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The Steelworkers Humanity Fund is an international development agency  created by the United Steelworkers at the Union’s Canadian Policy Conference in 1985. It began as a unique union-based response to the Ethiopian famine crisis of 1984. The basic mechanism generating funds is through a collectively bargained one penny for every hour worked by bargaining unit members, or about 40 cents per week per member.

Today, the Humanity Fund has been bargained into about 530 Steelworker agreements, representing close to 80,000 members. Those one-penny-per-hour contributions, plus matching funds from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), mean that Steelworker members are generating close to $1.5 million annually for the work of the Fund. 

Structure and functions
The Steelworkers Humanity Fund is an incorporated registered Canadian charitable organization (Reg’n No. 11917 2278 RR0001). It is governed by a Board of Directors of up to 18 members. In our case, the Board consists of elected leaders of the United Steelworkers as well as officers and activists from Steelworker local unions. The President of the Board is the Steelworkers National Director, Ken Neumann. Projects are examined quarterly by a Project Review Committee, also made up of Steelworker members, and the PRC makes recommendations for approval to the executive committee of the Board.

The Steelworkers Humanity Fund has four broad and inter-related functions: direct project support, education, worker exchanges, and policy-advocacy.

Project support for labour and community organizations is our basic work. Our education program operates in tandem with the Steelworkers general education program, and provides week-long and two-day courses on international solidarity issues through our ‘Thinking North-South’ course modules. Our exchange program involves organizing trips by local union members to visit the projects their contributions support. Our policy and advocacy program brings the issues back home, recognizing that many of the causes of poverty and suffering in the ‘South’ rest with institutions and practices in the ‘North’. The Humanity Fund joins other Canadian NGOs in advocacy campaigns around aid and development policies, labour rights, and fair economic relations between North and South.

History and financing
The Steelworkers Humanity Fund was created by the United Steelworkers at the Union’s Canadian Policy Conference in 1985. It began as a unique union-based response to the Ethiopian famine crisis of 1984. The basic mechanism generating funds is through a collectively bargained one penny for every hour worked by bargaining unit members, or about 40 cents per week per member.

Local unions all across Canada have responded enthusiastically. By 1987, 40 collective agreements covering over 4,000 members had Humanity Fund clauses.

The Steelworkers Humanity Fund has set a leadership example that other unions are increasingly choosing to follow. Starting in 1990, several other unions have established similar agencies: the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers (CEP), the Canadian Union of Public Employees, have all set up development funds, and others are planning to follow suit. Together the labour-based funds have formed the Labour International Development Committee, which has become a powerful lobbying voice arguing that Canadian aid and development practice include respect for the rights of working people within its policy criteria.

What kind of work does the Fund do?
Your contributions make it possible for the Humanity Fund to support more than forty social and labour development projects in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

• We help union educators in South Africa develop programs to help workers cope with the challenges and uncertainty brought about by export development zones.

• We’re helping local groups rebuild and retrain in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua.

• We’re working with a community-based women’s organization in Bolivia to raise skill-levels and find alternate employment opportunities.

• We’re supporting nutrition programs in northern Ethiopia.

• We’re helping small farm and campesino organizations in Chiapas, Mexico, and in Guatemala to get organized, set up micro-credit systems, and strengthen their communities.

• We’re supporting human rights work in Sudan; workers’ health and safety work in Peru; union-strengthening work in Mexico and Chile; and we’re opening dialogues for peace among local groups in the wake of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

This year the Humanity Fund provided funds to assist the victims of the hurricanes that hit Jamaica, Granada and Haiti. We are also the channel for local union members to respond to these crises.

In addition to the long-term project partnerships we have built with local organizations and unions in the Third World, the Humanity Fund provides about fifteen percent of its annual project funding to Canadian anti-poverty and development initiatives. We provide around $85,000 annually to Canadian food banks alone.

The work of the Fund also involves education and linkage of our members with the projects they support.

A last word
The Steelworkers Humanity Fund is one of the best examples of the ethics of generosity and solidarity that lie at the heart of democratic trade unionism.