A Working People’s Global Summit

A global economy requires a global approach—and not just from greedy corporations. The tumult caused by changes that span the globe most affect the billions of the world’s working people, and union leaders from around the world are coming together to share strategies and ideas to better represent these workers in the global economy.

The AFL-CIO is hosting a global organizing summit at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., Dec.10–11. Delegates will lay the groundwork for and discuss global strategies to help workers join unions. The summit opens on International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), a time when U.S. unions traditionally mobilize to restore the freedom to join unions.

The summit is being sponsored by the Council of Global Unions, which consists of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Trade Union Advisory Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development and a group of 10 union federations around the world.

AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff says the summit will attempt to reach a consensus on the crisis workers around the world are experiencing because of declining union densities. Workers around the world understand the benefits of collective bargaining—decent wages, pensions, health care—are tied to the ability to freely join unions.The delegates will discuss “collective strategies” to fight back, he says.

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