Foreword: For the second consecutive year, SEIU is participating in the Labor Delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, taking place this week in Posnan, Poland. Union representatives from Mexico, India, the U.K., the U.S., Korea, Sierra Leone and elsewhere are making sure that the concerns of and effects on working people the world over are an essential part of every discussion at the conference. Marrianne McMullen, SEIU's representative to U.S. Labor Delegation, blogs about their work and experiences (below).

It's 3:30 p.m. in Poznan and we can see the sun already setting through the sheer drapes of the hotel meeting room. More than 90 labor delegates are gathered at this hotel about 12 miles outside of the city. Many more countries are represented now: Nepal, South Africa, Pakistan, Norway, Latvia, Brazil, Holland, Ethiopia.

No formal talks are scheduled for the United Nations Climate Change Conference today, so the labor delegates of the International Trade Union Council are using the day for presentations and discussions.

Foreword: For the second consecutive year, SEIU is participating in the Labor Delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, taking place this week in Posnan, Poland. Union representatives from Mexico, India, the U.K., the U.S., Korea, Sierra Leone and elsewhere are making sure that the concerns of and effects on working people the world over are an essential part of every discussion at the conference. Marrianne McMullen, SEIU's representative to U.S. Labor Delegation, blogs about their work and experiences (below).

Poznan, Poland
Friday, December 5, 2008

More than 20 of us were crowded into the trade union delegation office at the Poznan Convention Center. It was 9 a.m., and time for the daily organizational meeting for the labor delegation at the U.N. Climate Talks in Poland. I'm sure I wasn't the only one in the room dazed by long flights and lack of sleep, and a bit queasy from the Polish staple of boiled sausage.

We were in our small Trade Union Non-Governmental Organization (TUNGO) office because we lost our regular meeting space due to meeting shuffling, a fairly routine event in a conference as sprawling as this one.

Labor union representatives introduced themselves from Peru, Australia, Mexico, India, the U.K., Spain, Belgium, Algeria, Korea, Japan, Sierra Leone --a sort of United Nations of Labor. Together this group painted a too-rarely-seen portrait of a truly global labor movement.

Together we went through that day's 26-page daily program for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Phillip Pearson of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) reviewed the delegation's daily goal: to attend all of the meetings and "side events" possible and deliver a strong labor message. From climate change impacts, to green job opportunities, our goal was to always introduce the concerns of and effects on working people in every environmental discussion.

Another task set before the delegates: Each national delegation was to set up meetings with our government delegation leaders. The government delegates are the ones who actually do the negotiating on the climate change agreements. Labor representatives, being from non-governmental organizations, can observe and provide input in open meetings.