By Jean-Paul Marthoz

The offices are being emptied and the computers are being switched off one by one in the red brick and smoked-glass building at 31-33 rue de Trèves/Trierstraat, in the heart of Brussels’ European administration district. The World Labour Confederation’s officers and experts are getting ready to move to the International Trade Union House (ITUH), Albert II Boulevard, which is the seat of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).
A long chapter in the history of trade unionism, but also that of social Catholicism, is coming to a close. Founded in The Hague (NL) in 1920 as the “International Confederation of Christian Trade Unions”, then rechristened “World Confederation of Labour” (WCL) in 1968, the organization had already become non-denominational in part. In the autumn, in line with the resolution that was adopted by an 86% majority at its convention at Houffalize, Belgium, it will join forces with its secular Social Democratic rival, the ICFTU, and other independent trade union confederations to create a new world federation (1).
Is this a marriage or a take-over? According to its initiators, it is neither one nor the other, and in no event is it a merger. The two organizations are too different: The ICFTU has 150 millions, or six times the WCL’s membership, and the latter would never have agreed to be swallowed up by the ICFTU.
The powerful Brussels-based Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (ACV/CSC) has given its blessing to the union. Used to working in a national united front, happy with the experience of unity within ETUC, where organizations affiliated with the ICFTU and WCL have worked side by side since 1973, Belgium’s largest trade union organization and the WCL’s generous godmother has clearly made its choice. Still, people are not partying in certain branches of the WCL, especially in its regional chapters and smaller European organizations (French Confederation of Christian Workers (CFTC), Luxembourg Confederation of Christian Workers (CSC-Luxembourg), etc.), which attach great importance to the “C” in their acronyms, that is to say the reference to socially-minded Christianity as part of their identity. As they see it, the creation of a new organization will put an end to a great dream and a great project: the existence of a global trade union alternative with a Christian bent.

Trade union crisis
The facts cannot be denied. Trade unionism is doing poorly. Membership in most of the large confederations in the major industrialized countries has been falling off steadily year to year. Today, the AFL-CIO, which had its heyday during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, represents only 15% of the US workforce. Last year, three major trade unions left its fold, triggering an acute political and financial crisis that generated shock waves that shook the ICFTU, within which it traditionally had an important place. In France, the divisions within the trade union movement are compounded by a ridiculously low rate of union membership. As relocalizations follow restructurings, cracks have formed in the workers’ great citadels. In Venezuela, the rate of unionization has fallen from 35% of the workforce in the 1980s to a scant 10% today.
Moreover, the future is not rosy. How is one to cope with globalization based on social dumping, child labour, relocalization, and deregulation? In China, where the global economy is being made over, trade unions toe the line. Unionists in many Latin American countries are harassed, intimidated, and murdered. In the Arab world the major trade union confederations are usually controlled by government bodies.
In the 1970s, the WCL adopted the image of an alternative to the ICFTU, which was described as the union arm of the Western world, and the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), which was based in Prague and openly pro-Soviet. Its Latin American chapter, the CLAT, positioned itself at the intersection of Latin American nationalism and the Catholic aggiornamento produced by the Vatican II Council. At its birth, it was very close to Christian democracy, which, starting with Eduardo Frei’s 1964 victory in Chile, strove to offer “a revolution in freedom”. It then rode the wave of the Latin American Bishops’ Conference in Medellin (1968), which took a “preferential option for the poor”.
In the 1980s and ’90s the WCL thought that it could narrow the gap. Solidarnosc, which was strongly anchored in Polish Catholic circles, asked to belong to both the ICFTU and WCL, while CUT in Brazil, which was the pivot for all the progressive experiences in South America, seemed to hesitate to join the ICFTU, which was still marked by the memory of its regional chapter ORIT’s collaboration with the military dictatorships and CIA. Aware of the balance of power, CUT chose the ICFTU, to the great displeasure of the WCL, which was consequently forced to wonder about its influence and survival.
The WCL, which was in part financed by Roman Catholic foundations such as the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and run by figures sometimes close to the Vatican, such as former General Secretary Carlos Custer (current Argentine ambassador to the Holy See), the WCL also suffered because of developments in the Catholic Church. Even though many Christian trade union officers did not dare to admit it urbi et orbi, their plans were weakened by the conservative strategy of Pope John-Paul II, who was hostile to liberation theology and close to congregations with affluent supporters such as Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ (a.k.a. Legionaries of Christ or Regnum Christi Movement). The WCL’s unionists also suffered in the 1980s because of Christian democracy’s crisis and confusion in countries torn by civil war (Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala) or ravaged by corruption and “mal-development”, such as Venezuela, which was long pivotal in Christian trade unionism and the Christian Democratic movement in Latin America.

The Belgian chapter
The end of the WCL triggers real nostalgia in Belgian Catholic circles. The “Catholic pillar” had already begun investing considerable energy and resources to create labour institutions and unions overseas, especially in Latin America, as early as the 1950s.
Helped by the Catholic University of Leuven’s prestige, accompanied by priests trained at the Collegium Pro America Latina, and relayed by a government dominated by the PSC/CVP (Christian Democrats) at the time, the “exporters” of the Belgian Christian Social movement (especially August Vanistendael and Joseph Cardijn, the founder of the Young Christian Workers’ movement JOC), had created an extraordinary “parallel diplomacy” that often ranged well beyond Belgium’s narrow borders. An extremely dense network of unions, Christian worker youth groups, Christian Democratic parties, and foundations converged on Brussels, which thus vied with Rome for the title of world capital of Catholic action movements. This presence disseminated a specifically Belgian notion of trade relations. Beyond the differences in interests, it fostered discussion and exchanges between trade union leaders, big bosses, and Roman Catholic executives of international institutions from Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission, to Michel Camdessus, thanks to the common references to the Church’s social teachings or the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier. Michel Then IMF director Michel Camdessus, for example, was one of the honorary guests of the WCL congress in Bangkok in 1997.

A Christian current?
What remains of all this in the new global organization? The WCL without a doubt contributed a uniqueness that will be hard to dilute in the new global confederation. Even if the latter does not challenge the multifacetedness of unionism on the national level, some leaders with ties to the WCL, especially in Latin America and Eastern Europe, are on their guard. With regard to the institutional landscape, they are afraid of being subjected to the same rather unenviable fate as the European Christian Democrats after they were absorbed by a European People’s Party dominated by (Spanish, British, and “Berlusconian”) secularized conservative groups. Politically, they are afraid of being forced to accept positions that will clash with their philosophical convictions on issues such as the liberalization of abortion and AIDS control that the ICFTU treated from a basically secular perspective.
The advocates of a “marriage of convenience” have taken great pains to calm these fears by stressing the “inevitable” need to bolster the effectiveness of trade unionism in order to fend off Neo-Liberal offensives and by proposing initiatives that should make it possible to preserve the philosophical achievements of more than a century of Social Christianism. These advocates of the new confederation point to the ETUC model, in which organizations with Christian roots, especially the ACV/CSC, move about freely. Moreover, ETUC’s former Secretary-General, the Italian Emilio Gabaglio, who came from a trade union – the Confederazione italiana sindicati lavoratori – that was affiliated with the ICFTU and was a former member of the WCL’s Confederal Committee when he presided over the ACLI (Catholic Association of Italian Workers), played a leading role in bringing the WCL and ICFTU closer together.
These long-standing members of the WCL say that they are determined to work loyally within the new global confederation. “It’s the best way for us to preserve our “little difference’,” one CSC steward told us, “like our comrades close to Social Democracy, even Marxism, who, in taking part in the hierarchical manoeuvring and drafting of resolutions and guidelines, practice in their own way certain forms of endogamy.”
In any event, there is no question of creating a structured “faction” or current. “That would be unmanageable and counterproductive,” the WCL’s Secretary-General, Willy Thys, explained. Being keen, however, to preserve the heritage of a “values-based trade unionism”, he supports the creation of a “World Trade Union Assembly”, that is, an open forum that would allow the former WCL members but also other activists to meet and assert the principle of unity within diversity such as is foreseen for the new global confederation. Once again, ETUC serves as a model. “In no event did its creation,” one of its leaders reminds us, “stifle debate and erase differences.” And he gave as an example the creation by three “sociologically Christian” federations (the ACV/CSC, CFDT, and Italian CISL) of the European Social Observatory. “Inside the ETUC,” our speaker continued, “no one took this to be a form of ‘divisionism’ but, rather, an initiative to provide Europe trade unionism with an invaluable tool for research and debate.”
Other initiatives are also taking shape in the wings of this great union upheaval, as if the WCL’s disappearance demanded an urgent pondering of the re-organization of labour circles of Christian inspiration. A team gathered around François Martou (the former president of the Christian Workers’ Mouvement (MOC), Belgium) and Luigi Bobba (president of the Italian ACLI) has been working for the past few months on setting up a European, even international, co-ordinating body for Christian workers’ associations.

Where is the centre of gravity?
How is all this brainstorming viewed by the ICFTU, over at the ITUH? It irritates some members who, being linked to secular circles, like FO in France, fear, despite all the denials, that a structured “current” will arise, similar to what exists in certain European trade unions (an example is Austria, where Social Democrats, Christians, and Marxists co-exist in a sometimes-stormy relationship within the OGB). “The main advantage of this unification,” one ICFTU officer tells us, “ lies in the world of workers’ ability to speak with one voice. The former WCL members must not then go off and set up their own chapel!” Others, who are linked to the most powerful (Scandinavian and British) organizations in the ICFTU, are not overly worried. “Even if the General Secretary, Guy Ryder, and others within the ICFTU also claim to uphold values, especially human rights, we have a very pragmatic reading of things,” is how one ICFTU advisor put it. “Our view of trade unionism does not put the philosophical dimension that Christian unionism adheres to at the centre of things. So, we don’t see any real risk of tension.” In fact, the ICFTU’s leaders, who cut their teeth on the fight against Communism, worry more about the impact that the inclusion of federations with a Marxist bent, such as the French and Portuguese CGTs, might have on the new global confederation. They are afraid that the centre of gravity might slide “too far to the left” and result in the creation of a pole of more radical organizations critical of the great trade unions of the North’s domination of international trade unionism.
Careful! One union movement may hide another. To be continued…