Worker's Day is a good opportunity for trade unions to reflect on the way forward in line with their fundamental role of affirming the value of work and the dignity of the worker.

There can be no doubt that one major role unions continue to have, especially in the changing context of today's world economy, is to reaffirm the right to work as an essential right, corresponding to people's fundamental responsibility to support themselves and their families. It is not only a right to subsistence but of making it possible for workers to achieve fulfilment.

Unions, therefore, are to be commended when they strive to see to it that society and the state ensure wage levels and working conditions are adequate enough for the maintenance of the workers and their families, when they push for continuous efforts to improve workers' training and capabilities so that their work is more skilled and productive and when they seek careful controls and adequate legislative measures against shameful forms of exploitation, especially to the disadvantage of the most vulnerable workers, of immigrants and those on the margins of society.

Trade unions must, of course, also focus on certain realities such as job satisfaction, job security, worker-management relationships and the environment at the workplace. Moreover, certain new challenges, such as the introduction of new technologies and the effects of globalisation, may require unions to re-think and renew the way in which they represent the labour force in different situations.

In addressing such situations, it is understandable that unions seek to influence governments irrespective of the party in office. Yet, unions have to ensure that their work is invariably in the best interest not only of the workers but also of the common good. This means, among other things, acknowledging that the activity of the trade unions does not have a partisan character. It must not be an instrument of the action of anyone, of any political party, in order to be able to concentrate, in an exclusive and fully autonomous way, on the great social good of human work and of working people.

In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II, who had to work first in a quarry and then in a chemical factory to earn his living, argues that just efforts to secure the rights of workers should take into account the limitations imposed by the general economic situation of the country. He compares social and socio-economic life to a system of "connected vessels" and says that every social activity directed towards safeguarding the rights of particular groups should adapt itself to this system.

In this sense, advised John Paul II, union activity undoubtedly enters the field of politics, understood as prudent concern for the common good. "However, the role of unions is not to 'play politics' in the sense that the expression is commonly understood today. Unions do not have the character of political parties struggling for power; they should not be subjected to the decision of political parties or have too close links with them. In fact, in such a situation they easily lose contact with their specific role, which is to secure the just rights of workers within the framework of the common good of the whole of society; instead they become an instrument used for other purposes."

Trade unions should always look back to their original base when planning ahead to respond properly to the new challenges facing workers in today's changed circumstances.