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Is the New Global IndustriALL union Amazing?

Peter sez:

I am not sure what is 'amazing' about this new merger, sent out by Eric Lee, creator of both UBook and LabourStart.

It follows the merger of the ITUC and WCL into the ITUC, 2006, as well as various other national and international mergers over the last decade or more. It may be a welcome adjustment to the reality of de-industrialisation and falling union numbers in the Northern homeland. But, surely, the problem with the ITUC, Global Unions and their related NGOs is not their size but their understanding of the present stage of capitalist (under-)development, their pyramidal structure, their belief in 'social partnership' with increasingly aggressive capitalists and states, and their relationship to succeeding waves of international - and increasingly anti-capitalist -social movements over the last 10-20 years.

So I will be more interested to see whether such issues are addressed. They have not been in the ITUC.

Now read on...

Next week, something amazing is going to happen in Copenhagen.

More than a thousand delegates representing 50 million workers in 140 countries are meeting to establish a new global union federation for the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors.

The new federation is going to be called "IndustriALL".

LabourStart will be there, and we'll have coverage on our site. RadioLabour is also providing daily coverage from Copenhagen.

And you can play a role too by tweeting your greetings to the founding congress of the new federation.

To do so, tweet your message on Tuesday, 19 June and make sure to use the hashtag "#IndustriALL".

Tweets with that hashtag are going to be projected on a large screen for all delegates to see.

If enough of you do so, Twitter will take notice, and term "IndustriALL" will trend. (You can learn about trending on Twitter here.)

And if you've not yet done so, please follow LabourStart on Twitter - it's the quickest way to get breaking global labour news stories to your mobile phone or computer. Simply visit http://www.twitter.com/labourstart and click on Follow. You must have an account on Twitter and be signed in to do this.

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