Labor unions going global for workers rights

Wouter van de Klippe is a freelance journalist and Public Policy graduate based in Europe. He’s particularly interested in organized labor, economic, social, and environmental justice, and social welfare states.
 

Boiling in Amazon’s warehouses

The city boiled as the unrelenting sun cooked Manesar in India’s northern state of Haryana. Temperatures soared to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas of India on May 16th this year as a deadly heat wave swept the region.

At 4:30pm, a manager inside of Amazon’s Manesar warehouse called a meeting. The meeting was, according to the manager, intended to motivate the workers to push their efforts and increase productivity despite the heat. To accomplish this, a worker testified in The Independent, the manager asked the warehouse workers to make a pledge: workers “will not take any breaks, we will not stop to drink water or go to the bathroom until we meet our targets.”

The inhumane pledge came as the same worker reported shifts of organizing products for 10 hours a day with only two breaks of 30 minutes to rest. While the facility has been outfitted with fans and coolers, she said that their impact is “negligible”, “walk just 10 steps away and you can barely feel any difference. The areas where we work are typically between 30-35C on any given day.”

Amazon has since said that the pledge was an “unfortunate and isolated incident”, but the case has catalyzed a renewed discussion of the brutal labor conditions in Amazon warehouses.

These conditions were brought to the attention of India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) by the Amazon India Workers Association (AIWA), established in 2022 and supported by UNI Global Union, a global union federation for service sector workers. AIWA is one of over 80 organizations across the globe fighting to improve the often brutal conditions faced by Amazon under the banner of the Make Amazon Pay campaign.

AIWA, with the help of UNI, was able to document and raise awareness of the conditions experienced by Amazon warehouse workers, ultimately resulting in the NHRC taking action at what the commission stated could potentially “raise a serious issue of the human rights of workers.”

Now, UNI Global union is campaigning to demand that Amazon provide safe working conditions – especially in light of the climate crisis. Amazon’s warehouses in India are not alone in unsafe temperatures – the Teamsters union in the US is mobilizing for better protections in the Northeast, and back in 2022 workers reported scorching temperatures during the 2022 California heatwave.

These campaigns and others like are one example of a burgeoning wave of global labor solidarity that is rising as unions seek out new strategies to confront global capital.

Especially in the United States, unions are experiencing a renaissance of public attention and support. Less well-known is that union victories in the United States could have the consequence of pushing union victories around the world.
 
 

Less well-known is that union victories in the United States could have the consequence of pushing union victories around the world.

On the last Friday of the groundbreaking United Auto Workers (UAW) walkout that led to a historic victory, Tesla servicing workers went on strike in Sweden. It was the first attempt ever to get Tesla to sign a collective bargaining agreement and the action benefited from the momentum of the UAW actions to organize auto workers.

Unions that are pushing the envelope of labor organizing in the United States could spearhead efforts around the world, especially when it comes to global efforts at US-based multinationals such as Amazon.

For Nick Rudikoff, UNI’s campaign director and coordinator of the Make Amazon Pay campaign, “only a global labor movement can transform Amazon into a responsible employer.”

“You have such a multisectoral company that transcends sectors and geographies, it’s the largest logistics and commerce company in the world.”

The Make Amazon Pay campaign was launched four years ago and has coordinated growing days of strike action each year – most notably during Amazon’s (in)famous Black Friday sales.

Last year’s Black Friday strike mobilized workers in over 30 countries and, according to Rudikoff, received more press coverage than the sales themselves. “The fact that the Make Amazon Pay strikes and actions received so much support shows just how much solidarity there is for workers wanting a union.”

A representative from AIWA told me that coordinating with UNI Global and the Make Amazon Pay campaign “shows that the poor working conditions at Amazon are similar everywhere across the world. We are fighting for the right cause, not only in India. We are fighting everywhere across the world, and we are learning from each other.”

New campaigns seeking to organize workers the world over within multinationals are one of the many ways that unions have responded to globalization and increasingly spread supply chains.
 

Globalization and International Framework Agreements

Labor unions have had to be nimble in response to contemporary capitalism. Historically, the labor union’s bread and butter way to improve working conditions has been to represent workers by negotiating collective bargaining agreements. When employers are unwilling to come to the bargaining table and negotiate these agreements, unions demonstrate their power through organizing strikes and collective actions.

Globalization and outsourcing put pressure on the ability of workers to do this – first, by companies threatening to move operations abroad in response to pressure from workers; second, by companies increasingly moving operations to countries with less-robust unions and fewer legal protections for workers and organizing.

In a report written by Astrid Kaag, policy advisor for the largest Dutch trade union confederation FNV, Kaag notes that “the most important tool we have, the collective labor agreement, means little in such situations.”
 
 

The heart of Union action has always been at the shop-floor between workers in a shared space.

The heart of Union action has always been at the shop-floor between workers in a shared space. As the threads of global capitalism weave increasingly international distances, the process of building worker power and manifesting it at the local level has come under threat.

To adapt, and strengthen international worker solidarity, unions developed a new tool to fight for improvements in working conditions called “Global Framework Agreements” (GFA). Essentially, these are agreements made between unions (most often global union confederations) and multinational companies that set a baseline of working conditions for the companies’ employees and suppliers.

One of the most impactful GFAs that have been signed to date was in response to one of the greatest worker tragedies in recent memory – the Rena Plaza disaster.
 

“The International Accord”

In April of 2013, an eight story commercial building containing several garment factories in Dhaka Bangladesh called the Rena Plaza collapsed, killing 1,138 garment workers. Companies that sourced clothing from the building included C&A (Belgium), Carrefour (France), El Corte Inglés (Spain), Benetton (Italy), and J.C. Penny (U.S).

The disaster catalyzed a response from workers, trade unions, and NGO’s that resulted in the creation of a legally binding framework agreement – first called the Bangladesh Accord and more recently transforming into the “International Accord for Health and Safety in the Garment and Textile Industry”, or more commonly just “The International Accord .”

The International Accord was signed and negotiated by IndustriALL Global Union and UNI Global union, alongside several NGOs. According to the accord’s dedicated website, it has resulted in over 2 million workers across Bangladesh being trained in workplace safety, over 56,000 factory inspections, and over 1,000 resolved complaints.

The accord’s first legal test came when in 2016 UNI Global and IndustriALL won a lawsuit against brands that had failed to live up to the requirements stipulated in the accord. In 2018, the two global union confederations won the court case and the brands were forced to pay over $2 million to remedy the accord violations at their suppliers.

Despite this victory, there are real limits for what workers can secure relying on GFAs. A study recently showed that while GFAs have indeed resulted in significant material improvements in some cases, they are largely dependent on the goodwill of management at a company’s headquarters.

Other studies have been less sanguine about the impacts of GFAs. In a report by the German foundation the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, it was shown that in many cases in the United States, the agreements were essentially ignored – either intentionally, or due to the fact that local managers didn’t even know of their existence. Between 1998 and 2018, the International Labour Organization estimates that over 300 GFAs were signed – and yet, many of these global agreements have failed to secure the workers rights that they call for.
 
 

despite the International Accord being lauded as a major victory, workers trying to organize in Bangladesh are consistently repressed, and in some cases, murdered.

At worst, GFAs can serve as opportunities for multinational companies to boast their corporate social responsibility while continuing the longstanding abuse of workers. This is especially the case when GFAs are not legally binding and do not contain dedicated ways to assess, monitor, and intervene on violations of the agreements by independent bodies.

In Bangladesh, although The Accord has led to changes in factories and successful legal battles for unions, worker abuses are still common in the country and garment workers are still paid very low wages. Many companies have yet to sign The Accord, especially those from the United States such as Walmart, Amazon, and Target. In fact, these corporations created their own, non-legally binding organization called ‘Nirapon’ which NGOs have described as being self-regulating and entirely opaque.

A key part of these agreements is to make companies agree to remain neutral when workers decide to unionize. Yet, despite the International Accord being lauded as a major victory, workers trying to organize in Bangladesh are consistently repressed, and in some cases, murdered. For example, Shahidul Islam, a prominent union organizer for the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation, was murdered on the 25th of April, 2023, after attempting to resolve a dispute over wages at a factory in Gazipur.

Not only has globalization put significant pressure on the ability of unions to organize. Political hostility to workers and unions have resulted in working conditions degrading in many places across the world.
 

Labor is under pressure the world over

The world’s largest trade union confederation, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), releases an annual report that describes the status of labor rights all over the world and provides ratings for each countries’ respect for workers rights.

This year’s results were bleak.

The ITUC’s 2024 report found that globally, workers were denied the right to strike in 9 out of 10 countries. In 49% of countries, trade union members were either arbitrarily arrested or detained. Only two countries’ ratings improved year on year (Brazil and Romania), whereas 13 countries saw their ratings fall.

An outlier can be found in the United States, where the Biden administration’s impressive support for organized labor has undoubtedly strengthened the movement in the country after decades of anti-union political leadership. Consider UAW’s successful amd ambitious campaign to organize non-union autoworkers. Surveys show that the US public is currently more supportive of labor unions than at any time in the past 60 years.

Alongside Biden’s formal political support has come new legitimacy within public discourse – although reactionaries have sought to disguise their intentions under a veneer of worker-friendly rhetoric.
 
 

reactionaries have sought to disguise their intentions under a veneer of worker-friendly rhetoric

Consider that the notoriously anti-union Republican party is attempting to rebrand itself as being pro-worker by, for example, inviting Teamster’s union president Sean O’Brien to the Republican National Convention.

Many of Europe’s far-right populists are similarly, and deceitfully, claiming an allegiance to the continent’s working class as well. The far-right Finnish Finn’s party has allegedly referred to itself as the “worker’s party without socialism”. Marine le Pen’s Rassemblement National is consistently attempting to present itself as the party of France’s working class.

In practice, these parties consistently implement policies hostile to organized labor. In the United States, the Republican party is blocking pro-union legislation and plans on rolling back labor protections for the working class when in power. In Finland, the Finns helped the center-conservative party slash worker and union protections.

Unions the world over are countering the far-right’s pseudo-allegiance to the working class by coming together.
 

Unions for Democracy

IndustriALL’s Walton Pantland wrote in 2019 that now, more than ever, there is a need for international union solidarity. He argues that the increasingly global and interconnected nature of contemporary capitalism requires new forms of worker movements.

“Labor is on the back foot. Jobs are becoming more precarious. Fewer workers have good pensions. Inequality is growing. The balance of power between capital and labor has tilted heavily in favor of capital.”

This year, the ITUC has been organizing a campaign “For Democracy” and warns that there are concerning anti-democratic movements in every continent that would have devastating consequences for workers’ rights.

For the ITUC, this gradual erosion of democracy presents an existential risk to the trade union movement. According to the ITUC’s For Democracy campaign, unions are forges for democracy. “Generations of trade unionists have fought and died, been tried and executed to advance democratic rights. Today, hundreds of trade unionists sit in jail, under house arrest or on trial as they continue to defend it.”

Wooing the labor vote has been a central part of the 2024 US presidential election and the outcome will have serious consequences on organized labor around the world. The stronger the labor movement becomes in the United States, the more pressure and momentum can be developed internationally. Just this year, Amazon workers in Coventry nearly succeeded in a vote for union recognition.

 
Labor organizers in the United States must take advantage of the current momentum and fight for legislative changes that will support organizing in the long-term. For example, campaigns must be centered around garnering support for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) act which would empower worker organizing through new legal protections.

There are also legislative victories that can be fought at the global level. Take actions like the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) which requires companies based in the EU to make sure that there are no labor and environmental abuses in their supply chains. Yes, the act has significant shortcomings and has been made significantly weaker through lobbying, but it is a good starting point that unions can organize around to fight for legal due diligence requirements at the global scale.

Another battleground could be union campaigns pressuring legislators to ensure that trade agreements contain clauses to protect the right for workers to unionize and requirements for participating in collective bargaining agreements.

The global fight for workers rights is a struggle contested on a cornucopia of battlegrounds – from legislation and presidential politics to local actions.

The Make Amazon Pay campaign represents one the many different ways that unions are fighting the world over to secure workers’ rights.

When asked on whether unions should be focusing at the global level, the local level, via old union confederations or new unions such as the Amazon Labor Union in the U.S., Rudikoff replies “every worker organizing drive at Amazon inspires dozens more – in other cities, in other states, and in other countries.”

“As a progressive movement we’re all in this together.”