News

Participation

We have now broken the 2000 participants barrier for Cape Town and the numbers are increasing every day.

Speakers

We have had confirmation from the following guest speakers who will be joining us in Cape Town.

• Guy Ryder, ILO Director General
• Ahmed Kathrada, political leader, Rivonia trialist, Robben Island prisoner and human rights activist.
• Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the ITUC
• President Tarja Halonen, Former President of Finland
• Kwasi Adu-Amankwa, General Secretary of ITUC-Africa 
• Seun Kuti, pioneering Nigerian musician and activist
• Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of IndustriALL Global Union
• Owen Jones, author, political commentator and journalist

Documentation

The documentation for the Congress is now available from the UNI World Congress website. Please note that it includes the first report of the resolutions committee. The committee have done an excellent job and their first draft contains 14 motions which will be put to the Congress for endorsement.

“Including You!” Theme

We chose our theme, “Including you!” two years ago. The theme addresses economic exclusion, income inequality and includes the rallying cry: “Workers need a pay rise!” The theme is topical and is gaining political traction. Just last week Oxfam published their report on income inequality, “Even it Out”. The report contains a succinct global analysis of the growing income divide. 

G20-L20 Theme

The General Secretary will be attending the G20 – L20 summit event in Brisbane, Australia this week. He will address the L20 Summit “Rebuilding economies, jobs and wages,” which will be attended by union leaders as well as the leaders of the IMF, the World Bank, OECD, ILO and representatives of the Australian government including PM Tony Abbott. Jennings’ theme of “workers need a pay rise” is not in tune at all with Australian government thinking.

Global Agreement with Japanese retail giant

En route to Brisbane, Jennings also signed a new global agreement with Japanese supermarket giant AEON. AEON has 420,000 staff and has ambitious expansion plans in the Asia and Pacific region.

This is the third GFA to be signed in Japan. UNI would like to thank UA Zensen – Japan’s largest union - for their work to accomplish this agreement.

Bangladesh

We will have a session on the Bangladesh Accord during Cape Town. Head of UNI Commerce Alke Boessiger, Supply Chain Coordinator Ben Vanpeperstraete and Director of Communications Richard Elliott have just returned from Bangladesh – where we can confirm 2000 factory inspections have taken place.

Communication from South African Health Ministry

We have received a communication from South African Health Ministry reassuring all participants that South Africa is Ebola free, and informing us of all the measures they have taken.

Know your geography

We draw your attention to this map of Africa to give you an idea of its scale – it really is an eye opener:

Further updates will be posted on the UNI Congress website:

http://www.uniworldcongress.org/