International trade union federations

Most unions are still organized nationally; But international coordination approaches have existed since the beginnings of the trade union movement and are becoming increasingly important today.

International trade union confederation

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC; Engl. : International Trade Union Confederation ;, ITUC double. : Confédération syndicale international CSI) is an international trade union umbrella organization based in Brussels.

In order to be able to meet the challenges of the globalization of the economy more effectively, the two democratic international trade union organizations , the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Association of Workers (WVA) as well as eight unions that were previously not affiliated to an international umbrella organization formed the International Trade Union Confederation in 2006 in Vienna (IGB).

The new ITUC has 306 unions from 154 countries with around 168 million members. These include the German Federation of Trade Unions and the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions .

World Trade Union Confederation

The World Trade Union Confederation (WGB) was founded on October 3, 1945 in Paris as an amalgamation of all trade unions regardless of their national, ideological or system affiliation. The founding appeal referred to the UN Charter . In the course of the Cold War , the anti-communist trade union federations separated in 1949 and formed the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). The WGB has been headquartered in Athens since 2005. There are 10 international professional associations as subdivisions.

Other international groupings

Industrial Workers of the World

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organization, whose members are often referred to as wobblies , is a global union that currently has little influence outside of the United States, Canada and Australia. In the United Kingdom, the largest regional structure in Europe, the IWW had around 250 members in 2007. In the German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg) there is an independent section of the IWW, which was founded in Cologne in December 2006 ( German Language Area Members Regional Organizing Committee , IWW-GLAMROC; Regional Organizing Committee of IWW members in German-speaking countries) .

International Workers' Association

The International Workers 'Association (IAA) (ger .: International Workers' Association , IWA; span. : Asociation Internacional de los Trabajadores , AIT; French .: Association internationale des travailleurs , AIT) is a global anarcho-syndicalist trade union federation. The IAA was founded in 1922 and still exists today. In its heyday, over two million people in Spain were organized in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), the Spanish arm of the IAA, at the time of the Spanish Civil War . It was the strongest Spanish union at the time. In Germany, the Free Workers' Union (FAU) was a member of the IAA until it was expelled in 2016 together with the CNT and the Italian USI . The reason was criticism of the state of the IAA.

International Confederation of Workers

The International Confederation of Workers * inside (IKA) (ger .: International Confederation of Labor , ICL) was founded in May 2018 in Parma (Italy) after the CNT, FAU and USI were 2,016 excluded from the IAA. In addition to these three organizations, the founding members include ESE (Greece), FORA (Argentina), IP (Poland) and IWW (USA and Canada). In addition, delegates from five other grassroots unions attended the Congress as observers.

Continental trade union federations

European trade union confederation

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC ) is the European umbrella organization of trade unions based in Brussels. The intersectoral organization was founded in 1973 by 17 trade union federations from 15 countries and represented around 29 million unionized members. It is a successor organization to the European Confederation of Free Trade Unions in the EEC and the trade union congress of the EFTA states. In 2019, 90 national trade union confederations (which represent around 45 million members) from 38 countries belonged to it as member associations. In addition to the trade union confederations from the 28 EU countries, the trade union umbrella organizations from Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and seven other non-member states of the EU are represented.

Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores

An umbrella organization of trade unions in Latin America is the Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores (CLAT). The founding congress took place in Santiago de Chile in 1954 . The General Secretariat has been in Caracas since 1966 . Affiliated to the CLAT is the Comisión Latinoamericana por los Derechos y Libertades de los Trabajadores (CLADEHLT), the Latin American Commission for Workers' Rights.

literature

Dirk Baecker (Ed.): Unions . ISBN 3-936096-14-7 .
FU Berlin: Trade Union Handbook , 1997.
Jochen Gollbach: Europeanization of the trade unions . 2005, ISBN 3-89965-126-X .

Web links

Commons : Union album with pictures, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: union - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Full texts in the library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Bonn

Individual evidence

↑ International Secretariat of FAU: FAU and IAA - Looking back ahead. In: fau.org. January 2, 2017, accessed November 24, 2018 .
^ Declaration of the FAU Congress 2016. In: fau.org. May 17, 2016, accessed November 24, 2018 .
^ Founding of the International Workers' Confederation (IAC) in Parma. In: fau.org. May 13, 2018, accessed November 24, 2018 .

[1] International Secretariat of FAU: FAU and IAA - Looking back ahead. In: fau.org. January 2, 2017, accessed November 24, 2018 .

[2] Declaration of the FAU Congress 2016. In: fau.org. May 17, 2016, accessed November 24, 2018 .

[3] Founding of the International Workers' Confederation (IAC) in Parma. In: fau.org. May 13, 2018, accessed November 24, 2018 .