INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF FREE TEACHERS' UNIONS. ********************
REPORT ON ACTIVITIES
*=*=*
General Council
Berlin, 21-24 July 1971.

DO
Archiv
ARP
3830

Report on activities for the year 1970- 1971.
**********************
A.- Introduction.
At the end of another year's activity, the Secretariat once again turns to the General Council, evaluating past results and future tasks, for impetus and guidelines for readjusting strategies and speeding the attainment of common ends.
This year's General Council meeting has every chance of being especially decisive. There is, indeed, only one twelve month term left before the end of this three year period% 3B it will then be the job of Congress as the supreme body to judge to what extent our executive organs have been able to realise the fundamental demands of the teaching trade unions freely confederated in the ranks of our International.
How far the blueprint drawn up by our plenary sessions in Frankfurt- am- Main in 1969 has been put into effect- this is the question which will have to be answered in a year's time by those responsible for our day- to- day activities, without ambiguity and after a supreme effort which will have to be more to the point, more exact, than ever before.
Every year, this restricted circle has seen a rigorous examination of conscience, the drawing up of an objective balance- sheet, and the vigorous formulation of resolutions.
By its regular impulsion, the General Council has been the motive force behind our movement. Reneving and reorientating our efforts year after year, it has counted for a very great deal in the conferral on the IFFTU of that international authority which, today, it really enjoys, both among the teaching organisations of the different continents and the intergovernmental agencies.

2.
If the genuine trade union doctrine embodied by the IFFTU is developing today a real power of attraction, alike in the industrialised nations and the Third World, this is in large measure due to the renewed insight, energy, and faith in trade union solidarity which our activists derive each summer from the Council's meetings.
It is a fact that our current programme is drawing more and more support from organisations all over the world. Of this the physical composition of the next Congress assembly will in itself by striking evidence.
It is also fair to say that this programme provides an answer to the wide- spread and persistent malaise currently felt by both teachers and the taught; an answer whose fairness and lucidity cannot fail to convince in an ever growing professional and social sphere. IFFTU militants are fighting with the energy of those who know they are identified with a cause of vital importance and urgency.
-
-
All those who are aware, to whatever degree, of the vital nature of education increasing, and increasing visibly all the time as the very cornerstone of the material and moral existence of both today and tomorrow, are dismayed by the generally negative attitudes of most countries' organising authorities to the permanent contestion of these fundamental structures.
For nearly three decades now, the free teachers trade unions have been clearly and vigorously denouncing, at national and international level, the deep- seated causes of the malaise, which, as they have grown more and more pronounced, have thrust themselves on the public consciounsness everywhere. Rightly, all people now feel themselves concerned in both the short and long terms. The problem is one which

3.
now claims the attention of everyone- teachers, pupils, workers of whatever branch- if only because its cause needs no more than a simple ascertainment of fact: the ever growing gap between an anachronistic and often socially iniquitous system of education and a general environment subject to rapid changes of all sorts brought about by the current scientific and technological revolution.
-
Under the double pressure of teachers and workers visibly catalysed by the importance of what is at stake, the authorities have at best reacted with trial reforms which have been timid, partial and uniformly contested, since neither teachers or pupils have been directly, organically and permanently associated with them. Elsewhere and this is the case in how many democratic and highly industrialised nations!- the crying need for profond and general structural reform has met and is still meeting with the dead silence of inertia, if not outright hostility and brutal repression. And everywhere, it is only by using the strike weapon that members of the teaching profession have any chance of forcing an improvement of their moral and material status.
These facts, regrettable as they are, go a long way towards explaining why the IFFTU is more and more becoming the focal point for a corld assembly of teachers, frustrated in their essential aspirations not only by official blindness but also by the importence, now recognised, of purely category associations not based on the trade unions.
As the second millenium draws to its revolutionary end, the teacher sees and is forced to admit the profound value, indeed the necessity, of becoming a trade union member, both on a national and international scale.

4.
The teacher is, in fact, through the very nature of his profession, put thoroughly on his guard by the headlong developments we are living through, and whose effects of all sorts have particularly strong repercussions in the area of his professional concern, that of childhoof and adolescence. He is aware that the orders he is given, the means allotted to him, both scientific and pedagogic, are not up to the level of forseeable needs of the professions and conditions of life of the workers of tomorrow who are seated on the benches in front of him.
Moreover, at whatever level he may find himself, how- unless he is merely a radio- controlled robot- can this teacher fail to see today that his work, now as never before, is the basis of all other work, and that for this reason alone he has a just claim to be accorded in all countries the full rights and freedoms granted in any other branch of work, in his case basic work in the public sector?
Such questions
revolutionary in a legitimated sense- can only be solidly answered by the doctrine of teachers' trade unionism, since it alone, pressed in each case in the normal course of events by regular and organised statutary action on authority, is capable of producing results.
Orientated essentially on the development of human resources, the fundamental riches of our communities, trade union demands have been geared to the following twin basic aims: an overall an overall reform of teaching structures centred on the necessary balance between education, training and the forseeable market for labour, and based on sober estimates of the social environment in the year 2000 and beyond; and, parallel with this, a total and determined upgrading of teaching itself, since the teaching profession is the only agency which can evolve and execute this revitalisation, on which the future of our civilisation and all our social wellbeing depend.

5.
The ever increasing unionisation of teachers at every national level is mirrored internationally, where, under the banner of the IFFTU, all teachers and educators are coming to realise that, by the very force of general developments, government policies are swayed by the recommendations of the specialised international institutions and that this growing two- way communication requires as a matter of urgent necessity that teachers reinforce their solidarity as a means of imposing respect for the moral and material interests of their profession.
These reasons explain this year's spectacular surge of the Free Teachers' International. It is because we have wanted at all costs to avoid disappointing these growing hopes and fears which have taken our objectives as their rallyingpoint, that we have taken the risk, despite the modesty of our means, of investing the IFFTU, at all its levels of action, with the demeanour of a great international organisation. This has been true of the propaganda sphere, in the distribution of our periodicals and in our direct, on- the- spot contacts.
But it has been possible above all because the overtly trade union character of the IFFTU, asserted again and again in international bodies with the support of other free workers'organisations, has given it an entry card to the big, specialised intergovernmental agencies, and at the same time an authority and effectiveness simply unattainable by purely category associations.
The Secretariat herewith submits its report on activities which, though executed according to the principles and in the spirit mentioned above, and in spite of the often increased aid of affiliated organisations, have been carried out in circumstances where material resources are constantly inferior to the dimensions of the many and onerous tasks to
be done.

6.
This interim report, the last of this term of office, covers the principal spheres of activity as laid down in 1969 by the statutary Congress of Frankfurt- am- Main, i.e. information, the development of education, the defence and promotion of the status of teachers, the promotion of world welfare, and finally the regionalisation of our activities and the strengthening of our trade union unity.
As in previous years, this report will not attempt to give an account, even superficially or in summary form, of all the daily tasks which mobilise the permanent vigilance of the Secretariat.
If the Secretariat may be allowed to express one hope, it is that the General Council may be able to see its way to considering the problem of an increase in the resources of the International to enable it not only to deal with the obligations resulting from its rapid expansion but also to embark with the same degree of success on the decisive phase of activity reading up to a Congress for which the organisation in July 1972 must be commenced now.
B. Information.
In accordance with the directives given at the Frankfurt Congress in 1969, the Secretariat has tried in as many ways as possible to publicise our International, its" raison d'être", its activities and achievements. During the year under consideration, efforts in this direction have been multiplied and directed not only to the teaching organisations of the various continents and workers of other organisations, but also to international institutions capable of taking part in educational development and of improving as is necessary the conditions of teachers.

7.
To this end, the following measures were taken:
a) our news bulletin has undergone a change in size and frequency in keeping with our increased publicity. A weekly press service has been set up to keep a close watch on scholastic and social news. This innovation has been very successful, with the national organisations ordering ever increasing numbers of the bulletin issued weekly by our service, largely for the use of their own executive bodies. In addition, the press departments of certain affiliated or sympathetic national organisations regularly reprint our news, thus multiplying very satisfactorily the effects we want to achieve in this very important sector of our activities.
In addition to publicising the most significant items of world- wide trade union news through our International to national organisations and international institutions, we have also caused others to do likewise, to the advantage of our Secretariat. The latter constantly receives full and up to date information, often of the greatest interest and help in deciding our actions. The Secretariat is therefore considering enlarging and improving this new Press Service which has shown in just a few months how effective it can be,
b) through the offices set up by the International on the American continent and in Asia, printed news sheets are circulated to the teaching organisations of those regions.
c) in addition, the Secretariat receives a considerable amount of mail each day which also represents a source of up to date information, of great value both to the Secretariat and to each national organisation to which we communicate its content.
d) finally, we have always considered the best method of information and publicity to be through direct personal contacts in the field. The past year has seen much of this,

8.
within the limits, obviously, set by the resources available for this purpose.
Details of these far- reaching activities and their results for the development of the IFFTU are dealt with in the chapter concerning the decentralisation of our movement. We should just point out here that the dissemination of information in the field has taken place in two main ways: direct contacts with organisations already affiliated or likely to become so because already sympathetic; the organisation in several countries of seminars in order to get a real view of the situation of teachers and of the aims, activities, achievements and difficulties of trade union organisations.
e) as in previous years, the Secretariat has taken part in the congresses of affiliated or sympathetic organisations. It has also replied to invitations by telegram, expressing its solidarity.
C. Defence of the teacher's condition.
This major theme in the teachers' trade union's struggle has been more than ever the mobilising fare behind the work of national organisations and the International.
Teachers everywhere are active. Everywhere, militants and trade union officials are ready and waiting to fight for total and effective recognition of the fundamental working rights of the teaching profession.
Everywhere teachers are opting for the way of the trade unions, declaring that the profess of civilisation and social evolution make their work a basic public service, integrating them, like it or not, as workers in the whole working mass. Today this principle has become axiomatic.

9.
The way is finally open for the necessary intersectorial action. Teachers are discovering the strength of solidarity with the whole Labour force. This power is needed to remove teaching from its social isolation and make everyone recognise it as a profession on which rest the world's best and surest chances for today and tomorrow.
Throughout this year of combat, the Secretariat has tried to play its proper part in this field, with the greatest care and the best possible means. It has made itself constantly available to the fighting affiliated organisations in the provision of immediate information on the exact significance of the basic principles contained in international labour legislation and the precise regulatory methods of applying them to the status of the teaching worker at each national level.
On several occasions, and with the same end in view, the Secretariat has reminded the affiliated organisations of its readiness, whenever asked, to intervene in any official body, but particularly in special intergovernmental organisations to protest against any measures taken by the powers that be which might run contrary to international standards.
In addition, the Secretariat has used the weekly bulletin to inform organisations of information received from all quarters which could help determine action. The same information was of course also entered into the files of the relevent international institutions concerned with the evolution of the teaching crisis and that of education itself.
During this same year, marked everywhere by an increase in protests and claims, the Secretariat has naturally concentrated its activities on its own objective, namely the real, integral and controlled application in all countries of two types of international instrument: intergovernmental recommendations concerning the teaching situation, and agreements

on trade union rights. The following is a brief account of these twofold activities:
10.
1.
-
Application of the intergovernmental_recommendation the teacher's_condition.
In a determined effort to attain absolute clarity, the Secretariat followed each stage of the regulatory proceedings of the official survey set up by UNESCO and the ILO to determine how well each Member State applies to its teachers the stipulations contained in our basic charter.
We published in our bulletin for 26 April 1971 the results of this survey as drawn up by the joint ad hoc committee of UNESCO and ILO experts, and the content of the subsequent resolutions adopted by the last UNESCO General Conference in its session of October- November
1970.
Our organisations certainly did not fail to see the interest of these documents. At the very least, they were able to use these documents to inspire further actions of their own and to ensure the effective application of the intergovernmental recommendation by their authorities.
The Secretariat asked each organisation to inform it of the exact state of its affiliates' professional status, considered in the light of the official texts mentioned above and, in particular, the conclusions and suggestions made at the end of the survey by the ILO- UNESCO experts' Committee.
The IFFTU representative took the opportunity of addressing the assembly, before the UNESCO General Conference voted on the experts' conclusions, in accordance with the prerogatives granted to the International by that high authority.
After vehemently condemning the evident state of social inferiority in which, against all justice and all good sense,

11.
the teacher- worker finds himself, not only in the developing countries but also in the industrialised and supposedly democratic countries, the IFFTU spokesman stressed three basic causes for complaint, deeply felt by all freely- organised teachers. These were: 1) the intolerable and incomprehensible standpoint of the powers that be in their negative or avowedly hostile attitude to the application of the recommendation; 2) the fact that, in the same spirit, many authorities failed to send the representative professional organisations their official reports before submitting them to the survey committee, in spite of the instructions to do so issued by the ILO on 15 January 1969; 3) the possibility, officially expressed, that the official survey may not be taken up again until 1975. When a government delegate spoke out against giving teachers the right to strike, the IFFTU representative replied that the ILO- UNESCO experts had insisted on this very right, as an integral part of the trade union rights our profession must be recognised to have.
2. rights.
Application of international_conventions on trade union
Our International has every reason, in the sphere of labour conditions, to be grateful for the action undertaken by UNESCO to satisfy the legitimate and increasingly insistent claims of teachers on this point. It is also very clear that our International must continue and strengthen its cooperation, already tested, with this body.
However, when it is a question of the complete conquest of trade union rights, organised teachers, like all workers, turn first of all the the ILO. The latter, by the will of all workers, is first and foremost the guardian of social equity, human rights, the respect of professional, material

12.
and moral rights. It wald be contrary to the essence and spirit of an authentic teachers' trade unionism for the specific nature of professional duties to lead the international authority to a categorial treatment of the condition.
It is therefore from the ILO that the Secretariat expects the full recognition of trade union rights for teachers to coin all countries, in texts and in facts. Our claims were therefore made first and foremost to the organisation in Geneva.
In theory, and for all workers without distinction, these rights were recognised half a century ago when the ILO was founded. They were included in conventions establishing international standards for work more than two decades ago. Nevertheless we are bound to admit that they are not yet incorporated in reality in national legislations everywhere.
At the present time, a third of ILO Member States have not yet ratified the agreement on trade union freedom and the protection of trade union rights which was adopted in 1948, and a quarter of them have not ratified the agreement on the right to organisation and collective bargaining adopted in 1949. Need one add, since the fact has been obvious throughout the whole world in 1971, that many Member States, although they have solemnly ratified these two conventions, haggle over their application or deliberately violate the agreements they themselves signed and ratified?
This state of affairs is so obvious that, after the energetic speeches made by representatives of the free trade unionism, the International Labour Conference, during its 1970 assembly, adopted a resolution calling upon those Member States which have not yet done so to ratify these two conventions as a matter of urgency and to guarantee, in the

13.
meantime and in any case, the respect of these instruments and to observe themselves, in their own legislations and regulations, the integrity of these principles.
So as to give this resolution a practical outcome, moreover, the assembly called upon the ILO Governing Body to use all the means in its power to set up regular machinery by which the Member States are bound to respect the international conventions and recommendations governing labour. Finally,
the Governing Body was called upon to undertake further detailed research likely to lead to a widening of trade union rights to conform with the civil liberties on which they are morally and legally based.
In its news bulletin no.4 for 1971, the Secretariat published the text of this important resolution, and in no.9 for the same year, the text of the two conventions concerning trade union rights.
At the same time, the Secretariat called upon its affiliated organisations to take this new opportunity to apply energetic pressure on their governments and oblige them to ratify these essential instruments which, de jure, guarantee trade union rights for all workers, teachers included.
Simultaneously, the Secretariat undertook a broad survey, on behalf of the International, through a questionnaire which was intended to establish the real situation, in all regions, as regards the official possibilities open to teaching staff to exercise their rights of association, collective bargaining and to strike.
Many organisations in the various continents, industrialised and developing countries, helped to draw up a fund of precise information which the Secretariat has used to great effect in international institutions.
*
*
*

14.
Still on the subject of improving the teachers' lot,
one thing for which we have con been hoping has at last come about: namely, a meeting of the Joint Public Services Committee at the ILO.
Although it was convened for the 28 September 1970, this committee meeting was adjourned because of the budgetary difficulties facing the ILO at that time.
This was very disappointing news for all the workers involved and led to a series of protests by the Secretariat which, after appealing to all affiliated organisations, managed, by uniting all its forces, to get the committee to meet on 22 March 1971.
Until 2 April the committee continued its important discussions at which the IFFTU representative was alone responsible for defending the interests of the teachers.
Many subjects were raised, all of great import for workers in the public services, including teachers: career problems, trade union freedom, staff participation in deciding standards of employment.
In the opinion of all involved, this joint committee ( not tripartite like the other ILO organisations) achieved very conclusive results in this first session, going beyond. the results reasonably expected to create now and for the future the best possible climate for intersectorial understanding.
From the point of view of results, the work made it possible to draw up a clear, objective and full list of the basic problems to be solved as regards the condition of the public worker and thus of the teacher, considered realistically, in all its diversity, as it exists in the different Member States.

15.
As regards the atmosphere surrounding these talks, the trade union representatives of this sector immediately created a spirit of unanimity and solidarity among themselves, in spite of the diversity of real conditions and aspirations between one country and another, one category and another and sometimes within one and the same category, viewed in one particular geographical situation rather than another.
The ILO Director General, taking note of this excellent beginning, stated that all the signe were that the committee would soon go beyond the experimental stage and become a permanent feature of regulatory proceedings in the International Labour Organisation.
This is also the hope of the trade union representatives, among them the delegate of our International, who see in this prospect one of the most promising hopes of effectively upgrading the status, career and working and living conditions of the millions of workers whose interests they represent at this tripartite body. The two resolutions unanimously adopted at the end of the session contain this promise. One of them, in fact, aims at extending to the public services all trade union rights, including the right to strike, without exception; the other registers the hope that the commission will accomplish on a permanent basis the whole of its programme for the future to ensure continous progress for all the workers involved. These two vital texts appeared with our commentaries in nos. 13 and 14 of our information bulletin.
The entry on the scene of the joint commission would seem genuinely to promise the breakthrough to social justice and dignity which the public services have been demanding practically since their inception.
For teachers in particular, as our representative strongly underlined in the session, it is of paramount importance

16.
that all aspects of their condition should be examined at the same time, from the same viewpoints and in the same spirit as the condition of all other categories of public servants. In the eyes of free trade unionists, it is on this total assimilation-now recognised" de facto" by the ILO- that the social and moral destiny of the teaching profession depends.
Again for the special benefit of teachers, the joint commission came out with the very clear view that the ILO should use all its authority and exploit all the machinery at its disposal to make Member States apply as a matter of urgence the intergovernmental recomendation on the condition of
teachers.
The constitution and actual meeting of the joint commission are the effective result of the profound and active solidarity forged over the years between all the freely- organised workers in the public sector, on the basis of the immediate professional and psychological affinities existing between them and which are given concrete form in the perfect cooperation uniting our International with the Public Services and the Post, Telegraph and Telephones Internationals( PSI and PTTI). This is the real significance of the event, and we feel it is appropriate to register it in this report. For the teachers, this year's show of unity at Geneva was at the root of a victory which contains in itself the seed of all the other victories which will eventually lead to the final triumph. This at least is what we hope in all good faith, believing firmly in the indestructibility of the inter- sectorial solidarity which has brought about these first concrete results.
It is moreover important to note that at the rostrum of the International Labour Conference( Geneva, 2 to 28 June 1971), the IFFTU delegate was, as in previous years, the only

17.
trade union representative of the teachers to take up the defence of the teaching profession; he finished with a forceful and urgent appeal to this august assembly to take all possible measure at ILO level to give effective force to the joint commission's recommendations.
Naturally enough, this was another opportunity for a vigorous denunciation of the intolerable humiliation inflicted on teaching workers in both their living and working conditions.
*
In conclusion, we believe we can safely say that an important and doubtless decisive step has been taken in prevailing upon the authorities to take into consideration the urgent necessity of undertaking a total re- evaluation of teachers' status in the light of what it is, a public serviThis progress can be ascribed to the relentless, but always documented and logical campaign which the IFFTU has been waging for so many years.
ce.
We therefore feel we have grounds to hope that at the end of its current deliberations and on presentation of the information resulting from the seminar held in Berlin from 12 to 20 July this year, the General Council will be able to confirm and strengthen the mandate conferred on the Secretariat for the accomplishment of a task whose importance remains capital.
D.- Educational development.
-=-
B
The primordial intrinsic importance of the problem of teachers' professional status, rendered even more acute by what has happened during the year under review, has naturally made the greatest claims on the Secretariat's activities.

18.
This is not to say, however, that it has in any way neglected the other essential imperative of its mandate: the energetic and whole- hearted support which democratically organised teachers feel it their duty to give to educational development.
This action is all the more necessary as in the course of past years the high- ranking intergovernmental institutions either specialising in education or interested in it for one particular reason or another, have been taking all sorts of initiatives liable to bend national educational and training policies in certain precise directions. This alone requires constant vigilance on behalf of teachers, the real practitioners in this sphere, who have every reason to be opposed to purely authoritarian planning and who demand above all that this planning should be carried out and implemented, ly in accordance with the economic interests of all the workers, but also with an eye on their intellectual, moral, social and cultural futures.
certainThe participation of organised teachers in the drawingup of the wide- ranging policies becoming accepted at a continental, or- better still- world level, runs up nonetheless against two different sorts of difficulty.
The first obstacle lies in the obvious fact that each intergovernmental institution wishing to intervene in this planning process only does so from its own point of view and for its own specific ends. It has thus to be recognised that at this level the proliferation of initiatives, often of great significance for the future of the masses, involves a manifest dispersion of the efforts of the international authorities. Through simple cause and effect, how can this dilution of effort not spread to the trade union organisations which, following their own principles, are anxious to keep a close check on such activities?

19.
-
84
brings us
The other handicap and a formidable one back to the general condition of the teaching profession. Not yet having been recognised the right to participate organically, permanently, completely and in a fully responsible way in educational, training and cultural policies and in their application, it is still a long way from enjoying such facilities in the preparation of intergovernmental studies and recommendations in the matter.
Such are the two fundamental problems which the Secretariat has to master in its efforts to gain a hearing for its viewpoints in high places. It has, however, left no stone unturned in its bid to secure active participation and press the claims of our movement in every international conference on educational and training matters.
But, as shown by the summary which follows, our interventions in the intergovernmental bodies have had to be made on a somewhat fragmentary basis, though it should be noted that these bodies were all notified in due time of the tenor of the resolutions adopted by the IFFTU General Council at their 1970 session.
Listed in order of relevance for our activities, these organisations are: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation( UNESCO), the International Labour Organisation, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development( OECD) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation( FAO).
1.
Action at UNESCO level. -0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0Within the limits of its present resources and with the aim of maintaining a continuous promotion of the objectives of our movement in educational and training matters, the

20.
Secretariat has done its best to use to the full the consultative status which the IFFTU has been accorded in this important institution.
The Secretariat was represented at the rostrum of the last General Conference( Paris, 12 October to 14 November 1970). The IFFTU delegate once again criticised before this assembly the fact that neither democratically organised teachers or the workers' free trade union movement were yet associated in any direct or organic way with the redoubtable future options on which UNESCO's vast enterprise of teaching and educational restructuring and planning rest although this undertaking concerns in the first instance, and to a decisive degree, the professional social and human futures of immense communities of workers.
-
The Secretariat participated actively in the meetings of nongovernmental organisations convened by UNESCO in Paris for 23 to 26 November 1970, 2 to 5 March 1971, and 28 June to 2 July of the same year.
At the same time, the Secretariat has maintained and extended its permanent contacts with those UNESCO departments particularly concerned with the professional objectives of our movement namely, the adult education department, the school teaching and higher education department, and the department for educational advancement.
Still within the last year of activity, the Secretariat used its status with UNESCO to take part in the second session of the International Consultative Committee dealing with questions relating to extramural education. This meeting was held from 8 to 14 December and was essentially concerned with harmonising the different points of view on education and literacy training for adults and with preparing the way for the Third World Conference on Adult Education.

2. Action at ILO level.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-021.
For some years now, the IFFTU has had the privilege, as an international teachers' trade union organisation, of being very closely associated with the work of the ILO, in whose tripartite structure( governments, employers and workers) organised labour is allotted an important place.
The necessity for the ILO to realise its World Employment Programme in the context of the second development decade has in some measure logically obliged it to give top priority to the problems of education.
This is hardly surprising given the stage of civilisation we are currently reaching, characterised as it is by increasing electronic automation of production, distribution and management, by the coming" era of leisure" with all its human and social demands, by the permanent demands of an immense Third World which is condemned maybe for many years yet to a state of under- development, its functions limited to as it
were
-
subcontracting, and destined to undergo all the dangerous vicissitudes of economic colonialism. In view of all this, how can the ILO technicians avoid seeing the necessity of conceiving the development of human resources, the fundamental and principle resource of three- quarters of the planet, in the form of a world plan for education, training, research and even culture, based on long term perspectives? Is it not evident that the gulf, increasing before our very eyes, which separates our anachronistic systems of education, restricted and stunted by national boundaries, and the real needs of employment, has become the real and explosive centre of contestation and protest in the schools of all countries? That teaching workers internationally and democratically organised are more aware than any other category of the extent, roots and dimensions of this problem this has been
-

22.
the Secretariat's repeated message in every one of its interventions before ILO bodies. But in each case it was of course also added that the practitioners of teaching and training found it inconceivable that in the face of such problems and their consequences, they should not be called on systematically through their organisations for their direct competence, their creativity in the matter and even for their simple profesional conscience. Their dignity as workers forbids them from being merely docile executants of plans in which, as they still have reason to fear, without the permanent participation of teachers, economic and technocratic considerations would take preference over the essentially humanist objectives of education and thus cause irreparable damage to the potential moral, social, cultural and intellectual development of every individual to be taught.
This is the substance of the message which on behalf of the International the Secretariat has presented to the ILO's specialised services, its Director General in the course of an interview on 7 May 1971, and to the International Labour Conference( Geneva, 2 to 28 June 1971), during which our representative made a long speech on this topic and on the se demands.
3. Action at the OECD. -0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0101
As is well known, the specialised services of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development are more and concerned with both immediate and long- term educational problems; they too are drawing up plans for this domain.
As
far as our claims and declarations to this body were concerned, there was basically change, except that we underlined with great emphasis the apprehensions of teachers with regard to

23.
the excessive intrusion of economic factors in the elaboration of new educational and training policies. This the Secretariat has done in the conviction that the influence of OECD studies on the policies launched by national authorities is becoming increasingly decisive.
The Secretariat has been given solid support in its mission by the Trade Union Advisory Committee which was set up at OECD level to watch over the interests of all the workers of the industrialised countries. It has in addition attempted to find practical ways and means of allowing organised teachers to resolve jointly with the rest of the workers the problems which they have in common in the sphere of complementary and permanent relationships between work and education.
In the matter of our educational programme and the demands which accompany it, the Secretariat has tightened still further its relations with the OECD departments of most concern to our movement i.e., social affairs and manpower, scientific affairs, and educational expansion.
The Secretariat took part in three OECD functions at which problems concerning organised teachers were dealt with. The first one of these was at Portland from 25 to 30 October 1970, where the OECD arranged an international seminar on the use of computers in higher education% 3B the second in Paris on 22 December of the same year, when the Secretariat was invited to the preparatory meeting for the next intergovernmental conference on the employment of highly qualified personnel; and the third again in Paris on 27 May 1971 at a meeting of the Trade Union Advisory Committee preparatory to an official session with the OECD authorities on the question of permanent education.

4.-
-
Action at the FAO.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-024.
On the surface, the aims and centres of interest of the teachers' International and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation would seem to have singularly little in common. This is not, however, the view of the officers of this important international organisation, who have of their own accord been more and more pressing every year in their appeals for cooperation from the organised teachers. And for years now, our International has tried to answer the call to the full extent of its possibilities.
The Secretariat has done everything to support the world food programme and the World Freedom from Hunger Campaign. As the only international organisation of teachers, it took in particular an active part in an important meeting of the FAO Consultative Committee in Rome on 22 June 1971.
Our many contacts with the FAO specialised services have led to to a programme of cooperation in the field of nutritional education, a programme which is due to be put into effect during the year 1971- 1972.
*
*
*
In conclusion, the Secretariat fees itself entitled to say that, if its activities in the field of educational and training development have been concentrated on the energetic and constant reaffirmation, at every possible occasion, of the principles laid down by the international teachers' trade unions, it has nonetheless been able to lay the foundations of an essentially constructive cooperation in the immediate future with the ILO, UNESCO, the OECD and the FAO by making the indispensable preliminary contacts with the innumerable specialised services of these powerful intergovernmental organisations• without at the same time compromising
-

25.
a priori or in any way the future liberty of action or decision of the trade union organisation.
There are hardly any bodies like the World Health Organisation and UNICEF which have remained outside its growing sphere of influence and action, although even with these, the Secretariat has for many years maintained relations which have been continuous but limited to the reciprocal exchange of information. This omission relatively speaking is of course due to the modesty of the material and human resources permanently available to the Secretariat.
It should be mentioned here that it behoves the General Council to take into consideration the actions carried out on a regional basis to promote educational development. This important activity will be dealt with in the report chapter concerned with the regionalisation of the structure of the IFFTU.
E.- Development of world welfare.
The Secretariat activity least subject to qualitative analysis, by reason of the nature and the gigantic dimensions of the task to be encompassed, is that of on the one hand being permanently on guard against all the evils resulting for the world community from blind hate and intolerance and violence, from the contempt of man for man; and on the other hand fighting for the continuous creation of well- being in the world, that is to say for progress in general, for more material and moral happiness for all, more respect for all the freedoms and all the legitimate rights of the worker, greater fraternity between all men, without discrimination of any
sort.

26.
It has to be admitted that although this is a vast and worthy series of abstract objectives, bound to the realisation in daily actions at world level of a very lofty universal ethic, even the convinced and enthusiastic intercontinental solidarity of teachers, however unflagging and dynamic, cannot hope to tackle it by direct action and achieve concrete results.
Certain pessimistic and discouraged spirits would even say that the battle waged by the Teachers' International since its foundation was a hopeless one.
Indeed, for twenty years at least, in the long post war period, the tragic spectacle of a still divided and torn world seems to deal a crushing blow to our hopes and deeply felt ideals. For twenty five years, men have been living in desperate hope for a Peace Treaty, whilst nuclear arsenals continue to engulf the best of our intellectual and material means, building up a destructive energy potential which even specialists qualify as sheer madness.
Intoxicating violence constantly inflames the collective consciousness, leading to murderous revolt in the streets, where we see sudden bursts of irresponsible protest, or anger spurred on by racialism or partisan hatred.
Finally, the present alarming pollution of our biological environment, coupled among young people by an internal physiological pollution, created by the abuse of drugs, commercialised by irresponsible publicity, is yet another form of aggression with incalculable genetic effects, the aggression of greedy and almost incontrolable economic forces.
In the face of these threats, our trade unions do best to react indirectly, such as by demonstrating our solidarity,

27.
our fraternity with the workers, but also by our cooperation with intergovernmental institutions whose respective aims and objectives meet our ideals.
Direct action must be limited to sending messages or publishing energetic resolutions. Our last General Council resolution in 1970 was immediately sent to the UN Secretary General.
Each time that the rights of man have been violated, we have protested to the same authority. We did so at the time of two particularly dismaying events, namely:
a) at the request of our Israeli organisation, against the policy of repression and discrimination against Jewish minorities in Russia%; B
b) at the time of the notorious Burgos trial, against the attitude of the Madrid government, and, more generally against the repression going as far as the removal of civil liberties to which our Spanish comrades are still victim.
-
As a non- governmental organisation, the IFFTU has also demonstrated its unconditional adhesion to the principles stressed by UNESCO as essential to peace, general development and mankind's happiness when it made 1971 an international year of combat against colonialism and racialism.
The IFFTU could not fail to adopt the same attitude of total commitment when the International Labour Organisation laid the foundations for far- reaching action for the worldwide defence of trade union rights and civil liberties, after the International Labour Conference at its 1970 session had adopted a long these lines.
In conclusion, the Secretariat believes it is not unfair to affirm that the International's activities, direct or indirect, are increasingly directed at creating a happier

28.
overall state of attain, in spite of the sorry picture presented by today's world.
These activities will be continued and stepped up, in conjunction with the international movement of all free workto build a solid bulwark against all manifestations of injustice and violence which hinder the progress of the universal community of labour.
F.
Regionalisation of the International's activities.
The Secretariat paid particular attention to that part of its mandate which instructed it to form strong, active regional branches of the Teachers' International in the various continents.
The principle of this reform, adopted in 1969 by the statutory Congress and applied since then, is to make the too rigidly centralised present organisation more flexible, and able to adapt to the infinite variety of regional environments and their changing situations. This transformation must be made without affecting the unity of doctrine and solidarity of action which constitute, among other things, the original and truly trade unionist nature of the IFFTU.
This is a long- term task, carried out me thodically according to guidelines which lay down three types of activity, namely:
to establish, in each region, a permanent system of exchange of information on the scholastic situation and the lot of teachers in the various countries of the region%;
-
to organise, in each region, an official trade union dialogue between teachers and specialist bodies which hold the prerogatives in the area as regards education and educational management%; B

29.
-
to create, in each region, a trade union structure which suits it best and is likely to strengthen, on the basis of our doctrine, united action for the attainment of recognised joint objectives.
In considering the results already achieved, we shall consider in turn the regions of Europe, the western hemisphere, then Asia and Africa.
1. Europe.
*****
The IFFTU organised the creation of the European Teachers' Trade Union Committee, so as to enable, in the short term, the trade union organisations which represent our profession in the six Common Market countries to take part in the elaboration of a Community policy for education, training and culture.
With a view to achieving this aim, this Committee had one major sucess during the last year in the setting up of a group maintaining permanent contact with the European Communities' Commission. Thus sure of this permanent relationship, a condition sine qua non for all trade union dialogue and action, the Committee immediately embarked on its programme for European educative integration. Two reports prepared by its own groups of experts, one on the common policy for occupational training, the other on permanent education, were officially submitted to the European Communities' Commission.
At the same time, and with the same aim, the Committee set up a specialised working group to study the problem of the schooling of immigrant workers' children and that of the training of the educators themselves.

30.
A solid trade union front has thus been established, capable of effective cooperation in the creation of a Europe for Education.
Representing some eight hundred thousand teachers, of all levels, from the kindergarten to the university, the European Teachers' Trade Union Committee is the only organisation which represents our profession in the Common The foreseeable enlargement of the latter makes it possible to envisage vast perspectives for the definitive relaunching of teachers' trade unionism in Europe.
Market.
The IFFTU Secretariat, for its part, has kept up its links with the Council of Europe, giving its best attention to the activities of the Social Affairs Department and those of the Council for Cultural Cooperation, which is responsible for extra- mural education, general and technical education and scientific research.
As in the past, our International was represented at the annual meeting of non- governmental organisations in Strasburg on 23 and 24 November 1970.
In addition, the Secretariat has increased its contacts with the European Confederation of Free Trade Unions with a view to speeding the joint achievement of an immense programme in the spheres of education and training within the Council of Europe countries. A working party, inspired by our Secretariat, is making active preparation for the next trade union conference to be held on this subject in Strasburg in September 1971.
Finally, we should mention the cooperation between the IFFTU and the German Friedrich- Ebert Foundation, in the sphere of education in Europe. Our Secretariat participated in the seminar organised by this Foundation in Bergneustadt from 14 to 16 December 1970, on the theme of the use of cybernetic methods in adult education.

2.- The Western hemisphere.
**************
31.
No General Council member will be surprised to hear that the action needed to encourage regionalisation in this hemisphere has had to overcome daunting obstacles.
a)
These obstacles are of two kinds:
geographical, physical and human, first of all: from the Canadian Far North to the Tierra del Fuego, there are more than forty states, each enormous, divided into important subregions created by incredible ethnic differences;
-
b)- environmental, social, political, psychological and cultural, complicating the various problems facing democratic trade unionism in the inter American region, those of the highly industrialised countries being fundamentally different from those vast countries still in a state of underdevelopment, those of democratic regimes having little in common with those with totalitarian and authoritarian governments, often under military control.
It is indeed ambitious to undertake a propaganda campaign in these conditions to encourage the application of international labour conventions and recommendations.
Action nevertheless began in October 1968 and now, in 1971, this report is able to give an account of its concrete results, everything would, however, have been impossible without the constant solidarity of workers organised by the PTTI, which has a powerful regional structure, with influence in the whole of the western hemisphere.
Thanks to its support, our Washington office can be proud today of having carried out a far- reaching programme.

32.
We should stress two very positive facts here:
increased IFFTU affiliation in New World organisations. These were only two in number at our 1969 Congress, but nine in 1970, and the 1971 General Council will see the number rise to twelve if it approves three new applications.
b) the extent and effectiveness of the programme of activities carried out during the last trade union year, around three main centres of interest:
the organisation of permanent contacts in the field with professional affiliated, sympathetic and fraternal organisations, as with official, international or regional organisations;
concrete aid to national teachers' organisations in their broad spheres of activity, specialised seminars, solidarity actions, recruiting campaigns;
information campaigns aimed at persuading increasing numbers of teachers' organisations to affiliate to the IFFTU.
3. Asia.
****
The splendid success of the International at regional level marked by the first IFFTU Asian conference at Kuala Lumpur, during a session from 27 to 31 December 1970, showed the power of a trade union doctrine, capable of attracting the working masses, inspite of many difficulties, geographical, ethnic, linguistic, social and political, which exist in the distant Far Eastern lands.
19The Kuala Lumpur meeting marks an important date in the annals of teachers' trade unionism. It was attended by over three hundred delegates, representing fifteen organisations of the nine countries of Asia and Australia.

33.
In addition, the Secretariat has made useful personal contacts in the field with officials of other trade unions which were unable to attend the Conference.
The Conference agenda also contained discussions on an essential problem for teachers, namely:" lifelong education", of particular importance in the International Education Year. Among the profession's social concerns were, of course, those themes relative to the exercise of trade union freedom.
After these meetings, the Asian structure of the IFFTU was being formed into a Regional Committee. This was an excellent start, in spite of the slender means available to our Regional Office.
Two news bulletins were issued immediately so as to publish the aims and initial results of this trade union action.
Finally, the Secretariat undertook the necessary complementary operation. It formed a system of permanent liaison between the Asian structure of the IFFTU and the regional representations of the large specialist international organisations, those making effective cooperation possible. This basic work was consolidated, thanks to the part played by our regional representative at the UNESCO Asian Conference, in Singapore, from 31 May to 7 June 1971.
These imFinally, the Secretariat contributed, as far as it could, to the organisation in Bandung of a study seminar on the theme of the place of education in development. portant discussions, which took place from 14 to 19 December 1970, were due to the initiative of our affiliated organisation in Indonesia, the PGRI, and the German Friedrich- Ebert Foundation.

4. Africa.
•
******
34.
A whole year of a work since 1969 has been necesarry to prepare and overcome each of the large steps we have described in the creation of a large international trade union structure. The last year, 1971- 1972, will see the International set up finally in Africa.
The Secretariat has, during 1970-1971, been methodically preparing for the next regional conference which will set the foundation for our African structure.
Broad exploratory work has been done, and has achieved encouraging results, showing that everything has yet to be done in these vast developing countries, not only as regards education and training, but as regards the effective application of trade union rights for teachers.
The extent of the programmes is almost boundless, as is their complexity, in view of the geographical, political, economic and psychological difficulty of the task. But this action is indispensable, equal to our ideal, within the grasp of our determination.
The Secretariat has compiled a dossier of preparatory information and is thus now able to make an exact estimate of the means and methods to be used, and it has every reason to hope that at the next congress it will be able to announce the effective creation of the African branch of our International.
*
If the General Council whishes, it can hear at this session the reports of IFFTU representatives in the Western Hemisphere and Asia, giving details of activities to the credit of the Teachers' International.

35.
We can affirm that the IFFTU's strength is growing, that it is finding the real means to accomplish its fundamental aim by carrying out this vast internal reform. Its new structure, at present being built, will give it the dynamism and increased means necessary to carry out realistic action and achieve concrete and lasting results, for it will be constantly adapted to geographical, social and moral diversities. Rather than hindering its forward progress, this diversity will provide the International with a new and ever renewed source of clearsightedness, inspiration and strength.
G.- Strengthening of trade union unity.
All our categories of activity, as has been implicity shown in each section of this report where they are described, are founded on the same active intersectorial solidarity and
support.
Today, teachers are becoming increasingly aware of trade unionism. More and more, this profession is leaving behind its traditional, categorial ideas and taking over the conviction which is the basic principle of the IFFTU and has been published abroad by it since its creation, that the teacher is a worker like any other, no more nor less, at the immediate service of others, and that, in the present social system, it is precisely the solidarity of others with the teacherworkers that is their best asset in the promotion of the teacher's work.
Our International's merit lies in its having had the clearsightedness in seeing, since its creation, this total and active intersectorial solidarity as a prime force and this is what makes it so attractive today to teachers and educators the world over.

36.
The Teachers' International has constantly sought to strengthen this central trade union idea by its action, thanks to its continued cooperation with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions( ICFTU) and the various International Professional Secretariats( SPI).
It is here that we have found, for the most part, the inspiration and vigour with which we participate, within all official and important bodies where the struggle continues, in the great dialogue which should finally lead to the recognition and total application of trade union rights for all workers, including teachers. Without this solidarity of doctrine, spirit and action the IFFTU would hardly have been able to take international teachers' trade unionism from the nothingness in which it found itself and in a few years take over the positions of authority it how holds in the highest international spheres of Education, Economy and Labour.
During this past year, as in previous ones, the Secretariat has considered it its duty to play an active part in the majority of meetings organised by the international trade union movement, and in which the subject of present- day problems in education and training was more and more frequently raised.
In particular, the Secretariat took part in the ICFTUIPS discussions on the problems of the working woman, a subject about which trade unionists are becoming increasinly preoccupied, and rightly so. The meeting of 12 and 13 November 1970 greatly stressed the occupational training of women and the application to women of international conventions and recommendations regarding discrimination in employment and occupation. Our representative once again took the opportunity of drawing this important trade union Committee's attention to the work done by our General Assembly in 1970.

37.
In a desire to strengthen still further the ties of cooperation between the International and the SPI's on all aims of common interest, the Secretariat took part in their annual Conference in Geneva from 18 to 19 November, where certain items on the agenda were of the highest interest for internationally organised teachers, namely: trade union cooperation with the ILO industrial committees, workers' education, the forms and methods, finally, of effective cooperation between the IPS's themselves on the one hand and between them and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, on the other.
But the Secretariat has logically tried above all to strengthen unity with the Public Services. As we have already showed, our International's solidarity with the PSI and PTTI, based on common interests and particular professional affinities, has given the best results this year.
It is significant that, at a joint meeting in Geneva on 21 March 1971, the major officials of these three international professional Secretariats worked out a common strategy regarding the work of the Joint Public Services Committee.
Whenever possible, the Secretariat has taken part in the conferences of certain IPS's, often to encourage joint action with the Teachers' International, always at least to show the latter's sympathy. The Secretariat was represented in Rome, from 26 to 30 October 1970, at the Statutory Congress of the Public Services' International( PSI). It was also in Dublin, from 19 to 22 October 1970, at the International Employees Federation Congress.
It is, however, particularly when it has entered into the controversy on workers' education on teachers' behalf that the Secretariat has shown the responsability and the value of our International's solidarity with other labour forces.

38.
For this reason the Teachers' International took part, from 7 to 12 September 1970 in Florence, in the Conference organised by the International Federation of Workers' Education, where our representative explained how far the solution to this problem lay in the use of modern educational methods and
techniques.
At the International Labour Office, in a search for rational solutions for the future, our International was asked to outline the views of organised teachers. From 3 to 14 May 1971, the IFFTU's activities included the meeting of advisors for workers' education at the ILO in Geneva. It should be stressed that, of all the international teachers' organisations, only the IFFTU took part in all this work. Our news' bulletin no. 18 published the conclusions of this important meeting. It gives hopeful prospects, whose achievement, when the necessary means have been found, opens up new vistas for the cooperation of organised teachers and bears striking witness to the natural unity of the general Labour movement.
*
****
In conclusion, the results of the second year of office can be included in the credit side of the balance sheet, in several basic areas:
progress of trade unionism among teachers;
effective achievement, or foreseeable achievement
in the near future, of important aims in the sphere of the teachers' conditions;

39.
-
strengthening of IFFTU's regulatory positions at
the level of specialised intergovernmental institutions;
parallel strengthening of trade union unity, particularly at the level of the public services.
In the Secretariat's opinion, this positive balance justifies serious hopes in all spheres covered by the work of our International.
André BRACONIER.
nd
DG
Archiv
vorstand

2
Centimetres Inches
3
2
ग
6
Color chart
CO
9
10
11
12
22
13
14
15
16
17
Blue
Cyan
Green Yellow
Red Magenta White
Grey
Black
# C9C9FF # 0000FF
# C0E5FC # 009FFF
# 759675 # 008B00
# FFFFC7 # FFFF00
# FFC9C9 # F10000
# FFC9FF # FF00FF
#FFFFFF
# 9D9E9E # D9DADA
# 5B5B5B # 000000
1 Centimetres.
Inches
2
A
Sachverständigen- Zubehör.de
5
7
10
11
12
113
14
15
16
17
Grayscale
0 1 2
3 4 4 5 6 7
7
8
8
100%
50%
C
Y
M
Sachverständigen- Zubehör.de
9 10 11 12 13 14
18%
0%

A
38