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Joe de Bruyn is the leader of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), the Australian trade union in the commerce sector. The SDA is the largest union in Australia with over 200,000 members and it continues to grow. Joe is also the elected senior vice president of the ACTU, the Australian trade union centre. Joe has 30 years of active engagement in international trade union work.



The SDA international commitment spans more than 35 years. They were there in the early 70s for the creation of Asia FIET and served on the FIET world executive board. The SDA was the host of the 1999 Sydney World Congress of FIET where the congress voted for the creation of UNI Global Union.



Joe has been a member of the UNI World Executive Board and the UNI Asia-Pacific (Apro) Executive Board since 2000 and serves as president of UNI Apro and as a member of the UNI Management Committee. He has also been an active member of UNI Commerce Global Union. The SDA has been a strong supporter of the work of UNI`s women’s committees at the global level and in the Asia-Pacific region.



In addition to the UNI work, the SDA has a strong solidarity record and has established an international fund to help unions in the Asia-Pacific region by providing training, equipment, humanitarian support and worker exchanges.



Joe is the candidate for President in the election UNI will hold at its Congress in Nagasaki. His election would mean that UNI has a world president from the Apro region for the first time.



Here are some of his reflections on UNI and the global union movement.

What does "Breaking Through" mean to you?

“Breaking Through” means achieving the fundamental strategic goals that the trade union movement sets for itself. I believe Breaking Through is a strategy that will lead to big union membership gains and more power for workers through their unions and UNI Global Union. I am running for President because I believe I can lead UNI’s Breaking Through strategy around the world.

For my union, the SDA in Australia, Breaking Through means being able to deliver union membership growth that doesn’t simply keep pace with employment growth but actually increases union density. For example, our new national collective agreement with McDonald’s and all its franchisees signed in Australia late last year has created a platform for our membership growth over the next 5 years. With all our employers, we are negotiating improved salaries and conditions of employment, support for working parents and full pay for young workers.

For UNI, Breaking Through means the achievement of our fundamental goals, including signing more Global Agreements with multinationals and ensuring they are abided by; supporting organising and union formation around the world, especially in the key countries UNI has identified; working with unions to push for protection of workers’ rights at the national and international level; and ensuring equal rights and justice for all workers in the workplace regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation.

How do you see UNI developing after the Nagasaki Congress as we look to our Cape Town Congress in 2014?

UNI needs to set itself a few key strategic goals and then work to achieve them by the time of the Congress in Cape Town. These goals should be coordinated across UNI’s industry sectors, regions, youth, equality and professional and managerial groups, as appropriate. There needs to be a concentrated focus to achieve the selected objectives:

• Sign more Global Agreements and build union alliances at multinationals to ensure that workers have strength globally to organise and bargain collectively
• Gain explicit recognition at the G20 meetings that the rights and entitlements of workers are not negotiable in the policies to be pursued for world-wide economic recovery from the Global Financial Crisis.
• Achieve a major break-through in union recognition and union membership recruitment in one selected union in one industry in a key developing country in each of the four years to 2014.
• Build the role of women in UNI’s leadership structures and secure an increase in women's representation to a minimum of 40% in all decision making bodies. I have been a strong advocate of improving the representation of women within UNI structures, and will insist upon regular progress reports to the Management Committee.

I have been active in the Asian-Pacific region for many years. The economic transformation in the region has been staggering. The growth of India and China will continue at a rapid pace. We are witnessing an economic shift of historic proportions. We are also seeing the emergence of new economic powers around the world. Our aim at UNI is to ensure that as economies grow the unions grow as well.

How has the world of work changed in the last decade?

Remuneration for workers has stagnated in many areas, especially for lower paid work. In many developed countries, the wages share of GDP has fallen, while the profit share has risen. For example, in the United States, 58% of the rise in real incomes in the 30 years from 1975 accrued to the top 1% of income earners. This means that inequality is rising in many countries, both in the developed world and in developing countries such as China. Globalisation means jobs can be shifted off shore at short notice, leaving existing workers redundant. Labour has become more mobile and millions of migrant workers are now employed in various countries, sending remittances to their dependents in their home countries. More women are employed than ever before and we must ensure that they get equal pay for equal work, have the right to paid maternity leave and are treated fairly on the job.

These are major challenges for UNI and for unions, but the Breaking Through strategy focuses on organising workers in all of our sectors everywhere in the world and holding multinationals to account when they refuse to recognise basic worker and union rights.

What do you think are UNI's key challenges for the future?

Along with dealing with a new global labour market, UNI must be a representative organisation in each of its key industry sectors. Therefore, UNI must seek to affiliate those national trade unions around the world who are not yet affiliated but who operate in the industry sectors that UNI covers.

The affiliated unions within UNI must be growing organisations, increasing their membership to ensure they are truly representative and collecting appropriate union dues to give them the resources to perform their work. UNI has a role to play, both directly and indirectly, in the organising and recruitment of workers into its affiliated unions. The equal representation of women within UNI's decision-making structures is a key goal as is promoting their leadership in their own unions.

Workers need a global voice and global representation in all the key decision-making areas among employers and governments, and UNI's role is to ensure it is at the table making its voice heard.

You say that UNI must have equal representation of women in its decision-making structures. How have you promoted equality in Australia?

Australia has always been a leader in gender equality, as the first country in the world to afford women the right to vote. The SDA has continued this tradition as both the largest union and largest organisation of women in Australia. We have long held that an end to discrimination against women at the workplace is a bedrock principle of our trade union work. To that end, we have fought for equal opportunity on the job and in society at large, fair parental leave and an end to sexual harassment and bullying. This is all part of our work to defend the basic human rights of all workers in the workplace.

I am particularly proud of the SDA’s role in the campaign for paid maternity leave, which was enacted by the Parliament in June of this year and was a major victory for working mothers. The SDA has campaigned in support of paid maternity leave for all women in Australia for several decades. When the Labor Party was elected to office in 2007, the SDA worked closely with the ACTU and Australian trade unions for a law that was fair and offered support that working women need. The Government scheme, which provides for up to 18 weeks of paid leave, will come into effect from January 2011. We are already planning to seek further improvement in the scheme, including 2 weeks of paid paternity leave.

We’ve been able to go even further at the bargaining table. In 2009, SDA negotiated a collective agreement with Ikea, one of the world’s leading retailers, which provides for up to 26 weeks of paid leave in the event of the birth or adoption of a child and for same sex couples. As the largest union in Australia, the SDA has an important role to play within the ACTU. We are proud that, since 1983, the ACTU has had a vigorous and broad policy against discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, colour, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, age, religion, and national extraction, as well as other categories. Unions must work to eliminate discrimination and homophobia in all workplaces. We have been able to mirror this policy in many of our collective agreements, providing protection to our members beyond legal requirements.

Of course, the SDA aligns with the ACTU policy against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and many of our collective agreements reflect this commitment. Typically, our collective agreements protect workers from discrimination based on race, colour, religion, ethnic or national origin, sex, sexual preference, age, marital status, family responsibilities, pregnancy, political opinion or mental or physical disability. They also state that sexual harassment or any other form of harassment is an unacceptable form of behaviour which will not be tolerated.

And within the SDA?

In 1975, the SDA was the first union in Australia to establish a National Women's Bureau to empower and support women. One of its key roles was to support promotion of women workers to management roles and leadership positions in the union. In the 35 years since, the SDA has staunchly promoted equal employment opportunity with employers. This work has led to more women in all levels of management in retail in Australia and to more women becoming active in the SDA and becoming union leaders.

Women comprise about 65% of the SDA membership and hold many of the top leadership positions in our organisation. Eighty percent of shop floor delegates are women, the political leadership of our branches is majority women and the majority of seats on the top decision-making body in the SDA, the National Council, are held by women. The SDA constantly encourages women members to stand for election to office within the union.

All union officials are trained to handle complaints of workplace sexual harassment. We also have a national policy to prevent sexual harassment, which is applied throughout the union’s internal structure.

What would you say are some of the key legislative victories won by the SDA and the Australian labour movement in recent years?

The election of a Labor Government in Australia was a huge win for Australian trade unions who worked together in an unprecedented campaign that we are all very proud of. Another big win for the trade union movement was the recent adoption of paid maternity leave. In both of these campaigns, the SDA played an active role.

In the historic 2007 election campaign, we donated money and employed staff members in targeted areas to get Labor candidates elected. Our branches reached out to members to tell them why they needed to elect Labor to repeal anti-union laws and we campaigned in the workplace. We also reached out to members in their communities and mobilised massive support for the “Your Rights at Work” campaign, which was the joint union approach that helped the Labor Party sweep into power.

Sharan Burrow was the ACTU President during the two campaigns you mention and is now the ITUC General Secretary. How would you describe your working relationship with her in the Australian union movement?

After working closely with Sharan on the Australian Council of Trade Unions for almost 10 years, I am very excited by the prospect of working closely with her at the global level. Sharan was president of the ACTU for 10 years prior to her election as ITUC General Secretary. For most of this period, I was the elected Senior Vice-President of the ACTU and worked closely with Sharan on behalf of Australian trade union members. We worked very closely together on electing the Labor government in 2007 and in the passage of paid maternity leave in 2010. I, along with other Australian union leaders, encouraged Sharan to run for election as General Secretary of the ITUC.

Sharan understands the issues union members face around the world. I am delighted she has been elected as the leader of the global trade union movement. She is exactly the kind of strong leader we need in the global fight for workers’ rights.