ICFTU OnLine…
232/981030/ND

Youth week - the future of the trade union movement (1)

October 30 has been declared the world day of action for young workers. The ICFTU and the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) are marking the day with a series of initiatives to be carried out in over 100 countries, aimed at promoting the rights of young people at the workplace. ICFTU OnLine, the ICFTU’s dispatch service, will distribute articles throughout the week on the situation of young workers. To join the campaign, see the new Youth page on this site.

Give youth a chance. Let them give the trade union movement a future
(By Natacha David)

Brussels, October 30, 1998 (ICFTU OnLine): Trade unions are losing members fast among the young. The main reasons there are so few young people joining the union movement are: late entry onto the employment market, ever more precarious conditions, mass unemployment and young people joining sectors where traditionally the union movement has no base. A secondary cause is the image of the trade unions: they are getting older and they no longer speak the same language or meet the expectations of the young. As a result younger generations around the world only join a trade union when they face a serious problem and they want someone to come to their rescue.

Seen all too often as "outdated" or "boring", the trade unions have a negative, or non-existent, image in the eyes of the young, and trade union leaders are losing credibility as a result. "The trade unions must change their traditional image of class struggle. They must set objectives that are more attractive to young people. The media always portray us as "trouble makers", we need to change that image. We cannot wait for young people to come to the trade unions. It is the unions that must go to the young," insists Alex Aguilar, spokesperson and youth secretary for the TUCP (Philippines).

Reaching out to young people means forgetting the stereotypes, such as "young people aren’t interested in anything these days", "they have no appetite for activism", "they don’t want responsibility". It means "being open to receive their sense of criticism, their appetite for innovation, their creativity. Rather than just despairing of the lack of young members, it is time to give young people their say, to stop talking "about" young people and start talking "with" them" urges Marieke Koning, the ICFTU’s youth coordinator.

But to talk to young people, you have to talk their language. The young, whether or not they are union members, see trade union language as too traditional, too bureaucratic, too hierarchical. The trade unions that have understood this have already been successful in attracting the young, one example being the TUC (Great Britain). "Recruitment campaigns such as "Respect yourself, join a union" or "Organising for our future" strike a chord with young people because they are designed to reach out to them, for example by being present, a few weeks ago, at a very successful music festival, or by sponsoring football teams" explains Sue Quinan, 29 (TUC-GB). In general, throughout the world, music and sport are both effective channels for getting into contact with the young, as are the fight against racism, humanitarian aid and environmental protection, three themes youth are sensitive too. Given the power of image-making, videos and television are the two most forceful means of reaching young people, with the Internet catching up fast.

"On the AFL-CIO web-site, there is a page which enables women to calculate their losses due to pay inequality. Calculated over a lifetime, the total is astronomical. It may seem like a game, but it hits home, and it certainly encourages young women to get involved in the fight for equal pay. More and more young people are rallying to this cause" enthuses Wendy Ray (AFL-CIO, USA). The young are often the first to master new information technology, they have access to far more information than before. They can therefore be made aware of thousands of issues and develop contacts with thousands of organisations. They often show particular interest in environmental or humanitarian organisations, which have made the most of these new means of communication to give themselves an attractive image for young people. While not losing sight of the fact that millions of young people in the developing countries have no access to the internet the trade unions will have to strengthen their presence on the internet if they don’t want to lose contact altogether with the new generation. They must look upon young people and the new trends in technology they bring with them not as a threat to the established order but as an opportunity.

A new language is essential therefore, but what should the unions be saying? "Young workers at the world level are very different from adult workers. But it is not difficult to understand what they want: they want work, a decent wage and acceptable living and working conditions. What we must get across to young people is that the trade union movement can help them meet these needs" says Pelle Johanson (LO-Sweden), acting chairperson of the ICFTU working group on young workers’ questions.

But where are the young people open to receiving this message? In two places where the trade unions are not traditionally present: at school and in the new jobs, particularly the service sector and small enterprises.

Trade union membership is no longer a family matter, it is not working fathers or mothers who encourage their children to join. Research shows that family and religion are no longer the primary social influences on young people. The mass media, as well as schools and teachers, play an increasingly important role. Hence the importance for trade unions of going to meet young people in schools, and giving teachers the appropriate information about young people in trade unions. "For several years we have been developing contacts with young people in schools and universities, and it is paying off, as the number of new members in the private sector (where there are many young people) has considerably increased" remarks Thomas Andersson (LO Sweden).

"There is a third group, who are neither students nor workers. They are the young people who are between school and work, in what is quite a difficult transitional period for them, where they may be in subsidised jobs, unemployed or receiving additional training. During this period, even when they spend some time in an enterprise, it is only for a short time, and they are rarely contacted by the trade unions. When these young people find stable employment, they tend to feel negative towards the unions because they weren’t there when they really needed them. That is why the CFDT has opened up its youth structures to people who are not yet workers, such as young students or people on work experience" explains Serge Rived (CFDT-France). But beyond being more open, there is the problem of structuring a project for young people from a wide range of different backgrounds. The time when young people came to the trade unions because they all shared the same big ideas is over. "It is very difficult to mobilise at the same time a young telecommunications engineer for whom the employment market is always rosy and a young worker with few qualifications who has been unemployed for two years. We have found there is a need to target campaigns on specific groups and try to define services that respond more closely to their needs. For example, we launched a campaign for young apprentices that is giving very positive results. At the end of their apprenticeship these young people are going to find themselves in very small enterprises where there is no trade union, which is why we have to contact them before they join an enterprise" continues Serge Rived. Another example of a targeted project is one launched by France’s Force Ouvrière directed at "youth jobs". "The aim is to get closer to the grass roots, to enable young people to take up responsibility within the trade unions, in enterprises and at every other level, but it is not easy, attitudes have to change" explains Gilles Goulm (FO-France).

The unions need to change people’s way of thinking, particularly in order to develop new areas of action, and to move into sectors where unions have never been before.

"The jobs where young people are to be found are precisely those that are the most difficult to organise. In the United States, the average rate of union membership is only 15 per cent, and among young workers it is barely 7 per cent. Labour mobility is very strong among the young. They do not spend a long time in one job, which does not motivate them to get involved in a trade union at the workplace. Yet more and more young people are worried about their social security, pensions, etc, long term questions that go beyond their immediate workplace" explains Wendy Ray (AFL-CIO, USA).

The informal sector, where many young people work, is also an enormous new area for the trade unions to explore, and some have already shown the way, as in India. "Construction workers, the majority of whom are young, are not organised. They gather in a street every morning, and the employers pick out who they want and hire them for the day. We have begun to make contact with them. They are frightened of their employers but they want to work with the trade unions even so because they badly need to be paid and to have better working conditions. We try to help them stand up to their foremen who don’t always pay them for all the hours worked. We try to arrange for them to be paid by the week and if there is a problem we contact the foreman directly, in some cases we may even contact the police. We have a similar experience with agricultural workers, as we are trying to organise the day labourers" explains Mukesh Galav, the representative of the youth committee of the HMS India. The story is the same in the Philippines, where the TUCP works with NGOs to try to organise the informal sector, particularly with homeworkers and the cigarette vendors on the streets. But even if it is not as widespread as in the developing countries, the informal sector is also posing a challenge in the industrialised countries, explains Pierhiogio Mereu (UIL Italy): "The trade unions were concerned exclusively with employees for a long time. The problem is that in Italy many young people are either unemployed or work in the black economy. We try to help the unemployed form networks to find work more easily, and we also try to reach the hundreds of thousands of young "invisible" workers who work "in the black".

These initiatives are showing the way forward for trade unions and confirm the optimism expressed by the ILO. Despite the fall in trade union membership, says the ILO, "there are many signs that the trade unions are seeking to adjust to the new reality. The most active of them look further than those in work and open their doors to those who do not have a stable job or who have no job at all."

But these positive examples are often limited by the lack of resources available to young people. "Child labour is one of the causes of rising unemployment in India and a way to fight against child labour is of course through education. The youth committee has set up a school for child workers that gives them 3 hours teaching per day and gives them a light meal. This has enabled us to provide schooling for 70 children. We would like to do more but we don’t have the resources" regrets Mukesh Galav. This lack of resources is particularly acute in a crisis situation such as in Asia. "Because of the crisis a lot of priorities have fallen by the wayside and it is even more difficult to find resources to make youth a real priority" regrets Hoon Hoon, the youth coordinator for the ICFTU’s Asia and Pacific Regional Organisation (APRO).

Beyond the declarations of good intent, the specific needs of young people are rarely analysed and integrated into specific programmes and few or no resources are allocated to policies concerning youth, on the pretext that there are other priorities (more important), deplore the young trade unionists. Sometimes it is not only a question of money, if at all. It is more a question of political support. Young trade unionists believe their needs and concerns are given too little consideration in negotiations with employers or political authorities. In collective bargaining, youth issues are usually relegated to the bottom of the list of demands from the outset, which often means they are used as a bargaining chip, complain the young trade unionists. Within trade union structures, they complain that they are not given the opportunity to develop and to take on responsibilities in order to acquire the experience they need, pointing to the high average age of trade union leaders, as compared to NGOs which are more open to the young.

"As a young person, you don’t get any support in your trade union, there is no specific programme for youth, anything we do is on our own initiative. We would like to be more involved, and it would also help a lot if we had the support of the AFRO (the ICFTU’s African Regional Organisation) for our youth activities" says Gladys Mthembu (NACTU, South Africa).

"The young should be given a bigger role in the trade unions, they should be involved at all levels, if only because they are the first to be affected by the decisions taken today that will influence their future, for good or for bad. That is why we asked the last APRO congress to give permanent representation to young workers on the organisation’s executive" explains Alex Aguilar (TUCP Philippines). "Young trade unionists must assert themselves and must express their views. For example, in Asia, a crisis seemed unthinkable until not so long ago. Now it means we have to adopt new strategies to face up to it. It is a good opportunity for young people to demand that they be present at the decision-making level" he adds.

Even though some aspects vary from one region to another, the situation for young people is more or less the same throughout the world. Sometimes it is simply a question of timing. For example, the temporary work phenomenon began in Europe and the USA, but now it is developing in Asia because of the crisis" continues Alex Aguilar. Beyond the specific characteristics of each region, the problems faced by young people are the same everywhere, which is why some 20 young trade unionists who had come from all over the world for a meeting organised by the ICFTU in Brussels are demanding a global approach to trade union youth policies and therefore support the ICFTU’s global youth programme (see box opposite). "This new ICFTU project is very important. It is a good way of working with other regions" confirms Ronald Suarez, the youth coordinator for ORIT, the ICFTU’s regional organisation for the Americas. Because priority must be given to the young at every level. Because from grass roots action to the international level, giving the young a role to play now is the best means of ensuring that trade unions will still have a role to play in the globalised society of tomorrow.

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)
Boulevard Emile Jacqmain 155, B - 1210 Brussels, Belgium. For more information
please contact: Luc Demaret on: 00 322 224 0212 - press@icftu.org

ICFTU OnLine