Eric Lee

ericlee@labourstart.org

This article appears in Jungle World today.

Bei seinem Indonesien-Besuch in der vergangenen Woche entschied der ehemalige britische Parlamentsabgeordnete George Galloway offenbar, das weltweit bevölkerungsreichste muslimische Land könne eine gesunde Dosis des guten, alten Antisemitismus gebrauchen. Im vergangenen Jahrzehnt hat sich der Irakkriegsgegner einen Namen als Großbritanniens führender Verteidiger arabischer Diktatoren kurz vor ihrem Abgang gemacht. Er war ein großer Bewunderer Saddam Husseins und scheint auch ein Fan von Bashar al-Assad und Mahmoud Ahmadinejad zu sein. In Jakarta machte er sich anscheinend Sorgen darüber, dass die Indonesierinnen und Indonesier der heiligen Sache der Zerstörung des einzigen jüdischen Staates nicht die nötige Aufmerksamkeit entgegenbringen, also ermutigte er sie, ihre Bemühungen zu verstärken. »Ich sagte ihnen, dass es in Jakarta vielleicht keine israelische Botschaft gibt, aber Starbucks gibt es an jeder Ecke und dort wird die israelische Flagge geschwenkt«, wies Galloway die indonesischen Muslime netterweise auf ein naheliegendes Ziel für antiisraelischen Protest hin.

Offenbar glaubt Galloway an die Mär, dass Starbucks von jedem verkauften Latte Macchiatto einen gewissen Anteil an die israelische Armee spende. Die Profite des Unternehmens würden verwendet, um Waffen mit weißem Phospor zu kaufen. Solche Behauptungen kursieren im Internet. Dass es sich bei dem berüchtigten Brief von Howard Schultz, dem Gründer von Starbucks, in dem er all dies zugibt, um eine Fälschung handelt, ist ausreichend belegt. Das Gleiche gilt für die »Protokolle der Weisen von Zion«, doch das verhindert nicht, dass sie die Bestsellerlisten quer durch die muslimische Welt anführen. Galloway reist weiter durch Asien.

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity.

The opening scene of Michel Hazanavicius’ new film, “The Artist”, is a movie within a movie.

It’s the final moments of a fictional 1927 silent film. The hero is being tortured, and those paying close attention will see that the torturers are Russians. (The dials on their machines have Cyrillic characters.)

The hero breaks free, rescues the girl, and flies off to freedom. His last words, which appear as a title card, are “Long live free Georgia!”

My guess is that Hazanavicius was looking for something that would seem authentic in the 1920s, something sufficiently obscure that it would have an air of being genuine. To have the hero of this adventure fighting for Georgia is about as obscure as you can get.

I’m sure audiences in the USA are convinced that it must have something to do with the state of Georgia.

But we know better.

In the 1920s, the plight of the formerly independent Georgian republic was very much in public view. And this was particularly true on the left.

Georgia, which had been a province of the tsarist empire, declared independence in 1918 and was led by Mensheviks.

In 1921, the Red Army invaded — probably at the instigation of Stalin, and without the knowledge of Trotsky.

The Mensheviks were quickly routed and many of their leaders fled to exile in western Europe.

From there they continued a long struggle to delegitimise the Russian occupation of their country. A large part of the struggle took place within the international socialist movement.

Leading socialists from across Europe travelled to Georgia in its final months, the most prominent of these being Karl Kautsky.

Kautsky wrote a book praising the Menshevik success in Georgia, citing it as an example of a democratic socialist alternative to Bolshevism. He contrasted the multi-party system, free press and independent trade unions of Georgia with repressive regime in Soviet Russia.

Trotsky countered with a vitriolic attack on the man formerly known as “the pope of Marxism” and defended what turned out to be the first successful Soviet invasion of a neighbouring country (others were to follow).

In Britain, the cause of Georgia was so well-known and widely discussed that the TUC eventually sent a trade union delegation to investigate. For years the Georgian social democrats in exile participated as honoured members of international socialist congresses.

Just three years after the Red Army seized Tbilisi, the Georgians rose up in a violent insurrection against Soviet rule. Leaders of the Menshevik People’s Guard led the uprising, but it was eventually crushed.

Within a decade there was little left of the Georgian Mensheviks in their homeland.

The new Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was the kind of place where psychopath like Lavrenty Beria could rise to power. Beria was so successful in brutally terrorising the local population that Stalin eventually promoted him to head the secret police throughout the Soviet empire.

Though the Mensheviks died off one by one in exile, the memory of Georgian independence never did. Georgia remained for decades a centre of anti-Soviet activism, culminating in mass street protests in the 1980s.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Georgians proclaimed independence and chose as their symbol the flag of the short-lived Menshevik republic. They made the date of the Menshevik’s declaration of independence their national holiday. And for a few years at least, the constitution of the Menshevik republic was back in force.

But the 1990s were to prove a turbulent time in Georgia, with civil wars and a series of failed leaders.

The country is currently ruled by the right-wing Saakashvili regime, whose record on workers’ rights has attracted the attention of the international trade union movement.

One of the first things Saakashvili got rid off when coming to power was the hated crimson flag of the Mensheviks.

To Michel Hazanavicius, the slogan “Long live free Georgia!” must have seemed to be as obscure as it gets, a historical curiousity, something that would appeal only to trivia buffs.

But to socialists, “free Georgian” is a reminder of a historical tragedy.

This article appears in the current issue of Jungle World.  A Russian translation is here.

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Im Parlament Kasachstans wird es künftig mehrere Parteien geben. Das ist nach der Wahl am Sonntag so sicher wie der Sieg der Regierungspartei Nur Otan, denn Präsident Nursultan Nasarbajew wollte es so. Die nun im Parlament zugelassenen Parteien stehen dem Regime nahe. Oppositionelle Kandidaten waren auch diesmal nicht zugelassen. Dass Nasarbajew es für nötig hält, seinem Regime den Anschein von Pluralismus zu geben, wird auf die wachsende Unzufriedenheit im Land zurückgeführt.

Deren deutlichster Ausdruck ist ein seit Monaten andauernder Ölarbeiterstreik in Zhanaozen. Am 16. Dezember kam es in dieser westkasachischen Stadt zu Demonstrationen und Unruhen, mindestens 16 Menschen wurden getötet. Noch immer gilt dort der Ausnahmezustand. Der Hintergrund des Konflikts ist umstritten. Den Unterstützern des trotzkistischen Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) zufolge gab es ein nicht provoziertes Massaker an unbewaffneten Streikenden durch die Polizei. Das CWI zog sogar Parallelen zu den »Juliaufständen« des Jahres 1917 im russischen Petrograd. Damals kam es zu spontanen Demonstrationen von Soldaten und Arbeitern gegen die Übergangsregierung. Die Bolschewiki versuchten, die Demonstrationen zu dominieren und die Regierung zu stürzen. Diese reagierte sehr repressiv und schoss Hunderte friedliche Demonstrierende nieder.

Aktivisten kasachischer, russischer und internationaler Gewerkschaftsbewegungen kritisieren jedoch das CWI. Die streikenden Ölarbeiter seien manipuliert und von Außenstehenden provoziert worden, was zu den tragischen Ereignissen geführt habe, bei denen Gebäude niedergebrannt wurden und Gewalt von beiden Seiten ausging. Auf der einen Seite steht der Vorwurf des Verrats, auf der anderen der Vorwurf, dass sich eine kleine Gruppe linker Abenteurer mit kasachischen Oligarchen, die gegen das derzeitige Regime opponieren, verbündet und eine Massenbewegung in eine unausweichliche Niederlage geführt habe.

Der Streik der Ölarbeiter begann im Mai des vergangenen Jahres. Sie verlangten anfangs höhere Löhne, seit kurzem gehört zu ihren Forderungen auch die Nationalisierung des Ölsektors. Ihrem illegalisierten Streik wurde von Anfang an mit Gewalt und Repression begegnet. Eine die Arbeiter vertretende Anwältin wurde zu sechs Jahren Haft verurteilt, einige Unterstützer und ihre Kinder fielen Morden zum Opfer.

Doch gebe es, so eine Stellungnahme der International Union of Foodworkers, keine gewählten Repräsentanten der Arbeiter, die mit der Unternehmens- und Staatsführung verhandeln könnten. So sei eine Gelegenheit für von außen kommende Gruppen wie das CWI entstanden, eine Führungsrolle einzunehmen und zu beanspruchen, für die Arbeiter zu sprechen.

Paul Murphy aus Irland, ein Abgeordneter des EU-Parlaments und Mitglied des CWI, flog in die Region, traf die Streikenden und hielt Pressekonferenzen ab. Kritiker des CWI sagen, Murphy habe den Streikenden Hoffnungen gemacht und sie so dazu gebracht, anzunehmen, dass sie nur seine Unterstützung und keine eigene Organisation bräuchten. Er und seine Gruppe spielten eine führende Rolle in der Kampagne, die sich nicht nur gegen die autoritäre Regierung Nursultan Nasarbajews richtete, sondern auch gegen die internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung.

Das hat den Verbänden eine Solidarisierung nicht erleichtert. Sie fühlten sich nicht willkommen, so dass selbst auf das Massaker am 16. Dezember keine Reaktionen folgten. Zum Beispiel sträubte sich die für den Ölsektor verantwortliche globale Gewerkschaftsföderation ICEM dagegen, sich mit einem Konflikt zu befassen, in dem sie ständig das Ziel von Attacken seitens des CWI ist. Eine andere globale Gewerkschaftsföderation, die International Transport Workers’ Federation, gab eine klare Stellungnahme ab, die das Massaker verurteilte.

Der internationale Gewerkschaftsbund ITUC, dessen Präsident Michael Sommer vom DGB ist, reagierte auf die Gewalt vom Dezember mit einer ausgewogenen Erklärung, ohne die ganze Schuld dem Regime zuzuschieben. Ähnlich äußerte sich Sharan Burrow, die Generalsekretärin des ITUC: »Die Gewalt muss sofort aufhören, und alle Beteiligten müssen anerkennen, dass die einzige Lösung für den Konflikt ein offener Dialog und Verhandlungen sind.« Das kann wohl nicht als eine klare Anklage einer Seite verstanden werden.

Videos von jenem Tag können kaum zur Aufklärung beitragen. Auf einigen sind Zivilisten, wahrscheinlich Streikende, zu sehen, die auf einer Bühne Lautsprecher und andere Gegenstände umstürzen, die für die Feierlichkeiten am Unabhängkeitstag vorgesehen waren. Andere Videos zeigen schwerbewaffnete Polizisten, die Demonstrierende jagen und auf sie schießen. Niemand streitet ab, dass mehrere Gebäude niedergebrannt wurden, unter anderem das Rathaus und der Hauptsitz des Ölunternehmens. Unterstützer der Streikenden behaupten, dass jegliche Gewalt von der Polizei provoziert worden sei.

Auch wenn die internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung in ihren offiziellen Handlungsmöglichkeiten beschränkt ist, unterstützte sie inoffiziell zwei Online-Kampagnen des Gewerkschaftsportals Labour Start. Die zweite, erfolgreichere Kampagne, die am Tag der Morde in Zhanaozen begann, wurde von internationalen Gewerkschaftern betrieben. Sie fordert von der Regierung Kasachstans, »die Gewalt gegen friedlich protestierende Ölarbeiter und ihre Familien in Zhanaozen sofort zu beenden«.

Eine unabhängige Berichterstattung ist in Kasachstan nicht möglich, überdies versuchte das Regime mit aller Macht auch andere Kommunikationskanäle im Land auszuschalten. Aber kürzlich erschienene Berichte weisen darauf hin, dass die ersten Schätzungen, die die Regierung bezüglich der Anzahl der Getöteten und Verwundeten veröffentlicht hatte, zu niedrig gewesen sein könnten. Selbst wenn die Umstände der Straßenkämpfe unklar bleiben, steht außer Frage, dass die Polizei exzessive Gewalt angewendet hat.

Derzeit hat sich die Lage in Zhanaozen beruhigt. Die Arbeiter hielten wieder friedliche Demonstrationen ab. Trotz des Ausnahmezustands wurde am Sonntag auch hier gewählt, ein Kor­respondent der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters berichtete jedoch, es herrsche ein Klima der Angst in der Stadt. Nach offiziellen Angaben erhielt Nur Otan in Zhanaozen 70 Prozent der Stimmen.

Seit der Unabhängigkeit von der Sowjetunion vor 20 Jahren regiert Nasarbajew ohne legale Opposition, daran wird auch diese Wahl nichts ändern. Die Organisierung einer unabhängigen Gewerkschaft in dem für das Überleben des Regimes essentiellen Ölsektor wäre eine ernste Herausforderung. Derweil diskutieren Aktivisten in Russland und anderen Ländern die nächsten Schritte. Man einigte sich darauf, Geld für die Familien der Streikenden zu sammeln, insbesondere für diejenigen der Getöteten und Verwundeten. Und trotz der standhaften Feindseligkeit des CWI setzen globale Gewerkschaften ihre Kampgane fort, um Druck auf das Regime Nasarbajews auszuüben. Es muss für die Gewalt verantwortlich gemacht werden.

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity.

I bought tickets back in November for the “Building the revolution” show at the Royal Academy and was given a 10:00 AM admission time. When I phoned to ask if it would be possible to come later, they told me not to worry — the show was not very popular and it wouldn’t be crowded at any time.

So the good news is, they were wrong.

When I finally did get to see this exhibition, subtitled “Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935”, it was absolutely packed with people. Clearly many are interested in the subject.

On a cold Saturday afternoon in London, there were hundreds of people of all ages walking past an enormous model of Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International and then wandering through a series of rooms showing everything from an industrial bakery to special housing constructed for the Cheka, the Bolshevik’ secret police.

And delighted as I am that so many people seem to be interested in one of the most revolutionary experiments ever undertaken, I left the exhibition feeling deeply disturbed. Let me explain why.

The idea that revolutionary politics, that changing the world, is somehow a part of the distant past, something that we modern people can look back it the same why we look at earlier civilizations, is somehow … wrong.

This exhibition with its cold, academic descriptions, was filled with people staring at photos of buildings — both as they were in the 1920s and as they are now — and then commenting on what they liked and didn’t, just as one would do with, say, Etruscan statues in the British Museum or medieval paintings of the infant Jesus.

“I like that one,” someone would say. “And that’s very ugly, isn’t it?” asked another.

But the ideas expressed — if one bothered to read the texts — were extraordinary, and deeply relevant to our time. This is not ancient history, and shouldn’t be presented as such.

For example, there was whole section devoted to early Bolshevik experiments with collective housing for workers. These massive structures included vast communal areas, common dining rooms, kitchens, laundries, libraries, kindergartens, wide hallways to allow social interaction, and relatively small sleeping areas. I was reminded of the Israeli kibbutzim, but on an urban scale.

It also struck me how so much of this architecture — like the kibbutz itself — seemed to define its vision of new society in terms of the liberation of women. Women living in such housing would not be expected to cook and clean, or even to be the primary carers of children. All of this was done collectively.

The involvement of revolutionary architects in the design of bakeries and garages and dams was also extraordinary. It expressed the idea that the places ordinary people spent their days — their work-places — should be designed thoughtfully, with some degree of respect for the people who work there.

The exhibition gave no indication of what preceded these buildings — we didn’t see what workers’ housing looked like under the tsarist regime, or what factories looked like before the 1917 revolution.

Without that context, and without any political understanding of the ideas of Marx and Lenin, the exhibition was like any other, showing any random country and period of history.

Nor does the decline of experimental art and architecture in the increasingly Stalinised Soviet Union get an explanation. We see Lenin’s absurdly grandiose tomb, the resting place of his mummified corpse to this day. And we’re shown details of housing built in Moscow for the party elite, the new ruling class. There is no sense that there is some kind of break here, that the revolution has been defeated, replaced by a new kind of class society.

If one knows something of the history of revolutionary Russia, the experience of seeing such works can be quite moving. There was a genuine sense of artistic and cultural liberation in the first years of Bolshevik rule.

But taken out of context, all one sees in this exhibit are objects, which one may judge according to individual tastes.

The great ideas that stood behind them — equality, freedom, social justice — have disappeared from view.

This article appeared as the Global Labour Column on 10 January 2012. Post any comments you may have there.

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In November 2011, the military dictatorship in Fiji jailed two of the country’s most prominent trade union leaders. Following the launch of an online campaign sponsored by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and run on the LabourStart website, some 4,000 messages of protest were sent in less than 24 hours. The government relented, the union leaders were freed, and the campaign suspended. A month earlier, Suzuki workers locked out in India waged a successful online campaign through the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) and LabourStart. Almost 7,000 messages flooded the company’s inboxes, and after only a few days, a compromise was reached.
The spectacular success of those campaigns is the culmination of a decade-long process of building up the campaigning capacity of the international trade union movement – specifically that of the ITUC and the global union federations (like the IMF), and the role played by LabourStart in that process.
This short essay will focus on the rather narrow topic of global online labour campaigning, to see where we have been, where we are now, and to speculate where we go next. Read the rest of this entry »

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity.

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In an interview this week for an Australian newspaper, the leader of the world’s trade union movement made an interesting observation.
“Have progressive parties lost the narrative that connects them with working people in many countries?” asked Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
One would have expected a diplomatic answer — something along the lines of, well, it varies from country to country, clearly some labour and social democratic parties remain closer to their roots, and so on.
But that is not what she said. Burrow, who chose not to pursue a political career in Australia and instead moved to Brussels to take over the ITUC, was blunt:
“The answer is yes, absolutely,” she said. Labour and social democratic parties have lost their connection with the working class.
So next you’d expect her to say that it was really important for those parties to rebuild those connections, that unions and the parties they founded needed to re-connect, and so on.
But once again, her answer was surprising.
“My job is not to worry about the parties,” she said, “but to build the issues on which we can base a conversation with workers.”
“We” in this case means the trade union movement.
She did have one final comment for the politicians, though.
“If any smart politician who shares even an ounce of our values can’t get elected on the basis of that conversation, that is, frankly, pretty despairing stuff.”
I found her comments very interesting coming in the wake of November 30th public sector strike here in the UK — a strike which went ahead without the support of the Labour Party or its leader, Ed Miliband, who was elected with the support of unions.
Trade unionists in a number of countries are finding that the political parties acting in their names are doing very little on their behalf. In some cases, this is causing unions to turn inward. When Sharan Burrow says “my job is not to worry about the parties” it’s a clear expression of that feeling.
And the feeling is global. In the USA, many trade unionists have expressed a deep frustration with the Obama administration. Unions had a long shopping list for the first Democrat to win a national election since 1996 — and the top of their list was passage of labour law reform. They didn’t get it. Banks got bailed out, but unions got very little.
Marxists like to point out that the Democratic Party in the USA is a bourgeois party, so that’s pretty much what we can expect.
But this is a naive explanation. Unions in the USA play roughly the same role with regard to the Democrats as British unions do with regard to the Labour Party here. Sometimes, Democratic politicians even sound more left-wing than their British labour counterparts.
There are even worse cases like these — such as the Greek social democrats managing an austerity drive that triggered massive street protests. One imagines that Greek trade unionists have little time for “progressive” politicians these days.
There are, of course, notable exceptions. In Canada, the union-backed New Democratic Party which did extremely well in the most recent federal elections, threw its parliamentary support behind postal workers and others in recent national disputes.
One doesn’t have to be a supporter of the Fourth International to get that there is a growing rift between the working class and the social democratic and labour parties that speak in its name.
To hear a moderate, mainstream trade union leader like Sharan Burrow make comments like that shows just how far things have gone.
At the end of the interview, Burrow says “we believe in non-violent protest, absolutely.” But then she adds, “if there’s no capacity to resolve the problem, then we are on the streets.”
The question is not how mainstream left parties can re-connect to their base. Burrow is right about that. It’s a bigger problem.
And yet her comments leave many unanswered questions.
Can unions go it alone? Do they not need to be engaged in politics?
Can parliaments and local governments be left in the hands of those who have no sympathy for and no connection to the working class?
Is being “on the streets” a strategy?
The willingness of trade union leaders like Burrow to speak the plain truth opens the possibility of having a serious conversation about these issues in the labour movement. And that’s a conversation in which Marxists have something to say.

This article appears in the most recent issue of Our Times (Canada).

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What has new media ever done for us?

I assume most Our Times readers will be familiar with Monty Python’s comedy film “Life of Brian” and, in particular, the “What have the Romans ever done for us?” scene. I’m reminded of that scene whenever I’m asked to talk about new media and the labour movement.

In it, actor John Cleese famously asks his fellow Jewish revolutionaries, metaphorically, what the Romans ever did for them. And the answers come rolling in. Aqueducts. Roads. Sewers. It’s a bit like that when asked, metaphorically or not, what the Internet has ever done for the trade union movement. Answers do come to mind fairly quickly. For instance, the Internet’s role as a campaigning tool is now pretty much universally acknowledged. And no one would tell a political party such as the NDP to not “waste money” on new media.

We all now understand how vital the new technology is for our work. Or do we?

First of all, what do we mean by “new media”? If one thinks only of the very latest fads, such as Twitter or BBM (Blackberry Messenger), one misses the point. The most powerful, effective and proven of the new media is email. Good old-fashioned email.

In doing dozens of online campaigns over more than a decade, I’ve learned that nothing comes close to email as a tool for reaching out to people, educating them and mobilizing them. So, our definition of “new media” has to include tools like email, but also the web, social networks like Facebook, and micro-blogging or instant messaging platforms like Twitter and BBM.

Unions have used this technology for three decades now. In fact, it was pioneered in Canada. The first time a union used mobile computing technology in a strike was back in the early 1980s in British Columbia (during a B.C. Teachers’ Federation strike). The first nationwide union computer communications network was the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ Solinet (founder, Marc Belanger), set up back in the mid-1980s.

Pioneering use of the new technology was also made more than two decades ago by what are now called “global union federations.” They adopted email in part to reduce their communications costs as international phone calls, certainly back in the 1980s, were prohibitively expensive.

So, after decades of using the technology, which is now a proven and accepted part of our tool-box, the question is: are we using it to its maximum? Do we really understand what it is all about? I don’t think so, and let me explain with a metaphor.

Imagine if someone today in Canada were to invent a rocket that could, at a reasonable price, travel at the speed of light, taking people anywhere in the solar system almost instantly, and even beyond. What would you say if the reaction of the public was, “Cool! Now we can get from Toronto to Ottawa in an eighth of a second.”

One might argue that they were missing the point.

The Internet’s greatest power is the fact that, unlike almost any other communications medium, it ignores national borders. It travels at precisely the speed of light.

If I want to make a telephone call (which was once considered new technology) from, say, London, England to London, Ontario, the telecoms companies charge me for the privilege of crossing international borders. They charge me much more than if I were to make a telephone call within the UK. If I wanted to send a letter, the same would be true: it’s much more expensive to send a letter from country to country rather than within a country. (For those under the age of 50, by “letter” I mean a kind of printout of an email, put into something called an “envelope,” with a stamp on it. A stamp is a – well, forget it.)

Distance used to matter. Borders used to matter. But, if today I send an email, or even make a Skype call, from the UK to Canada, I am charged no more money than if I was sending an email or Skyping locally. In fact, I pay nothing at all, except for the Internet connection.

Distance has evaporated. Borders don’t exist. We can communicate in ways we couldn’t imagine a decade or two ago.

That doesn’t mean we can’t use the new technology within our local communities. Of course we can. I have built many websites for local trade unions in the UK, and they make great use of them. In the recent postal workers’ strike in Canada, which was backed by a huge online campaign on LabourStart, we saw some very effective use of new media.

But this is a rocket that can travel to other galaxies, too.

Let me give an example that’s hot off the press (an expression that will make no sense to the next generation and is barely understood today). In September this year, Indian auto workers employed by the giant Japanese multinational Suzuki went on strike. Suzuki responded brutally and the strike was a very difficult one, but, in the end, the two sides reached an agreement. On the day the workers returned to work Suzuki promptly broke the agreement, the strike resumed, and things got much worse very quickly. Shots were fired at strikers by company goons.

The union in India got in touch with the global union federation representing metal workers (based in Switzerland), who, in turn, contacted the UK-based news and campaigning website LabourStart, which I edit. Within hours, we had launched a global campaign in eight languages (including Japanese).

Seven thousand messages, some 20 per cent of them from Canada, poured into the headquarters of the Suzuki company. In the UK, Unite, a large manufacturing union, wrote to 90,000 of its members by email urging them to support the campaign. Less than 96 hours after the campaign went live, the company capitulated and reached an agreement with the union.

Maximum use was made not only of the web (which hosted the campaign) and email (used to send the messages), but newer social media as well. LabourStart’s own Feedback and Twitter accounts were used to spread the word quickly to thousands of trade unionists. And Suzuki’s corporate pages on Facebook and Twitter were quickly covered with messages condemning the company’s attempts at violent union-busting.

Much of the publicity for the campaign was done on the trade union movement’s own social network, the small but feisty UnionBook.

Obviously, it was not the online campaign that brought Suzuki to the bargaining table. It was the courage and determination of the strikers. But, according to the International Metalworkers Federation, the online campaign that LabourStart orchestrated played a vital role.

The new media are allowing some very old institutions, like the metal worker unions, to come alive in dynamic and exciting campaigns. They are doing this by crossing borders and creating, above all, a new way of thinking, a new consciousness, for the thousands of trade union activists who participate in these online struggles.

The new media are creating the conditions for the birth of something new, but which is also something old. It used to be called “proletarian internationalism.” The next generation will no doubt come up with a better name.

(A German language version of this article appeared in Jungle World.)

Two weeks ago, I found myself standing together with 62 locked out workers in front of a metal factory in Gebze, Turkey, just outside Istanbul. The workers, members of Birlesik Metal-IS (the metal workers union), have been denied access to the factory since July. A line of riot police stood just inside the factory gates, shields at the ready. Other police were situated inside the factory itself, with a large police bus parked just outside.

The company, a Turkish subsidiary of GEA (a transnational company based in Bochum, Germany) claims that the workers held three illegal strikes lasting 15 minutes each. The “strikes” took place during the workers’ tea breaks and lunch. Turkish labour courts and an independent investigator appointed by the company have already ruled that GEA is in the wrong, but they’re refusing to budge.

What makes the dispute interesting is that GEA is considered to be a “responsible” employer — one which is not usually considered to be hostile to unions. In fact, it is one of a number of companies which have signed international framework agreements with the Geneva-based International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF). This is significant because though it is a German company, some 60% of its employees are based in other countries.

The framework agreement, signed in 2003, acknowledged the company’s social responsibility and the basic right of all employees to establish and join unions. It explicitly committed the company to respect ILO Conventions No. 87 (Freedom of Association) and No. 98 (Right to Collective Bargaining). That agreement was followed by similar framework agreements between the IMF and other German-based multinationals including Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler.

In locking out the 62 workers in Gebze, the management of GEA were clearly in breach of that agreement. They have refused to meet with the union or the IMF.

One of the speakers on the picket line that day, Kirill Buketov of the International Union of Foodworkers, said that GEA’s decision to ignore the framework agreement and attempt to break the union in Turkey was a “declaration of war” on the international trade union movement.

Adnan Serdaroglu, the leader of Birlesik Metal-IS said to the demonstrators “if GEA has enough courage, then let GEA go to Germany and do the same to German workers — dismiss the German workers because they are unionised.”

At the request of the IMF, LabourStart subsequently launched an online campaign demanding that the employer meet with the union, reinstate the sacked workers, and reach an agreement. The campaign is running in a dozen languages, including Arabic and Hebrew — and German [tinyurl.com/clvdo38].

The IMF is currently pressing both IG Metall and the DGB to play a more active role, and to mobilise their own members to support the locked-out Turkish workers. So far, very little support has been shown by German workers and their unions for the locked-out workers at GEA.

This is a very familiar story.

Just two months earlier, another global union federation — UNI Global Union — asked LabourStart to launch an online campaign targeting another German employer, Deutsche Telekom.

That campaign protested Deutsche Telekom’s refusal to allow employees at its US subsidiary, T-Mobile USA, to join a union.

According to the Communication Workers of America (CWA), the employer used threats and scare tactics to block efforts to organise. In a campaign the union describes as “brutal”, its says that “management distributes memos and manuals that instruct managers on how to stop organising efforts and orders its security guards to harass workers interested in organising. Job advertisements for human resource managerial positions stress union avoidance. Upper level management refuses to even talk to counterparts at CWA.”

UNI says it has sought to engage Deutsche Telekom through an international framework agreement that would set the rules for global behaviour by the company. “While such an agreement was close to fruition under former Deutsche Telekom management”, says the union, the “current management has refused to sign any document that impedes its campaign of union avoidance.”

UNI might well learn a lesson from the experience of the International Metalworkers Federation: the signing of a framework agreement is no guarantee that workers rights will be respected.

Some other global union federations have put a freeze on signing such agreements, as the experience with employers like GEA shows that they are no substitute for union power on the ground.

Meanwhile, working through UNI and LabourStart, the CWA teamed up with Ver.di in a campaign to flood the email inbox of Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann with messages demanding that the company “enter into an agreement to end all interference and respect the right of the workers to decide for themselves about whether or not to join the union.”

Over 10,000 people sent email messages to Obermann, who had one of his subordinates write a long response to each one, defending the company. UNI issued an equally long and detailed rebuttal. At the moment, there is a stalemate.

The two struggles, at T-Mobile USA and GEA in Turkey have a lot in common. The employers are German companies that are unionised at home and that have had dialogue — and in one case, an agreement — with global union federations to respect workers’ rights abroad.

They are not like Wal-Mart, a company that notoriously does not allow unions in any of its stores and that will even close down a store to block unionisation.

Deutsche Telekom and GEA are typically “enlightened” post-1945 German companies, apparently keen to cooperate with unions in a social partnership that benefits everyone.

Except that when they can, they behave just like Wal-Mart.

To put it bluntly, when forced to deal with powerful unions like IG Metall and Ver.di, these employers carefully cultivate a warm and fuzzy image of social partnership.

But when dealing with much weaker unions in the USA or Turkey, they behave like thugs — bullying and threatening, sacking workers and blocking union organising campaigns.

But they are vulnerable, as the response of Deutsche Telekom to the email campaign has shown. They don’t want the bad publicity and the possible loss of sales revenue that might result. If the online campaigns were to grow even larger, particularly with the support of thousands of German trade unionists and other activists, it might be enough to get them to back down.

And of course email campaigns are not the only weapons unions have.

IG Metall and Ver.di, which have so successfully defended the rights of their own members at home in Germany, can perhaps put a little bit of pressure on the two companies as a gesture of solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Turkey and the USA.

What are they waiting for?

This article appeared in Jungle World.

Zwei Tochtergesellschaften deutscher Unternehmen in der Türkei und den USA gehen gegen gewerkschaftlich organisierte Mitarbeiter vor, obwohl die Firmen internationalen Rahmenvereinbarungen zu Arbeiterrechten zugestimmt haben.

Als die Delegation eintraf, stand an den Fabriktoren eine Reihe Polizisten mit Schutzschilden. Weitere Polizisten hielten sich in der Fabrik in Bereitschaft, ein großer Polizeibus parkte davor. Ende November standen 62 ausgeschlossene Arbeiter vor einer Metall verarbeitenden Fabrik außerhalb Istanbuls. Den Arbeitern, Mitglieder der türkischen Metallgewerkschaft Birlesik Metal-IS, wird seit Juli der Zutritt zur Fabrik in Gebze verwehrt.

Das türkische Unternehmen, eine Tochtergesellschaft der transnationalen GEA Group AG, die ihren Sitz in Bochum hat, behauptet, die Arbeiter hätten drei Mal jeweils eine Viertelstunde gestreikt. Diese »Streiks« fanden jedoch während der Tee- und Mittagspausen der Arbeiter statt. Türkische Arbeitsgerichte und ein vom Unternehmen eingesetzter unabhängiger Ermittler haben bereits entschieden, dass die GEA im Unrecht ist. Aber das Unternehmen weigert sich, die Aussperrung zurückzunehmen.

Die GEA gilt offiziell als »verantwortungsvoller Arbeitgeber«, sie ist eines der Unternehmen, die die internationalen Rahmenvereinbarungen mit der International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) unterzeichnet haben. Das ist bedeutsam, denn obwohl es sich um ein deutsches Unternehmen handelt, sind fast 60 Prozent der Belegschaft in Betrieben in anderen Ländern beschäftigt.

In der Rahmenvereinbarung, die 2003 unterschrieben wurde, bekennt sich das Unternehmen zu seiner sozialen Verantwortung und dem Grundrecht aller Beschäftigten, Gewerkschaften zu gründen und ihnen beizutreten. Explizit verpflichtet die Vereinbarung dazu, die Konventionen 87 und 98 der International Labour Organization (ILO) zu respektieren, die das Recht auf freie Assoziation und kollektive Verhandlungen festschreiben. Diesem Abkommen folgten ähnliche Rahmenvereinbarungen zwischen der IMF und anderen transnationalen Konzernen mit Sitz in Deutschland, wie Volkswagen und Daimler-Chrysler.

Indem sie die 62 Arbeiter in Gebze aussperrte, verstieß die Konzernleitung gegen diese Vereinbarung. Sie weigerte sich, mit Vertretern der Gewerkschaft oder der IMF zu verhandeln. Ki