ITUC Founding Congress - Acceptance speech by Guy Ryder, ITUC General Secretary

President, Congress,

Thank you for the trust you have placed in me. I know that with that trust goes a heavy responsibility. And while I cannot promise you that I will discharge that responsibility successfully to your satisfaction, I do promise you that I will do so to the limit of my capacities and will serve all of you equally and without distinction. You may be sure of that.

I must say it is also nice to have a job again.

Sisters and Brothers,

We leave Vienna with an International trade union movement radically transformed. More unified than ever in its history. Bigger, stronger.

There is good reason to take satisfaction in what we have done, and in the contribution that each and every one of you has made. Sometimes it has not been easy. Sometimes it has looked almost impossible. But we have done it in defiance of those (and they were quite a few at the start) who said that it could not be – or should not be.

And in that collective effort there are two people I want to thank on behalf of you all.

Firstly Willy Thys. Willy who led the WCL with such distinction for so many years and who with his talent and above all his commitment to our movement made a personal decision that yes this unification was going to happen – and did as much as anybody to ensure that it did.

And secondly Emilio Gabaglio. The moment when this process was launched was the Congress in Prague when the ETUC said farewell to Emilio as its General Secretary. A few people there may have been naïve enough to believe that that was the end of his distinguished contribution to trade union internationalism.

Well, as you see, not so. I said on a previous occasion that I had learned so much from him – and in the work of these last four years the learning was continued.

To you both Willy, Emilio, friends both, sincere thanks.

If it is true that this week we have made history, and if it is true too that this achievement has required immense efforts – not of individuals but of organizations – we need I think to take stock of lessons learned, and of the challenges ahead.

The first lesson has to do with the preconditions which made unification possible. I can identify three of them.

The first is quite simply the determination, the political will.

A commodity that can be made available or withheld at your discretion, which you all decided to make available, and which you are going to have to continue to provide if our new International is going to work.

The second is the common ground of our shared principles and values. I can’t stress them too strongly. We are united because of our community in independent and democratic trade unionism. It is the cement that holds us together in our rich pluralism and in our common house. And a lesson we have known for a very long time is that if ever we compromise on these principles we will be divided and our house will fall.

The third is as old as trade unionism itself. Solidarity. We could never have advanced this far without it. If each of you had not been willing to look first at the common and greater good of our movement and then to the specific interests and concerns that we all brought in our baggage to Vienna, we would be in a very different position.

The challenge ahead is to make of the ITUC the instrument of the new trade union internationalism that we have all accepted as necessary (and in our hearts we have known it for a long time) to effective representation of working people in the globalised economy.

In Vienna we have created the potential. When we go home we have to start the tougher job of realizing that potential – and it remains to be seen whether or not we will be capable of doing it. Whether we will be able to live up to the goals we have set ourselves.

And those goals are ambitious. Fundamental change in the global economy. Social transformation. Universal respect of the fundamental rights of working people.

But in today’s circumstances it is simply not realistic to be less ambitious.

In 1949 the President of another founding Congress of a previous International spoke to this subject – and I believe to us today – when he said, and I quote that:

“The International (which) has been constituted (is) faced with the actual task of making it work … I am convinced that we shall accomplish this work because it is not too great for our energy and determination and all the means that we have in our power …We shall achieve these aims… if all the trade union organizations here assembled accept for their future work the categorical imperative that decisions taken in this Congress must be applied at home and everywhere in working, nor only for national aims, but also and more particularly for international aims.”

I couldn’t have said it better – and I will not try to, but I will say a little more about our common future.

So many of you, this week, have said that our unity is our strength – and it is so. But fewer have said – though many I imagine have thought it – that it is also fragile. History has shown that in the past international unity in our movement has not been enduring.

Which means that we have a joint responsibility to nurture and safeguard it. Our first duty of solidarity is to each other. Easy to accept in this hall I know, but something that we’re going to have to take very seriously as we go forward. It may be less obviously satisfying, less rewarding – in the short-term at least – to commit to and to strive for the common benefit of the ITUC. To make the often invisible investment in our future together, and the compromises that may go with it. But that is what I ask you to do. That, and to be absolutely resolute in rejecting any type or temptation of organising in internal tendencies or fractions in our new pluralist international. That temptation may exist or may appear and in it would lie the seeds of our destruction. Our unity would not, could not, withstand it, and we must not tolerate it.

Sisters and Brothers,

I am confident that our forward road will take us in a different direction, and as I said at the outset I promise to work with all of you to make sure that it does.

The message we send out from Vienna to working people in all lands is that the International Trade Union Confederation is born from our common determination to provide them a single voice, strength, solidarity, and an instrument to improve and transform their lives, communities and societies. The different traditions, inspirations, and histories that have brought all of us along the converging roads to Vienna are part of our strength. As the ILO Director General reminded us on Wednesday we stand on the shoulders of those who went before us. None of us turn our backs on our past history, and all of us assume the task of preparing the way for the next generation.

We stretch out our hand to those who share our values and ambitions – we invite them to work with us and to join us when the moment is right. We reach out to the regional organizations – the ETUC with which we have designed a common architecture, to the International Confederation of Arab Trade unions with whom we want to conclude a formal cooperation agreement, and to the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity who we wanted to be with us today.

We look to work also with Governments, with International Organisations, and with employers to advance our objectives – in the ILO and elsewhere in the tradition of dialogue and tripartism.

We want to cement a structural partnership with the Global Union Federations to make our shared single movement as strong as it must be. And I repeat we need each and every one of them – otherwise our house will not be complete.

We want to continue and to deepen our opening to civil society in conditions which respect our respective, complementary roles, and safeguard our trade union identity.

In all of these cases people will find in the ITUC a strong and committed and principled partner.

But to those who oppose us. To those whose business is exploitation , and repression, whose way of work is diktat and the abuse of financial and political power and whose attitude is arrogance – and they are still many – our message is that the outstretched hand can quickly become a clenched fist, and that we will not flinch from confrontation when confrontation is the only way.

President, Sisters and Brothers,

Thank you again for making the International Trade Union Confederation a reality. It can be no stronger than you make it. No more effective than your commitment to it.

You have made history here. But we have much more history still to write. Our future is not written in the stars. And if we fail we should not look for the fault in our stars but in ourselves.

We wont let that happen. Too many people look to us for a better future. There is a real weight of responsibility and of history on our shoulders. Together, united, strong, the ITUC will play its part in building a social justice, freedom, equality and peace – the ideals that brought us this far and will take us forward together much further.

Thank you

Guy Ryder
Vienna, 3 November 2006