One of three ITUC affiliates in Belgium, the CSC has been attending the Dour music festival for over a decade. For the duration of the festival, no fewer than 160 young activists – accompanied by a dozen or so permanent staff – are present around the various venues, and the campsites in particular. They split into groups and head to wherever young people congregate. To raise the profile of trade unions, their simple but extremely effective idea is to set up barbecues and microwaves, then offer to cook meat or re-heat meals for festival-goers while taking the opportunity to explain what unions do and why. Other groups wander around the festival site in a bid to sign up new members, although this is not the CSC’s main aim.
“The most important thing is visibility,” explains the CSC’s national youth officer and festival team leader Benoît Constant. “We don’t necessarily bring up membership straight away. We begin by focusing on the CSC’s current projects and talking about our campaigns and solidarity, and we tend to get a pretty positive response. It’s about talking to young people in their own language.” For Benoît Constant, change is key. Young people today tend to get involved on an ad-hoc basis rather than committing for the long term; the trade union movement has to adapt to this new trend.
Francis has been with the CSC for eight years. Despite having become a member more by accident than design, he says he is now well and truly hooked. He believes that the CSC’s presence at Dour Festival helps raise young people’s awareness of trade unions and also that young people are very receptive to the solidarity message. After all, sharing a drink or a tent pitch is precisely that: solidarity. For Nancy Debey, a permanent staff member in Verviers, the festival work is beneficial as “it enables young activists to relax and have a good time while promoting a good trade union cause.”
Although this kind of event is naturally light-hearted, the fact remains that the position of young people in the labour market is increasingly precarious. As the group hit hardest by the financial crisis, their short- and medium-term prospects are not good. “The problem is a global one,” Benoît Constant notes. As an active member of the ITUC Youth Committee, he had the chance to exchange experiences with colleagues around the world at the last ITUC Congress in Vancouver in June. “Sharing experiences is vital to trade union action. We must recognise that everybody is affected by the crisis - at different levels depending on where they are in the world - but young people are especially hard hit. Obviously, this is one of the messages that we try to convey at the Dour Festival: solidarity has no borders!”
To view the CSC’s Dour Festival photo gallery, go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ituc/sets/72157624467800387/
To read the ITUC Congress resolution on young workers, go to: http://www.ituc-csi.org/resolution-on-a-decent-life-for,7172.html?lang=en
