Protokoll 2003 - Seko

same here in Sweden. We hope, despite this latest tragic event, that
that love of freedom and the ability to live in a free way will continue.
Violence affects not only politicians, it affects all citizens wherever they are
in the streets and in their workplaces. As I speak to you today here, one of
our biggest affiliates in the United Kingdom is at the very same moment
launching a campaign in London which they call Freedom from fear. It is
a campaign to try and protect the people who work in shops, who face
customers, whether in the post, the banks, or the security services. They say
that these people need security at their workplace to point out the violence
that does take place and which I don't think most people always realize. I
would like to highlight that and ensure that our workers will be protected.
Very soon, in the weeks that come, we will be part of a high level expert
meeting at the ILU, and we will be there as well presenting the case for
commerce workers, for postal workers and others about the necessary
measures that are needed to protect people at their workplace.
Colleagues! We created UNI some three years ago in response to
globalization, in response to the enormous technical changes which were
taking place and changing completely the industries in which we worked,
changing the borders between those industries. We created UNI in
response to the deregulation which was sweeping the world and reinforcing
this process of globalization, a deregulation which allows multinational
companies to go wherever they wish, to operate wherever they
wish, frequently without control and always without any respect for
national or regional boundaries.
We decided that given these changes that were taking place, we needed to
give a trade union response to that globalization of the economy, to make
a global union which would be the voice of workers wherever decisions
are taken on the international level which affect workers.
Chief amongst those organizations in recent years where we have been
concerned has been the World Trade Organization. For the last few years,
the WTO has been working on what they call GATS, the General Agreement
on the Trade in Services, an attempt after the first rounds of
liberalizing the manufacturing industries, of liberalizing also trade and
services. That affects almost all of our members in UNI, because all of us
work in services of one kind or another – the post, telecoms, electricity,
banks, finance, insurance, All of our 15 million members around the world
will be affected by these discussions which take place in the WTO.
It is a very strange organization. It is based in Geneva, where we live, but
when we go and knock on the door in Geneva and try to talk to them, when
they open the door they will say to us: That's fine, we will talk to you, but
we don't actually take the decisions. Decisions are always taken by
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