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As corporate globalization continues to tighten its grip on the world’s population, it is critical that the United Steelworkers builds bridges to other unions, workers’ organizations and social movements around the globe. A progressive people’s globalization is beginning to emerge, in which a re-energized labour movement is key. Our Union is playing a central leadership role.

The National Policy Conference of 2002 provides the occasion for Steelworkers to step back and reflect on how our Union’s work in building international solidarity and mobilizing for global justice can be enhanced.

1. A proud tradition of global action

The United Steelworkers has a long and proud tradition of action on the world stage. It is a tradition of solidarity with progressive struggles as well as working in common cause with democratic trade union movements around the world.

Our union has a demonstrated history of leadership in international labour organizations. Our work in the International Labour Organization (ILO), International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) and the International Federation of Chemical, Energy and Mine Workers Union (ICEM) has served to advance the rights and struggles of our members and of workers around the globe.

As corporate globalization grew, our union reacted quickly to develop global links and exchanges with unions in other countries. In recent years, the list of exchanges has grown significantly with countries in South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe. These efforts have allowed our union to take issues like bargaining and organizing to the global level where we can more effectively challenge industries and corporations.

Our International Executive Board has established an International Affairs Committee that is chaired by National Director Lawrence McBrearty to promote our continued active role in the global arena.

Almost a generation ago, the United Steelworkers in Canada led the way with another important innovation by establishing the Steelworkers Humanity Fund – a decision taken by the 1985 National Policy Conference. Bargaining a penny an hour for international development projects meant a fast-track education in international solidarity for thousands of our local union officers and members. Through worker-exchanges with the south, through new education programs, and through a steady stream of visiting trade unionists from developing countries at our conferences and schools, Steelworkers quickly became recognized as influential pioneers in innovative labour solidarity.

Other unions began creating similar labour funds. By the middle of the nineties, five of those funds joined with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the Labour International Development Committee (LIDC). The LIDC became the vehicle for accessing funds for labour development from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and for influencing the conduct of Canada’s foreign aid policies.

This kind of leadership has put the Steelworkers in the forefront at home and among other Canadian players in international affairs. More importantly, it has meant that unionists and their social allies in Latin America, Africa, Asia and around the globe have come to know the Steelworkers as a uniquely responsive partner in their often brutal struggles. The Steelworkers Humanity Fund has opened many doors, started many dialogues, and built many friendships among ordinary men and women in Canada and Zimbabwe, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Ethiopia, Mali, Bolivia, and in many other countries.

As we come together in the spring of 2002, Steelworkers have a deep appreciation of the need for international activism. With growing corporate globalization and with poverty and social exclusion creating daily violence in the lives of the majority of the world’s citizens, there is a pressing need for tools to create global solidarity.

Our union’s activism takes many forms. Three that are central to our current work and future possibilities are strategic alliances, project partnerships, and policy advocacy.

Strategic alliances. Steelworkers have built many permanent relationships that have become features of the Union’s ongoing work. Five years ago in Montreal, Policy Conference delegates approved a pioneering mutual support pact with our Mexican partners, the Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT). This has allowed the FAT to build up a strike and defense fund. And several years before that, Steelworkers in Cominco’s Western Canada operations forged links with their brother organizations in the south, first in Chile and then in Peru. The result has been an extremely fruitful system of information exchange, bargaining strategy, and health and safety cooperation. In recent years, these kinds of critical strategic alliances have grown with unions in different countries, sectors and transnational companies.

Project partnerships. The Steelworkers Humanity Fund currently supports over 40 projects in Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia. Our project partners include unions, small non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with unions, women’s organizations, indigenous groups, social and rural development groups, cooperatives, and human rights organizations. The projects supported by the Fund range from food security and nutrition programs, to micro-credit plans for peasant farmers, workers’ health and safety training, women’s empowerment, and skills training for democratic activism of every sort – from organizing to lobbying governments for change.

Policy advocacy. Steelworkers have carved out a special expertise in fighting for fair trade policies and in challenging corporate power. The Steelworkers led the coalition that filed the first complaint under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) side agreements against union-busting practices by a transnational corporation in Mexico. We played a prominent role in the struggle by unions and social movements against trade agreements that enhance corporate rights at the expense of workers’ rights and environmental protections. Since Seattle, Steelworkers have made their presence felt on fair trade issues in the streets, in special events like last spring’s People’s Summit in Quebec City, in front of politicians and tribunals, and in alliance with other unions, student groups, women’s organizations and church activists.

This record of activism and accomplishment should make Steelworkers proud. But we cannot rest content. Our Union needs to move forward to tackle the enormous problems of working people and the millions of women and men being left behind, both at home and around the globe, by the speeding neo-liberal machine.

In this first decade of the new century, our mission should include initiatives both very specific and more ambitious. They should all build on our record of strong credibility in various areas.

We need to build on our tradition of leadership and speak out for the rights of working people at home and around the globe.

1. Our work on corporate social responsibility has ranged from exposing Talisman Energy’s activities in Africa to exposing union-busters before the Broadbent-Bennett Inquiry on corporate accountability and democracy. We must continue to bring considerable public attention to this issue, and maintain political pressure for verifiable codes of conduct for respect of union rights, and for state action to ensure Canadian corporations respect ILO conventions and international human rights codes.

2. Our work for fair trade must continue to grow. We must not allow more NAFTAlike agreements, driven by transnational investors’ needs with no regard for worker and citizen rights. We must continue to work with our allies throughout the Americas for enforceable mechanisms in the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) to protect labour rights, the rights of women, indigenous peoples, and the integrity of the natural environment.

3. We must step up our work as champions of social and economic democracy within nations and within supranational organizations. Key to building a genuine people’s democracy is building effective trade unionism.

Fighting for fair trade and against unjust corporate power is part of our demand for wider participation by all citizens in economic decisions affecting all areas of their lives.

We need to strengthen the institutional capacity of the Steelworkers and the wider labour movement to effect social change. We need to work more with other unions and with our labour partners around the world to build the skills necessary to bargain with employers, confront and lobby governments, and raise living standards.

1. We must strengthen existing labour partnerships and build new cross-national mechanisms at both the sector and company levels. The Steelworkers and world labour organizations like the ICFTU, ICEM, and IMF have all committed themselves to exploring global bargaining strategies and functional alliances. Our union is well positioned to play an expanded leadership role in this initiative.

2. Our Union must continue to take the lead with other progressive social groups and coalitions in the struggle against corporate globalization. We must do it both through our own initiatives and as an active player in the initiatives of the Canadian Labour Congress. That means openly debating differences in strategy and tactics, finding common ground for action, and not allowing politicians and employers to succeed in their divide-and-conquer tactics among environmentalists, young people, trade unionists, and others.

3. Within the Union, we must increase our internal education programs on global solidarity. We must also significantly expand the bargaining of Humanity Fund clauses in the collective agreements of locals still not contributing. There is tremendous potential within our workplaces to take concrete practical action on current issues relevant to all of the points above – especially in supporting our anti-sweatshop partners in negotiating no-sweat clauses for the purchase of work clothes.

These priorities represent a tall order. All of them are based on work that Canadian Steelworkers are already doing, animated by the spirit of solidarity we have nurtured for many years and which makes our union a respected leader in the struggle for global justice for ordinary people both at home and around the globe.

The best way to build peace is to fight poverty, provide tools (like unions) for people to improve their lives, and restore hope. That is the Steelworkers global mission. And it all starts at the bargaining table.