Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Europe, Headlines, Labour

TRADE: WTO Talks Overshadow Labour Concerns

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Jul 28 2004 (IPS) - International trade negotiators are ignoring the plight of millions of workers, according to leading trade union groups.

As trade officials started a four-day general council session at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva Tuesday (Jul. 27), a group of trade unions led by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) criticised the WTO trade negotiations for ignoring the "worsening impact" of trade on peoples’ lives and working conditions.

The WTO session aims to produce a framework for the final stretch of the trade talks, and has been called to keep negotiations on track for the Dec. 31 deadline for a new international trade agreement.

But ICFTU says that by putting all their efforts into the Doha Development Round (DDR), trade officials are forgetting other important trade issues.

"Unfortunately, while WTO trade negotiators pore over the fine print of their schedule for completing their Doha Round negotiations, the very basis of support for a multilateral trading system is being cut away from under their feet," Guy Ryder, general secretary of the ICFTU warned.

Ryder is urging governments to "raise their sights and tackle the basic social and development questions" which he says are "at the heart of the inequity and injustice that characterise world trade today."

He says governments will otherwise "fail to mobilise support among their own populations for completing, ratifying and implementing whatever trade deal may ultimately be concluded."

The Doha round was launched in the Qatar capital in 2001. The talks were scheduled to conclude this year, but are months behind schedule.

Negotiators have urged more political will in restarting the Doha trade round since the WTO meeting collapsed in Cancun last September mainly over the billions of dollars a year rich countries spend on farm subsidies.

Trade negotiators are now hoping that a negotiating framework is agreed by the end of July, or else the Doha round risks being sidelined by a new structure in the enlarged European Commission and by the U.S. presidential elections in November.

But ICFTU says that in the meantime other workers’ rights are being compromised – particularly in the textile sector. It adds that the position will only get worse when the textile quota system ends next year.

Quantitative restrictions on import of garments and textiles are due to end from January next year with the expiry of the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC).

This would give all WTO members unrestricted access to European, U.S. and Canadian markets.

ICFTU says this could have "serious repercussions" on jobs in the textile sector in countries which will appear less attractive following the quota system.

It says millions of workers around the world have seen their jobs undermined as multinational companies shift their production to China and other countries where production is cheaper due to violations of basic workers’ rights.

"Nothing in the framework of WTO trade talks being presented this week tackles this social void at the heart of the world trading system," Ryder added..

The International Trade, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF) voices the same concerns.

"Who is going to explain to the 40 million workers, mostly women in desperately poor counties such as Bangladesh and Mauritius, that the jobs carnage in those sectors that will come in 2005 after the end of the ATC Agreement is good for them?" ITGLWF general secretary Neil Kearney said in a statement.

ICFTU, which represents some 148 million workers around the world, together with the ITGLWF and the Paris-based Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC), is now calling for the creation of an emergency clothing and textile forum to respond to the crises that may emerge January 2005 onwards.

The trade union network says the new forum should be created under the auspices of the United Nations, and with the participation of the WTO, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

"The international community should create an emergency clothing and textile forum as one of the policy coherence initiatives that the World Commission has recommended. That could bring together all relevant organisations, including the social partners, to put in place a plan of action to head off the crises that will surely emerge," TUAC general secretary John Evens said.

ICFTU says the draft framework for completing the Doha Round which was outlined on July 16 is also very weak in the areas of special and differential treatment for developing countries.

It adds that proposals on cotton "do not come close" to the demands developing countries made in Cancun to tackle the massive subsidies given to cotton growers in industrialised countries.

A further concern of the trade union network is that demands on developing countries to open up their agricultural markets may undermine their domestic producers and jeopardise food production for their people. It says tariff reductions that could be required in the non-agricultural market access (NAMA) talks also risk having an equally "devastating" impact.

"At the end of the day, multilateral trade talks through the WTO remain a generally better option than the alternatives, but that is little comfort to the workers losing their jobs owing to the WTO’s deficiencies," said Ryder..