THE DOWNFALL OF THE WCL 51

The WCL was born in June 15-19, 1920 in The Hague (Netherlands) with the foundation
of the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions IFCTU.
The federation represented 3.366.400 workers affiliated to 10 confederations
in de following countries: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Hungary,
Italy, Netherlands, Swiss and Czechoslovakia.
President was the Swiss Jozef Scherrer.
Secretary General was the Dutch P.J.S. Serrarens.
( see:  J. Insausti, Head of the Press and Information Service of the WCL,
"50 Jaar Internationale vakbewegingsactie in dienst van de werknemers,
Het WVA van 1920 tot 1970", WCL magazine Labor Nr.6, 1970)

We are still working with the documents that were used as reference papers for the WCL debates about the future relations between WCL and ICFTU. Times had changed. Were earlier debates about ways of cooperation, now it went further and it was about a possible merger or creating a complete new international organisation between ICFTU (the big one), the WCL (the small one) and the loose ends that roam here and there in the international trade union movement, the so to say national trade union confederations (some of them ex-communist) which had no international connections.

The IFCTU Secretariat in Utrecht, Netherlands after it had been looted
by the German secret police Gestapo

Paragraph 2 titled “United Action” gives an overview of the development of the relations between WCL and ICFTU. We read that since its Congress in Caracas (1989) and later on in Mauritius(1993) “the WCL put forward a proposal on the creation of a WCL-ICFTU united front. This concept was later on transformed into “united action”, mainly meant with the ICFTU but without excluding other organisations.”

In 1946, one year after the end of World War II, the IFCTU Congress gathered
in Amsterdam and celebrated its 25th birthday.
Originally it had to be held in The Hague where the IFCTU had been founded
but the city still stayed in ruins.
During this Congress a resolution was adapted
in which the IFCTU declared itself prepared to cooperate
with other international trade unions,
such as the World federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). (see: J. Insausti, page 21)

It is written in the document that after the end of the Cold War, with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Empire, the ICFTU became more respectful to the WCL:

- In 1993, the WCL regained a seat in the ILO Governing Body.

- TUAC Vice Presidency has been in hands of Belgium's ACV/CSC.

- Several agreements between the ICFTU and WCL were made in 2002 to organise common meetings at the IMF and World Bank level.

-Since 2000, the WCL, participates, together with Global Unions, in the World Economic Forum of Davos.

- The ICFTU decided to work together with the WCL in 2001, within the framework of the annual organisation of the World Social Forum.

- “Their exist good cooperation links with the ICFTU at the United Nations level. The ICFTU's veto on the participation of the WCL and its organisations in Global Compact (a UN initiative to make agreements between multinationals and trade unions) has been recently lifted.”

On the left WCL Secretary General August Vanistendael
and on the right WCL President Gaston Tessier
who brought between 1949 and 1960
the WCL to Asia, Africa and Latin America.(see: J.Insausti, page  31)

However within the ILO, the main UN institute for employees and employers to develop a social dialogue on world level, the WCL was marginalized: “The issue of the ILO and the elections for the Governing Body remains of the essence. The Workers' Group working procedures (simple majority) supply the ICFTU with a de facto monopoly-based situation, which leads to the sub-representation of the other members. This situation can also be seen in the other ILO structures and specially, within ACTRAV.” (Point 2.3)

To my opinion the so-called sub-representation of the WCL in the ILO was not only because of the monopoly-based culture of the ICFTU but also a lack of WCL to give priority to staff its ILO liaison office in Geneva with experienced and skilled lobbyist. In stead, young and unexperienced staff was hired with the argument that they were not expensive. More is said about the ICFTU “monopoly-based culture” in paragraph 2.4: “However, in general terms, it can be said that despite the progress and efforts made by its leaders, the ICFTU is still characterized by a monopoly-based culture, which becomes stronger at the intermediate executive level.”

But in spite of these negative ICFTU positions towards the WCL, there were also some positive ICFTU attitudes:

– “In November 2002, the WCL Secretary General was invited to a Global Unions meeting held in London, in order to give his opinion on international trade unionism. The discussion was heated, but open and respectful of the different standpoints.”

– “During the ETUC Congress in Prague -in April 2003- the public appeal made by the ICFTU Secretary General (Guy Rider) and addressed to the WCL constituted an implicit acknowledgement of the latter as a key factor for the unification of the international trade union movement.”

– “The ICFTU has cast aside the idea of an outright WCL-ICFTU merger. Likewise, the creation of a new organisation -in compliance with an ICFTU-WCL agreement – open to confederations with no international affiliation, and aimed at strengthening an international trade unionism undermined by neoliberal policies, is a novelty within the history of our relationships...” (Paragraph 2.5)

It seems clear that the ICFTU, under the leadership of Secretary General Guy Ryder, had developed a new strategy for the unification of the WCL-ICFTU, that served also as the focus point from which could start unification of trade union confederations world wide, including also members and former members of the communist World Federation of Trade Unions WFTU (with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the WFTU had lost the Russian Trade Union Federation FNPR as its main sponsor).

On a certain level, this strategy is based on the analysis that with the collapse of communism world history has come to an end and that we are entering now the era of global capitalism (neoliberalism). This hypothesis was more or less introduced by Francis Fukuyama's essay “The End of History?”, published in 1989 in the international affairs journal 'The National Interest'. It is a new variant of the old Marxist notion about the end of history but then in the opposite way, toward capitalism and not towards socialism.

THE NOTION of the end of history is not an original one. Its best known propagator was Karl Marx, who believed that the direction of historical development was a purposeful one determined by the interplay of material forces, and would come to an end only with the achievement of a communist utopia that would finally resolve all prior contradictions. But the concept of history as a dialectical process with a beginning, a middle, and an end was borrowed by Marx from his great German predecessor, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. ( chapter 1 of Fukuyama's “The End of History?”)

On top of this, with this new strategy, the ICFTU presents the old Marxist dream of workers' unity in a new jacket. The famous communist slogan “Workers of the world, unite!” of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their Communist Manifesto (1848), comes to life again but now under the leadership of mainly social-democratic oriented trade unions organised within the ICFTU. The officially reason for the unification on world level was of course not this old Marxist slogan but the much more pragmatic idea of “Strengthening the international trade union movement”.  

THE DOWNFALL OF THE WCL (PART 16)

During the VOST Congress in Kiev (1995) I spoke to Mr. Mark Tarnawsky of the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI) in Kiev. In the picture above we see standing from right to left Marjon Oostveen from the Dutch CNV, Pol Buekenhout from Belgium ACV, VOST President Olexander Djoulik and myself.

During several trips I tried to come in touch with people of the Free Trade Union Institute / AFL-CIO. In Moscow it failed. In Lithuania, I spoke with a member of the Free Trade Union Institute in Poland during an evening meal at the home of LWU President Aldona Balsiene. It was a friendly meeting from which I have deduced that the LWU received support from the FTUI. I believe, that after its initial enthusiasm for the WCL, that support ultimately led to the affiliation of the LWU to the ICFTU.

At the 4th Congress of VOST in February 1995, I spoke to Mark Tarnawsky of the Free Trade Union Institute in Kiev. VOST joined the WCL after its second congress in 1993, where Olexander Djoulik had been chosen as President of VOST. Tarnawsky acknowledged that their support to several unions in the Ukraine had been unsuccessful. According to VOST the FTUI had been too generous with financial support, resulting in infighting in stead of cooperation between the new unions.

It became clear that the AFL-CIO favored support to new democratic unions, ie unions that have had nothing to do with the former Communist trade union-nomenclatures. The ICFTU however maintained good contacts with what was going to be called post-Communist trade unions, ie the former Communist confederations that after the fall of Communism were democratized. Sometimes members of these old communist union-nomenclatures managed to maintain all or part of their positions.

In the picture above Jan Deremaeker sits next to Amrita Sietaram (now working at the ILO). Next to Jan we see Christophe Jussac from the French CFTC. On the head of the table is key note speaker Professor Lindemans (Belgium) at the seminar "WCL for new trade unionism after communism" in Budapest 1993.

We should not forget that many West European trade union leaders had already for some time before the downfall of communism, contacts with members of the Communist trade union-nomenclature from the time of the detente during the Cold War. Also members of the WCL had such contacts, as for example the Belgian ACV. Jan Dereymaeker, in these years head of the International Relations Department of the ACV, writes about this in his article "Chronicle of the ACV policy in Eastern and Central Europe" published in De Gids op Maatschappelijk Gebied (The Guide to Social Life , Number 2, 1997, p.197 )

" Like many other Western European trade unions ACV also had in the past contacts with (political controlled) organizations behind the Iron Curtain. A number of countries had put tentative steps towards liberalization ( Hungary , Yugoslavia ... ) and it was also common in the European trade union movement to take part in the peaceful coexistence rather than to give in to the - too cold - war ideology . That led to diplomatic trade union contacts which led sometimes to mutual invitations of 'observers ' or ' journalists ' ( but never guests or participants ! ) at congresses. Here and there study visits were made ( to be informed on the ' developments in the field' ) and during the anual ILO Conference, with the simplicity and clarity of the then world, there was mutual consultation: we as WCL or together with the ICFTU and on the other side the WFTU . " (The WFTU has survived the fall of communism with a limited number of small communist unions)

About the WFTU the following is said in Wikipedia: "The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was established in 1945 to replace the International Federation of Trade Unions. Its mission was to bring together trade unions across the world in a single international organization, much like the United Nations. After a number of Western trade unions left it in 1949, as a result of disputes over support for the Marshall Plan, to form the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the WFTU was made up primarily of unions affiliated with or sympathetic to Communist parties. In the context of the Cold War, the WFTU was often portrayed as a Soviet front organization. A number of those unions, including those from Yugoslavia and China, left later when their governments had ideological differences with the Soviet Union." 

The pursuit of international trade union unity is as old as the trade union movement itself. It started already in the time of Marx and Engels, the ideological founders of the Communist trade union movement. It goes back to the Marxist analysis that due to the global development of capitalism a global class struggle will arise. International trade union pluralism as a condition for the development of democratic trade unions never has been an option in this view.

In the foreground right August Vanistendael during the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of CLAT in Caracas, Venezuela. Behind him Dr. Arnold van Niekerk. The woman next to Vanistendael was the assistant of the Committee. August Vanistendael was president of an Evaluation Committee of the three Dutch NGOs Cebemo (now Cordaid), Novib and ICCO. These three NGOs funded development projects of unions affiliated with CLAT, as well as projects of CLAT itself. Dr. van Niekerk and myself (on the left) were members of that committee.

Since the WCL was an independent and autonomous world organization, the Americans had little or no effect on the WCL policy. The State Department however has tried to interfere directly with the WCL or should we say tried to intimidate the WCL? August Vanistendael (1907- 2003), general secretary of the International Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (predecessor of the WCL) , told with a certain pride about his experiences with the North American State Department. When he began to expand the WCL to Latin America, Asia and Africa in the 50s, he was invited several times to visit Washington. It was made clear to him that the WCL was not welcome in Latin America. The State Department considered Latin America as the exclusive sphere of influence of North America, also with regard to the trade union movement.

Apparantly the nineteenth century Monroe doctrine, according to which European intervention in Latin America was out of the question, was still alive. However, Vanistendael just went through and strengthened WCL ties with Latin American unions and those in the rest of the world. The U.S. togethether with the AFL-CIO must have been unhappy with the establishment of the Latin American Christian Trade Union Confederation CLASC (the predecessor of CLAT) in 1954. Especially when the CLASC started to attack the US involvement into Latin America as a new kind of imperialism that hindered Latin America to determine its own future. CLASC considered the former Inter- American Organization of Workers ORIT (member of the ICFTU) dominated by the AFL-CIO as an instrument for US intervention in Latin American trade union affairs.

to be continued