Representatives from some 900 unions announced yesterday they would start organising workers in several countries to pressure multinational companies like retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for better benefits and wages.
"We're trying to use globalisation to raise working standards," Stephen Lerner, a director with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said on the sidelines of an international union convention held in Chicago. "Global companies have global responsibilities," he added.
Union leaders representing 15.5 million workers are meeting this week from Monday to Thursday under the banner of Union Network International (UNI), a Swiss-based federation, to devise strategies to organise workers to press for better pay, health care and other benefits.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has for years resisted unionisation of its 1.6 million workers, union representatives said.
UFCW director of global strategies Alan Spaulding
The 1.4 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, based in Washington, D.C., has made Wal-Mart its main focus, Alan Spaulding, director of global strategies, told Reuters in an interview.
A spokesman from Wal-Mart did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
The UFCW's goal is to organise workers at Wal-Mart in Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Britain and Germany. Some workers in Brazil, Argentina and Germany are already unionised because of Wal-Mart acquisitions.
The UFCW is also preparing to launch campaigns in Russia and India where Wal-Mart is poised to expand.
"Wal-Mart and other companies are saying that they have to lower wages and cut benefits to be able to compete in the 21st century," Spaulding said. "We are determined to stop that race to the bottom."
SEIU's Lerner said his union, which represents workers such as janitors and security guards, is targeting Group4 Securicor, a British-based security company with many US clients.
The 1.8-million member SEIU said it would announce later this week five countries where it would launch organising campaigns to pressure the company to allow its worker - wherever they are - to join the union.
Lerner said the union was in negotiations with Swedish security company Securitas to sign a global agreement allowing workers to unionise.
The SEIU was also holding meetings with janitorial and security unions in seven Latin American nations to decide which companies they would focus on in that region, Lerner said.
The Teamsters union, which joined UNI this year, is currently holding talks with DHL, the logistics and express delivery business of Germany's Deutsche Post.
The Teamsters want an international agreement that would allow non-union DHL contract drivers to organise in the United States, Thomas Keegel, the Teamsters' general secretary-treasurer, said in an interview.
There are already 9,000 union workers in DHL, Keegel said.
He said the Teamsters were also trying to organise workers in countries where Quebecor World Inc., a Canadian-based printing company, has operations.
"We are in a multinational corporate world," Keegel said. "We are asking for fairness ... and international organising is the only way that it can be done."