Decent work for everyone

Trade union acti­vity can be dange­rous. Accor­ding to the global trade union move­ment orga­ni­sa­tion ITUC, union acti­vists were murde­red in 13 count­ries in 2022. All kinds of harass­ment is commonplace, too, like battery, arrest and base­less dismissal.

The Industrial Union supports many trade union and working life projects around the world. These are financed from the Union budget.

The Trade Union Soli­da­rity Centre of Finland SASK is the soli­da­rity and deve­lop­ment coope­ra­tion orga­ni­sa­tion of Finnish trade unions, with a focus on labour rights. The Industrial Union is also a member of SASK, and run seve­ral projects toget­her with it. The Mini­stry of Foreign Affairs usually supports these projects, too, multiplying the origi­nal financial input of the Union.

Trade unions are doing very prac­tical work in many places. They are instru­men­tal in impro­ving the situa­tion of working peoples’ lives. For this reason, the local part­ners of the Industrial Union projects are usually trade unions. Some­ti­mes the coope­ra­tion also covers the Global Unions like IndustriALL.

The Industrial Union supports many trade union and working life projects around the world.

The Industrial Union projects are of a very prac­tical nature. They can for instance aim at impro­ving occu­pa­tio­nal health in certain working places or advancing collec­tive bargai­ning. All this bene­fits the Industrial Union members, too. We can learn many things from the other unions.

In Malawi, SASK heard about the situa­tion of women in the coal mines. They worked long days and slip­pers were deemed good enough as safe shoes. SASK had suppor­ted local unions and trai­ned their repre­sen­ta­tive, who took to action.

Result: women no longer do night shifts. They got the same protec­tive gear as men and their own locker room and toilet.

Now, the Industrial Union is working on a project to make Brazi­lian industrial unions stron­ger. The goal is that unions can be a strong voice in working life issues and in a just green transition.

Real results in Mozambique

The answer is yes. In March, three Finnish researc­hers publis­hed a three-year study of a SASK project in Mozam­bique. SASK suppor­ted five local trade unions to orga­nise trai­ning for emplo­yees and their repre­sen­ta­ti­ves. These unions also cove­red industrial work.

The researc­hers compa­red working places where the trai­ning was given with those without it. The results of the study were clear. Even two short days of trai­ning did help to improve terms of work.

The study indica­tes that the group that partici­pa­ted in trai­ning on labour matters had a slight increase in sala­ries, while those without trai­ning had a loss in sala­ries. Furt­her­more, the trai­ned workers had an increase in the number of paid hours worked as they worked less non-paid hours.

Their pay also rose. This did not happen at the workplaces without training.

At the workplaces with trai­ning, the unions were able to keep their members. At the workplaces without trai­ning, union members­hip dropped.

Union trai­ning focused on labour rights and nego­tia­tion skills. Better know­ledge of these gave self-confi­dence and had a posi­tive influence on the terms of work.