The General Secretary of the ITF, David Cockroft said in the Federation's press release:
pressure on the Honduran military to allow the country to revert to
democracy. We are therefore calling on our member unions to consider
taking lawful action to defend the rights of the citizens of Honduras.
That is likely to include protests that centre on Honduran ships. All
such actions will be peaceful, will respect the rights of the seafarers
on the ships, but will send a clear message to those in authority – for
now – in Honduras, that the outside world does not accept their seizure
of power.
While some multinational lenders have halted aid programs to Honduras, the US has so far only suspended military support.
Due to their integral role in facilitating trade, port and transport workers can play a crucial part in supporting their union counterparts around the world. For example, I have written on this blog before about how port workers throughout Southern Africa have organized important solidarity efforts with workers in land-locked Zimbabwe and how the members of ILWU on the West Coast of the US have gone on strike to protest the war in Iraq.
In addition to working together to fight political repression, transport workers have also collaborated to win union recognition and collective bargaining rights with multinational corporations. For example, US bus workers for the UK-based company FirstGroup worked with the ITF and the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) in the UK to fight strong anti-union tactics by the company in this country. FirstGroup was determined to keep their US operations union-free, but through a strategic corporate campaign, workers in the UK (including support from unions in Ireland and the Netherlands) were able to unionize 15,000 new workers for FirstGroup in the US -- that is over a third of FirstGroup's yellow bus workerforce here and that percentage is still growing. This recent article from Transport International Online does a great job of outlining how this exciting Transatlantic campaign worked -- and you can find out more about this ongoing fight on the Teamsters' School Bus and Transit Workers United website.
These recent examples show the power that workers can have when they join together around the world. These kinds of actions will continue to be more important than ever as working people everywhere are fighting the race to the bottom, abuses by common mulinational corporate employers, the continued trend of precarious work and the negative impacts of the global economic crisis.
Comments
re: Transport Workers Show Global Solidarity in Honduras and Els
Great post, i've already subscribed to your feed. thanks.