29.10.96

(NB. This was written before I received Richard Flint's response to Jack Heyman. I hope it stands regardless)

LABOUR INTERNATIONALISM AND UNION INSTITUTIONALISM:

FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON THE ITF AND THE LIVERPOOL DOCK STRIKE

Peter Waterman

This note follows the `Open Letter to Richard Flint, ITF Communications Director', written by ex-ITF Inspector, Jack Heyman, from the US, emailed October 23, 1996. It is extremely rare for international union officers to not only resign on grounds of principle but to give public reasons for doing so. All respect, Jack! Let us hope that any ITF response will concern your arguments and not your friendly attitude toward your unnamed 19th century (socialist internationalist?) philosopher!

FIRST CRITICAL INSIDER ACCOUNT OF AN ITS?

Jack's account of the ITF handling of the Liverpool strike, and of the general role and functioning of the International Transportworkers' Federation, is - to my knowledge - the first- ever critical account to have come from inside such an organisation. Regrettably, it seems that he felt he had to leave the ITF before he could make such a statement. For the rest, the ITF evidently operates with rules of officer-loyalty modelled on those of the Communist-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions, for which I worked 1966-69.

Jack's account fills many gaps in existing research. He also makes statements of fact where we have previously only been able to speculate.

ITF INCOME AND EXPENDITURE

I am particularly concerned with Jack's information and arguments on the influence of the shipowner contributions to the huge Welfare Fund operated by the ITF. I would like to know more about this.

I was shocked by Jack's statement that the ITF donated GBP 7 million `largely to religious organisations' last year, and 1.5 to the UN's International Maritime Organisation. I do not recall seeing such vast sums, or heads of expenditure, in past ITF accounts, and I find even the smaller sum incredible! Which religious organisations were given these sums? For what worker or union purposes? With what results for workers or unions? And why should workers (or, for that matter, unions) subsidise the UN's International Maritime Organisation, rather than campaigning to make states and the shipping industry pay for what is inter- state and international-capitalist organisation? And were these funding decisions fully debated by, or even presented to/endorsed by international and national transportworkers' organisations, particularly their maritime or dockworker sections?

UNIONS AS MEDIATORS RATHER THAN REPRESENTATIVES

Jack's suggestion that the ITF is more concerned to preserve its credentials with corporations and the relevant (inter-)state organisations than with dockers carries the ring of truth - and is consistent with much national and international trade-union behaviour since World War II, if not World War I! The question here is that of whether it is not the quasi-universal model of Union as Collective Bargainer that is responsible for the current success of the vicious neo-liberal attack on labour and unionism internationally. There has been a Faustian bargain (Faust sold his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal life) between labour and capital/state. It brought impressive advantages to both unions and workers (as did the other one to Faust). But it has made unions incapable of counter-attack, or even effective defence, in the total war launched by what turn out to be not `social partners' but greedy, vicious and destructive capitalist corporations and increasingly irresponsible, undemocratic and corrupt governments and states.

THE ITF AS A UNION OF FLAG-OF-CONVENIENCE SAILORS

Then there is an issue referred to by Jack but which is not quite clear to me. I do not have my own study of dockworker internationalism with me in Lima, but I do have some recollections - on which any comments or corrections would be welcome. This is to the effect that the ITF, an international trade-union federation, is legally registered in Britain as a trade union, thus falling under the draconic anti-solidarity legislation of Thatcher. As I further seem to recall, this ITF union status was sought or accepted by the ITF so that it could act as a union on behalf of...? Was this non-unionised seamen on Flag of Convenience ships? If the ITF is constrained, in its historical function of organising or coordinating international labour solidarity, by British labour legislation should it not move to a country with a less labour-hostile regime? Or find another way of representing FoC seamen? And, in so far as it claims to represent these un-unionised workers, what model of representation operates here? Are there delegates? Elections? Or simply thousands of Filipino, Polish or West African seamen in a position of grateful dependency on ITF inspectors and such dockworker solidarity action as is sometimes mobilised?

THE ORIGIN OF THE ITF IN 'STRIKE TOURISM'

One possible correction to Jack's account. He talks of British seamen sailing into Dutch ports took solidarity action with striking dockers. My recollection here is that it was British dock union officers who did this, not only in Rotterdam but also in Antwerp. Maybe we are referring to different occasions. But Jack's point is right in principle: it was by defying existing laws, and risking imprisonment, that British unionists thus contributed to the creation of the forerunner of the ITF.

INTERNATIONAL UNION IMMOBILISM

A point on ITF's fear of supporting a losing cause in Liverpool. Jack calls this a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fair enough. the converse is not necessarily true - i.e. that energetic ITF support will ensure the victory of the Liverpool dockers. But so what? As the saying goes: `some victories are not worth winning; some defeats are worth more than victories'. You can only win after having been repeatedly `defeated' and after learning the lessons of such `defeats'. The current logic of the ITF is one of immobilism. Of standing still, holding one's breath, preserving one's present position, and hoping the storm will blow over. On this logic we would never have won (in the same movement that led to the creation of the ITSs) the 8- Hour Day. And because of the logic of immobilism we are going to have to struggle again for the 8-Hour Day 100 years later!

LEARNING FROM WOMEN, NETWORKING AND INTERNATIONAL NGOs

The storm will not blow over. There has been a revolution within capitalism. And unlike socialist revolutions, capitalist ones have never been undone. Unions have to reinvent themselves as social movements - I call it the new Social Unionism - that are fit for the era of globalisation. They can learn here from the international women's movement. They have no General Secretary, no Headquarters, no International Organisation of Free Women's Associations. But they have an internationally networked movement that mobilises, empowers, adapts, that communicates to national and international civil society, that lobbies and negotiates (from a clearly-articulated position of `autonomy') and that is evidently capable of imposing many of its demands on national and inter-state organisations.

The international union movement really needs to reflect on the high profile of the women's movements at the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing, and the practically flat one of itself at the Social Summit in Copenhagen. The pathetic story of Copenhagen is that the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions tried to huff and puff its way into the inter- governmental, or official, Conference, on the grounds that it was not an NGO but one of the three equal social partners in the UN's International Labour Organisation. The conference organisers said, in effect, `So what? We are not the ILO. You are an NGO'. The ICFTU tucked its tail between its legs, entered the NGO Forum, where it was one amongst hundreds of NGOs, and received less space (none?) in the international media than Oxfam, a relatively tiny British-based development aid agency and alliance. It was after Copenhagen that I found the ICFTU for the first time describing itself publicly as an NGO!

WILL THE ITF LEADERS NOW SPEAK?

I would have thought it was time for the top officers of the ITF to speak publicly on these issues, rather than leaving this task to a lower-level (appointed?) officer such as the Communications Director. The Liverpool dock strike is raising quite fundamental policy issues, not simple issues of fact, position or opinion. I do not, however, expect them to so respond at this stage. They are only likely to do so if the issues are taken up forcefully and publicly by some of the more militant national member unions, or union officers, as those mentioned by Jack.

I am wondering how the ITF - and the rest of the international trade union organisations - could possibly be made subject to both perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (transparency). In other words, how they could be both modernised and democratised, so as to make them fit for the new globalised information and services phase of capitalism. Transportation and communication (primarily the computer and mass media, but also road, rail, air, sea, post, telephone) are increasingly central to capitalism. It seems to me, however, that change within the ITSs is only going to happen through both internal and external pressure - the kind being demonstrated right here and now! Here are some modest and hopefully practical ideas, to which I would be happy to receive any response.

FOR PERESTROIKA AND GLASNOST IN INTERNATIONAL UNIONISM!

  1. What about another open letter, or petition, concerning the Liverpool case, drafted by Jack Heyman and friends, and for signature by other ITF inspectors and national transport or dock union officials? Given that some of these are employees of the ITF, and that others may feel under other pressures to withhold their identities, these signatures could be sent to a trusted firm of labour lawyers, who would (on request) report simply the country of origin or other minimal data.

  2. A resolution for the next ITF Congress (or call for a special one?), similarly drafted by Jack and friends, addressed to the more general issues raised during this email exchange, and circulated for discussion and eventual redrafting. Such a resolution would, presumably, have to be approved by one or more ITF member organisations.

  3. An open international conference on the ITF or international solidarity of cargo-handling workers, hosted by a national dockers'/transportworkers' union, or an international docker/portworker network, or an international labour-support body, or one or more university departments/researchers having some reputation amongst transport unions or workers. A combination of such should also be possible. ITF and other international union bodies to be obviously invited and guaranteed space. The massive, conservative and arrogant AFL-CIO is apparently now willing to attend independently-organised conferences on international solidarity and to play a modest and constructive role there.

  4. An email list or World Wide Web site on international trade-union organisations and international solidarity - neither of which exist as such as far as I know. The value of such has been demonstrated by Liverpool, both as a means of creating and gathering international solidarity activity and as an international `public space'. These have provoked the ITF for the first time to come out of its institutional fortress, and to publicly address its critics, without reliance on its customary powers and privileges.

  5. An independent resource centre or service, providing information on documents, audio-visual materials, bibliography, resource persons, etc, either specifically on the ITF, or on ITSs and international unionism/labour solidarity more generally. There is, for example, the classical Joris Ivens movie from just after World War II, `Indonesia Calling!', about effective Australian maritime worker support for Indonesian independence when the Dutch were trying to re-establish colonial control. Who knows whether these is a video version available? Where? And is it in other languages than Dutch and English? And in both PAL and NTSC standards? I have unused archives on Lagos (with photos and microfiches) and Barcelona dockworkers, on the ITF and dockworker internationalism, which I would be happy to deposit where others could access them. Another question: is there an English-language translation of Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten's massive and impressive Ph.D. study of the ITF (to which Richard Flint has referred us)? Has it even been published in German? Are there accessible articles in English? Does the ITF have publicly-accessible archives of such materials (I am not referring to the ITF historical archives at the University of Warwick)?

At the risk of repetition, let me say this: I neither desire nor expect the disappearance of union organisations, nationally or internationally. What is necessary is that they abandon their pretensions to incorporate, control - or even best represent - labour internationalism, that they open themselves up to criticism, practice this on themselves, relate - on a basis of respect and equality - with even small and non-representative international labour support groups, with independent and critical researchers/writers, and with the new social movements behind the `new global solidarity'

And to the Liverpool dockers, let me say this: as one of the oldest sectors of the traditional working class, and as one base of the new mass unionism of the late-19th century, under the most ferocious attack of multinational capital and reactionary states, you have already made your contribution to the labour internationalism of the early-21st century! All power to your elbows!

Peter Waterman (in Lima to 20.12.96)

Preferred email address (autoforwarding to Peru): WATERMAN@ISS.NL

Address: c/o Gina Vargas, Larco Herrera 1383d, Magdalena, Lima, Peru. Tel/Fax: +51-1-462-0443.

ITF Debate