PRINCE WILLIAM was in Liverpool last week and even Paul McCartney, but the city’s most important guests came with a different purpose. 

Over 2,000 trade union delegates from over 110 countries came to the city to meet for the four-yearly congress of a union representing 500 trade unions and over 20 million workers. 

Its theme was “Making it Happen” and it showed us all that it certainly was making it happen in eastern Europe, in Africa, in Palestine, in Latin America, with Amazon, with G4S, with DHL, with global companies and by supporting individual activists like Colombian Eric Amador for whom UNI launched a global campaign after he and his family received death threats within hours of the election of the new right-wing government. 

There were Tunisian trade unionists who won Nobel Peace prizes, there was of course Jeremy Corbyn, there was even former president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff and workers from Amazon who had taken strike action against the capitalist super-giant. 

Awards were given to the Hillsborough Campaign, to the Museum of Slavery and tributes to the retiring general secretary Phillip Jennings who was so important to the creation of this global union.

So given this treasure trove of campaigns, activity, inspiring leaders, dynamic ideas and creative and deeply modern trade union activity, where was the media? 

Seven million hits on Twitter and extensive social media engagement tell the story of massive interest in what was going on. 
But this is a movement that the media has yet to understand, suspecting as they might that it represents a different world to the narrative of rising racism, unstoppable capitalism, military interventions and refugee crises, environmental chaos and massive inequality.

Newly elected general secretary Christy Hoffman and deputy Alke Boesinger are the new leadership. Hoffman is a tough US former activist, a union lawyer and someone who was mostly responsible for the winning of the Bangladesh Accord that has prevented any further deaths in Bangladesh garment factories since the terrible Rana Plaza disaster five years ago. 

A combination of hard negotiations, leverage activities against companies that were reluctant to sign and the establishment of organising resources on the ground are an example of how the new leadership view the role of UNI — to fight and win using all our resources. 

The theme of Making it Happen represents the position the world union movement is in.  

Its Breaking Through awards are used to highlight workers campaigns, to show that the unions are not finished, that no workers can ever be left unorganised and that the role of leaders on the ground is the most important ingredient.

UNI has negotiated 53 global framework agreements with companies to allow workers the right to organise in a union, covering five million workers in 150 countries. 

This is of tremendous significance for the union activist in countries like Indonesia, Colombia, Poland, Palestine, Korea and other places with few resources and few rights. 

It creates opportunities and new rules. But the activity has to come from below and UNI seeks to find unions to work with, to help and support those unions that need simple support to start organising. It is doing that in 70 countries.

UNI has established two organising academies, one in central Europe and one in Colombia. These aim to find, train and employ young workers who will then work on campaigns started by local unions, offering experience and expertise. 

In the past, too many organisers are lost to the unions when campaigns end, but this operation allows the movement to retain its most valuable resource, organisers to work with activists.

UNI headquarters in Switzerland operates a small team of about 45 staff. Each region has its own offices, again with limited but highly effective staff teams. 

The emphasis is on activity, on support and on co-ordination. The affiliates are at the centre of everything that UNI does, donating huge solidarity funds from European and US unions for work in India, across the whole of Africa, in Colombia, Chile, Malaysia, Korea and many other places. There are 170 projects in total.

Yet UNI is also pushing quickly and swiftly wherever it can get a hearing over the use of AI, robotisation, workers’ rights to privacy and freedom from fear. 

UNI has produced its own workers’ data rights document to be tabled everywhere with employers, to be incorporated in existing agreements. 

The congress reflected all of this work. It started with a huge opening conference, featuring a Liverpool production of the history of the city and the movement, which ended in a great emotional moment as local trade union banners paraded to the front of the hall, carried by local activists, fusing the moment when the congress arrived from all over the world to be greeted by Liverpool’s own movement. 

Corbyn’s speech was a perfect enunciation of the need for global unions, workers’ rights, human rights and democracy. He spoke of the disgrace of the attacks on Yemen and the war crimes in Gaza. He emphasised the need for internationalism and solidarity and was a great start to the congress.

The protest actions in support of Amazon workers and for former Brazilian president Lula both demonstrated the range of campaigning that UNI does, but by far the most moving was the call to support Eric Amador. Given 72 hours to leave his city, he has been told that he and his family would be killed if he didn’t comply.

The UNI Congress and the America Region have asked us all to support him by sharing the story to deter the paramilitaries from carrying out their threat.

There was talk in the hall of “standing on the shoulders of giants.”

UNI Congress showed that there are many giants in that congress already and that a global movement against war, poverty and inequality has a powerful ally and a willing partner. UNI Congress 2018, Liverpool. It’s a great start.