Labour Wrap: International Labour: not just two alternatives

OVER the past five years a battle for political orientation has been going on within trade federation Cosatu, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap. It concerns international affiliation and carries an echo of the Cold War years.

And, says Bell, it does matter because the outcome will affect the entire body politic. It will determine the orientation and therefore the actions of a large segment of the labour movement. The battle involves the two international federations to which unions are affiliated - the International Trade Union Confederation, ITUC, and the World Federation of Trade Unions, WFTU.

The WFTU is the rump of the formerly Soviet-backed union movement that had - and has - the support of communist parties. Among its leading members are the “conveyor belt” state unions of North Korea and Syria.

The ITUC is the organisationally independent grouping whose affiliates tend to support social democratic and labour parties which, like the ANC, are members of the Socialist International. But, says Bell, many of these parties promoted business friendly “neo-liberal” economic policies and so lost the support of many trade unionists.  

The ITUC leaders have also been criticised for being too close to big business and this gave the WFTU an opportunity to grow. It presented itself as the only alternative to the “imperialist” ITUC. Four Cosatu affiliates have now joined the WFTU and have agreed to host a WFTU world congress in Durban in October.

Complicating matters, says Bell, is the fact that Cosatu remains in ITUC and metalworkers’ union, Numsa, the largest union in the land and an early affiliate to the WFTU, was expelled by Cosatu.  

According to Bell, the unions should not see this as a case of “Tweedledum or Tweedledee”, of the WFTU or ITUC. The labour movement is clearly in need of reform but, as presently constituted, only the ITUC seems reformable.