International Transport Workers' Federation
The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF ) is an established 1896, an international trade union federation, which represents 4.5 million workers currently in the transport sector.
Organization
The ITF are over 600 trade unions connected in more than 140 countries, the association is owned by the ICFTU. The headquarters of the ITF is located in London; Regional offices in Nairobi, Ouagadougou, Tokyo, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Georgetown, Moscow and Brussels.
Member associations in Germany are the DGB unions Verdi and ECG. In Switzerland, these are the SGB unions SEV, VPOD, Kapers and Unia.
A current focus of the activities of the ITF is to support the crews of ships sailing under so-called flags of convenience; The ITF is also authorized in different countries, right to conclude collective agreements for the affected crews. In November 1999, the International Employers' Association of Marine IMEC and ITF signed the world's first international agreement for an industry that has been in force since 2000. Compliance is of 131 ITF inspectors in 43 countries (2004) reviewed in the context of port union controls.
The international trade union is one of the few working-class organizations that already unfolded transnational strike action, including the first major international coordinated strike movement in history in 1911, were paralyzed as numerous European ports simultaneously, as well as the strike against the EU directive on ports " Port Package " in year 2003.
History
In the interwar period, the ITF was aligned syndicalist under her then Generalsektretär Edo Fimmen and played an important role in the radical labor movement a. They contributed significantly to boycott the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC ) in 1920 against the authoritarian Horthy regime in Hungary and led independently an embargo of ammunition shipments to Poland during the Polish- Soviet War by. From the ITF also went several 1924-25 - ultimately unsuccessful - initiatives should focus more the trade union movement internationally, and no longer to rely on national regional offices. During the British miners' strike in 1926, the ITF organized a successful boycott of all coal shipments on the islands.
The ITF played between 1933 and 1945 a major role in the anti-fascist resistance, since it managed to support different working illegally groups of transport workers in Germany and in exile under German seamen working members effectively and to ensure a steady flow of information in both directions. In 1932, she launched an initiative to align the activities of the international labor movement on the fight against Nazism and put it in front of a 13 -point program. In early 1933 they then offered to the ADGB to provide the IFT in the service of the anti-fascist struggle in Germany, but this was acknowledged by the German trade unions with silence.
During the Nazi era, the ITF and Fimmen of German Social Democracy and the German trade unions were critical and made them for the failure of the workers' movements against fascism responsible, which is why she was skeptical about also offers the exiled Social Democrats to work together. In response to such a wrote about Fimmen in 1937: " The ITF makes their work alone and independently ... [ Any ] discussion about a different method I lean on ... The only international organization that has actually something when is the ITF, and thanks to its working methods. "
Also in the Spanish Civil War, the ITF turn on that regarded the struggle against fascism as an international. This prevented or delayed arms shipments into the already conquered by Franco area and helped the Republic to buy ships abroad. The attempt to bring a German arms shipment to the side of the Republic, failed to carry out.