Today is, depending on where you’re standing, WDDW, WFMA or JMTD. It’s a great new initiative from the ITUC in Brussels, who have decided that to campaign on labour rights in an age of globalisation, you need to take the campaign itself global. This means drawing the links between what makes work work in many different situations, and showing how decent work is the only sure way out of poverty in developing countries, and for justice and equality in the developed world.
As unions know, the best way to make links is through solidarity, and so unionists all over are holding events as the day progresses, from the rather normal (like getting the Government to address a union meeting in Kazakhstan), through to the slightly wacky (‘Legs Akimbo’ union drama in Austria, or driving with full beam lights on in Bulgaria). Oh yes, and the Greeks are on strike. There’s a rather compelling timeline being kept at www.wddw.org, so you can see what’s going on – the list is really pretty impressive.
In the UK, we’ve open house at the TUC in London (as well as an event being organised in Newcastle). I’ll be at some of the TUC do, where there are going to be over 50 seminars, films, and exhibition stands over the course of the day (more info here). Hope to see other metropolitan unionists there too!
If you can’t get to one of the events, you can join the celebrations in the virtual world of Second Life, where several speakers from the London event, as well as campaigners from UNI in Switzerland and unionists from around the world will be holding their own virtual events on Union Island between 12 noon (GMT) and 4pm. I’m going to be logging in there too, to get my decent work fix. It’s always interesting to meet some of the international types that these online events bring together – I now have union pals in places I’ve never been to – so I’m looking forward to that.
WDDW an interesting model for a global campaign – tieing hundreds of local activities together to illustrate how local issues all tie into a globalised picture that needs to be tackled at both a local and global level, and I think the ITUC should be commended for trying something so ambitious. This kind of thing could build nicely, in fact it’s the kind of thing that only really works when everyone is used to what they’re doing, how their messages work together, and how they can pull together more effectively with the global media, so I hope they keep it up for next year too.