Trade Union Organizing for Social Justice

Follow up workshop on: “Trade Union Organizing for Social Justice”

Banjaluka, hotel “Bosna”, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 17-18 October 2008

Report

Introduction: The follow up workshop on “Trade Union Organising for Social Justice”, organized by the ITUC PERC SEE Office – Sarajevo and the South Eastern Europe Labour Educators Network (SEELEN), coordinated by the TUC “Nezavisnost”, was held on October 17th -18th 2008, in Banjaluka. The host of the meeting was the SSRS – Confederation of Trade Unions of Republika Srpska (KSBiH - Confederation of Trade Unions of Bosnia and Herzegovina). The activity is a follow up to the workshop held in October 2007, in Novi Sad. The ITUC PERC and the LO-TCO Sweden supported it.

The follow up workshop was attended by nominated representatives of the ITUC and PERC affiliates and partners in South-East Europe, who deal with trade union organizing in practice (e.g. an organiser, specialist of organisational department dealing with setting up of new union organisations or trade union campaigner responsible for bringing new members, from central, branch or industrial level). Workshop participants included representatives from Serbia (TUC “Nezavisnost” and CATUS), Montenegro (CTUM), Croatia (UATUC), Macedonia (UNASM and KSS), Bosnia and Herzegovina (KSBiH: SSRS and SSSBiH).

The representatives of the BSPK (Kosovo) could not attend the meeting due to difficulties on visa issuing for Bosnia and Herzegovina and the NHS (Croatia) excused for not being able to take part on the workshop due to other commitment. The SSM (Macedonia) did not respond to the invitation and was not represented at the workshop. The KSSH and BSPSH (Albania) were not invited to the workshop, due to the limited number of workshop languages.

Twelve Trade Union organizers or officers in charge for TU organizing from seven ITUC PERC partner organisations in SEE, along with two representatives of the ITUC PERC Brussels and Sarajevo Offices and an expert on organizing from the NSZZ “Solidarnosc” participated on the workshop. Mr. Sergejus Glovackas, PERC Coordinator for organizing was invited to the workshop but could not take part due to other commitments. The total number of participants was 17. (See attached list of participants).

The follow up workshop program included presentations and discussions on the PERC Task Force work on organising, the organizing policy and strategy of the NSZZ “Solidarnosz” and the experiences in organizing workers in small and medium size enterprises.

The meeting discussed the practices of membership building activities run by unions of SEE, and the place of organizing activities in the strategies of national centers. It also identified successful and not so practices of organizing campaigns The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Zoran Ristic, Director of the Center for education, research and privatization of the TUC Nezavisnost” and Jasmin Redzepovic, Team Coordinator, ITUC PERC Office for SEE - Sarajevo. Ms. Ranka Misic president of the SSRS and KSBiH introduced the meeting, highlighting the mission of unionization – promotion of social justice. She underlined

1 specific challenges the unions of SEE meet in the field of building unionism: non-respect of labour and other rights, antiunion attitudes of “new employers”, negative image of trade unions.

The PERC Trade Union work on organizing After the introduction of participants Jasmin Redzepovic made a short overview on the activities organized since the previous SEELEN workshop of October 2007. The follow up workshop was planned for March 2008 but he explained why it was more suitable organizing this activity in the second part of 2008, mentioning the summing up of data presented in the questionnaire on the preparation of a regional guide on organizing which was sent to all the organizations in the region in January 2008. The questionnaire was filled in by five organizations and the answers highlighted the importance of organizing workers in small and medium size enterprises. He informed also that the PERC initiated in the meantime the setting up of a Task Force on organizing http://perc.ituc- csi.org/spip.php?article81 that was initiated in May 2008, in Brussels, which will be working on the development of organizing strategies of PERC affiliates.

Anton Leppik made a presentation http://perc.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?article142 on the challenges on Trade Union organizing in CEE and the activities of the PERC and its Task Force on organizing. He explained the place of organizing policies in the PERC programme, underlining the general challenges unions are facing, organizing approaches the various unions of the region are practicing and the needs to initiate reforms in approaches to membership building and membership mobilization by those organisation that want to strategically priorities and implement active organizing policies. He referred to the discussions of the PERC task force that was initiated in May 2008, in Brussels. Results of a survey on the preparation of guidelines on organizing in SEE Zoran Ristic of the TUC Nezavisnost presented results of a survey that SEE organization took part in. The survey confirmed that structural reforms should be initiated to make unions efficient organizing force (reliance on external resources, voluntary initiatives, closeness of primary groups, good operations in public sector but almost totally underrepresented private sector, no efficient strategy) and make specifics of the membership building in the SEE region. According to some updated data on Serbia the Trade Union density in the private sector is around 13% and it is around 38-40% taking into account all the workers. He summarizes the findings of the survey by saying that (1) the Trade Union strategies on organizing in the region is not effective, (2) Trade Union structures are not adequate and appropriate for organizing workers who are engaged in atypical forms of labour, etc.; (3) young and women workers should be the main target groups and (4) the awareness raising among workers on trade union and workers rights need to be continued (see attached summary of the survey).

2 Organizing as a trade Union Strategy: The experience of the NSZZ Solidarnosc Krzysztof Zgoda of Solidarnosc presented work of its organizing team (five organizers and 1 researcher) and effective means of organizing private sector security guards (5000 out of 200000 working people) and the efficiency of people-to-people approach in building unionism, as well as public and community - including business community - campaigning to ensure the visibility of workers’ issues and unions as vehicles to address them by negotiations with management. The definition of Trade Union: “Trade Union is an organization of workers, who unite to build a power, which they need for improving their conditions of work and life.” He explained that they succeeded to sign Agreements with the main Security guard companies in the Warsaw region expanding their organizing work over a couple of years to the whole country. Each workers pays one percent of his/her net salary to the local trade union organization of which 40% are paid to the branch TU and 60% to the local/company TU, which uses the funds for organizing. He explained the mapping exercise on organizing workers in one company, the selection of organizers and their working conditions. Usually, organizers are persons who had some TU experience, working as shop stewards in local trade union organizations. Each organizer reports on daily basis to the branch TU the number of new organized workers and the branch TU keeps the data base on it. He described the successful cooperation with UNI – United Network International that supports projects on organizing in the filed of finance, commerce, etc. all over the world. He stressed that the organizing work should be targeted towards the workers and the management in a company, but also towards the company clients. The experience of Trade Union organisers in the SEE and lessons learned In group work the participants discussed successful organizing examples, including “expeditors” and “hairdressers” in Bosnia and Herzegovina and security workers in Croatia. They also discussed the challenges with which the Trade Unions are facing in the attempts to build unions:  no entry to the workplaces,  the working arrangements without contracts that puts workers outside of generally protective trade union rights legislation,  fragmentation and privatization of the enterprises that makes less people working and meeting together,  necessity to register primary group to ensure representation and bargaining,  short-time lived interest of workers in unions that shrinks when their issues are removed, role of the owners of the companies vs. managers etc.). The group agreed to elaborate couple of case studies for further analysis in the network and to submit them to the PERC task force before its next meeting. Report prepared by: Sarajevo and Belgrade, 25.11.2008

Jasmin Redzepovic Zoran Ristc Team Coordinator Director ITUC PERC Office for SEE Center for education, research and privatization, TUC “Nezavisnost”