Trade unions as agents for peace and justice

Speaking at FIM CISL’s XXI national congress in Naples yesterday, industriAll Europe’s General Secretary Judith Kirton-Darling reaffirmed the importance of trade union work on peacebuilding. This will be a key theme in debates and votes in our forthcoming Congress in Budapest next week, where motions and draft work priorities have been tabled.

Judith Kirton-Darling reiterated that in today’s volatile context in which economic insecurity and deindustrialisation, war and increased threat of conflict, extreme weather events and climate change, and rising social inequalities, trade unions have a vital role to play in building bridges between workers and unions to steer a route to a more sustainable, peaceful and fair future. This is all the more important as authoritarian and far right forces aim to stir conflict, to divide and scapegoat.

The panel debate included interventions from international union and Catholic leaders considering the role of trade unions as agents of peace building. There was a strong focus on the critical situation in Palestine and Israel.

It was recalled that the root of trade union values is the notion that an injury to one is an injury to all, and that lasting peace depends on social justice and democratic participation. Judith Kirton-Darling stressed that it is more urgent than ever that this principle is put into action through mandatory human rights due diligence along global supply chains to build practical solidarity to ensure human dignity and decent work. The ongoing union work to support trade unionists in Myanmar was highlighted.

She repeated industriAll Europe’s demand for a proactive and comprehensive industrial policy and investment package to ensure that Europe is able to decarbonise without deindustrialising. Reiterating that a single-minded focus on increased defence spending would not save Europe’s industrial workers or production fabric, and yesterday’s failed recipes of austerity, labour-market flexibility and privatisation will only exacerbate the problems we face.

Our collective security depends on social stability and economic security. Investment and industrial democracy are antidotes to our economic instability. Europe needs an industrial policy fit for the challenges of our time, bound with social conditionalities on all public funding and procurement that ensure the maintenance and creation of good quality jobs and worker participation from plant to international levels.

“Another way is possible” – this was also the slogan of the Congress, but a strong and united trade union movement is a prerequisite.

The debate will continue in industriAll Europe’s Congress next week in Budapest which will focus on ‘Uniting workers for an industriAll future’.