Lewis Machipisa

Labour activists at the WSF say its time they transformed the movement into a new type of global organisation, one able to 'fight evil and represent the poor'.

'We are here in Porto Alegre because we realise that we cannot solve our problems alone, within our national frontiers, despite our hard-won political freedom,' said Willie Madisha of the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the country's largest labour organisation.

'We have to recognise that as individual countries, we are being picked off one by one by the elites and their representative institutions. It is Argentina's turn for 'disciplining' this year; before it was Turkey, and before that it was Indonesia,' noted Madisha.

This process of critical self-assessment has already started at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which groups the main unions in the world.

According to Guy Ryder, ICFTU general secretary, the trade union movement is among the few agents capable of addressing the moral vacuum left by the powerful forces of the market.
While quality employment declines in the relentless quest for profit, the gulf of inequality is widening between rich and poor, between women and men and between the developing and industrialised countries.

It is against this harsh reality that thousands of trade unionists have gathered at the WSF to voice their concerns about unbalanced globalisation.

Meanwhile, in New York, the same forceful message will be passed to those assembled at the World Economic Forum.
The ICFTU, in cooperation with other trade union organisations, launched a joint statement to the World Social Forum and the World Economic Forum.

The statement calls for a more positive globalisation process, one based on solidarity, and stresses the importance of the right of workers to form and control their own unions and defend their own interests.
'The trade union movement is present in force in New York and Porto Alegre to argue for taking a different path, a path that takes the workers of this world into account,' said Ryder.

The collapse of the financial structures of Argentina and the US-based Enron Corporation are just the latest examples of how the global economy and global institutions have lost their way, the labour unions say.
A Multi-Pronged Approach

'We believe that the current preoccupation with diplomacy and lobbying must compliment mass-based campaigns and not be a substitute for it,' said Madisha, 'As a movement of global civil society the WSF gives us the space to explore alternatives to the hegemony of neo-liberal globalisation. Our concern is to find a common ground around which to mobilise and campaign. We want to give concrete content to the broad idea of the globalisation of human and worker rights,' said Madisha.

To achieve this Madisha concedes that labour must to stand together with other social forces and build alliances to more effectively challenge the socially destructive policies of the Washington Consensus, the name given the 'liberalising economic reforms' imposed by such institutions as the World Bank.
But this has proved no easy task.

'Left to themselves, the elites will sooner or later plunge us all into social and ecological disaster as they pursue their own narrow, short-term interests,' predicts Madisha.
It is against this background that labour unions are calling for global social justice, especially in terms of what is known as the North-South divide.

'As opposed to the current dominant globalisation paradigm of the World Trade Organisation, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, COSATU calls for the globalisation of human and worker rights as the cornerstone of development and fair trade,' Madisha said.

Ever since the South African government embarked on its Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy (GEAR) in 1996, which Madisha dismisses as an orthodox neo-liberal policy, unemployment has been on the rise.
Many people have gone from working in a factory to selling bananas on the streets. But what is even worse is that, far from achieving financial stability, the rand, South Africa's currency, has halved in value against the US dollar since 1994.
The country's biggest capitalists are also stampeding out of the country as fast as they can.

'It has become clear to us that our government is being held hostage by the forces which are driving globalisation,' said Madisha.

North-South Workers Unite
This, says Jeff Faux, president of the Washington-based Global Policy Network, calls for a deal between workers in the developing world and in the industrialised world.

'Both of those workers are getting hurt by neo-liberalism. The North American Free Trade Agreement, for example, has resulted in reduced wages for workers in Mexico, the US and Canada,' said Faux.
'So we need a grand bargain in order to form world solidarity among workers. The heart of that bargain is that we need labour standards around the world which include the right to collective bargaining,' he added.
'Democracy is the key. There are rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries, and the workers in rich countries have to think of themselves as workers.

'No matter where you live, the kind of globalisation that we are now pursuing has resulted in reduced real wages, increased poverty and a shrinking share of labour income that comes from their own work,' said Faux.
'In the Argentine crisis, the problem is that over the last 10 years capital has increased its share, but labour has seen its share shrink, so the people lack purchasing power.'