A network of IBM unions worldwide will meet in Switzerland in May,
to form the IBM Global Union Alliance, organizers said.

Alliance@IBM, Local 1701 of the Communications Workers of America,
based in Binghamton, will participate, said Lee Conrad, national coordinator of the local group.

IBM unions, including the Alliance, have worked together over the years as a network of information
and cooperation, but the new organization "takes that network to another level
and will include many more IBM unions," the Alliance said.

In the past year, new IBM unions have formed in Argentina, Chile, and Bulgaria, the group said.

"As IBM has set itself up as a truly global company,
trade unions also need to set up a truly global alliance," the group said.

Doug Shelton, a spokesman for IBM, declined to comment.

Alliance, which has been trying to organize IBM employees since 1999, said:
"IBM has negotiated with unions in Europe for decades and IBM has been successful as a company.
If the company can do that there, they can do it here."

The networking among unions around the globe representing IBM workers dates to the 1980s,
said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University.

Bronfenbrenner said she thinks IBM's outsourcing of work from the United States to other countries
in an effort to cut costs has worked against union efforts here.
But unions have emerged more strongly in other nations.

"The idea was that you would move it to China and there would be no unions,
and they discovered in fact, that unions in China were beginning to find themselves" Bronfenbrenner said.

If unions work in solidarity globally, Bronfenbrenner said, "I think they can get something."

The unions' objectives are to pursue agreements with IBM to improve working conditions
of IBM employees worldwide and to raise levels of trade union membership at IBM.
The company operates locally in Endicott.