Low wages and excessively long working hours are a major issue for textile, garment, leather and footwear workers around the world.

Poverty wages and long hours are often the direct result of inadequate prices and impossible delivery schedules. Manufacturers claim that were they forced to pay more they would lose the orders and were they forced to reduce working hours they could not meet delivery deadlines and would thus be penalised. Merchandisers and retailers, in turn, claim that the field is incredibly competitive and raising wages even just to meet basic needs would cause chaos and limiting overtime would make it impossible to get goods to consumers on time.Too often in the past, international solidarity has been seen as the industrialised world's unions helping those in developing countries, as the rich helping the poor, as the strong aiding the weak.

At present many unions are unable to deal with the ramifications of globalisation, which has transformed the nature of trade union activity both at national and international level. Corporate power has increased dramatically, and the flexibility afforded by globalisation has severely weakened the bargaining power of workers. Overcoming these obstacles will require considerable changes on the part of the labour movement to improve coordination and activity in the field of international solidarity and organising.
Global solidarity benefits everyone, workers and their unions, in both the industrialised and the developing worlds.
In future, global solidarity must include organising across national frontiers and utilise the resources and experience of every single organisation representing workers within these industrial sectors, whether at national, regional or international level. The full and efficient utilisation of these combined resources is vital.

(a) Organising and bargaining

Without the right to organise, the most fundamental of all worker rights, it is nearly impossible to secure or defend other rights. In developing and industrialised countries alike, trade union membership and influence are on the decline. Unions must halt that decline by broadening their membership base and by putting organising and recruitment at the forefront of all their activities. Trade union experience is that the time-honoured process of collective bargaining between workers and employers is the most appropriate means of achieving a fair return for the labour.

The ITGLWF is committed to :

devote at least 15% of its total resources to organising;

urge its affiliates to give priority to organising, including increasing unionisation in largely unorganised sectors, including the informal sector;

work to secure strong, representative and sustainable union representation capable of adequately defending members and safeguarding their interests through collective bargaining;

continue to support, in close coordination with the regional organisations, organising projects involving corporate research, strategic targeting, planning, international coordination and the creation of strong unions through majority representation and member involvement;

analyse collective bargaining developments to identify the most effective approaches and strategies;

ensure that the issue of collective bargaining is the centrepiece of all its trade union activities;

develop its capacity to conduct corporate research and develop a database on companies in the industry;

develop a global solidarity network to support organising through pressure on retailers in consumer countries;

ensure coordination and transparency between various donor organisations supporting organising projects;

vigorously resist any government or employer attempts to limit collective bargaining, including government intervention to regulate the outcome or suspend the practice of bargaining altogether, or to introduce individual contracts.

(b) Promoting worker rights

Exploitation is rampant in the textile, garment, leather and footwear sectors. Such exploitation is happening because of the intense competition in a globalised economy where in the textile, garment and leather sectors 160 countries are producing for export into only about 30 markets. It is happening because governments are unable or unwilling to enforce their own labour legislation. It is happening because employers are increasingly transnational corporations, often with a base in Korea and Taiwan and with no respect for either the country in which they operate or the workers they employ. And it is happening because retailers in industrialised countries push down the price paid to producers to levels that can only result in exploitation. All of this is unnecessary and needn’t happen. Indeed, it results in company inefficiency, low productivity and poor quality, hindering profitability. Workers’ rights abuses are shortsighted, not just morally or socially, but also economically.

The ITGLWF commits to :

in conjunction with its regional organisations, expose violations of worker rights wherever they occur and mobilise solidarity action among affiliates, as well as making representations to governments and employers, exerting corporate pressure, making use of consumer pressure, and securing media coverage;

undertake, in conjunction with its regional organisations and other international trade union organisations, targeted campaigns aimed at certain countries or sectors where the gravity of the abuses warrants particular attention;

exert pressure on governments to ensure they take responsibility and enact and enforce rules which will ensure that globalisation promotes development, secures a living wage for all workers and provides environmental protection;

promote a common approach between the governments of the region based on respect for minimum international standards;

demand that the Taiwanese and Korean Governments exert pressure on outward investors by :

imposing conditions on the export of capital;

influencing, through training for companies and company management, managements investing or intending to invest abroad;

using their embassies and other representation posts abroad to impress upon outward investors and their managers the need to respect national labour legislation and international labour standards;

using trade and investment delegations both inward and outward to highlight the need to adhere to international labour standards in all enterprises;

considering incentives for outward investing companies which respect international labour standards throughout their operations.

strengthen awareness of rights’ issues among affiliates, and further develop their ability to respond rapidly and effectively to any abuse of worker rights;

encourage affiliates to use corporate codes of conduct as a tool for organising and bargaining;

mount campaigns aimed at making consumers aware of the exploitation of workers in the textile, garment, shoe and leather sectors and mobilising them to demand that the products they buy are manufactured under fair labour conditions;

maintain, through contributions from affiliates, an International Solidarity Fund to aid at short notice unions faced with major difficulties;

organise each year a high-profile event, coordinated to take place on the same day around the world, to draw attention to the human and workers' rights violations occurring in the textile, clothing, shoe and leather industries;

expand its links with non-government organisations working in the field of human rights whose principles and objectives coincide with those of the ITGLWF;

vigorously pursue the linkage of trade to worker rights in all trade agreements with a view to rapidly eliminating the worst abuses of workers rights by making participation in world trade conditional upon respect for core labour standards;

campaign in the lead-up to the World Cup 2006 in order to secure broad support to put pressure on FIFA to renegotiate and apply the code of conduct first negotiated in the late 1990s;

promote respect by all governments for the 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work relating to respect for the principles of freedom of association, effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour, effective abolition of child labour, and elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation;

make full use of ILO supervisory mechanisms for the defence of human and trade union rights, and continue to maintain pressure to ensure that ILO procedures are updated to meet new challenges;

make use of the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, which targets ways in which multinational enterprise operations in home and host countries can build socially sustainable development, respect for human rights in the workplace, employment promotion and security, skills training, good working conditions and sound industrial relations;

make full use of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, a set of standards that embody the expectations of governments with regard to good corporate behaviour, and include the right to organise and bargain collectively;

insist that governments and international organisations make the provision of technical and financial assistance dependent on respect for fundamental worker rights;

assist affiliates in campaigning against the activities of government- or employer-sponsored organisations which infringe on the role and privileges of trade unions, including ‘Solidarista’ associations;

continue to support the joint Global Unions’ Hong Kong Liaison Office (IHLO) to monitor trade union and workers’ rights and political and social developments in mainland China;

maintain a ‘Register of Dirty Companies’, intended for companies which are directly responsible for serious violations of labour rights, and which consistently ignore all efforts to force them to remedy the violations they have committed. The aim is to drive renegade companies from the industry by calling on their existing customers to sever their contracts and on their potential customers to refrain from placing orders;

make use of the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, which targets ways in which multinational enterprise operations in home and host countries can build socially sustainable development, respect for human rights in the workplace, employment promotion and security, skills training, good working conditions and sound industrial relations;

make full use of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, a set of standards that embody the expectations of governments with regard to good corporate behaviour, and include the right to organise and bargain collectively.

Agenda for Action

Reporting a violation

Basic Trade Union Rights

Coordinating Support for Trade Union Development

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