20 February, 2013IndustriALL’s Automotive Working Group met in Tokyo on on 10-12 December.
IndustriALL and JAW, the Japanese Federation of all Autoworkers Unions, hosted the meeting. Participants from 18 countries discussed strategies and concrete actions in the automotive sector of IndustriALL.
The network’s main purpose is to stabilize the relationship between different unions, companies and countries, to be a support in organizing campaigns, and to help strengthening unions.
The meeting was strongly orientated to the key points of IndustriALL´s Action Plan, especially “Organizing and building stronger unions” and “Trade union rights- right to join a union and have collective agreements”.
Participants discussed activities in different countries like Mexico, India and Russia. The common goal of the work in these countries is to improve cooperation between local unions and company headquarters.
The work of a few organizing campaigns was shared, for example Volkswagen, Daimler and Nissan in US, along with talks on international agreements on precarious work (Volkswagen), Global Framework Agreement (Renault) and another international agreement from Volkswagen exporting the German “Codetermination Rights” to all plants worldwide. An agreement between a union and management, it strengthens the rights of the union even in countries where labour laws are very weak.
It was decided to hold the next Automotive Working Group Meeting in October 2014 in Bangkok, Thailand.