Speech ICFTU General Secretary Guy Ryder

President, Delegates, Observers and Guests,

We are moving to the final part of our Congress and no doubt the final minutes of the life of the ICFTU.

This Congress is about to consider proposals which are among the most important – if not among the easiest – taken in the history of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. For, if they meet with your approval, they will bring an end to the 57 years of the ICFTU’s existence and provide for the founding of the most representative and unified trade union International ever seen.

President, you will guide us through the complexities and technicalities of these decisions in a moment.

But before that, it is right I think that we pause briefly to reflect on the significance and the motivation for what we are about to do.

On occasions such as this one, our natural reflex is to look back over our shoulder at our history, at our achievements and our disappointments, at our victories and our defeats. The times we got things right and those mistakes which – inevitably – we made.

The videos we saw earlier, the memory of the sisters and brothers no longer with us the words of the ICFTU’s past leaders all help us to do this and, no doubt, produce in us a powerful mixture of maybe contradictory emotions.

Emotions which may not necessarily help us to be 100% objective in our judgments this afternoon. But let’s make that effort to set emotion to one side and look at where we stand today and where we intend to go from here.

What can we say?

We can say – with pride but without triumphalism that in its 57 years history, the ICFTU has been present where it had to be in the defence of workers rights and interests, in the promotion of free and democratic trade unionism, and in the cause of democracy and liberty. We have had our detractors of course, but none could contest the reality that the ICFTU has helped make the world a better, fairer, free place than had we not existed.

Most frequently our work has been to intervene day-to-day in support of trade unionists in ways that are today not remembered by even the most avid labour historians. The steady drip-drip of our solidarity carving out small spaces of improvement in the daily lives of working people. I have heard this type of work described by critics as irrelevant, as inadequate, as missing the essential point of the confrontation with global capital. I think those criticisms are wrong. They misunderstand trade unionism, and they are negligent of the history of our movement. And in any case when history has come knocking at our door, where the ICFTU has been called to action in moments of the highest drama – when what was at stake was the very direction of the course of history – we were up to the task. We got the job done. And we helped break asunder the rocks obstructing the path of progress.

Well, history is knocking at our door again this week in Vienna. And I am confident we will again get the job done.

Together we have traveled a long road of solidarity, struggle, and internationalism that has brought us from London in 1949 to Vienna in 2006. We have grown along the way. The ICFTU started life with 56 affiliated national centres from 50 countries and territories. Today we have over 200 affiliates in 150 countries and territories.

And as we have grown, so to has the pluralism and diversity of our Confederation.

But what has helped us stay on the right road has been our common adherence in all of this diversity to the basic values of democratic trade unionism, values which are the essence of the ICFTU, without which we could not have held together, and without which we would surely have lost our sense of direction.

If we are all agreed on this, then we must also be agreed that our long journey is far from completed. In none of our countries can any of us say that bread, peace, and freedom has been won for all. Social justice is still a most distant prospect and grinding poverty the stark and immediate reality. Too often what trade unionists have won in the past – and maybe thought was won for ever – is under threat. No, our job is not done. So why now, of all times, is it the right thing to do to bring the proud history of the ICFTU to an end?

That was the question asked – and answered courageously and clearly by our 18th World Congress in Miyazaki just two years ago. The answer, and it is proper to recall it now, comes in a strong endorsement of unification on two essential foundations.

Firstly, unification based on principle. We are acting on a simple imperative and a simple reality. The imperative being that the basic principle of free trade unions that have always guided the ICFTU must be the principle that guides the new International. That is what the draft Constitution we will take up in a moment says. And the simple reality is that those principles are shared not just inside the ICFTU but beyond it as well. By our friends in the WCL and by a significant number of national centres affiliated to neither international. From different starting points these three currents converge today and bring all of us here to Vienna. There is no logic, no justification for continued division, and every advantage in unification.

But unification with purpose too – and this is the second essential foundation.

Shared principles are essential. Principles shared among greater numbers is better still - and adds to our strength. But even that is not enough. We have also to come together in a common determination to pursue the objectives set out in the draft Constitution and to give ourselves the means and capacities to realize them.

Simply put the challenge is to provide effective representation to working people in the globalized economy and the truth is that we have a responsibility to change so that we do that better than now. And it lies in our own hands to do this, because many of the obstacles we have so far run up against are of our own manufacture.

This is the essence of the new trade union internationalism that history and our circumstances call on us to put in place.

Here in Vienna, we have the opportunity to put the first building blocks into place. This may be the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end. I am not certain. But it is an enormous step forward. And it is equally sure that a great deal more is going to have to be done afterwards.

No international can be stronger then the active engagement and commitment of its national affiliates allow it to be. That was always true of the ICFTU, and will be true for the ITUC too. So the onus is on all of us to make international work an integral part of mainstream national trade union activity – not a distraction from it. We need to make all parts of the international movement work together for best effect. We have new opportunity to develop close cooperation in Europe with our allies of the ETUC.

We have opportunity too to recast the relationship between the new International and the Global Union Federations, to the benefit of all parties and the advantage of the single movement we all belong to.

History can be instructive. In the first recorded speech of a representative of the then International Trade Secretariats in the Founding Congress of the ICFTU in 1949 he speaks of the problems caused by “a mild feeling of competition and rivalry” between the ITS’s and the ICFTU’s predecessors – going back to the 1920’s.

Which proves two things:

-  one – that he was a diplomat and
-  two – that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

And sends us an obvious message – its time to do better – and the Council of Global Unions offers us the chance of a new structured partnership in which – if we chose – we can do great things. Let’s do that – let’s all do that, the new International, our ten GUF partners and TUAC too of course.

President, Congress,

Extraordinary efforts have been made to bring us to the point of the historic proposals before you now. They are not really the efforts of individuals – but the efforts of organisations – the ICFTU and its affiliates as well as those of others.

It is for you to weigh the merits of those efforts and to take decisions accordingly.

What I personally value in them is that they show that our movement knows how to place the general goal before narrower interests. Knows that the right way forward is not necessarily the easiest way. Knows too that its future is in its own hands and that it is ready to turn its how to creating that future.

And now, indeed it is you who will decide.

Guy Ryder
ICFTU General Secretary
Vienna, 31 October 2006