Trade Union Merger

Workers of the world uniting? It looks like a super multinational union is in the works. The new union, which would see British union Amicus, German union IG-Metall, and North American Unions United Steelworkers and International Association of Machinists join together, is in the works, with early plans for the unions to federate and eventually merge into one union. Current 'international' unions tend to be American unions with Canadian divisions, including both Steel and Machinists. This is exactly opposite from the move in the early 1980s for Canadian unions to seek autonomy from the American dominated international.

The following is an e-mail I was sent by my local labour council.

British trade union plans foreign merger

Britain's largest private-sector labour union said it was planning to form an international organisation of 6 million members by federating with unions in the United States and Germany.
Amicus said it had signed agreements with German engineering union IG-Metall and with the United Steelworkers and the International Association of Machinists, both based in the United States, aimed at an eventual merger.

Derek Simpson, Amicus general secretary, said the creation of a single group would help workers deal with multinational businesses that "trade off countries and workforces against each other".

"We can work together to prevent labour standards being eroded by ruthless global companies who show a ruthless disregard for their workers in the pursuit of even greater profits," Simpson said in a statement.

"Our aim is to create a powerful single union that can transcend borders to challenge the global forces of capital and I envisage a functioning, if loosely federal, multinational trade union organisation within the next decade."

Members of Amicus and Britain's Transport and General Workers' Union are due to vote by May on plans to merge and create a workers' group of two million Britons.

Simpson said IG-Metall had around 2.4 million members, the United Steelworkers around 1.2 million and the International Association of Machinists about 730,000.

"As a single union we will be able to focus on delivering better pay and conditions for our members and have the organising strength to reach out to new trade union members in our existing work places, as well as in new industries," he said.

Unions in Britain have expressed concern about the loss of manufacturing jobs to countries where labour costs are lower, including thousands of positions in the motor industry. French car manufacturer Peugeot closed a plant in Coventry, central England, in April, moving 2,300 jobs to Slovakia.