WTO and Labour rights

[Bill Rosenberg <w.rosenberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

An intermittent contribution to the WTO and labour rights debate -

I support Patrick Bond and Martin Hart-Landsberg on the labour (and
China) issues.

We have two union federations in New Zealand. The larger Council of
Trade Unions (CTU) has until now taken the ICFTU line of labour and
social clauses (see below). I say "until now" because its
long-standing President, Ken Douglas, who pushed this line regardless
of membership views, has recently been replaced and his international
trade and investment line may go with him. The more activist Trade
Union Federation (TUF) has actively opposed it on the basis of
international third-world union contacts who oppose the line.

It is absurdly hypocritical for the same countries that order the
WTO's sister bodies, the IMF and World Bank, to impose violently
anti-worker measures on third world countries, to also call for basic
labour rights. Martin L-H has already referred to the example of South
Korea, where labour rights have been set back hugely by the IMF
intervention there, in U.S., Japanese and European interests.

How would a labour clause as proposed by the ICFTU - which I
understand is essentially what is being debated - be enforced in
practice? Against a whole country (as seems to be proposed with
China)? An industrial sector? An individual employer? On whose
evidence? Remember that WTO actions are government-to-government only.


Can you see the U.S. demanding retaliation against a country because
its labour rights have been undermined by a U.S.-backed IMF
"structural adjustment programme"? Are we really so naïve to think
that a country if pressured in this way would do anything but the
minimum window-dressing that would suit U.S. (etc) government
purposes? For example, would it help the majority of workers employed
in sectors selling into the domestic market? Would the U.S. demand
sanctions when it was most likely its own transnationals (who had
quite possibly led the design of the trade rules in the first place)
taking advantage of these oppressive laws? What if (as happens
frequently in developed countries such as New Zealand and the U.S. as
well as developing countries) many employers ignore acceptable laws to
impose unacceptable practices, such as preventing unions organising?

In short, I have considerable sympathy for the view of Third World
activists whom I respect, that this would be used as (yet another)
means to restrict trade on quite an arbitrary basis, while having
little measurable effect on the plight of workers in those countries.

What are the alternatives? In part we have to acknowledge that we are
trying to take short cuts with this kind of device. What will really
change these kinds of social conditions is popular support for them -
primarily in the countries concerned, but with internationalist
support from unions and like-minded groups elsewhere. That's hard
work. And popular support is precisely what the IMF, U.S. covert and
military interventions, etc, explicitly work to undermine.

But if we were to have an effective institutional device of this kind,
I would think we would have to turn the whole relationship on its
head. It should be workers' rights that are driving trade sanctions,
not trade rules taking workers' rights as one (opportunist,
unsympathetic) consideration. So a reformed ILO or the UN could
monitor such things and have the right to call for sanctions
(superceding WTO rules) where appropriate, and perhaps at the
initiative of, or at least with the support of, genuine unions in the
country concerned. Since that would (in theory at least) be
independent of the latest trade skirmish or dumping debate, that would
remove the suspicion of ulterior motives. But it would also have to be
supported by a complete change of policy in the IMF and World Bank, or
a country would find itself with sanctions applied on top of an
IMF-induced economic depression.

Regarding China - while it is far from perfect in its labour and human
rights, it is also far from being the worst country with which the
U.S. trades and which has WTO membership. To make it the focus of
these "rights" clauses reeks of opportunism by those who oppose China
from a position of anti-communism, and resenting its success in
resisting the worst effects of financial flows on open economies.

Bill Rosenberg

Footnote on the ICFTU position: While criticising the effects of
neo-liberal policies, the ICFTU accepts the validity of the
international agreements, interpreting them as "regulation" of the
global market, but says "a workers' rights clause would ease
protectionist pressures and strengthen free trade."  It is a way of
"linking basic workers' rights to trade liberalization" ("Fighting for
Workers' Human Rights in the Global Economy", Bernie Russell, ICFTU,
December 1997, Brussels, p.27, 5 resp). Similarly, Stephen Pursey,
Head of the ICFTU's Economic and Social Policy Department asserts as
"points of consensus in the ICFTU" : "all countries should aim if not
for totally free trade, for progressively more and more open trade
with no obvious stopping point ... the international community should
exert pressure on countries that violate basic standards because these
violations reduce the legitimacy of the trading system... just as it
is in the interests of countries to liberalise trade even if others do
not, it is also in the interests of countries to implement basic
labour standards if others do not" ("Implementation of Labour
Standards in the Multilateral System,  Labour Standards in the Global
Trade and Investment System", TUAC/OECD, November 1996, p. 73-75).