International Metalworkers Federation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The International Metalworkers' Federation ( IMF ) / International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF) was an umbrella organization of over 200 free and independent metalworkers' unions in 100 countries representing about 25 million members, with headquarters in Geneva . The association was organized as an association under Swiss law.

In August 1893, 30 union members from eight countries met in a hotel in Zurich , Switzerland , to agree on a joint collaboration. With the establishment of the International Metalworkers Union, they laid the foundation for one of the oldest organizations of this type, which then united 60,000 metal workers.

Three years later, in London there were already 140,000 workers; 1900 in Paris 240,000. An International Metalworkers Association was founded in Amsterdam in 1904 . At the beginning of the 1920s, the number of members rose to almost three million people and thus reached a high, which fell to below 200,000 by the meeting in Prague in 1938. After the Second World War , the number of members rose almost continuously.

Trade unions that organize employees from the same multinational companies in different countries , for example at the car manufacturer Ford or at Siemens in the electronics industry, founded so-called global corporate committees that met for the first time in Detroit in 1966 for the automotive industry . At the same time, there were irregular conferences on international trade union cooperation in individual sectors, such as in the shipbuilding industry since 1951. The attempt was made here to avoid location competition to the disadvantage of the employees and to formulate common political approaches - an early form of globalization criticism.

A representative of the IMF was opened in the Japanese capital Tokyo in 1957, and in 1969 a regional office in New Delhi . An office opened in Johannesburg , South Africa , in 1984. There are two more in the Chilean capital Santiago and Mexico for Latin America and the Caribbean region and one each in Malaysia and Moscow .

In international organizations like the UN or the OECD , the International Metalworkers Union represents the interests of the members. The members meet every four years to determine the future course of action with action programs . For Germany is IG Metall responsible for Austria , the Union of Metal and for Switzerland Unia and Syna .

In 2012 the IMB merged with ICEM (International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers 'Unions) and ITGLWF (International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation) to form the Global Union Federation IndustriALL .

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Johanna Wolf Answers to a Globalized World. The International Metalworkers Union and the Shipbuilding Industry , in: Work - Movement - History , Issue I / 2017, pp. 45–60.