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Human rights are not limited to a particular country, race, religion, gender or age – human rights transcend all boundaries. We are all entitled to the same rights and freedoms, regardless of where we live. In the labour movement, we cherish the principles of equality, justice, dignity and respect and demand to see them upheld around the world. Naturally, we understand that workers’ rights are human rights. This message needs to be shared with others now more than ever.

Going global

Over the past 30 years, transnational corporations have emerged as the most powerful force in the new global economy. They have transformed the way goods and services are produced and moved throughout the world, and they have changed the relationship between workers. Workers in Canada and the United States are now linked with workers in Mexico; and workers in Mexico are linked with workers in Guatemala. Workers in Guatemala are linked with workers in Indonesia, and on and on it goes. We share common employers as well as the same consumer goods and services. In exchange for globalization, however, it seems as though our ability to work and live is affected by international decisions beyond our control. This is what living in a global economy has come to mean.

Globalization has not meant prosperity and better living standards for everyone. It is bringing new levels of incredible wealth for a few and poverty for many. World governments are becoming powerless to protect and provide for the people who elect them. Meanwhile, globalization is allowing corporations to get richer and more powerful at the expense of people’s basic human rights.

Transnational corporations: too much power with too little accountability

The expanded power of private corporations is even more worrisome because the capacity – and the will – of governments to regulate power has decreased.

Of the 100 largest economies in the world, more than half (52) are private corporations rather than national economies. Transnationals have become more powerful than most governments. Yet corporate leaders are not elected and are only accountable to their shareholders. There are no performance requirements and no corporate codes of conduct.

Formerly, governments regulated private corporations and controlled their excesses. Today, governments (national and local) compete with each other to see who can offer more concessions to potential investors.

Successive rounds of government trade talks are making it easier to do business by de-regulating trade more and more. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) even permits investors to sue governments when they establish health or environmental or cultural protections for the public good if private companies deem them to be a threat to their profits.

Steelworkers and global solidarity

When the United Steelworkers in Canada voted to bargain a penny an hour to create the Humanity Fund in 1985, we were reaching out in solidarity to Ethiopians caught in the midst of drought and war. More than 17 years later, there are about 530 Steelworker local unions that have included the Fund in their collective agreements – and we are still reaching out.

The Humanity Fund is a labour non-government organization (NGO) that allows Canadian Steelworkers to link up with development, relief and social justice groups worldwide. It is a registered Canadian charity that provides receipts to contributing members.

How does the Humanity Fund help?

If corporations can go global for greater profits, then workers and their unions need strong international links with each other to make sure labour rights stay on the agenda. Since many of our employers have globalized their operations, the Humanity Fund has become a tool for helping workers make their own global connections.

Through the Fund, Canadian Steelworkers have linked with unions and community groups in countries like Mexico, Chile, Bangladesh, Guatemala and Mozambique. Worker to worker exchanges, participation in each other’s training programs and joint campaigns allow us to make connections with other unions and organizations throughout the world. Workers are discovering new ways to connect, share information, and forge joint strategies to address common problems.

The penny-an-hour contributions from 80,000 members plus matching funds from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) mean that Steelworker members are generating close to $1.7 million annually.

This has allowed the Fund to grow into a labour international solidarity agency with five inter-related program areas. Relief activities for natural disasters like the one that triggered the formation of the Fund continue, but the core of the Fund’s work is in supporting long-term development projects with both labour and community organizations in the South.

Sample collective agreement language: The Company agrees to deduct on a weekly basis the amount of one cent per hour from the wages of employees in the bargaining unit for all hours worked prior to the fifteenth day of the month following, to pay the amount so deducted to the Humanity Fund and to forward such payment to the United Steelworkers National Office, 234 Eglinton Ave. East, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario M4P 1K7, and to advise in writing both the Humanity Fund at the aforementioned address and the Local Union that such payment and the names of all employees in the bargaining unit on whose behalf such payment has been made. The Company agrees to pay an equivalent amount of the total employee contribution each month.

We have built a member education program within the Steelworkers general education program that provides courses on international solidarity issues. We have introduced worker-to-worker exchanges that allow local union members to visit projects their contributions support and see the work of activists in other parts of the global economy.

Finally, the Fund’s policy and advocacy program addresses issues faced by our southern partners. Many of the causes of poverty and suffering in the "South" rest with institutions and policies of the "North." The Humanity Fund also works with other unions and progressive organizations in campaigns around aid and development policies, labour rights and fairer trade.

The Fund at work: globally

Member contributions make it possible for the Humanity Fund to support social and labour development projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America. New projects are assessed quarterly by a Project Review Committee. The projects are evaluated regularly, both through internal evaluations done by our project partners and through external evaluations, including regular monitoring by Humanity Fund staff.

In addition, the Humanity Fund participates on behalf of our members in emergency relief operations like those that took place after the earthquakes in India and El Salvador. The Fund has also provided assistance after Canadian crises like the flood disasters in Manitoba and ice storms in Eastern Ontario and Quebec. We provide local union members with an immediate method of responding during in an emergency.

Africa:

In the Horn of Africa, we’re supporting nutrition programs and peace initiatives. Our multi-year study of nutrition and food security in northern Ethiopia completed its first phase with the publication and release of Dr. Abdulaziz Adish’s study. It has been followed by a new project to help our partners in the Relief Society of Tigray (REST) implement the study’s findings. And working with the Citizens for Peace in Eritrea (CPE), the Fund is supporting local initiatives to promote peace and defend human rights in that country.

The Fund was also a major supporter of a well-publicized international mission to examine the human rights situation in Sudan, and particularly the role of Alberta-based Talisman Energy Company. Oil companies operating in Sudan are, either knowingly or unknowingly, prolonging the war in that country by allowing their facilities to be used by Government of Sudan armed forces.

In South Africa, we work with the International Labour Resource and Information Group (ILRIG) on export-processing zones, and with the Centre for Adult Continuing Education (CACE) developing materials on equity, gender, and race issues. We’re helping union educators develop programs to help workers cope with the challenges and uncertainty brought about by export development zones.

We’re supporting the education programs of SINTICIM (the construction, wood and mine workers unions) in Mozambique, and we’re helping the Zimbawbwe Congress of Trade Unions with training programs on globalization and trade.

Latin America:

We currently have 19 project partners in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, Chile and the Dominican Republic. We work with social and community organizations, unions and labour-specific organizations, as well as women’s, campesino and aboriginal groups. Overall, our partners are putting more support into teaching skills and the techniques of influencing public policy, especially labour legislation and employment rights.

In Bolivia, we’re working with a community-based women’s organization to raise skill levels, find alternate employment opportunities, and defend their rights.

We’re helping small farm and campesino organizations in Chiapas, Mexico, and Guatemala get organized, set up micro-credit systems, and strengthen their communities. We’re also supporting union development training with the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), and the National Federation of Mine, Metal and Smelter Workers of Peru (FNTMMSP).

The Fund at work: locally

The major components of the Humanity Fund’s domestic plan are: food security programs; policy work for the elimination of poverty; corporate social responsibility initiatives; human rights lobbying; fair trade policies; and sustainable environmental practices.

The Fund provides about 15 per cent of its annual project funding to Canadian anti-poverty and development initiatives, including $85,000 annually to 40 Canadian food banks. The Fund also supports Canadian partners like Common Frontiers and Ethical Trading Action Group (ETAG) on ethical trade issues.

ETAG’s ‘No Sweat’ campaign put labour rights issues on the public agenda by encouraging students, teachers, public employees and other Canadians to promote the adoption of ‘no sweat’ purchasing policies at public institutions. The campaign also calls on the federal government to change labeling regulations and require apparel companies to disclose where their products are manufactured. Such a change would make it easier to confirm whether products are being made under sweatshop conditions or conditions that meet international standards and local laws.

The Fund has also helped the Steelworkers remain in the forefront of the growing global movement for a new social and economic order. Our union has focussed on how trade deals disguise unacceptable corporate behaviour, especially in the developing world.

In April 2001, at the Second Peoples’ Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, just prior to the government leaders’ meeting on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), our union brought together more than 400 Steelworkers and social activists from many organizations for the Commission of Inquiry into Corporate Conduct in the Americas.

Human rights before investors’ rights

Labour, environmental and social rights are vital to raising living standards and ensuring social justice throughout the world. Current trade agreements are being negotiated to allow corporations to stride the globe with little accountability for their actions to citizens, communities, and states. These agreements really have little to do with free trade, and are better described as privileged investment agreements, created to enforce corporate rights globally.

In its recommendations, the Corporate Conduct Commission urged us to abandon the current "bill of rights for investors" approach to trade agreements. Instead, trade agreements should stipulate that provisions to prohibit subsidies and dumping can only be allowed if there is corresponding language detailing responsibilities to communities, workers and the ecosphere.

The Commission further recommended that trade agreements be re-constituted so that rules apply to both companies and governments; that is, that corporations found to have ignored or violated their social responsibilities are penalized. Wording in all trade agreements must make it clear that when there is a clash between a trade rule or regulation and an internationally recognized human right, a government is obligated to abide by the human rights provisions.

Free trade that does not include workers’ rights is not fair trade.

Commission of Inquiry into Corporate Conduct in the Americas The purpose of the Commission was to examine the activities of Canadian-based transnational corporations operating in Latin America. A panel of four commissioners was appointed to oversee the proceedings and issue a report based on the testimony given regarding corporate control over the lives of ordinary working people and families. The Corporate Conduct Commissioners were: Telma de Souza, Workers’ Party deputy in the Congress of Brazil; Ed Broadbent, former leader of the federal New Democratic Party; Françoise David, former president of the Quebec Federation of Women and leader of the World Women’s March in 2000; and Chilean Senator Jorge Lavandero. The event was co-sponsored by five of our partner labour organizations from Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Brazil.

Solidarity at work

Distance is no longer the barrier it once was. Globalization means that we live in an interconnected world. Corporations – including our bosses – are moving capital from country to country at incredible speed. Their decisions are affecting our lives as well as countless others in our communities and around the world.

Corporate interests are served by governments enacting pro-business laws, which often have a detrimental global effect on labour, environmental and social standards. If an employer can step on workers’ rights in one country, it will not be long before the rights of workers in other countries are threatened.

Together, workers share many of the same problems, and it is no coincidence that we also share many of the same employers. By developing joint strategies to address the issues we face, we can learn the most effective ways of dealing with our employers. In unity, there is strength. From the streets of Seattle and Quebec City, to each of our projects in Africa and Latin America, the United Steelworkers is in the forefront of building true workers’ globalization – based on justice and solidarity.

What kind of projects does the Humanity Fund participate in?

In 1993, 10 Canadian Women of Steel consulted with their global counterparts to develop a gender policy that would guide the Humanity Fund’s project selection process. As a result of their efforts, each Humanity Fund partner organization is urged "to examine the role of women and men in the design, implementation and evaluation of its projects."

Project partners are encouraged to:

Bring women together to identify their practical and social needs, taking into account women’s additional reproductive and productive responsibilities;

Design projects based on the identified needs of women;

Contribute to the social, political and educational advancement of women;

Enhance women’s economic stability and self-sufficiency;

Promote women’s freedom from violence and other forms of oppression.

A growing trend The Steelworkers Humanity Fund is an example other unions are following. Starting in 1990, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers of Canada (IWA) have all set up international development funds. Other unions are planning to do the same. In partnership with the Canadian Labour Congress, the labour-based funds have formed the Labour International Development Committee, which has become a powerful lobbying voice, arguing that Canadian aid projects need to be screened not only for their impact on gender and environment, but also for their impact on labour.