Stephen Cotton

General Secretary

Stephen Cotton is General Secretary of the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), a global union federation representing 677 trade unions and 19.7 million transport workers across 149 countries in the seafaring, port, road, rail, tourism and aviation sectors. He joined the ITF in 1993 in its maritime section and rose through roles including assistant secretary and secretary of its Special Seafarers' Department before being elected General Secretary at the 2014 ITF Congress in Sofia and re-elected in Singapore in 2018. Under his leadership the ITF's seafarer inspectorate grew from 35 to 147 inspectors and the number of ships covered by ITF collective bargaining agreements rose from under 2,000 to more than 12,000. In 2014 he received the United Seamen's Service Admiral of the Ocean Sea Award for his work defending seafarers' welfare, and in 2021 he was appointed by the UN Secretary-General to the Board of the UN Global Compact. He chairs the Council of Global Unions and is a trustee of the ITF Seafarers' Trust.