WSIS: Unions Want Employment Issues on Agenda

source: Inter Press Service

22.Oct.03 - Global unions are concerned that organisers of the World Summit on the Information Society due to open in Geneva December have ignored key employment issues.

The draft declaration and action plan have failed so far to acknowledge the role the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector plays as employer, says the Swiss-based Union Network International (UNI).

UNI is a global trade union for the skills and services sectors, with about 15 million members worldwide. Three million of these are in telecommunications and information technology (IT).

The UNI says governments and the business community taking part in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) have done little to push issues such as workers rights, labour standards, health and safety, and equality on to the agenda.

These issues and more industry-specific issues such as universal access to communications and public investment in ICT are being pushed to the sidelines, says UNI general secretary Philip Jennings.

"We are bothered about the need for the summit to address what kinds of rights and opportunities should be given to working people," Jennings told IPS. "There seems to be insufficient attention given to a lot of the aspects of labour relations as well as occupational and employment aspects."

Members of international trade unions working at the WSIS under the Global Unions platform say they recognise that society is moving to a new stage in terms of organisation of work, location of work, how work is done and how businesses function.

They say these issues must be addressed during the course of the summit, being organised by the International Telecommunications Union with sponsorship from the United Nations (UN).

Neil Anderson, head of the telecom division of UNI says the declaration expected at WSIS has some words about the UN human rights declaration but nothing about labour rights.

"Workers have to produce the things that make the information society work and they have to be recognised in the declaration and action plan," he says.. "There are some governments that don't want them in there and certainly business is opposing to some extent as well."

Despite the tripartite approach of bringing government, business and civil society together at the summit, it seems that organisers are not facing up sufficiently to issues on the trade union agenda.

The Global Unions group says their concerns have not been helped by the seeming determination of government representatives to keep civil society out of decision-making procedures.

Until recently, UNI has been unhappy with the organisers' stand on access for participants outside of normal government representation, Jennings says.

"We along with a number of other non-governmental organisations made representations to the organisers and the president of the Prepcom about how unhappy we were about how other voices were being excluded," Jennings says. "And I think they've made a pretty reasonable effort to try and accommodate this, but it still isn't working as we would like."

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society groups have been allowed an hour of informal sessions ahead of the formal sessions. But civil society groups remain frustrated over their lack of input in the overall process.

"We welcome the opportunity to have the possibility to make our case heard, but it's also imperfect," Jennings says. "The danger is we could end up just talking to our own audience."

Despite the moves to open up the summit process, there are still very strong fears among many within the trade union lobby that the WSIS might be headed for failure.

Trade unions are worried that the World Bank-International Monetary Fund (IMF) approach to issues facing the WSIS will be swallowed whole when it comes to issues such as liberalisation, deregulation and the question whether or not public service can meet the challenges of the IT revolution.

"Look at Colombia for instance, where we just had a case where the World Bank told the telecommunications carrier in the country they had to privatise," says Jennings. "That means that essentially the universal access provision is questioned."

On the other hand the business community "has forgotten the society part of the information revolution," Jennings says. "This isn't just about improved IT infrastructures, this is also about what does this new world mean for people at large."

The WSIS focus has been aimed clearly at bridging the digital divide, which it describes as the ever increasing gap between the technological haves and have nots. The Global Union platform believes this is important, but that the summit should focus equally on the social divide.

"It's also about what people earn, where people earn it, and the conditions in which new employment opportunities are made in a new working environment," says Jennings. "We are looking for the NGO community to support us in this argument."

Jennings is confident of moving in that direction. "We've got our act together, we know what we want, we're already talking to union centres around the world," says Jennings. "We have networked the network of unions, so we are pretty well prepared."