SA switches on social clause

["Patrick Bond" <pbond@xxxxxxxxxx>]

SA trade/industry minister (and Unctad president) Alec Erwin --
who once promoted labour clauses in trade deals -- now feels more
pressure on this issue from other capitalist-comprador trade
ministers, than his own workers.

But I'm not sure that's such a bad thing right now, given the need to
continue delegimising the WTO and the even more urgent need to
transcend this terribly divisive wedge issue...

Business Report    10/12/99

State won`t push for labour clause in trade deals
Frank Nxumalo, 10 December 1999

Johannesburg - The government would not push for a social clause
to be included in its trade negotiations with other countries to
accommodate the demands of organised labour, Alec Erwin, the
minister of trade and industry, said yesterday.

A social clause in trade agreements covers the labour criteria
under which goods are produced. Tony Twine of Econometrix said
Vietnam in the early `90s was a classic example. Most nations
refused to trade with it because of its wide use of child labour and
wages as low as $1 a day. But a social clause can be used as a
competitive advantage in trade deals, as happened at the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial conference in Seattle.
Industrialised nations, under pressure from labour organisations,
wanted labour standards made part of the millennium round. At
stake was the developing world`s competitive advantage in terms of
lower wages, benefits and lower labour costs. Factories from the
developed world would be tempted to relocate to the developing
world, to the detriment of labour in the north and to the advantage
of labour in the south. Erwin said not a single developing country
wanted a social clause included in the new WTO round, for fear of
losing this competitive advantage. Seattle placed international trade
union solidarity under threat by pitting the interests of labour in the
northern hemisphere against those the southern hemisphere.
South Africa`s unions are pushing the government to include social
clauses in trade deals with countries of these two blocs. This
would aid regional union solidarity.
http://www.busrep.co.za/busrep/busfront?sction=news&category=g
eneral_ news&ar ticleID=18583&publishdate=19991210