Re: SA switches on social clause

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I too think it is hard to be against this position taken by Alec Erwin
(below). I am not sure if he is still in the South African Communist Party
but the adverse forces on workers and governments of would be developing
countries are great.

Of course unions should also continue to campaign for labour clauses. There
is not one position that is right regardless of the circumstances. People
trying to be progressive may necessarily have to take up different
positions according to whether they are representing unions or governments
in a grossly unequal world.

One strategic rule for governments that seek to be progressive is to try to
minimise the proportion of the reserve army of labour of global capitalism
within their borders, and to maximum the population producing use values.
Another is to raise the technical and educational level of the forces of
production.

But as Nathan argues, whatever reforms turn out to be a way of doing it,
there must be transfers of capital from advanced capitalist countries to
the developing countries. Hopefully of course this will be in a world
economic system that releases the unproductive global reserve army of
labour massively to increase the use values and the quality of life for the
population as a whole, without further exploiting the environment so that
there is no reduction in living standards of the working people of the
advanced countries.

I therefore think that the South should bargain hard. Much as it may
sympathise with abolition of child labour and environmental pollution this
must be organised in a world system that is equitable and not dominated by
the largest concentrations of capital.

Unionists in the north should not restrict themselves to economist demands
against cheap imports. They should themselves demand taxation to the set up
of a massive global development fund for social and environmental
improvement in all areas of the world. And what better source to tax than
the vast currency shufflings of the multi-national companies.

Chris Burford

London




At 09:35 11/12/99 +0200, Parick Bond wrote:
>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
>
>