Jennings tells Congress: “forward ever, backward never: onwards with Breaking Through”
UNI Global Union General Secretary, Philip Jennings, in a rallying call to the 2000 UNI delegates gathered in Cape Town, said UNI was sticking with its “Breaking Through" mission “no ifs or buts”.
Jennings said that “Breaking Through” which began life at the last world congress in Nagasaki 2010 would continue to be the road map UNI would follow all the way through Cape Town to Liverpool 2018:
“Our Breaking Through plan was a call to action to build our organising power.
A call to action:
- Change the rules of the game in the global economy, from financial regulation to supply chains.
- Commit to union growth in the growing services economy.
- Grow union rights and influence in business.
- Win the fight for gender equality in our own UNI Global Union.
The call to action was adopted.
We have put it to work.”
Jennings paid tribute to the UNI family, “The World Executive, UNI Africa, UNI Americas, UNI Asia & Pacific, UNI Europe, each of our Sector Global Unions – are all working in alignment. Single minded. Focussed on specific goals.”
Quoting Martin Luther King Jennings said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Breaking Through lives in that ambition. At a time when the corporate world is coming out of hiding, crawling out of the “swamp”, stock market casino fever is back. Do not bend. Do not submit to resignation or despair.”
Jennings called the theme of the Cape Town Congress, “Including You” as UNI’s alternative vision for a more just world.
“Our approach with Global Unions was to say: learn from the crisis, to drive home the message our democracies are not here just to serve the wealthy. The coin has dropped. Tickle down is economic fraud. Neo-liberalism is economic and social fraud.
Neo-liberalism: market failure, financial failure, climate failure, equality failure.
Our theme “Including You!” is our alternative.
We focussed on inequality. Drew attention to the falling share of wages in wealth produced. Helped create sense – economies wage-led. Relentless in using the evidence to show income inequality is bad for our economies, is bad for growth, is bad for communities, is bad for people.”
Jennings rounded off his address by quoting from a recent encounter with a SABC television producer who had neatly summed up the challenge for UNI and all of us: “Share the wealth more evenly or the world will burn.”
Jennings rounded off his address with a reminder of the old African saying, “Forward ever, backward never.”