Open World Conference of Workers

In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights

Toward the Caribbean Conference of 

December 2002

Editorial of Inaugural Issue of "Caribbean Open Forum" 

Roseau (Dominica) Declaration

Building the Caribbean Conference December 2002 

Editorial of Inaugural Issue of "Caribbean Open Forum" 

(September 2002)

As you can read in this first issue of "Caribbean Open Forum," a Caribbean Conference will be held December 12-13, 2002, in Guadeloupe around the following topics:

- against deregulation
- for the defence and the reconquest of workers; rights
- for trade union independence
- against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which will bankrupt the economies of the small countries already destroyed by three centuries of colonization,
- for the right of the peoples of the region to govern themselves.

It is no coincidence that the conference is being held in Guadeloupe. Thanks to the Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), which is the co-convener of the conference, it can be said that Guadeloupe is the capital of trade union independence. The complete independence of the UGTG in relation to the State and all foreign investors, and its refusal to surrender to the call for a "social dialogue," have enabled the UGTG to obtain significant victories and and to win the confidence of the workers, and, more generally, of the oppressed population. One recent example is the victory of the workers of the National Employment Agency (ANPE), which created a precedent that their coworkers in France want to use as a precedent for jurisprudence. [See article inside.]

The capitalist exploiters have understood the importance of the independence of the workers' organisations. This is why they are hell-bent on destroying that independence by trying to make them collaborate in the implementatioin of their plans -- all in the name of the "humanisation of globalisation."

You can read in the article titled, "The European Union and the Promotion of the Social Dialogue in the Caribbean," the role that the European Union has been assigned in this region.

In opposition to this generalised offensive, a movement of resistance has built up, largely around the International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International (ILC), the San Francisco Labor Council (AFL-CIO), as well as a whole host of unions, labor and democratic rights organisations on all continents. This resistance is manifested, in part, by the regular holding of international international conferences against deregulation and privatisation, in favor of the reconquest of workers' rights, for trade union independence. The last such conference was held in Berlin, Germany, in February 2002, gathering delegates from 51 countries. Its complete report has been published in a book issued in French, English, Spanish and German.

In our Caribbean region, the Berlin Conference was prepared by a meeting in Martinique in December 2001 that brought together militants and unionists from Martinique, Guadeloupe and Dominica. The Caribbean delegates present in Berlin, in the face of the danger to the entire region represented by the extension of NAFTA to the rest of the Western Hemisphere in the form of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), considered it a necessity to organise -- prior to the Conference of the Americas Against the FTAA, scheduled for 2003 -- a special conference for the Caribbean at the end of 2002.

The organisers of the Caribbean Conference of 2002 stand firmly on the ground of the full independence of workers' organisations. The framework of this Conference is the one contained in the Declaration of Roseau (Dominica), which is published in this issues, as well as the full financial independence of the conference, meaning its total self-financing.

The Editorial Board of Caribbean Open Forum


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