AFL-CIO, U.K. Unions Join Forces Against Union-Busters

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/02/22/afl-cio-uk-unions-join-forces-against-union-busters/

U.S. corporations are exporting more than consumer goods these days—they’re increasingly exporting their anti-workers practices as well. In countries such as the United Kingdom, which still enjoys a high rate of union membership, more and more employers there are beginning to use American union-busters.

In one of the first concrete steps to continue the global solidarity of the historic Global Organizing Summit in December, the AFL-CIO and the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) are joining forces to try to eliminate the vicious intimidation practices employers use to prevent workers from seeking a better quality of life.


TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, right, and Stewart Acuff.


AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber signed a joint agreement Feb. 12 to work together to eliminate the intimidation of workers who want to improve the quality of their families’ lives by forming a union.

The two union federations agreed to share information about the activity of union-busting firms in the United States and Britain, develop a shared database of union-busting activity and create “Busting the Union-Busters” training materials. Both will jointly lobby governments and relevant international bodies to restrict the activities of the union-busters. Click here to read the agreement.

The TUC reports that one of America’s worst union-busting firms, the Burke Group, has opened offices in Britain and across Europe.

According to Barber:

The underhand tactics employed in the shadowy world of the union-busting consultant are proving increasingly attractive to a handful of employers in the U.K. This is a U.S. export that U.K. workplaces could well do without. Thankfully, the activities of the union-busters are still small scale here compared with the influence they exercise in the States, but it’s important that we do all we can to stop them dead in their tracks. That’s why our agreement to work together with the American unions to counter the propaganda put about by the union-busters is so important.

FULL story at link.