LABOUR: Union Proposes Alternative to Neoliberal Globalisation

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 16 1997 (IPS) - In this era of neoliberal globalisation, workers will have to wage war on the transnationals on the same battlefields where the globalisation process is being fought out, said a document prepared for a workers congress here.

“Globalisation as such is inevitable. What is not inevitable is the neoliberal form of this,” said the study presented to the International Union of Food and Allied Workers (IUF) Congress this week.

The strategy contemplates the displacement of the union struggle and the political battle of the workers’ movement far beyond the frontiers of the nation-State to reach the world-wide level.

These conditions will make “it possible to set up a counterproposal based on a democratic socialist model of globalisation (in the general sense of the term) as opposed to the neoliberal model,” concluded the initiative.

The transnational companies, spearhead for global integration, have increased their power enormously over the last two decades, a period which has been characterised by the practically uncontrolled movement of capital.

This situation has had political consequences with important social repercussions, mainly related to the slow but obvious decline of the nation-State as an economic agent and as the means of putting a certain degree of social control on capital.

The weakening of the State has created a sensation of vulnerability and pessimism amongst the citizenry, faced by institutions which can no longer offer them what they need, it said.

The proposal in the document would mean the contruction of a new international system to regulate the transnationals’ operations on a world-wide basis and “would reaffirm the universal unifying values of democratic consensus.”

For this strategy to come off, the unions need to organise “great masses of workers,” recovering the power lost in recent decades and restoring their credibility.

The document prepared for the IUF congress, which will end in Geneva Friday, defined worker credibility as “the capacity to truly get at the employers and governments if they do not deal with what we are trying to say to them.”

Representatives of 344 IUF affiliated unions in 112 countries were warned they should not “fear conflict. We must be prepared and we must give ourselves the means to win through in the conflict.”

The intitiative proposed to back the political will of the 2.6 million members of the IUF to obtain commitments from the transnationals and to develop conflicts on a wider scale.

The study noted the weaknesses in the international union movement “which is in reality a network of loose links and bridges between national organisations accustomed to acting in national terms.”

The International Congress of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the biggest union group in the world, reflects these problems, it said.

The main problem faced by the ICFTU, of a social democratic tendency, lies in the fact the representatives of national groups “are incapable of understanding and, even less, reacting to the challenges of globalisation.”

As an institutional alternative, the document suggests that international workers organisations organised according to industry or profession, like the IUF, should receive the tecnical title of International Professional Secretariats (IPS).

The IPS’s currently represent the form of international union organisation most likely to mount an effective challenge to the power of the transnational companies, said the study.

This strategy contemplates improving the organisation of the unions and the provision of sufficient resources, suggesting moving into the financial terrain by constituting foundations.

But the plans suffer from the lack of a coherent programme to “construct an alternative form of globalisation aimed at a just and democratic world order,” admitted the document.

The study mentioned other previous alternative proposals, such as failed initiatives to include a social clause in the international trade statutes and the imposition of taxes on the international capital flow.

The social clause proposal, suggested by the ICFTU, was rejected in the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Singapore, last December.

Finally, the docuement mentioned some institutions which are working on a programme for an alternative society, like the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in Bonn, the Karl Renner Institute, in Vienna, the Political Studies Institute, in Washington, and the Evatt Foundation, in Sydney.

The study stated that in order to achieve a global political capacity, mobilise the world-wide public and apply serious and sustained pressure upon the governments, alliances must be established with political organisations and other civil society organisations.