International Confederation of Labour

In 2010's there were some trade unions dissaffected with IWA-AIT, the most notorious of them were german Free Workers' Union, spanish Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and italian Italian Syndical Union. In 2016, in Milan they celebrated a conference that lead to a broader international conference held in November at Barakaldo, Spain.

In there several trade unions met: IWW from the USA and Canada, IWW from the UK and Ireland, FAU and IWW from Germany, IP from Poland, USI from Italy, ESE and Rocinante from Greece, CNT-GAP and CNT-Vignoles from France and FORA from Argentine, as well as some solidarity statements sent from other organizations like Sociedad Obrera from Paraguay, FOB from Brazil and CNT-STCPP from France. After this event they decided to push for a new workers international that solved the problems they found in IWA-AIT.^[1]

The First Congress of ICL (International Confederation of Labour) was celerated in Parma, Italy, between the 11th and 14th May 2018. As a result, a new international working class organisation was created. It was established by unions dissatisfied with the International Workers' Association (IWA-AIT), including the CNT (Spain), USI (Italy), FORA (Argentine) and FAU (Germany).^[2]

In 2019, IWW-NARA (United States and Canada) decided to join ICL. With this new section also came in the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) and in that year the whole ICL supported the campaing #PrisonStrike, that was co-led by IWOC earlier that year.^[3]

In 2021, IWW-WISERA joined ICL^[4] and in 2025 it was CNT France (also known as CNT-Vignoles) that joined.^[5]

The current member organisations are:

• The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, Spain
• The Free Workers' Union, Germany
• The Italian Syndicalist Union, Italy
• The Libertarian Syndicalist Union, Greece
• The Confédération nationale du travail, France
• The Workers' Initiative, Poland
• The Industrial Workers of the World-NARA, North America
• The Industrial Workers of the World-WISERA, British isles, Europe and Australasia

Industrial Workers of the World has the particularity of being a workers international in itself. So, there are sections belonging to IWW that now are also linked to ICL. As for IWW-NARA it covers all Northamerica, including United States and Canada. They have intention to root in Mexico, but by the way this task has not been successfull. IWW-WISERA is based in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. However, it also has some sections in other european coutries like Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Iceland, Finland and Cyprus. The German speaking countries share a Regional Organizing Comittee (ROC). But IWW-WISERA also has another ROC in the other part of the world: Australia. With Australia, there is another section in New Zealand belonging to the same ROC.

In 2019 ICL created the Asia workgroup, that tries to link the european anarcho-syndicalist unions to radical rank-and-file unions in asian countries like Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand. So, ICL set up some campaing like the support of the workers of Dragon Sweat in Bangladesh ^[6] and supporting the Federation of Garment Workers Union-Myanmar (FGWM) ^[7].

ICL also celebrated a conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 2020. ^[8] This conference helped to establish links with several south and southeast asian garment unions as well as solidarity campaings, collectives or NGOs of the area.

This contacts can be followed each year in the GlobalMayDay campaing, which put together most of the ICL sections with other unions in the Global South. In these campaings take part other anarcho-syndicalist unions not belonging to ICL, like spanish CGT or swedish SAC.

This campaing started in 2017, pushed by some local sections of german FAU and IWW-WISERA. Each year attracts more unions and organizations all around the world and serves as a platform to spread what each union does at maydays. In 2026 the call of the GlobalMayDay has been signed by 24 organizations.^[9] However, it must be stated GlobalMayDay is not a proper campaing of ICL, but closely related to some of its core sections.