News

Delegates from six differnt countries attended the first day of the UNI APRO Organising Conference today in Kuala Lumpur. Delegates from trade unions in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam and Australia all attended to look at organising strategies for their campaigns. The conference was jointly organised by UNI SCORE and the UNI APRO Region.

Presentations were given by unions that had waged successful campaigns in DHL, Digicom and AEON and the lessons spelt out for them by the union leaders who had won them. Christy Hoffman the Deputy General Secretary of UNI gave a terrific speech outlining why this conference was important and why UNI was right to insist that the `Breaking Through `strategy of the union was right.

She said

`Economies in this Region have been growing but not trade unions. Inequality is an unfair consequence of this economic expansion and we must deploy all our resources to fight inequality and get a fair share of the new wealth for workers. That can only be done if we have powerful trade unions.`

Having had a number of presentations today, delegates will spend tomorrow looking in more detail about how they can map and plan their own campaigns. A notable feature of this conference has been that the majority of the delegates are young women. The unions are changing!