CALL OF THE MILLIONS # 12

the global challenge

special issue on global unionism today

book review p 2; interview p7.

This issue of cotm is devoted to global

unionism and organising and based
around the book 'Global Unions, Local
Power' by Jamie McCallum.
The book takes an extended look at the
nuts and bolts of what it calls the most
successful global campaign so far,
conducted against the security firm G4S.
In it McCallum brings together detailed
field research and a new view of labour
internationalism. Looking at the major
unions involved America's Service
Employees International Union (SEIU), the
Union Network International (UNI) and its
South African and Indian affiliates the
book tracks the achievement and
implementation of a global framework
agreement (GFA) across different societies.
This set of processes involved crucial
changes internal to the union bodies too,
which is summed up as a shift to a focus
upon organising.....

We begin with context. In the era

of globalised production, McCallum
argues that unions are having to
rethink their traditional focus upon
workers rights, acting instead to
contest the rules under which TNCs
operate, through 'governance
struggles'. In this contest, unions try
to change the TNC rule base to gain an
organising foothold, aware that state
powers and international law are today
too weak to secure workers legal
rights. In pinpointing these 'rules of
engagement' as a new site of struggle,
unions have tried three avenues of
advance social clauses, codes of
conduct and GFAs.

The organising story begins in USA

where the SEIU was looking to repeat
the organising success of Justice for
Janitors in a rapidly changing private
security industry. Tackling the US
sector meant dealing with Europeanowned companies and a reorientation
of the campaign onto a global footing.

SEIU also found it had to build the

organising capacity of its allies and
The last of these is the most
partners before they could be
promising, leading to direct bargaining effective campaigners. The
between unions and TNCs on labour
globalisation of its 'organising model'
standards throughout global supply
- uniting direct action with detailed
chains. A GFA directly challenges
corporate research was the way this
company power in the absence of
change came about.
workers rights - they construct new
rules and regulations that reorder the Different industrial relations
labour-capital relationship creating traditions loomed large here, creating
a framework for global union
some dissonance and obstacles e.g.
campaigns and long-term industrial
the more consensual industrial
strategies to build power across a
relations found between the UK's
sector or region.
GMB and G4S were threatened by the
McCallum pays particular attention confrontational American approach.
to the implementation of the G4S
In other settings things moved more
GFA, examining how it was used in
smoothly, Australia's LMHU eagerly
different states in different ways,
adopting the new organising model to
including its spur to new organising
revive their fortunes.
across Africa, USA, Brazil and
Australia.

Most important here were the links

SEIU forged with the UNI global
union federation, establishing a global
partnership that proved vital in its
battles with the Swedish security
firm Securitas and G4S. This involved
funding for UNI projects where GFAs
could not be easily established,
supplying training for reps and advice
on running corporate campaigns.

In the G4S case SEIU brought their

corporate campaigning techniques
centre stage. The strategy targets an
employer's financial interdependencies, political linkages and their
reputation through hard-hitting
negative publicity. This 'air war'
precedes the 'ground war' of
organising workplaces - a two-stage
process that effectively excludes
rank and file input from a strategy
designed from above, as McCallum
recognises.
In its early battles with Securitas,
SEIU worked with Swedish partners
STWF to gain a neutrality agreement
that allowed it access to workplaces.

In the US it came up against far

stronger opposition from the
Wackenhut corporation, forerunner of
G4S. When industry merger created
the second largest private firm in the
world in 2004, SEIU's response was
to commit to organising G4S on a
global scale.
They began with a struggle against the
casualisation of 15,000 guards in
Indonesia. By 2006 SEIU and the UNI
had established the G4S Alliance to
push forward their campaign,
especially within the Global South.

The signing of the GFA in 2008

led to far deeper global involvement
when South Africa and India were
chosen as the first sites to push the
GFA forwards. The Alliance had relied
on negative publicity, around the
equation of workers rights as human
rights, to pressure the employer into
signing the GFA. This focus continued
in the implementation phase. In terms
of its depth and scope the agreement
is the best achieved so far in the
arena of global organising.

It contained grievance and dispute

resolution mechanisms, higher
standards for workers and a
neutrality agreement allowing unions
access to organise G4S sites.
Organising advances around the globe
UK, Poland, Uganda, Malawi, Nepal
and DR Congo - were to follow.

drifted into a service union mentality.

The campaign here was as much about
reviving SATAWU as organising G4S
sites in fact the latter depended
upon the former.
After a damaging strike in 2006,
marred by violence, SATAWU moved
closer to the UNI and laid down an
organising plan with its financial
support. New committees of activists
were established at key sites, major
cities now became the focus of the
campaign. Despite this, prior to the
introduction of the GFA, SATAWU
had made little progress.

McCallum then turns to a detailed

analysis of the GFA's progress in
South Africa and India. It is evident
immediately that different industrial
relations systems play an important
role in this process: global does not
equal universal. Instead the outcomes The situation then began to change
register a plea for historical
and the union slowly gained a foothold
specificity, in theory and practice.
on G4S sites. Internal changes within
SATAWU were central to this success
story, a shift to a mode of organising
activity that paid off in terms of
membership and participation. As
McCallum notes this change was
powered both from above and below,
and from the outside by UNI. Local
and global forces are acting interdependently here.

In South Africa, the private

security sector had grown enormously
in recent years, helping turn G4S into
the largest employer in the whole
continent. SEIU UNI worked with
the SATAWU union, an outfit that
had made unsuccessful efforts to
organise G4S in the past, and then

Over in India the story was very

different, the campaign passing
through the fracturing prisms of local
industrial relations and political
affiliation. UNI SEIU worked with
two separate unions divided by
geography and political traditions, via
an umbrella coalition. The outcomes
were strikingly different.
In Bangalore, the PSUG partner
followed the organising model quite
closely, although the employer refused
to abide by the neutrality agreement
and continued to retaliate against reps
and activists.
Over in Kolkata, the CITU partner
resisted the UNI plan. Instead it
relied on its historic role as labour
broker for a vast informal workforce
to recruit members and political
lobbying of the Communist state
government for industrial relations
reforms. It even refused to prioritise
G4S as an organising site ahead of
other employers. The continued noncompliance of G4S with the GFA made
the political lobbying route even more
important.
This shows, says McCallum, that
different actors can use the GFA for
different kinds of gain. In India the
massive scale of the security sector
and a fractured industrial relations
context mean that the organising and
mobilising of its workforce remains a
huge challenge today.

In the final chapter of the book

McCallum draws out the theoretical
implications of his research. The G4S
campaign signals a new kind of labour
politics: the potential for workers to
flex their associational power in
'governance struggles' despite
operating in a context where their
structural power and legal rights are
weak.
Challenging the rules and winning the
GFA gave the unions involved a way
forwards both in respect of the
immediate employer and over the
wider industry. As an instrument of
union power, the GFA works best, says
the author, when it is part of a wider
industrial strategy than as a stand
alone procedure.
The impact of the GFA in the US
demonstrates this well. Though SEIU
only recruited 1000 new members, it
was vital to get a foothold within G4S,
in order to make organising other
major employers and the rest of the
US private security industry easier,
which in turn duly happened.

The interplay of global and local

factors is a second feature of the
G4S case. They combine in different
ways, translating global-level gains
into national contexts. The local
context can however determine the
specific strategy used by global unions
as the Indian example showed us.
And institutional and organisational
innovation within unions themselves
at both levels is a vital part of the
process. McCallum argues it is a
precondition to effective campaigning,
as the alliances SEIU forged here
show.
Most surprising among the lessons of
G4S is that has not proved an easy
model to emulate. The cost and
complexity of global organising a la
G4S have been too daunting and
SEIU itself has taken a step back
from the global stage.

...So plenty material to

reflect on there. We decided
to take things a step further
and ask Jamie McCallum a few
questions about his work.........
1 There are plenty critics of SEIU,
but you are not entirely of that view.
Given their role in conducting and
funding the most successful
transnational labour campaign so far,
why did they then 'move away' from
global organising? Were they right
to do so?

I dont think they have completely

moved away from it. I think that
some people within the union thought
that some of the campaigns were
long shots that wasted scarce
The case is controversial for another resources.
reason. Corporate campaigning and
Im not an insider and I dont have
governance struggles are top-down
access to all the debates that take
initiatives, putting a premium on
place. But my understanding is that
effective leadership and control a
many within SEIU feel that global
loose group of autonomous bodies
organizing is the future of their
could not have organised this mega
union.
TNC. Such a conclusion is massively
I think that UNI has maintained
out of step with the current focus on many of their commitments to
rank-and-file organising. As McCallum winning global framework
sums it up:
agreements. Other unions have
victory is not as simple as winning; it
backed away in more demonstrable
is about building the power to fight in
ways than SEIU.
the first place.

2 Is top-down, centralised control

the only way to wage war effectively
against TNCs today? What about the
work of other unions who have
developed smaller bilateral projects
that seem successful e.g. U E
FAT, or the UK's GMB alliance with
its Latin American partners under
the Bananalink banner?
No, its not the only way. But I am
less sanguine about a completely
uber-democratic (bottom-up)
movement against transnational
capital. Scholars are far more likely
to challenge me on this point than
unionists because unionists
understand that centralization and
consolidation of resources can
prepare them to fight in a better
way.

I think a lot of critics of the topdown model underestimate the

logistics and complexity of managing
and sustaining a global campaign, or
even one involving just two or three
countries. The necessity to keep all
the players on the same page is
critical and so far I havent seen it
work without a fair amount of
centralization.
3 Targeting TNC investors seems an
unlikely route for unions to build
workers power. Are you convinced
that these 'corporate campaigns'
deliver the goods, with the
investment community playing the
role of our surprising allies?

Great question. I agree that

corporate campaigns are unlikely to
build worker power. They can,
And to be clear, I dont know of
many wars against TNCs. There are however, create conditions more
campaigns, many of which are fairly favorable for workers to take action.
No one really thinks that corporate
tame and tepid. Youre right, those
campaigns are going to save labor.
alliances you mention seem
successful, but I dont have much
data to suggest that they are.
Theres a group I am starting to do
some work with called ReAct in
France. It has had some success with
smaller bilateral campaigns in
French-speaking Africa.

But what are the goods, as you put

it? The goods, in my opinion, is a
strategy that allows workers to take
action. I think corporate campaigns
have the potential to do that. This is
what I mean when I say governance
struggles. It allows unions to
exercise a degree of control over
what employers can do and this is
very important.

4 To the uninitiated the sketch of

Indian trade unions and industrial
relations seems almost too fantastic
for words - 66,000 registered trade
unions!! Were you surprised by the
scale and complexity of this stony
organising terrain?

The global-local dynamic is a major

issue, yes. I was primarily interested
in the influence of UNI and SEIU,
and that was pretty clear. Most
unions in India that worked with
them trusted them and did
transform to some degree. One was
more or less opposed to SEIU on
Yes, very surprised. Like many
some quasi-ideological grounds. But a
young(ish) scholars from the states, fair amount of change happened
I went to India a little nave, even
within SEIU too. As we talked about
though Id read a lot and talked with above, these campaigns put pressure
a handful of organizers before going. on the internal machination of the
The number of unions in India is
union.
possibly more like 100,000 actually.
But it wasnt just in India. UNI and
Its just unfathomable.
SEIU helped to build an organizing
Some people in India were
disappointed with UNIs role there, program at multiple unions in Europe,
with SEIUs role. They thought they the UK, Australia, South Africa,
should have accomplished more. But Poland. It was fairly committed to a
strategy of local union restructuring.
many of their in-country partners
This could be seen as bullying but I
were hamstrung by a lack of
think that would be a simplistic way
resources or state repression or
their own ideological blinders. Given of looking at it. SEIU clearly had
the circumstances, Im surprised as valuable experience, personnel, and
strategy to offer. The degree to
much happened as it did.
which SEIU, and some parts of UNI,
5 In the interplay of global and local are considered to be the
dynamics that is a key finding from organizers in Europe is a testament
your research, it often seems as if it to how attractive or useful its model
was.
is the global players who call the
shots. In the Indian example, who
changed most CITU or the UNI?