[WA-News] Diversity Makes Stronger Trade Unions

[Jennifer Radloff]

>Diversity Makes Stronger Trade Unions
>by Suchita Vemuri
>
>The American Federation of Labor  Central Industrial Organizations
>(AFL-CIO) has initiated long-overdue measures to ensure more
>representation for women and non-white persons on affiliated union
>committees in the USA. For a trade union that has had a poor showing in
>non-white-non-male participation in decision-making, this is an ambitious
>initiative.
>
>Describing the initiatives, AFL-CIO committee member Roger McKenzie said
>that the federation is considering setting aside fixed quotas for
>representatives of migrant and female constituencies in the workforce in
>the USA. He was addressing a panel discussion on Using Diversity to
>Strengthen the Trade Union Movement as part of the World Conference
>Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance
>(WCAR) in Durban on August 29.
>
>In Denmark, Sweden, Brazil and elsewhere, all countries with sizeable
>migrant worker populations, the issue of representation for a voiceless,
>differentiated minority has become imperative for the trade union
>movement, if it is to retain its strength. Non-represented migrant
>workers, if they remain outside the fold, at below-minimum wage rates, can
>pose a threat to the unity and effectiveness of the trade union movement.
>Though this was not explicitly voiced by the trade union leaders from the
>North who addressed the meeting, it was implicitly understood.
>
>It was implicit in the words of the delegates from Denmark, Sweden, Brazil
>and others representing different unions in the USA.
>
>Mariamas of the Swedish Trade Union Federation (STUF) said that it was
>important for both the local communities and immigrants to be integrated.
>"Immigration, and the frequent injustices that accompany this  including
>unequal wages and unequal rights at the workplaces  are not the problems
>of the immigrants alone. Primarily, these are problems of the entire
>community that receives the immigrants and includes immigrant te workers
>themselves."
>
>Integration for STUF immigrant-members has been attempted painfully,
>drawing upon slow education process for both the local and immigrants
>populaces, for both local employer and co-worker communities. Swedish
>industry has a large immigrant workforce  varying between seven per cent
>in the construction industry and about 40 per cent in information
>technology firms.
>
>Guilda of the Women Workers' Union of Denmark, was forthright: "We have to
>ask ourselves  I ask myself," she said bluntly, "would I step down from my
>position of responsibility as a union official for someone else simply
>because the other person is an immigrant, in the interests of more
>representative leadership? I don't know how I'd feel about it." For the
>time being, however, in her work with immigrant workers she helps
>immigrants learn how to cope with their new circumstances and conducts
>leadership training programmes for immigrant union members.
>
>"There was one woman who learnt Danish astonishingly quickly," narrated
>Guilda, "when I complimented her on this, she said to me  'I didn't bother
>learning or speaking Danish before because no one asked me to express
>anything important'. This is what the training programme is about."
>Instances like this make the work meaningful.
>
>A number of unions in the Americas and elsewhere have begun taking the
>issue of diversity seriously. Among these, the Coalition of Labor Unions
>and Women, the Asia-Pacific Association of Labor, Pride At Work and the
>Labor Council of Latin America have conscious policies to ensure that
>diverse communities have proportionate representation on committees and
>various leadership positions.