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As the leaders of the world’s biggest economies are gathering in Seoul, about 2000 trade union leaders are next door in Nagasaki, Japan, at the UNI Global Union World Congress, coming up with a plan to change the rules of the game and bring justice, respect and dignity back into the global workplace.

With a truly global labour market, UNI’s unions are making a new call to action to fight injustice and fight for the rights of all workers to have fair pay, good conditions and respect at work. They will demand that their governments also enact and enforce legal protection for worker and union rights.



“The world’s leaders in Seoul this week need to know that they are being watched. This is the time for firm and decisive action to get the world working again,” said Philip Jennings, UNI General Secretary. “The world is changing and workers are getting a smaller and smaller piece of the pie.”

To win that piece of the pie, UNI has a new plan as a global union to “Break Through” to grow UNI, grow unions, grow worker power and change the rules of the game.

“Our Breaking Through Plan is built on the fact that when we can organise, when we negotiate, we improve the lives of workers,” Jennings said. “It challenges elites, global institutions – from the G20 and IMF to the WTO – to give us a seat at the table. No workers’ voice? Then no legitimacy. No workers’ voice? Then no mandate for change.”



The participants attending this week’s UNI World Congress will be watching the outcome of the G20 summit in Seoul closely to see whether world leaders can come good on the pledges made in London in April 2009. UNI delegates include those working in the finance sector, the sector at the centre of the credit crunch crisis.

Joe Hansen, UNI World President, is critical of G20 progress since London.

“The G20 has been very concerned with markets and with the economy. It’s not paying enough attention to employment and the conditions of labour worldwide,” he says.

To improve global labour conditions in the services sector, UNI is launching a new plan called “Breaking Through” that focuses on growing unions and ensuring workers worldwide have the right to join a union and bargain collective. Delegates at the Congress unanimously passed a motion to support this new plan.

Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. Burrow addressed UNI Congress delegates on Tuesday as part of the opening session of the Congress.



“The promise to put quality employment at the heart of the recovery seems to have been abandoned, the promise to regulate the financial sector reduced to a shadowy memo from Basel and where is the support action on climate change with investment in green jobs?,” Burrow said.



“In London and Pittsburgh we had hope, in Toronto in June we saw the first signs of leaders backing away from global action and when you see, heading into Korea, no headlines demanding coordinated global action on jobs, no consensus on a financial transaction tax, no urgency in the need for climate action and financing green economy capacity for the poorest countries, we are rightfully worried and increasingly angry at inaction,” she added.



The UNI World Congress and the G20 Summit are both in the Asia-Pacific region for the first time. UNI chose to hold its Congress in the region because, with the tremendous growth and importance of the region’s economies, it is vital to seize the opportunity to put the missing social pillars in place.

For more information on the UNI World Congress, you can check out the UNI World Congress blog at: http://www.uniglobalunion.org/Blogs/Nagasaki.nsf/ or follow us on Twitter @UNIGlobalUnion or on Facebook at UNI Global Union.