assembly line, Chen says she’s ready to go back to school and study hard so she’ll never have to return to Foxconn.

“It’s so boring, I can’t bear it anymore. Everyday is alike: I get off from work and I go to bed. I get up in the morning, and I go to work. It is my daily routine and I almost feel like an animal,” said Ms. Chen, who aspires to become a biologist.

When asked why humans do machine-like work at Foxconn, she responds, “Well, humans are cheaper.”

Tunisians recently formed a new trade union organization, called the Tunisian General Labor Federation (CGTT), to help improve

relations between unions, fight unemployment and exclusion, and establish unemployment benefits.

The CGTT held a constituent congress in the coastal city of Nabeul, and named Habid Guiza its general secretary. The new organization claims to represent 30,000 members.

CGTT aims to contribute to the development of trade unionism in Tunisia, Guiza said, and to provide workers with the freedom to choose their union.

The Fijian government has defended its decision to refuse a delegation of Australian and New Zealand trade unionists entry to the country.

The four delegates had planned a three day visit to investigate allegations of human and labor rights breaches by the Bainimarama government.

But when the group, including Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Ged Kearney, arrived at the Nadi International Airport, they were refused entry and put on the next flight to Sydney.

Fiji Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said the delegation’s visit was ‘well-orchestrated’ and ‘irresponsible’.

He said the ACTU had a preconceived position and planned to move a resolution at the Australian Labor Party Conference to place Fiji on the same blacklist as Burma and Zimbabwe.

‘Even before visiting Fiji, the ACTU had taken a position,’ the Fijian government said in a statement.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said it was concerning that consular access was denied the group, and that Australia had an ongoing commitment to promoting labor and human rights and ensuring that trade unionists remained free from intimidation.

Six American clothing companies, including American Eagle and Gap, have confirmed the results of a China Labor Watch (CLW) investigation that uncovered violations of Chinese labor laws

at a factory that supplies garments and accessories sold in the United States and elsewhere. The factory is part of the Jiangsu Ningbo Hesheng Headwear Company.

According to the investigation, the factory’s working conditions expose employees to high temperatures and toxic gases, workers regularly work more than 12 hours a day, workers work 30 days straight without a break during the busy season, and the base salary for workers is significantly lower than the legal minimum wage of Cixi County, where the factory is located.

American Eagle, GAP, J. Crew, Liz Claiborne, Talbots and Target responded to CLW’s report by conducting their own investigation. In November, they acknowledged the poor working conditions at the factory and said they would compel management there to provide a safer and fairer work environment.

Italy risks a “social explosion” over the government’s austerity measures and unions plan more protests against them, the head of the country’s largest labor federation CGIL says.

CGIL leader Susanna Camusso said Prime Minister Mario Monti’s government was “deeply conditioned” by its need for support from the party of his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, and its austerity plan spared the rich and demanded excessive sacrifices from ordinary Italians.

“We see every risk of a social explosion,” Camusso said in an interview with Reuters, warning that anger was rising over a pension reform she said was unnecessary, measures that cut already weak purchasing power and a worsening labor market.

CGIL and the two smaller unions, CISL and UIL, are holding a series of strikes to protest against the 33 billion euro plan that aims to shore up public finances and combat Italy’s debt crisis.

Camusso, the first woman leader in the CGIL’s 105-year history, acknowledged that Monti had made some concessions to union demands by reducing cuts to low pensions and slightly easing a housing tax, but this did not go far enough.

“It would be absolutely excessive to say we are satisfied; the solutions are insufficient,” she said, announcing that the CGIL and its partner unions planned a national street demonstration. More than half of the CGIL’s 6 million members are pensioners.

Speaking in her office in central Rome, 56-year-old Camusso tried to strike a balance between accepting the need for tough measures to solve the debt crisis and an insistence that the steps adopted were unfair.

“We are flexible in the face of the emergency but we are not willing to accept everything,” she said. “You can’t ride roughshod over people.”

In late July, authorities in Malawi perpetrated a round of violence that resulted in the deaths of 18 people involved in peaceful protests.

The International Trade Union Confederation has written to the president of Malawi to strongly protest the bloody repression of peaceful protests.

Malawi’s trade unions have been critical of a number of recent laws which limit the freedom of the press, restrict lawsuits against government agencies and officers, and limit civil liberties. Under the current situation, the Malawian police can search any house without a search warrant, and the press cannot publish anything which is “deemed to be contrary to the public interest.”

Protestors also wanted to point out the quickly deteriorating economic conditions in their country, characterized by crippling fuel and foreign exchange shortages. The workers of Malawi have been hit hard by the economic crisis. Shortage of foreign exchange means that companies cannot bring in raw materials and parts, which has resulted in massive job losses. Shortages cause basic goods to become unaffordable.

“This is not worthy of a country which adheres to the principles of democracy,” said ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow. “Confronted with such particularly harsh conditions as the ones currently hitting Malawi, citizens and civil society organizations should not face even tougher repression when standing up for their basic rights.”

Guatemala City – Delegates to the II Conference against Impunity in Guatemala, convened by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and its Guatemalan affiliates, have condemned the killings of two women who were fighting for the rights of the Guatemalan people.

Lesbia Elías Xurup, a member of Comunidades en Resistencia contra Unión FENOSA, fighting against energy group abuses, was hacked to death by machetes at her home in Comunidad de La Selva, Santo Domingo, Suchitepéquez, on 21 July. The assassins, not content with killing her, chopped off one of her hands.

María Santos Mejía, secretary of the independent maquilas union Sindicato de Maquilas Independientes, was shot in the head several times by assailants on a motorbike. She leaves her four children and four-month-old baby.

In a letter, the ITUC urged Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom to take every step necessary to bring an end to the “constant murders and violations of the rights of working people. It is essential that the Guatemalan government take urgent measures to guarantee the full exercise of human, labour and trade union rights in the country and to end the murders of trade unionists and women trade unionists.”

Lorenzo Godoy Asencio, general secretary of the tricycle taxi drivers union and the local transport workers union in Guatemala, was murdered in early May.

The trade unionist disappeared on May 2nd with his moto-taxi; he had left the house to buy bread for dinner. When he failed to return, a search was launched the following day in the area bordering El Salvador. His body was found on May 5th in Aldea Los Angeles, showing stab wounds thought to have been inflicted with a screwdriver. This murder has once again plunged into mourning the workers of Guatemala.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), in a letter to the president of Guatemala, called for a full and immediate investigation to ensure that those responsible for this crime are brought to justice without delay and punished with the full force of the law.

ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow, appalled by the repeated murders of trade unionists in Guatemala, underlined: “This new murder must not go unpunished, as, unfortunately, have all the other murders carried out against trade unionists in Guatemala thus far. It is essential that the government react by strengthening the rule of law and ensuring respect for the fundamental rights enshrined in the ILO Conventions ratified by Guatemala.”

The serious and constant violations of ILO Convention 87 in Guatemala will be examined by the ILO Committee on the Application of Standards during the International Labor Conference in June.

The recent events in Tunisia and Egypt that resulted in the departures of long-time dictators Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak have raised hopes that reasonable democracies will flourish and spread throughout the Arab and Muslim Middle East.

Governments that work for all the people instead of just the very wealthy or “the connected” are long overdue. All who appreciate freedom can only applaud what has taken place so far. Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of Yemen, will no longer push for his son, Ahmed, to take his place. King Abdullah of Jordan replaced his government in order to shore up his regime.  Hopefully, the dictator Muammar Qaddafi of Libya will not be able to pass the government there onto his sons.

Workers and labor unions in the Middle East, as elsewhere, have played a role in the fight for democracy in Tunisia and Egypt. Who can forget Solidarność, the independent trade union federation,  that helped topple the Communist regime in Poland?

Newly democratic nations in the Middle East, if they are truly democratic, will encourage the development and expansion of free, democratic, independent trade unions that represent the workers in those countries. Trade unions exist to help workers better their lives and the lives of their families with improved wages, benefits, safer working conditions, and representation, precisely what is needed most to build and sustain a true democracy.  

MOSCOW – At a recent ITUC conference here, the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) affiliates joined the Newly Independent States (NIS) in their demands that the governments and employers in Russia and in the newly independent former Soviet states respect fundamental rights guaranteed by ILO Conventions.

The demands were voiced at the conclusion of the International Confederation of Trade Unions Conference, “Building Democracy and Trade Union Rights in the NIS,” held here last December.

“We have the situation when in the countries with about 200 million able-bodied population, the real security of workers approaches to zero,” reads the final document adopted by the delegates.

The large conference was attended by union leaders and activists from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine, as well as representatives of the ITUC and its Pan-European Regional Council (PERC), European trade unions and global union federations, including the IMF, NGOs, academics, trade unionists and journalists.

The nature of violations differ: in Russia, trade union leaflets were added to the list of “extremist materials”; in Belarus, the system of annual contracts is used as a tool of anti-union discrimination; in Georgia, a truncated Labor Code is introduced, which contains only 55 articles and virtually no guarantees of legal protection of trade unions. Employers and the governments violate the fundamental right of workers to freedom of association as guaranteed by ILO Conventions.

Officials from different Russian government agencies attended the conference, including the Ministry of Healthcare, Ministry of Justice, and General Procurator’s Office. This created the possibility of a direct and sharp dialogue between trade unionists and government representatives. Andrei Isaev, Chairman of the Duma Committee on Labor and Social Policy, spoke about the legislative work regarding labor relations.

About 15 activists of the primary union organizations from across the region spoke of pressure exerted on them by employers and authorities. Behind each of the short reports was a history of several months and sometimes years of struggle, persecution, unlawful dismissals, discrimination, and fierce resistance.

The final document adopted by the representatives of trade unions calls for strengthening trade union solidarity, to conduct educational work, to build strong trade unions, and to hold national and international campaigns for the protection and development of trade union rights.