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Across the globe, union movements at both a national and international level are forced to confront the power and political dominance of global corporations. In the name of market efficiency and global competitiveness, these corporations undermine the power of unions through constant relocations to cheap labor countries that deny union rights.
They impose work restructuring that intensifies (speed up/longer working hours) and casualizes work. These same corporations are driving the privatization process, destroying any concept of the public interest. These ‘restructures’ are not negotiated, they are imposed.
At the 2005 Congress of SIGTUR in Bangkok, the President of the KCTU stated that the union movement must "enter a phase of experimentation. We need to fundamentally transform ourselves....If unions fail in this endeavor to re-organize then we have no future".
SIGTUR is currently in a phase of experimentation – a search for new methods of organizing, new methods of challenging the dominant power of global corporations and the weak response of political parties across the political spectrum.
From its inception in 1991, SIGTUR was a movement experiment that has brought together the democratic unions in the south in a search for new forms of empowerment. Throughout the 1990s global campaigns were initiated, some of which were successful (see SIGTUR history). At present, SIGTUR is engaged in a process of constructing global unions (See Bangkok Congress resolutions).
There are other union internationals that are struggling with these issues. SIGTUR is working closely with a number of these initiatives. This web site reflects these initiatives.
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