The United Steelworkers (USW), North America’s largest private sector union, and Unite the Union, the largest labor organization in the United Kingdom and Ireland, have signed an agreement clearing the way for the creation of Workers Uniting, hailed by both as the world’s first global union.

According to a joint statement released on Wednesday from at the USW’s constitutional convention in Las Vegas, Nev., Workers Uniting will “draw on the energies of the two unions’ more than 3 million active and retired members from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and the Republic of Ireland who work in virtually every sector of the global economy, including manufacturing, service, mining, and transportation.”

“This union is crucial for challenging the growing power of global capital,” USW President Leo Gerard said. “Globalization has given financiers license to exploit workers in developing countries at the expense of our members in the developed world. Only global solidarity among workers can overcome this sort of global exploitation wherever it occurs.”

“In addition to empowering the interests of our unions’ members, our mission is to advance the interests of millions of workers throughout the world who are being shamefully exploited,” said Derek Simpson, General Secretary of Unite’s Amicus section.

Tony Woodley, General Secretary of Unite’s T&GU section, said, “The creation of the new union is only the beginning. We’re laying the foundations of an even larger and stronger global union yet to come.”

The founding constitution of the new global union urges its combined membership to “build global union activism, recognizing that uniting as workers across international boundaries is the only way to challenge the injustices of globalization.”

Workers Uniting will “match our words with action and resources, utilizing our collective expertise and knowledge through collective bargaining, organizing, global political action, and international solidarity.”

During the past year, as the two unions have discussed the merger, they have been actively involved in joint efforts to advance global union activism, the statement said, including:

•“Extensive discussions about strategies that each of the unions has adopted for saving manufacturing capacity in their respective countries.”

•“Joint collective bargaining efforts with common employers in the paper, chemical, and titanium industries.”

•“International solidarity projects, such as efforts to protect the rights and safety of trade unionists in Columbia and Mexico.”

•“Participation by rank and file delegations of activists in each other’s education, rapid response, health and safety, civil rights, and women’s conferences.”

•“Exposure to the political processes in each other’s countries, including Democratic Party primaries and Labor Party conferences.”

Workers Uniting will be a fully functional and registered labor union in the UK, U.S., Ireland, and Canada, the statement said, with the ability to represent all of the members of its founding unions. It will be governed by a steering committee with equal membership from each participating union. The new union’s staff will be headed by an executive director who will oversee an initial budget of several million dollars and a staff which includes specialists in research, international affairs, and communications.

Both participating unions have pledged to have Workers Uniting “challenge exploitation anywhere in the global economy, since it is fundamentally unjust and is destructive of decent living standards everywhere,” the statement said. To this end, Workers Uniting, in conjunction with the National Labor Committee, will create a Global Labor Rights Network, with allied staff on the ground in Central America, the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and other regions.

The merger document was signed on Wednesday.

Some History

In 2005 the USW—then the United Steelworkers of America or USWA—merged with the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers International Union (PACE) to create the largest industrial union in the country. The new union, USW for short, came to represent more than 850,000 active members in more than 8,000 bargaining units in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean, and another 400,000 retired members.

The USWA originated in embryo in 1936, when the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers (AAISTW) joined ranks with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), the latter created that year to coordinate a monumental drive to organize the mills. Six years later, in 1942—after much success and no little bloodshed, including the killing of 10 steelworkers by police at Republic Steel of Chicago in 1936 and the injuring of 100 more—the AAISTW and SWOC disbanded at a convention in Cleveland, Ohio, and the USWA was formally established as a constitutional body.

Over the year the USWA merged with nine other unions, prior to its merger with PACE: the Aluminum Workers of America in 1944; the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers in 1967; the United Stone and Allied Product Workers of America in 1971; Allied and Technical Workers of America—an autonomous unit of the United Mine Workers know as District 50—in 1972; the Upholsters International Union of North America in 1985; the United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum, and Plastic Workers of America in 1995; the Aluminum, Brick, and Glass Workers Union in 1996; the Canadian Division of the Transportation Communications International Union in 1998; and the American Flint Glass Workers Union in 2003.

Posted 7/3/2008