Oliver Morgan, industrial editor
Sunday December 31, 2006
The Observer
Amicus, the UK's largest private sector union, has signed agreements with the German engineering union IG-Metall and two of the largest labour organisations in the US, the United Steelworkers and the International Association of Machinists, to prevent companies playing off their workforces in different countries against each other.
The move, to be announced this week, is seen by union leaders as the first step towards creating a single union that can present a united front to multinational companies.
Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, said: 'Our aim is to create a powerful single union that can transcend borders to challenge the global forces of capital. I envisage a functioning, if loosely federal, multinational organisation within the next decade.'
Amicus is itself planning to merge with the Transport & General Workers' Union in May to create a 2 million-strong labour organisation. Between IG-Metall's 2.4 million members, the USW's 1.2 million and 730,000 at the Machinists', a merger would create an organisation with some 6.3 million members.
Simpson added that multinational companies 'trade off countries and workforces against each other' and that forging such solidarity agreements as have been signed with German and US unions is the best way to combat such practices.
UK unions have repeatedly claimed that global companies shed British jobs first because employment protection legislation here is weaker than elsewhere. In April, for example, Peugeot announced it was closing its Ryton car manufacturing plant near Coventry with the loss of 2,300 jobs, saying that work would be transferred to Slovakia, where labour costs were cheaper, and France, Peugeot's home turf.
Simpson's views are shared by Tony Woodley, general secretary of the T&G, who said earlier this month that a trade union acting in a single country was an idea whose time had passed.
The T&G has worked closely in the past with overseas unions. It has combined on organising and campaigning activity with SEIU, the North American service employees' union, which has 1.3 million members. Although the T&G has not gone as far as Amicus in turning co-operation into formalised agreements, Woodley has said he believes unions must act together internationally to combat the growing influence of global capital.
Simpson has said in the past that UK unions are currently small players and need to grow in scale. He believes that unions have not managed to maintain their influence in the face of the growth in influence of global companies, a fact demonstrated by the demise of the wage premium between unionised and non-unionised workers.
Amicus has discussed a merger with IG-Metall in the past. In 2000, Sir Ken Jackson, Simpson's predecessor, held talks with Klaus Zwickel, then head of the German union, about such a move.
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