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It was in 1920 that was founded, in The Hague (Holland), the international trade union organisation currently known as World Confederation of Labour - WCL. Born in the European cradle and inspired by the basic values of Christian humanism, this organisation was constituted under the name of "International Federation of Christian Trade Unions". As was stipulated in the first Statutes, the new international trade union organisation wanted to protect, in an independent and autonomous way, not only the concrete workers' interests but also values such as the dignity of the human being, the priority of labour, democracy, justice and solidarity across the national borders. The Dutchman Pieter Jozef Serrarens was the first secretary-general, the Swiss Joseph Scherrer the first president.
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One of the first challenges the young international confederation had to take up, was the rise of fascism and Nazism, which accompanied the deep economic crisis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It had to pay for its opposition to the right-wing totalitarian ideology with the arrest and deportation to the concentration camps of its German leaders and with the ban on its Italian affiliate by Mussolini. In a short period of time it lost its member organisations in Austria, Germany and Italy. During the war the Gestapo destroyed its secretariat in Utrecht (Holland) and persecuted its political leaders.
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The Treaty of Yalta put an end to the second world war and would change for several decades the face of Europe and the world. For the IFCTU this found expression in a considerable narrowing of its recruitment basis. It was indeed unable to re-establish the relations with the Christian trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe. It was faced, further, with the choice between either continuing on its way or joining the World Federation of Trade Unions which the trade unions of the winning countries had constituted in London, in September 1945. At an extraordinary Congress, assembled in Brussels in October 1945, the delegates turned down the invitation to integrate into the WFTU. They did not believe in this unity which they deemed too artificial, and decided to maintain the IFCTU.
Four years later the predictions of the IFCTU came true: the WFTU split up, and a third international confederation saw the light of day: the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Again invited to merge, the IFCTU replied after long discussions that it preferred to remain independent. Besides the fact that it defended trade union pluralism, the IFCTU turned down a trade unionism subordinate to the cold-war ideology. Its autonomy enabled it to criticise the perverse effects both of communism and capitalism, and to defend the idea of a society system in which the worker can develop in all his or her dimensions.
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To the post-war IFCTU a policy of expansion outside Europe became a necessity. The first new affiliations were effected in Canada and Vietnam. Trade union confederations from Africa followed soon. In 1958 the first non-Europeans made their entry into the Executive Committee. But presently people came to realise that a strictly "Christian" trade union movement stood hardly a chance of expansion, particularly in Africa and Asia.
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Stimulated by the Belgian August Vanistendael who succeeded Serrarens as secretary-general in 1952, the IFCTU made ready to cross the borders of narrow denominationalism and to establish an international trade union of faithful workers. In this context an important seminar took place in Saigon (Vietnam) in 1959, centred on the question whether the great world religions have a common or convergent ethical basic principle capable of guiding the social behaviour of their followers.
The affirmative replies heralded profound changes within the IFCTU. The result was that in 1968, at the 16the Congress in Luxembourg, it transformed itself into WCL. A new Declaration of Principles was adopted. It stipulated clearly that the WCL was guided by "either a spiritual concept based on the conviction that man and universe are created by God, or other concepts that lead together with it to a common effort to build a human community united in freedom, dignity, justice and brotherhood".
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| Renovation of the world trade union movement |
The change of name and the new Declaration of Principles opened the door to expansion in the Third World. The increased participation of its representatives stimulated in the political bodies of the WCL a lively debate on the causes of underdevelopment in the South and of the economic domination by the North. This debate was conducive to the elaboration of an anticapitalist, antitotalitarian and anticommunist concept of development and society. The WCL developed, on the basis of solidarity, a strategy aimed at the liberalisation of the workers and the peoples. That is why it invited, as early as in 1977, the other democratic international confederations to react against the dispersion of the world trade union structures and to initiate a process of renovation while respecting the identity of each and everyone. This need for a trade union action co-ordinated at world level - the cause to which the WCL devoted itself in the 1980s - figured again on the agenda of the latest Congress in Mauritius, in 1993. The WCL launched a new appeal to build, by means of concrete concerted actions, a genuine international trade union front to be in a better position to fight the disastrous consequences of the globalisation of the economy for the workers.
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| The 25th Congress in Romania, Bucarest (2001) |
It will the first time that the WCL Congress meets in a Central or East European country. One of the criteria for affiliation to the WCL is indeed independence of states and companies. Before the fall of the totalitarian regimes, the countries in Central and Eastern Europe were marked by an institutional proximity between party, state and trade union, and by the absence of trade union freedom.
Before the dark times of Nazism and Fascism, followed by the communist domination, important trade unions from Central and Eastern Europe were members of the WCL. Then, the first independent trade union from the region to affiliate to the WCL was Solidarnosc, from Poland. In 2001, the WCL has affiliates in Bulgaria, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania. In this last country it has established a regional liaison office.
Romania is one of the Central and East European countries with the best trade union structures, which explains the choice of Bucharest as venue of the Congress. The WCL has two affiliates in that country: the CNS Cartel Alfa and the CSDR (confederation of democratic trade unions of Romania). Bogdan Hossu, President of Cartel Alfa, is WCL Vice-President for Central and Eastern Europe.
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In the last few years the WCL adopted a critical attitude toward the neoliberal model of economic globalisation the legitimacy of which it questions. The WCL - member of the International Council of the World Social Forum - recommend a social development that goes beyond simple respect of workers’ rights and the elimination of poverty. To achieve this it opts for a regulatory role of the state and an equitable distribution of goods and means of production.The WCL plays an important role of contact and exchange among its affiliates, thus reinforcing the action of everybody in a global economy. It intervenes with institutions and decision-making bodies in order to reach a development model that does justice to the human being, the communities and the people.
The WCL represents the workers within the United Nations, its regional committees and its specialised agencies. It has obtained a consultative status, category A, within the ILO (International Labour Organisation), the United Nations Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC), particularly the Human Rights Commission and the Commission on Multinational Enterprises, and other international organisations.
The Human Rights and International Labour Standards Department intervenes with national and international negotiators in case of violation of workers’ rights. Lastly, the WCL provides information on problems in connection with the world of work.
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