[Mb-civic] Workers Of the World Uniting - Harold Meyerson - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Workers Of the World Uniting

By Harold Meyerson
Saturday, August 27, 2005; Page A17

CHICAGO -- Thebusiness at hand was furthering globalization, but the 
usual suspects were nowhere to be seen. No U.S. trade representatives 
set the agenda. No corporate executives stalked the hall.

But then, the meeting this week in Chicago of roughly 1,500 labor 
leaders from around the world had a rather novel agenda. They convened 
on Monday under a banner that read "Imagine a Global Union." When they 
adjourned on Thursday, they had begun to build one.
   

The world's first global proto-union, surprisingly enough, comprises 
workers in the property services industry -- that is, janitors and 
security guards. Over the past half-decade, companies all over the world 
that have long provided the employees who guard and clean offices and 
factories -- including such venerable U.S.-based security companies as 
Pinkerton, Burns and Wackenhut -- have been bought by a handful of 
largely European-based multinationals.

The consequences, for both the employees and their home nations, have 
varied considerably. The guards at Pinkerton and Burns, for instance, 
are now employees of Securitas, a Swedish-based multinational known for 
providing extensive training and having good labor relations. But the 
employees of Group 4 Securicor, a British-Danish conglomerate, haven't 
been so fortunate. In South Africa, guards at the airports have been 
reduced to working on month-to-month contracts with no benefits. In 
Indonesia and Kenya, Group 4 has refused to deal with its workers' 
long-established unions. And in the United States, guards at Group 4's 
subsidiary Wackenhut work with skimpy health insurance for a company 
that has been fined repeatedly for labor law violations.

Not surprisingly, it's the union that's been organizing security guards 
and janitors in the United States -- the Service Employees International 
Union (SEIU) -- that has taken the lead in getting this global effort 
off the ground.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/26/AR2005082601480.html?nav=hcmodule
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