Global Solidarity Makes Us Stronger!
In our global economy, workers are standing together across thousands of miles, speaking hundreds of languages, and working across the entire supply chain together. We have one message…
WE STAND IN SOLIDARITY!
Today's economy is truly global, and it is more important than ever that union solidarity crosses international borders. Many employers of RWDSU members conduct business in different countries, or are headquartered in other countries. What happens internationally can greatly affect what happens here. We support our union brothers and sisters internationally, and we need their support now more than ever before.
Our work with international trade union organizations has helped us negotiate strong contracts with global employers including Coca-Cola, Nestle, Fresenius, Zara, and H&M, to name a few, and helped bring new members from global corporations into the RWDSU.
During the Amazon campaign in Bessemer, Alabama, members of Uni Global Union and beyond sent messages of solidarity to workers.
The RWDSU is a member of two international trade union organizations:
IUF — International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Association
The IUF represents 336 organizations in 119 countries. These organizations represent approximately 10 million workers. IUF workers are employed in agriculture, food preparation, tobacco, hotels, restaurants and catering services. The IUF fights back against exploitation and oppression of workers, and is committed to promoting and defending trade union rights and human rights in general.
UNI - Global Union
UNI represents over 20 million workers in the private service sector in more than 900 trade unions in 150 countries worldwide. The aim of UNI and its affiliates is to organize workers in the service sector. UNI believes strongly in the importance of international unionization to match the growing global economy, and is dedicated to using new technologies like the Internet to help unions communicate and gather information.
Recent Global Solidarity Campaigns
Amazon
Now, as the price of everything has increased, Amazon is squeezing every last drop it can from workers and communities. It impacts us all, driving down workplace standards, growing inequality and undermining our governments and public institutions with limitless power and influence.
The RWDSU has been challenging Amazon, which can and must do better, for over a decade. From the successful fight to stop their second headquarters in New York unless or until they treated their workers with dignity and respect, to becoming the first union to take on organizing an entire Amazon warehouse in the United States — the RWDSU will not stop until Amazon changes its treatment of workers. Our work has shaped and will continue to shape not only the global economy, but labor organizing around the world.
Amazon’s rise to the top of the winner-take-all economy has been a call to action to labor unions around the world. We have joined together in the Amazon Global Union Alliance to fight for collective bargaining and the affirmation of the dignity of work. RWDSU President, Stuart Appelbaum currently chairs the Global Amazon Alliance.
Coca-Cola
The RWDSU represents Coca-Cola bottlers, distributors and vending machine makers in the Northeast and Midwest. Our members at both of the top beverage companies, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, have some of the strongest union contracts, safest working conditions and benefits workers anywhere have at either company.
When our union siblings in the IUF were in negotiations and wanted to see how our contracts secured workers’ ability to have long time and safe jobs, which could help them raise their families, we welcomed them with open arms in Boston, Massachusetts.
That visit, and many others, have built a strong bridge of communication among Coca-Cola workers and specifically around their union contracts globally.
Thanks to the IUF, we convene annual meetings with the company to address workplace concerns. We stand with our union siblings abroad, just as they have stood in solidarity with us.
Poultry & Meat Processing
The RWDSU has a long history representing poultry and meat processing workers, particularly in the Southern United States. United, RWDSU organizers have helped thousands of poultry & meat processing workers win protections and improvements in what is traditionally dangerous and underpaid work.
These often unseen and unheard from workers stand elbow to elbow processing everything from your children’s McDonald’s chicken nuggets to your grandmother’s Sunday roast, but it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that they were finally recognized for what we’ve long know them to be: essential workers. Workers put a spotlight on their working conditions and demanded change from the 77-billion-dollar poultry industry, which was paying them, as then-RWDSU Member, Michael Foster put it, “just four-quarters,” to put their lives on the line in a global pandemic.
Workers in the food processing industry worldwide looked to the calls for action in the United States as an example and the RWDSU stood shoulder to shoulder with our union siblings in the IUF to demand change at the international level, as well as at home.
On April 7, 2020, Michael Foster gave the first interview by a poultry worker in the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid failures by the industry to give workers necessary safety protections, including basic PPE, he came forward to tell the 77-billion-dollar industry that “four-quarters” was not enough to put his life on the line. His bravery gave strength to dozens of workers whose stories collectively forced the industry to make deep and lasting health and safety changes. The strength of these workers is also winning them record wages at the bargaining table as we now call them, rightfully, essential workers.
ZARA
In 2016, thanks in part to the solidarity of Spanish unions already representing workers at the company, over 1,000 Zara workers at eight stores in New York City won the right to a union voice.
The campaign began in 2014 when Zara workers launched the #ChangeZara campaign with support from RWDSU’s Retail Action Project. They drew attention to the differences in work life between U.S. retail workers and their European counterparts who are unionized, such as access to benefits and representation at work. After workers presented petitions to their managers and held public rallies, in 2014 Zara agreed to increase the number of full-time positions, end on-call shifts, and give workers a raise. But Zara workers needed a union to make those changes permanent.
UNI Global Union negotiated a global framework agreement with Zara’s parent company Inditex, which opened the door for conversations around neutrality. Using this framework, the company promised not to interfere in the union drive and to recognize the union once a majority of workers signed cards.
The initial wins in 2016 have continued to spark worker organizing across Zara in the United States, and thanks to the Global Framework Agreement, thousands of Zara workers have become members of the RWDSU.
H&M
In November 2007, the very first H&M workers organized and won RWDSU representation through an expedited process with support of UNI and the Swedish H&M unions. It was the first neutrality agreement ever won by workers on this scale. In the years since, a growing number of H&M workers have continued to join the RWDSU.
In 2018, the RWDSU sought to change systemic and pervasive issues in the retail sector through the H&M contract and won! Workers stood together yet again to take on the Swedish company, where workers in their headquarter nation have more rights than in the United States. And again RWDSU had the full support of the Swedish H&M unions and UNI Global Union. Workers held a massive Herald Square rally, built a robust digital campaign and won the support of local elected officials to win:
Guaranteed Part-Time Hours
Eliminate “Clopenings”
No More Than 5 Consecutive Days Worked
How it started…
How it’s going…
Looking to organize a union at your workplace?
Organizing a union at your workplace means standing together to win a seat at the table at work. It means having a voice, and a way to say to your boss that the concerns of workers are every bit as important as the employer’s bottom line. Interested in getting started?