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15 October, 2013On 10 and 11 October trade unionists from the USA, Germany, Finland, Brazil and Spain came together upon invitation of IndustriALL to assist at the first John Deere network meeting founded with the aim to open new communications and cooperation channels between workers of the company worldwide.
Participants from three continents started their meeting with an open exchange of experiences. Some activists had very concrete questions: “How to respond to John Deere’s strategy of making each site “exchangeable” and being able to shift product design and production from one plant to another?”. Others were more interested in a wider perspective.
The meeting brought together very different approaches, and the participants made an enormous progress in the two days of discussions. All participants want to contribute and want to create a network that generates “added value” for all trade unions and all John Deere workers, no matter where they come from and no matter where they live.
The meeting was not only about a simple exchange of information about the situation at John Deere, the union activsits have also committed to work together in the future in order to make the network a success.
UAW (USA) and IG Metall (Germany) will jointly provide all participants with the draft “guidelines” for the network and invite all the participants to contribute. The trade unionists who were present in Geneva also agreed on opening up this network to all interested trade unions organizing workers at John Deere. Hence they installed a “godparenthood” system in order to be able to cover all continents where John Deere operates.
The priorities for further discussion include occupational safety and health at John Deere, union responses to application of any form of “precarious work” and support for organizing initiatives.