N° 120 / - 1 February 2001
Philippines: trade action seminar
Senegal
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The Confederal Congress of the UDTS was held in Dakar on 29 and 30 December 2000. In his fraternal message to the Congress delegates General Secretary Willy Thys assured the participants of the WCL’s solidarity with the Senegalese workers in their struggle for genuine social progress. He stressed the fact that the UDTS, led by its general secretary Alioune Sow who is also vice-president of the WCL, has always remained loyal to the values of independent trade unionism.
Niger
On 12-14 January 2001, the Confédération Nigérienne du Travail (CNT) organised in Niamey its first statutory Congress; the Congress theme was "The CNT facing the challenges of globalisation". WCL general secretary Willy Thys sent the delegates a message, conveying the WCL’s fraternal greetings. He stressed the importance of building strong, democratic and independent trade unions aimed to develop a new social contract, through an alternative to the absolute supremacy of the market and of competitiveness, as the WCL proposed at its latest Congress.
Philippines: trade action seminar
On 14-19 January 2001, a trade action seminar of the Asian federations was held in Manila (Philippines), in co-operation with the international trade federations of the WCL. Further details on this seminar will be given in Teleflash 121 of 15 February 2001).
Colombia : seminar of the CGTD
The Confederación General de Trabajadores Democráticos (CGTD), the Colombian WCL affiliate, organisation colombienne de la CMT, organised a seminar-workshop to assess the action of its Women’s Committee and to draw up its Plan of Action for 2001. The co-ordinator of the women’s action of the WCL, Kattia Paredes, took part in the seminar, which was attended by men and women from various sectors: dairy companies, liqueur companies, communications sector, informal sector, pensioners, child workers. The themes of the seminar were the new Protection of Motherhood Convention (no 183), the world women’s march, the WCL and the action in favour of women. Visits were organised to the CGTD centre for senior women and to a house for children and adolescents in an underprivileged district of Bogota, Ciudad Bolivar, where a remarkable work is done with over one hundred children and adolescents between eight and nineteen. Child workers in the informal sector, helping their jobless parents, take part in educational, leisure and trade union activities. Work is also done with the parents of these children in order to favour their return to school. The Instituto Nacional de Estudios Sociales (INES) plays an essential part in the training of these child trade unionists, future leaders who are strongly aware of the problems and can analyse their own problems.
Madagascar
On 8-14 December 20000, eighty peasants from eighteen regions in the country assembled at the Benasandratra Antananarivo training centre to take part in a national seminar and the 4th Federal Congress of FEKRITAMA, the Christian federation of Malagasy peasants, on "Peasants facing the current context of rural development". The Congress elected a new Federal Board for 2000-2004; H. Rakotomandimby remains the organisation’s general secretary. FEKRITAMA is affiliated to SEKRIMA, to the FEPATAA (African regional organisation of agricultural workers) and the FEMTAA.
Human rights violations - update
COLOMBIA : The WCL has received information to the effect that the company Bavaria SA and the Red Cross violate in their company ILO Convention 98, which Colombia ratified.
It has also been informed that the workers of Sinaltrabavaria and the Red Cross have been on strike for several days to denounce the fact that the written collective agreement is not respected. This is a new strategy of the employers in that country: in response to the platforms of demands of the workers they propose a contrapliego (counter-proposal) that would cancel the collective agreement. The WCL condemns these trade union freedom violations and has asked the president, Mr A. Pastrana, to urge both companies to observe the signed agreements.
Still Colombia. The WCL has just been informed of the murder attempt on Cesar Andrés Ortiz, 21 years of age, messenger of the Instituto de Estudios Sociales (INES) and co-ordinator of the Grupo Infanto Juvenil of the CGTD, affiliated to the WCL. Other youths, a child, a woman and a senior citizen were injured as well. Cesar Ortiz suffered a serious shoulder injury and had to be operated. The doctors fear that he will remain paraplegic. The WCL condemns these human rights violations and demands an inquiry so that the perpetrators will be punished.
CHILE : The WCL has been informed that the president of the company union at SOPRAVAL, Nelson Orellana, has suffered moral aggression and been threatened with dismissal and even death because he had been on strike for thirty days. The strike was called after the management had decided to halve the wages and to dismiss at least thirty workers.
The WCL condemns these trade union freedom violations and has asked the president, Mr R. Escobar, to urge this company to respect the physical integrity of each human being.
CUBA : In a press statement Amnesty International has denounced the attempts of the Cuban government to abolish trade union freedom and the freedom of meeting and association. The celebration of the 52nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was marked by the arrest and confinement of people who wanted to take part in the marches and rallies to celebrate Human Rights Day, 10 December. Most people arrested were released within 48 hours, but four of them were tried expeditiously and given a one-year prison sentence.
But the repression has been going on much longer already.
Amnesty International also mentions the case of Pedro Pablo Alvarez Ramos of the Consejo Unitario de Trabajadores Cubanos (CUTC), affiliated to the WCL, who since October 2000 has been among this number of dissident prisoners for having adopted a critical attitude to the Cuban government. He was arrested while preparing the first Congress of the CUTC (20-21 October 2000), and state security officers intimidated several leaders of the organisation all over the country.
WCL made its choice: Porto Alegre rather than Davos
Press Statement
The World Confederation of Labour has nothing to ask «the eminent persons who will take part, like every year, in the summit of Davos at the end of January». On the contrary, it has chosen to be present at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, taking the view that «the trade union world, rather than being a co-manager of the capitalist system, is part and parcel of a social movement to transform the predominant economic system ».
In an «Open Letter to a few World Leaders» Willy Thys, general secretary of the international trade union, affirms that «only voluntarist policies that are deliberately focused on social goals» make it possible to fight poverty and to attain development.
Enormous but unsatisfiable social needs persist in the world. Access to drinking-water, to education, to health care, to social infrastructures... indeed require, according to the WCL, worldwide programmes and resolute, job-creating public-sector policies favouring the local human resources in the first place. The dignity of the workers requires that the institutions formally recognise trade union freedom as a condition for its interventions, in the same way as the struggle against child labour, for instance. This now is far from achieved at the beginning of the century,: «The wealth gaps continue to widen, between rich and poor, between countries, between income from work and income from capital. The concentration of resources is growing. Trade union freedom remains in very many cases a remote prospect, and this not only in authoritarian or developing countries. In the call centres, the shops utilising clandestine migrants and the free export zones alike, the working conditions remain in too many cases unworthy of human beings.» In the opinion of the WCL, poverty is fought by creating dignified and decently remunerated jobs; not by social aid.
That is why the WCL, without rejecting the globalisation but indeed the shape it has taken, will go to the World Social Forum to contribute to turning the global economy into an instrument at the service of the well-being of the peoples, who are the majority this time.
CMT - WCL - WVA - TELE FLASH is a two-weekly information bulletin
containing brief trade union messages, edited by the press department of the WCL.
Responsible Editor: Willy Thys (e-mail: Willy.Thys@cmt-wcl.org)
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