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PSI Young Workers Meeting – Sunday 23rd September in Vienna: "Give Young Workers a Voice”.

Around 60 young trade union activists from PSI affiliates came together on the eve of Congress to discuss how public sector trade unions can better reach out to young workers.

Opening the meeting, Hans Engelberts, PSI General Secretary, spoke of the organisation’s commitment to ensuring that young workers have a voice within PSI. Indeed a hot topic for discussion was the amendment to the PSI Constitution during this Congress, which means that for the first time, each region will have a young worker representative on the PSI Executive Board, as well as on Regional Executive Committees. The delegates were keen to explore just how they could ensure that their elected representatives properly represented their collective views and were sufficiently empowered to raise those views at meetings of the Executive Board.

Also on the agenda were questions concerning the recruitment and retention of young workers, organising young workers and international solidarity.

Obstacles to overcome
The young workers may have been from very different parts of the globe, but they found that they had many experiences and concerns in common. Notably, every region expressed concerns about the increasing precarisation of work and job insecurity, pay discrimination against young workers, threats posed by globalisation and neo-liberalism and the impact of global warming.

The delegates also identified several obstacles to effective participation of young workers in trade union activities, including:

• Lack of involvement in the decision-making processes
• Lack of respect for their ideas among trade union leaders
• Lack of trust in the judgement of young people
• Lack of visibility within their trade unions
• Lack of information about what trade unions are and how they can help young workers.

Messages for PSI and its affiliates
In terms of what young workers themselves could do, the participants urged each other and their peers to actively participate in trade union activities; get involved in budget setting; organise their own campaigns on issues of importance to young workers; create information-sharing networks; and reach out to students and other young workers. They called on trade unions to invest in having a young trade union leader who would be the “face and voice” of all the young workers in their unions.

There were messages for PSI too. Key amongst those were that there should be a young worker representative on the PSI World Women’s Committee and that PSI should seek to influence governments to include information about workers’ rights in education curricula.

Other main recommendations from group discussions
Retention of Young Workers:

• Involve young workers more and ensure that union activities are well promoted amongst young members
• Older members should assist in improving the retention of young workers, for example, by organising campaigns which target young workers
• PSI should monitor young workers’ involvement in its structures
• Unions should provide training and mentorship programmes for young workers on:
  o Collective bargaining and negotiating strategies
  o Leadership
  o Keeping public services public
  o Communications and technology (e.g. internet, Website)
  o Quality public services and youth employment

International Solidarity

• Young workers should establish a networking platform, using information technology, where experiences and information can be quickly shared in order to support one another
• Unions should organise education programs such as workshops, exchange programmes and study visits, especially amongst PSI affiliates from different cultural backgrounds/regions
• PSI and affiliates should develop thematic campaigns to focus on specific issues such as
  • Globalisation and the threats to job protection and stability and the provision of quality public services
  • Improving the image and perception of trade unionism
• Urgent call to unions to provide means and support to tackle contractualisation/precarisation of work and organising contract/precarious workers

The meeting also provided the young workers with the opportunity to prepare for their intervention during the Congress Equality Plenary session. The young worker delegates entered the plenary hall to rousing music, carrying placards and balloons bearing messages for PSI affiliates and demanding “Give Young Workers a Voice!”

All in all the message coming from young PSI activists at Congress was loud and clear: “Young workers need trade unions and trade unions need young workers”. Above all, unions must listen to young workers and campaign on the issues that are important to them.

The PSI Young Worker representatives for the Congress period 2008-2012 are:

See the young workers film shooted and presented in Vienna, at the Congress plenary session by clicking here.

The video is in flash format. Click here to get the adobe flash plugin.