[mobglob-discuss] Fw: The difference between charity and solidarity

[Paul Browning]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ericlee at labourstart.org>
To: <labourstart at unionlists.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 6:32 AM
Subject: The difference between charity and solidarity


> A couple of years ago, after sending out an appeal to support workers somewhere in the developing world, I received an email back from a steelworker in the United States.  "We have enough problems here at home," he told me -- and didn't want anything to do with our campaign.  
> 
> Last week, we got a similar email from someone in Canada.  "All those campaigns are quite laudable, helping those workers in far off lands. However, how about helping those workers a bit closer to home?"
> 
> That letter came in response to an appeal I made last week.  I asked all of you to help build support for campaigns on behalf of workers in developing countries -- places like Thailand, Cambodia, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Bahamas and Haiti.  Most of our campaigns do indeed focus on developing countries.  And most of the readers of these messages live in industrial countries -- mostly in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
> 
> Sometimes it must feel to you a bit like charity appeals, like the messages I get every day from organizations like Oxfam and the Red Cross.
> 
> But there's a big difference between charity and solidarity.
> 
> International union solidarity means that workers everywhere help workers anywhere because it is in their self-interest to do so.  And solidarity is a two-way street.
> 
> This week we have been asked by a union representing casino workers in New Zealand to send off messages to an employer who has sacked a union delegate.  The appeal is here:
> 
> http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=35
> 
> New Zealand is NOT a developing country.  It is modern capitalist society with a Labour Party in power.  But even there, workers sometimes feel a need for international solidarity.
> 
> That casino in Dunedin, New Zealand, for example -- its owners, who are dependent upon tourism, need to know that word of what they have done has spread far and wide.  The workers there need to know that they not only have their own union, the Service and Food Workers Union, behind them.  They also have thousands of trade unionists around the world backing them.  
> 
> A century ago, such international solidarity was part-and-parcel of being a trade unionist.  Much of that tradition disappeared in the intervening decades, but the Internet has offered us the possibility of reviving that tradition.  It is a tradition particularly appropriate to the age of globalization.
> 
> When workers anywhere need help, trade unionists everywhere should rally to their side.  The Internet allows us to do that in seconds, at no cost, painlessly.
> 
> Please -- send off your message of support for New Zealand casino workers today.  And make sure to visit the page on LabourStart listing all the current campaigns:
> 
> http://www.labourstart.org/actnow.shtml
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Eric Lee
> 


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