DESCRIPTION

LEARN membership is mainly on organizational or institutional basis, particularly through the various working people’s organizations. But it is also open to individual trade unionists and worker educators. Member organizations are those that formally join LEARN and regularly pay dues; thus, are entitled to all the rights and privileges of being full-fledged LEARN members. For one, they have representatives and can participate in the General Conference (GC) – LEARN’s highest decision-making body – as well as in the Board of Trustees (BOT) and its Administrative Committee (Adcom). Non-member organizations that avail of any LEARN services or programs or with existing project cooperation or maintain some form of coordination with LEARN are considered partner organizations.

At present, LEARN member and partner organizations in the Philippines include a national labor center of private sector and informal workers; a national confederation of government employees; labor federations (general, industry, sectoral); workers’ alliances (according to a specific area, industry, sector, or conglomerate-based – such as of unions in a particular TNC/MNC or trans/multinational corporation); independently registered local unions; women organizations; community-based groups; mutual aid or self-help associations; cooperatives; NGOs; a multisectoral ideological bloc; and a political party (party-list).

Aside from this, LEARN continues to maintain, develop and open new linkages and cooperation with different organizations abroad, including several global unions or global union federations (GUFs) of the international labor movement; trade unions and NGOs in other countries; and several international institutions or organizations involved in various social advocacies.

Cognizant of the need to expand and revitalize the labor movement, LEARN continues to maintain, develop and open new ties and cooperation with various organizations in the country and abroad – primarily trade unions or labor-related organizations and women groups; but including also other POs and NGOs involved in different social advocacies. LEARN facilitates linkages and cooperation between and among its members and partners as well as other potential cooperating groups. Part of the efforts to forge contact-building and alliance-building or any other forms of partnership are meetings, seminars, symposia, conferences, forums, cultural programs, mobilizations or mass actions and other activities initiated or co-sponsored by LEARN, which enable trade unions and other organizations from different sectors or industries or localities to meet, to share their experiences and aspirations, and to express their support to one another.

Included here are LEARN’s support in establishing industry unions and alliances of unions in TNCs; providing secretariat work in international gatherings of trade unionists and social activists held in the Philippines; “connecting” local unions with global union federation (GUFs), international institutions, and trade unions and NGOs in other countries; and joining solidarity actions or sending protest letters to back up any struggle for labor, trade union, democratic and human rights anywhere in the world.