04 Oct Ed’s gone wild – Malaysia Edition
Edward Miller previously worked at FIRST Union as their strategic advisor and was the FIRST representative on the Stand Up committee. Recently he’s buggered off to Malaysia to take up a job there. Tell us all about it, Ed!
I recently took a job in Kuala Lumpur for Building and Woodworkers International (BWI), the global union federation (GUF) that represents workers in the wood and construction industries.
So what’s a GUF all about then? It works like this.
Capital is organised multinationally nowadays: multinational companies structure their affairs in such a way to take advantage of, for example, low corporate tax rates in one country, the cheap cost of labour in another, and poor environmental regulations in yet another. Labour – that is workers – need multinational strategies to combat this, by co-ordinating actions and campaigns across multiple countries at the same time. This is where GUFs come in.
GUFs assist in campaigns where local unions could do with a bit of a hand (as in South Korea right now where trade union rights are under serious attack), they campaign on global issues (like the migrant worker exploitation in Qatar), and negotiate global framework agreements, that establish a set of global labour standards that that employer guarantees across all their operations. Corporate executives of all stripes have all sorts of fora to coordinate and discuss tactics to increase profitability, it seems only right that unions should create the same opportunities, to forge better strategies ensuring workers get a fair deal and decent working life.
I first got involved with BWI two years ago during a Youth Conference, where I was lucky enough to share experiences with trade union delegates from across the globe, and I have stayed actively involved in the organisation since then. My work will involve campaigning on issues throughout the Asia-Pacific, including dealing with Chinese multinationals, labour migration, tax avoidance, promoting sustainable forestry, and, most importantly, working to improve trade union and worker rights.
Edward will endeavour to keep Stand Up updated of what is going on in the BWI space, and will occasionally plead for your support for particular campaigns.
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