home | what's new | BAYAN | contact info | peoples' campaign back NewSbiTs PapERs PapERs High Interest Rates by Edberto Villegas ACCELERATED DESTRUCTION OF PRODUCTIVE FORCES Message of Solidarity to the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization Asia's Economic Crisis by Peter Murphy Notes on the Recent Crises by Ernesto M. Valencia Trade, TNCs and Labor and Other Social Issues by Antonio Tujan, Jr. The APEC, The MAI and Corporate Rule by Antonio Tujan, Jr. The Global Financial Crisis by Michel Chossudovsky The Asian Currency Crisis, The Looting Of Central Bank Reserves by Michel Chossudovsky THE MAI -- ANOTHER WORKERS' NIGHTMARE? by Aziz Choudry back to top page NewSbiTs INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AGAINST MINING TNCs DIRTY SECRETS OF THE CHIPMAKING INDUSTRY HISTORY OF SEMICONDUCTORS AND TOXINS back to top page PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST IMPERIALIST GLOBALIZATION BAYAN (NEW PATRIOTIC ALLIANCE) and the PHILIPPINE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (POC) invite you to the INTERNATIONAL FACT FINDING MISSION: The Social, Environmental and Human Rights Cost of Mining by TNCs 09 - 13 November 1998 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AGAINST MINING TNCs 14 - 16 November 1998 Manila, Philippines PEOPLE'S PROTEST ACTION AGAINST MINING TNCs AND APEC 17 November 1998 THEME: Linking worldwide people's resistance against imperialist plunder and domination! ========================================================= I. MINING, SAP and GLOBALIZATION: The Context The implementation of the IMF/WB-imposed Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) with its prescriptions of liberalization, deregulation and privatization, hastens the process of imperialist globalization bannered by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and APEC. In the Philippines, President Fidel V. Ramos enacted into law Republic Act 7942 known as the New Mining Act of 1995 last 3 March 1995, fully liberalizing the mining industry. Its implementing mechanism, the Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA), gives foreign investors such as transnational (multinational) corporations (TNCs) the right to control, manage and engage in unbridled mining operations in the country. The FTAA allows unobstructed exploitation and plunder of the country's mineral resources by mining TNCs. It guarantees foreign mining conglomerates a bonanza of incentives that includes: a 25-50 year tenure over 100,000 hectares of land per mining contract; water and timber rights; a 5-10 year tax holiday; and absolute control and authority over mining areas, even allowing them to maintain private armed security forces with a "legal" right to evict indigenous occupants of the place. There are now 100 FTAA and 1,502 Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA) contracts pending approval. Most of these applications come from Australia, Canada and the USA. If granted, they will cover almost half of the Philippines' entire land area. Elsewhere in the world the same thing is happening. Governments are opening up their economies to lure foreign investments. Liberal mining laws have attracted numerous multinational mining corporations especially from Australia, Canada and the U.S.A. The TNCs' obsession with profit at great social and environmental cost is nowhere more evident than in mining. And the neocolonial states are determined to use all possible means to defend and promote the interest of multinational mining corporations making the intensity and scope of exploitation unprecedented. The victims: the most vulnerable sectors of society - peasants, indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, women and mine workers. II. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AGAINST MINING TNCs The International Conference Against Mining TNCs is a continuation of a series of anti-APEC and anti-imperialist conferences coinciding with the annual APEC Leaders Summit. The first was the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization in Manila in 1996. This was followed by the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization -- Continuing the Resistance! organized by the NO to APEC Coalition (NTAC) in Vancouver, Canada in 1997. To be held on 14-16 November, the International Conference is being organized from the point of view of the people's struggle for freedom from exploitation and domination of transnational/multinational corporations and imperialist states. It has three (3) components: 1. Fact Finding Mission, 09-13 November. It is a major pre-conference activity. The 5-day integration with mining communities will not only give the participants first-hand experience and information about the people's situation resulting from the exploitative and ecologically destructive operations and grave human rights violations committed by mining TNCs. More importantly, the mission is an opportunity for both the participants and the host communities to share and learn from the gains and problems of spontaneous and organized resistance they are waging against foreign mining firms and imperialism in their respective countries. The IFFM report will serve as working paper for the workshop on international campaigns cooperation plan. It will also form part of the conference official documents. 2. Conference Proper, 14-16 November. With the theme, Linking worldwide people's resistance against imperialist plunder and domination! the conference will have the following features: plenary session on topics such as: a] mining TNCs and globalization b] liberalization of the mining industry and industrialization c] Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), mining TNCs and environment e] mining and land rights f] people's worldwide campaign and action plan against mining TNCs and globalization sharing/presentation of experiences of peoples struggles against mining TNCs and imperialist globalization in Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America workshops on the environmental, social and human rights cost of mining by TNCs: a] health and environmental cost of TNC mining, particularly open pit mining b] impact of TNC mining on women and children c] workers' situation in the TNC-controlled mining industry d] human rights implication of TNC mining e] mining TNCs and the indigenous peoples' struggle for land rights and ancestral domain and, finally, a workshop on planning and linking worldwide peoples' campaign and struggle against mining TNCs and imperialist globalization. cultural programs, video documentary showing and photo exhibit. 3. People's Protest Against Mining TNCs and APEC, 17 November. A motorcade-march-rally from the site of the conference to the offices of transnational mining companies in Makati City, specifically the Placer Dome and Western Mining corporations. They are two of the largest mining companies operating in the Philippines with the worst record of human rights violations, environmental disaster, landgrabbing and community displacement. Significantly, November 17 is also the opening of the 6th APEC Leaders Summit in Malaysia. Thus, the motorcade-march-rally will proceed to the US Embassy to highlight the continuing people's campaign against APEC and imperialist globalization. III. THE PARTICIPANTS The conference aims to gather 150 participants (100 foreign and 50 local) from: anti-imperialist and progressive organizations of indigenous peoples, peasants, fisherfolk, women and mine workers; individual and NGO advocates of indigenous peoples, the environment and human rights; and liberation movements. IV. REGISTRATION FEES The registration fee will cover all conference-related expenses such as food and accommodations (from date of arrival, 08 November to date of departure, 18 November), conference kit, cultural presentations, solidarity night, and the motorcade-march-rally: US$ 200. for mass leaders and/or delegates of mass organizations: indigenous peoples, peasants, fisherfolk, women, workers, students; and for representatives of liberation movements US$ 300. for NGOs, church organizations, donor agencies and advocates The fact finding mission-related expenses will be taken care of from solicited funds and resources by the conference secretariat and host communities. V. THE PHILIPPINE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (POC) The Philippine Organizing Committee (POC), composed of major people's organizations actively campaigning against mining TNCs and imperialism, is the official organizer of the conference. The international conference and its concomitant activities are part of the sustained People's Campaign Against Imperialist Globalization. BAYAN (New Patriotic Alliance) CPA (Cordillera People's Alliance) INNABUYOG (alliance of indigenous women's organizations in the Cordillera) KAMP (Alliance of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines) TABAK (alliance of indigenous people's advocates) KATRIBU (youth advocates of indigenous peoples) KALIKASAN (People's Network for the Environment) Alliance for Genuine Development (Far South Mindanao) SAGIP (Southern Mindanao) SILDAP-Sidlakan (Northern Mindanao) HALAD - Western Mindanao HUGPONG-NA Negros CLAA (Central Luzon Aeta Association) UMALPAS KA - Albay (People's Network Against Mining And Land Conversion) KMP (Peasant Movement of the Philippines) PAMALAKAYA (national fisherfolk organization) AMIHAN (Federation of Peasant Women's Organizations) GABRIELA (national alliance of women's organizations) KMU (May First Movement) HEAD (Health Alliance for Democracy) Promotion of Church People's Response (PCPR) MIGRANTE International KARAPATAN (Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights) COURAGE (national organization of government employees/workers) For registration and more information, please contact: The Conference Secretariat Attn: Ms. Dayling Java P.O. Box 10296 Broadway Centrum 1112 Quezon City, Philippines Phone: (63-2) 435-9151 Telefax: (63-2) 922-5211 E-mail: bayan@iname.com back to top page DIRTY SECRETS OF THE CHIPMAKING INDUSTRY (Excerpts) A toxic yellow-brown cloud rose from the floor at a Teccor Electronics computer chip plant in Irving, Texas. Acids had leaked from a faulty pump onto silicon wafers littering the floor. The reaction created the dangerous fumes. Three employees, dizzy and struggling to breathe, wound up in the hospital. For weeks, they suffered respiratory problems. Teccor President Al Lapierre says employees "needlessly stuck their noses" in the fumes. But federal investigators saw another problem that day in 1995. "Safety was secondary to production" wrote an investigator for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which governs workplace practices. Supervisors knew the floor was dirty but did not clean it because they would have had to close the plant for several days, OSHA said. The Teccor incident is one of many that exposes the dark side of a high-wage, fast-growth industry that is coveted by states and cities across America. A six-month examination of the $150 billion semiconductor industry, also known as the computer chip industry, reveals that the economic engine powering America's technological renaissance and churning out vast Wall Street fortunes is not nearly as clean as its image. The USA TODAY investigation, based on dozens of industry interviews and thousands of pages of regulatory documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, found that some semiconductor companies: Endangered workers, many of them women and minorities, by failing to fully train them about the hazardous, sometimes deadly, chemicals with which they work. About 10% of nearly 200 chip and chip-related plants inspected nationwide since 1992 fell short on training, OSHA records show. Failed to make plants meet health and safety standards, raising the risk of chemical exposures to workers and residents. For example, 10 of 36 plants in California's Silicon Valley were cited for health and safety shortfalls between 1993 and 1997, according to fire department and OSHA records. Continued to use chemicals suspected of causing cancer or miscarriages even though the vast majority of companies recognized the danger and switched to safer replacements, Environmental Protection Agency and fire department documents show. Expanded in areas of the United States in which environmental and safety regulations -- and enforcement of those regulations--are less strict than in Silicon Valley, where the industry was born. In at least one plant, employees were exposed for years to acids and solvents that workers and doctors say caused mouth sores, headaches, nausea, mood swings and blackouts, according to internal documents from the Zilog chip plant in Nampa, Idaho. The industry is the target of two sets of lawsuits involving IBM and Motorola. Workers and communities allege that chemicals used to make chips caused cancer, birth defects, and neurological and respiratory disorders. The industry also has a toxic past. In California's Silicon Valley, at least 18 of 29 federal Superfund sites -- the nation's most polluted sites -- are tied to the chip industry. Covering miles of aquifers, most of the sites are tainted with trichloroethylene (TCE), a solvent once widely used to clean chips. Regulators now suspect it might cause cancer. TCE is still used at some plants. More workers and communities are likely to face dangers from the industry as it roars ahead. Thirty major chip plants will open in the United States during the next five years. The giants -- Intel, NEC, Motorola and Texas Instruments -- are widely known. But scores of other companies supply chipmakers with everything from silicon wafers to equipment. The industry turns wafers made of silicon, Earth's second most common element after oxygen, into fingernail-size chips powering computers, cars, TVs, high-tech weapons and hundreds of other electronic products. More than 50 other U.S. industries released more pollutants to the air, land, water and public waste-water treatment facilities than did the semiconductor industry in 1995, the latest year for which EPA data is available, an analysis shows. The industry has largely replaced ozone- depleting compounds with less harmful chemicals, and many toxic solvents, used to clean chips, with water-based cleansers. ... ...the industry poses dangers, some of which are not obvious. The employees work inside low-story buildings in "clean rooms" that are so free of dust that even hospital operating rooms are dirty by comparison. Workers wear head-to-toe suits not to protect themselves but to keep their skin flakes, breath and hair from contaminating the valuable chips. Surrounding the workers, though, in pipes overhead and waste drains below, flows a perpetual chemical river. More than 60 hazardous acids, solvents, caustics and gases are used to make chips. The chemicals etch microscopic circuits onto the wafers, which go through dozens of steps. Some chemicals are suspected carcinogens and reproductive toxins. Others, such as hydrogen fluoride, a colorless liquid or gas, are so strong that they can cause severe burns deep beneath the skin. Arsine gas is the most toxic and attacks red blood cells. A leaking cylinder in a typical living room would be lethal with one whiff. Phosphine gas, also toxic, destroys lung tissue. Silane gas ignites on contact with air and has engulfed workers in flames. "If we could do it with water, we would do it with water. But we cannot make semiconductors without chemicals," says Lee Neal, head of health and safety for the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), a trade group. Big chemical accidents at the plants, though rare, have killed workers, contaminated streams and forced plant and neighborhood evacuations. Small accidents, more frequent, have burned fingers, damaged lungs and irritated skin. ... JOBS AND WONDERS GALORE ... U.S. companies employ 265,000 people worldwide. In the United States, the industry provides the building blocks for the $300 billion electronics industry, which employs 2.4 million people. Intel, the largest chipmaker, is one of the world's most profitable companies, with a market value of $117.6 billion, more than the Big Three automakers combined. ... SAFETY SOMETIMES SACRIFICED Yet a probe into the safety and environmental record of the industry reveals that the risks are not always negligible---or mitigated. ... At the 500-employee Zilog plant in Idaho, workers had complained of problems for years. In 1993 and 1994, they were repeatedly exposed to acids, solvents and chemical fumes in an old and poorly maintained plant. Thirty workers sued. They said the exposures made them sick and, in some cases, caused miscarriages. The workers settled for $2.25 million in 1996. Erin Leishman, 29, a mother of three, chose not to sue. She wanted to forget the three years she worked there and the four miscarriages and one stillbirth she endured during that time. Chemical fumes, she says, drifted over her. "I had mouth sores," she says. "Sometimes, I would go home and vomit." Zilog denies wrongdoing. But its former safety manager, in a resignation letter, admitted that employees were exposed and that the company should have taken action. James Cochran, now a safety manager for Philips Semiconductor, wrote: "Corporate management has stated that if they did everything that has been recommended to them, they would be out of business. . . . A company with $50 million to $75 million in cash has a poor defense when stating, 'We can't afford it.'" An LG Epitaxy plant in Santa Clara, Calif., has worried safety officials for years. The 62- employee plant, in a crowded industrial park adjacent to homes, uses toxic gases and chemicals to grow ultrapure layers of silicon on top of wafers. Those wafers then go to other plants, where they are made into chips. In 1992, city officials ordered workers to evacuate the Epitaxy plant because they believed it was too dangerous. Building officials said the plant was not built to safely house the hazardous chemicals the company used. Fire officials found several problems, including drums of hazardous waste improperly placed next to the property line; inadequate monitors to detect chemical leaks; and incompatible gases stored together, increasing the risk of fires and chemical releases. ... In 1996, the plant released a cloud of deadly phosphine and hydrogen chloride, which can cause severe skin burns. The cloud spread over the parking lot. A badly worn electrical plug had come undone, disabling the equipment that was supposed to clean the exhaust, a company report says. Last year, employee Jeffrey Saurman, 30, died after an accident at the plant. Saurman used powerful acids to clean equipment. He thought he mixed hydrofluoric acid with nitric acid. Instead, he added alcohol, which was in a similar bottle. The mixture exploded, creating a toxic yellow-red plume. The acid splashed. The burned worker ran to an emergency shower. He died two weeks later from chemical burns and inhalation. ... In the two years before the accident, the fire department had responded to the plant 32 times -- an unusually high number for semiconductor plants in the area. In 1996, it investigated four incidents involving hazardous chemicals at the plant -- also a high number. ... At Teccor, workers inhaled the dangerous fumes for a few minutes, evacuating only after another worker entered the room and began to choke. OSHA cited Teccor for training deficiencies regarding chemical hazards. ... COURTS PUSH ISSUE For Keith Barrack, 33, of Beacon, N.Y., the concern is immediate. Every time he gets an ache, he thinks his cancer is back. Barrack worked at IBM's East Fishkill plant in New York between 1986 and 1989. He was 30 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer — cancer that he believes came from exposure at work to chemicals known to cause cancer in rats. Two people who worked near him got cancer, too. One died. Zachary Ruffing, 12, was born with extreme skeletal deformities. His mother and father worked at the same IBM plant in the 1980s. While pregnant, his mother was barred from handling chemicals suspected of causing birth defects and miscarriages. But "I was breathing everything," says Faye Calton, 35, now of Lexington, Ky. "You could taste the chemicals." She says IBM officials told her she was safe because the plant was properly ventilated. "I trusted them," she says. Barrack and Ruffing are among 128 former IBM workers and their families who have filed a lawsuit, saying the chemicalsgave them cancer or caused birth defects. The case is the biggest to attempt to tie chipmaking to cancer. It is in the discovery phase. Filed in 1996, the lawsuit is against chemical makers, including Union Carbide and Eastman Kodak. Workers' compensation laws prevent employees from suing IBM directly. ... Copyright By Julie Schmit, USA TODAY; Contributing: Database editors Barbara Hansen and Anthony DeBarros sent to Bayan by Leslie Byster Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 760 N. First Street San Jose, CA 95112 408-287-6707-phone 408-287-6771-fax svtc@igc.apc.org back to top page Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 12:15:33 -0800 (PST) From: "Camp. Resp. Tech." svtc@igc.apc.org Subject: Chips Dirty Secrets, Part 5 History of semiconductors and toxins 1958--The first integrated circuit, commonly known as a computer chip or semiconductor, is demonstrated by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. 1961--Fairchild Semiconductor in Santa Clara County, Calif., the emerging Silicon Valley, releases first commercial chip. 1971--Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sets limits on how much workers can be exposed to chemicals over a 40-hour week without ill effects. Today, many large semiconductor companies set internal standards lower. 1977--The Apple II, the first fully assembled, programmable personal computer, is introduced. IBM launches its line of PCs five years later, igniting the PC revolution and driving demand for chips. 1980--Intel announces plant in Rio Rancho, N.M., the new Silicon Desert. 1981--Fairchild Semiconductor reports massive leak of 50,000 gallons of industrial solvents, which are used to clean chips, from an underground tank in California. Similar leaks occur at numerous semiconductor sites in the Silicon Valley leading to the creation of 18 Superfund sites. 1983--Intel passes the $1 billion annual revenue mark and eventually becomes the biggest chipmaker and one of the worldÕs most profitable companies. 1984--Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that workers in the semiconductor industry experienced respiratory problems "due to toxic agents" at a rate three to five times higher than workers in other manufacturing industries. Accidental release of methyl isocyanate at Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills thousands of people. Event fuels support for public's right to know about chemicals used and released by companies. 1985--First building codes governing semiconductor plants are written. Before, companies were free to use the hazardous chipmaking chemicals in regular warehouse-like buildings. California releases study showing three times as many birth defects in the neighborhood near the Fairchild plant, where groundwater was contaminated. The study does not identify a culprit. A follow-up study fails to confirm the initial findings. 1986--Congress passes law requiring companies using hazardous materials to submit chemical list to local fire departments, or other agencies, so they can prepare for accidents. Today, the law covers about 650 toxic substances and roughly 23,000 plants. Study of semiconductor workers reveals a potential link between chemicals used in the chipmaking process and miscarriages. The ethylene-based glycol ethers have been associated with reproductive toxicity in animals dating to 1981. 1987--Companies are first required to make public their releases of toxins to the environment. 1991--State of California Bureau of Labor Statistics and Research stops tracking "systemic poisoning" though the state found that the rate was three to four times higher in the semiconductor industry than in all manufacturing. 1992--Industry-sponsored study shows a 40% higher rate of miscarriages among chip workers exposed to ethylene-based glycol ethers (EGE). Companies, including Intel and IBM, permit women who become pregnant to take jobs outside the areas where the chemicals are used. Major U.S. companies eliminate EGEs over the next three years. Some health officials continue to question whether the glycol ethers were really the culprit. Study also shows that respiratory symptoms and dermatitis are more common among chip production workers than other workers. 1994--Industry emits 1.27 million pounds of hazardous air pollutants, down by almost two-thirds from 1987. U.S. companies employ 250,000 workers. Chips are essential to virtually all electronic products. 1995--The electronics industry, of which semiconductors are part, is the biggest polluter in 26 U.S. counties, including those encompassing Albuquerque, N.M.; Austin, Texas; Phoenix; and Fort Collins, Colo., according to Environmental Protection Agency toxic emissions data. 1996--Thirty chipmaking employees settle lawsuit against Zilog in Nampa, Idaho. Employees say overexposure to chipmaking chemicals made them sick; caused miscarriages. Former workers at IBM plant sue chemical makers alleging that they got cancer from chipmaking chemicals. 1997--Motorola, with help from the EPA, begins testing technology from Radiance Services of Bethesda, Md. Technology employs lasers to clean chips, which would reduce the need for chemicals and water. 1998--First trial is scheduled in one of five lawsuits against Motorola and other entities responsible for contaminating underground water in Phoenix. Hundreds of plaintiffs allege their properties lost value or that they suffered cancer, neurological and respiratory disorders from being exposed to TCE in water, air or soil. Timeline by Genevieve Lynn, USA TODAY Source: USA TODAY research by Mary Cadden Leslie Byster Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 760 N. First Street San Jose, CA 95112 408-287-6707-phone 408-287-6771-fax svtc@igc.apc.org back to top page ACCELERATED DESTRUCTION OF PRODUCTIVE FORCES MESSAGE OF SOLIDARITY TO THE PEOPLE'S CONFERENCE AGAINST IMPERIALIST GLOBALIZATION Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada By Prof. Jose Maria Sison International Network for Philippine Studies November 21, 1997 I wish to express my solidarity with all the participants in the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization: Continuing the Resistance, from November 21 to 25, as well as with those in the NO to APEC International Youth and Student Caucus on November 27. I congratulate the NO! to APEC Coalition for its successful preparatory work and I wish the aforesaid conference and caucus the utmost success in continuing the resistance to APEC and the monstrosity that is imperialist globalization. You hit the nail on the head when you speak of imperialist globalization. The monopoly capitalists, their political stooges in states and their reformist "civil society" apologists try to bamboozle people with the term "globalization" as if it were a brand-new fact of life that one cannot do anything about, except to adjust to it or at best plead to the monopoly capitalists and their states to reform and improve themselves. Retrogressive Meaning of "Globalization" "Globalization" is a term to which the imperialists and their camp followers attach a retrogressive meaning, denoting the hoary dogma of "free trade" and the entire antipeople train of liberalization, deregulation and privatization. The neoclassical and neoliberal terminology of free competition capitalism simply does not apply to the reality of monopoly capitalism and neocolonialism. We are still very much in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, especially because of the betrayal of socialism in the Soviet Union since 1956 and in China since 1976 and the persistent predominance of monopoly capitalism. The higher technology that is now available and that further compresses the globe has a higher social character than the earlier electro-mechanical technology and is far more suitable to socialism than before. But unfortunately, the capitalist social relations and the private methods of appropriating the product of labor have become even more avaricious and antisocial. As the imperialists use the term, globalization means a policy shift from Keynesian or social-democratic methods to neoliberal methods, or rather to the use of neoliberal jargon to rationalize the unmitigated greed of the monopoly capitalists. It is meant to disparage the idea and experience of state intervention for social welfare, economic development and coping with the crisis even within the world capitalist system and, most of all, to counter the cause of socialism. The neoliberal bias disdains fiscal measures and favors the use of monetary measures in running the economy and letting the monopoly capitalists have the utmost free play in the market. At any rate, the monopoly capitalists still use both fiscal and monetary measures to aggrandize the monopoly capitalists. It is untrue that there is a growing separation between the multinational corporations and banks on the one hand and the states on the other hand. States have always been the instrument of the ruling class, now the monopoly bourgeoisie. It is also untrue that multinational firms and banks have no national basing. National stockholders own and control each of them, even as their predatory operations are borderless. The 18 chiefs of state in the APEC Summit are subdivisible into the representatives of a few imperialist states and the more numerous client-states. They are all servants of monopoly capitalism. Under the neoliberal policy shift, pushed vigorously by Reaganism and Thatcherism since the 80's, these states shamelessly abandon social pretenses, accelerate the delivery of public resources to the monopoly capitalists and push corporate welfare at the expense of social welfare in the very centers of global capitalism and prevent economic development in the neocolonial hinterlands. For a long time, until the '70s, the traditional imperialists had to adopt the fiscal measures of state intervention in order to cope with the crisis of overproduction during the Great Depression, to run war economies in the course of World War II, to combat socialism and national liberation movements in the aftermath of World War II and subjugate Soviet monopoly bureaucrat capitalism in the Cold War. Destructive Character of "Globalization" In comparison, the neoliberal policy-shift is proving to be far more destructive to the forces of production and far more shortlived. In the last ten years, from 1987 to 1997, we have witnessed a series of worsening crises, the stock market crash of 1987, the debt crisis and hyperinflation in Latin America in the late '80s, the Mexican peso collapse and the current economic and financial turmoil. Also within the last decade, the growth rate of all the OECD countries have fluctuated between 1 and 3 percent, despite the extremely speculative overvaluation of assets and the more than 30 times overvaluation of the real value of world output. The national profit rates in the three global centers of capitalism, the United States, Japan and the European Union have drastically fallen. Winning monopoly firms maximize profits by putting in more capital into new technology and by downsizing their labor force, generating mass unemployment and increasingly utilizing untenured and part-time labor under the so-called flexible labor policy in both imperialist and client states. The United States has relatively the strongest economy among the imperialist powers because it uses its technology lead and its politico-military strength and attracts funds into its stock and bond markets from the weaker and more stagnant imperialist economies. It benefits most from the investment and trade liberalization that it is pushing most vigorously under the WTO and through trade blocs like APEC and NAFTA. However, the accumulated costs of the Cold War and imperialist preeminence as well as the decline of its client economies reduce and adversely affect the growth of the US economy. The United States is still suffering from a huge debt burden and trade deficits, even as its export drive has undercut Japan and the European Union and such old tigers as South Korea and Taiwan. Since its economic bubble burst in 1990, Japan has continued to languish in economic decline, despite its exceptionally heavy deficit-spending on public works, shifting plants abroad, export of supplies for export-oriented manufacturing in East Asia, investments in US bonds and financing real estate speculation mainly through Honking banks. The European Union suffers from an official rate of unemployment at 12 percent and has adopted austerity measures. Seventy to 75 percent value-added by multinational corporations is still being produced in the imperialist countries. The process of concentration through mergers and acquisitions, assisted by bankruptcies, continues unabated. Only 100 MNC's or 0.3 percent of the total number own one-third (USD1.8 trillion) of the total of foreign direct investments. Seventy per cent of the total global flow of direct investment is concentrated in the three global centers of capitalism and some neighboring countries. In turn, 30 percent is concentrated in only some ten so-called emergent markets, with East Asia taking the lion's share. Up to the eve of the current economic and financial turmoil which conspicuously started in Southeast Asia last July, the imperialist finance companies and multinational firms put their funds into the so-called emergent markets in Southeast and Northeast Asia because they could get here the highest rates of profit in the world. Surplus capital from the global centers of capitalism went into financing in the client states of East Asia budgetary and trade deficits, privatization of state assets, importation of luxury goods, supply of components for low value-added export-oriented manufacturing, sale of telecommunication equipment, real estate development and other speculative activities. If the most conspicuous construction under Keynesian economics was that of public roads and bridge, that under neoliberal economics has been that of office and residential towers and golf courses. Of course, the overborrowing and overspending by the "emergent markets" must come to a dismal end. Now, there is gross overproduction in low value-added, labor-intensive export-oriented manufacturing. The oversupply of garments surfaced in 1994, followed by that of consumer electronics in 1996. The old tigers also find their higher value-added products squeezed by the US export drive and the continuing decline of the Japanese economy. The debt problem of Southeast Asia has gone from bad to worse at an accelerated rate. The causes have also gone from bad to worse. Whereas up to the late '70s the debt problem involved heavy borrowing and spending for infrastructure and expansion of raw- material production, it has now involved frenzied use of private speculative capital from abroad to sustain upper class consumption, real estate speculation and other antipeople and antidevelopment activities. Obscurantism in the APEC The current economic and financial turmoil now shaking the entire world capitalist system is inevitably the focus of discussion in the APEC summit. The summiteers are bound to expose themselves as obscurantists when they gloss over the rotten fundamentals of the world capitalist system, especially because of the neoliberal policy-shift, push further for trade and investment liberalization under the WTO and promote the entire range of prescriptions in the Multilateral Agreement on Investments from the OECD. There is massive capital flight from the "emergent markets" in East Asia. Austerity measures are certain to be applied on them. They are being required to accept new conditionalities from the IMF in exchange for bail-out funds, now running at more than USD80 billion for a number of East Asian countries. The deterioration of economic conditions in the client-states in the Asia-Pacific region means further shrinkage of the market and a dwindling source of superprofits for the United States, Japan and the European Union. The crisis of the world capitalist system is certain to worsen, pushing the imperialist powers to redivide the world because of the shrinking market and reduction of superprofits. The client states are also driven to compete with each other in producing goods for export and in pushing down wage and living conditions and producing goods for export. Volatility in the world capitalist system is induced by a large bloat of speculative capital, including the daily flows of more than USD1.2 trillion through foreign exchange markets and USD55 trillion traded in the derivatives market. In the stock markets, the multinational corporations buy back their own stocks or engage in cross sales of stocks with their sister companies to conjure the illusion of recovery. But in real terms, they are losing markets and profits and have to reduce production. All the while, the overwhelming majority of third world countries, which have been brought down economically by the global overproduction of raw materials since the late '70s continue to sink in further underdevelopment, poverty and civil strife. Foreign exploitative capital have gone only in trickles into these countries, in contrast to the large amount poured into East Asia since the late 80's. At any rate, they continue to be crushed by the debt burden and ever deteriorating terms of trade for their raw-material exports. The former Soviet bloc countries have been plunged into third world conditions. The most rapid destruction of productive forces is demonstrated by Russia, where production has gone down by more than 40 percent since 1991. Surplus goods from the West rather than productive capital have been dumped on Russia, which now is more than ever dependent on the export of oil and other raw materials. In the former Soviet satellite countries, production has gone down in the range of 16 to 30 percent. Capitalist Crisis and Proletarian Revolution The imperialist countries are themselves reeling from the crisis of their system and the class struggle between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat is coming to the surface. The old tigers and all the later "emergent markets" are in serious economic trouble fraught with social and political unrest. In Southeast Asia, the Filipino people are demonstrating to neighboring peoples that protracted people's war is possible and necessary. China which has gotten the lion's share of speculative capital for "emergent markets" has compradorized and made its economy lopsided, is now in economic decline and is vulnerable to renewed social turbulence. In general, the third world countries and former Soviet-bloc countries are sinking deeper into lower levels of povety and misery and discontent. The people in these countries suffer stagnation and destruction of productive forces and the worst forms of oppression and exploitation. They are weighed down by the global unemployment of more than one billion people and a debt burden of more than USD2 trillion. They have no way out but to wage revolutionary struggle. Conditions in the world capitalist system are now comparable to those during the Great Depression and even worse in several respects. The stage is set for far worse capitalist crisis and interimperialist war as well as for proletarian revolution and national liberation movements in the 21st century. I am confident that in the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and the people in the forthcoming century, the cause of national liberation, democracy and socialism will win victories greater than those in the 20th century. I express my admiration for the organizers and participants of the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization for carrying on the criticism and repudiation of monopoly capitalism, the imperialist and client states and the reformists who use the slogan of "civil society" to inveigh against revolutionary mass struggles and who wish to keep the people within the confines of the capitalist system and neocolonialism. You help to light the way towards a new and higher level of revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism. Once more, I congratulate you. I hope that your conference will inspire more people to continue the struggle against imperialism. Thank you. back to top page By Aziz Choudry GATT Watchdog published in ALARM Update September 1997 From: gattwd@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 97 18:14:26 +1200 Sender: owner-apecforum-l@list.web.net THE MAI - Another Workers' Nightmare? Investment liberalisation is an integral part of the APEC agenda. This was perhaps most clearly signalled at the 1994 leaders' meeting in Indonesia, where a "voluntary, non-binding code" of investment principles was endorsed, along with the 2010/2020 timetable for achieving free and open trade and investment in the region. The Statement of Investment Principles adopted at Bogor omitted the already weak section of the PECC Draft Investment Code dealing with the responsibilities of foreign investors. Investors were merely asked to act as "good corporate citizens" - little consolation for many of the region's peoples who have seen the social and environmental destruction already wrought by unaccountable investors taking advantage of liberal investment regimes to invest however and wherever they wish. Seven of the 18 APEC member economies are currently involved in negotiations at the OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in Paris on a binding Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) described as a charter of rights and freedoms for transnational corporations, and a "quantum expansion of corporate power" beyond NAFTA and GATT. If concluded, the MAI would be the first binding international agreement negotiated by the OECD - "the rich nations' club". Secretive negotiations began in 1995, with an original completion date of May 1997. Due to the failure to settle some major points of disagreement between contracting parties, formal acceptance of the MAI has been delayed, possibly until next May. 90% of the text is said to be completed, but the MAI's exact provisions are not yet known. Since the leak of a January draft, its contents - and the secret, anti-democratic nature of negotiations - have provoked an international wave of outrage, criticism, analysis and action. The MAI's stated purpose is "to ensure a high minimum standard of treatment for foreign investors and their investments" and prevent discrimination in favour of local investors or investments. It would protect investors and investments, affording them enforceable rights which are binding against signatory governments. Underlying the MAI are the principles of national treatment and most-favoured nation status. The former binds signatory governments to treat foreign investors at least as favourably as local investors, while the latter decrees that the best treatment given to investors from one country must be given to all countries. Having circumvented the known opposition from many poor nations to such a treaty by choosing the OECD (instead of the WTO) as the forum in which to forge the MAI, the main advocates of an investment agreement - the USA, Japan and the European Union - aim to avoid the risk of its provisions being watered down. Once concluded among the 29 OECD nations, others will be invited to sign, and the role of maintaining and enforcing the MAI is likely to then be transferred to the WTO. Fear of being "left out", and the likelihood that accession to the MAI will become a condition of receiving loans from international financial institutions like the World Bank, IMF and ADB are likely to pressure the countries of the South into signing. The MAI would effectively lock present and future governments - at national, state and local levels - into commitments made for 20 years. As a "top-down" agreement, everything is covered unless it is expressly reserved. Governments must lodge a list of reservations setting out areas where policies do not conform to MAI requirements. These are subject to "standstill and rollback" provisions; no new restrictions can be added by future governments, and current reservations are expected to be eliminated over time. This means locking in a regime which cannot be changed even if voters choose governments which seek to place some controls on foreign investment. As drafted, the MAI could prevent governments from limiting what foreign investors can own (whether strategic assets or rural land) or from imposing performance requirements on them to use a set amount of local content, to hire local managers or staff, or to share technological knowhow. It would facilitate easier access for investors to be able to move assets - financial instruments or production facilities - across borders, regardless of social and environmental considerations. It would guarantee the free transfer of all payments relating to an investment in and out of a country. The MAI lacks any regulatory framework or language about the responsibilities of investors regarding fair competition, treatment of employees, and environmental protection. Under the MAI, governments would not be able to adopt investment boycotts (of the kind used against companies active in apartheid South Africa) because of an investor's activities in another signatory country. The MAI sets down no rules of behaviour for investors. But it grants them extensive rights, including the right to sue governments under a binding investor-state dispute mechanism for investors who claim they have been disadvantaged in actual or planned investments. Investors could seek to enforce the agreement in the courts of the country with which it has a dispute, or could sue a government before an international tribunal with the power to make legally binding rulings. For example, they could challenge environmental protection laws or those designed to support local businesses and develop economically deprived areas. Governments can also enforce the agreement against other signatory governments. The capacity of governments to create employment will be severely eroded by the MAI. The commentary states that "the MAI should prevent the application of national employment quotas or labour market (economic needs) tests". In the event of a privatisation, the MAI could also prevent governments from utilising special share arrangements to encourage local workers and communities to buy the company or to distribute shares to the public. Any reference to the OECD voluntary Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises or labour/environmental provisions included in the MAI are likely to be marginal and ineffectual, probably based on the labour and environmental side-agreements in NAFTA. TUAC (the Trade Union Advisory Committee of the OECD) has been consulted on the MAI, but has no direct influence on negotiations. It supports the MAI, and proposes the "affirmation of support for core labour standards and the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in the Preamble of the Agreement, the annexation of the Guidelines to the text of the MAI, and a specific clause that commits new parties to the MAI not to undermine labour and environmental standards in order to attract new investment" (TUAC 98th Plenary Session, Paris 15-16 May 1997). References to the Guidelines in the preamble and annex would have no legal effect, and even in the highly unlikely event of strong labour or environmental clauses being included, they would still require governments or foreign investors to enforce them, as no-one else has any standing to bring a dispute under the MAI. Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and the UK all argue against the inclusion of a labour clause and only a weak reference to the Guidelines, while the US Council for International Business opposes any and all measures to create or imply binding obligations for governments or business related to environment or labour. Indeed it is a bizarre notion that an agreement underpinned by such a strong deregulation agenda could somehow safeguard worker rights. As New Zealand unionist Robert Reid has said in relation to APEC: "For those organising at the grassroots...exploitation, discrimination and repression in the workplace are the natural consequences of globalisation, not an unfortunate by-product that can be fixed by a social contract". By the time of the 1998 APEC Summit in Malaysia, the MAI may well be signed, sealed and delivered to serve the same narrow, blinkered set of economic and financial interests as APEC and the Bretton Woods toxic trio - the IMF, World Bank and WTO. It is vital that pressure be brought to bear both on OECD and non-OECD governments demanding that full, open and democratic debate take place before they sign this far-reaching agreement. back to top page back
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PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST IMPERIALIST GLOBALIZATION
INTERNATIONAL FACT FINDING MISSION: The Social, Environmental and Human Rights Cost of Mining by TNCs 09 - 13 November 1998
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AGAINST MINING TNCs 14 - 16 November 1998 Manila, Philippines
PEOPLE'S PROTEST ACTION AGAINST MINING TNCs AND APEC 17 November 1998
THEME: Linking worldwide people's resistance against imperialist plunder and domination!
I. MINING, SAP and GLOBALIZATION: The Context
The implementation of the IMF/WB-imposed Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) with its prescriptions of liberalization, deregulation and privatization, hastens the process of imperialist globalization bannered by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and APEC.
In the Philippines, President Fidel V. Ramos enacted into law Republic Act 7942 known as the New Mining Act of 1995 last 3 March 1995, fully liberalizing the mining industry. Its implementing mechanism, the Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA), gives foreign investors such as transnational (multinational) corporations (TNCs) the right to control, manage and engage in unbridled mining operations in the country.
The FTAA allows unobstructed exploitation and plunder of the country's mineral resources by mining TNCs. It guarantees foreign mining conglomerates a bonanza of incentives that includes: a 25-50 year tenure over 100,000 hectares of land per mining contract; water and timber rights; a 5-10 year tax holiday; and absolute control and authority over mining areas, even allowing them to maintain private armed security forces with a "legal" right to evict indigenous occupants of the place.
There are now 100 FTAA and 1,502 Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA) contracts pending approval. Most of these applications come from Australia, Canada and the USA. If granted, they will cover almost half of the Philippines' entire land area.
Elsewhere in the world the same thing is happening. Governments are opening up their economies to lure foreign investments. Liberal mining laws have attracted numerous multinational mining corporations especially from Australia, Canada and the U.S.A.
The TNCs' obsession with profit at great social and environmental cost is nowhere more evident than in mining. And the neocolonial states are determined to use all possible means to defend and promote the interest of multinational mining corporations making the intensity and scope of exploitation unprecedented. The victims: the most vulnerable sectors of society - peasants, indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, women and mine workers.
II. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AGAINST MINING TNCs
The International Conference Against Mining TNCs is a continuation of a series of anti-APEC and anti-imperialist conferences coinciding with the annual APEC Leaders Summit. The first was the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization in Manila in 1996. This was followed by the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization -- Continuing the Resistance! organized by the NO to APEC Coalition (NTAC) in Vancouver, Canada in 1997.
To be held on 14-16 November, the International Conference is being organized from the point of view of the people's struggle for freedom from exploitation and domination of transnational/multinational corporations and imperialist states.
It has three (3) components:
1. Fact Finding Mission, 09-13 November. It is a major pre-conference activity. The 5-day integration with mining communities will not only give the participants first-hand experience and information about the people's situation resulting from the exploitative and ecologically destructive operations and grave human rights violations committed by mining TNCs. More importantly, the mission is an opportunity for both the participants and the host communities to share and learn from the gains and problems of spontaneous and organized resistance they are waging against foreign mining firms and imperialism in their respective countries.
The IFFM report will serve as working paper for the workshop on international campaigns cooperation plan. It will also form part of the conference official documents.
2. Conference Proper, 14-16 November. With the theme, Linking worldwide people's resistance against imperialist plunder and domination! the conference will have the following features:
a] mining TNCs and globalization b] liberalization of the mining industry and industrialization c] Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), mining TNCs and environment e] mining and land rights f] people's worldwide campaign and action plan against mining TNCs and globalization
workshops on the environmental, social and human rights cost of mining by TNCs: a] health and environmental cost of TNC mining, particularly open pit mining b] impact of TNC mining on women and children c] workers' situation in the TNC-controlled mining industry d] human rights implication of TNC mining e] mining TNCs and the indigenous peoples' struggle for land rights and ancestral domain
and, finally, a workshop on planning and linking worldwide peoples' campaign and struggle against mining TNCs and imperialist globalization.
3. People's Protest Against Mining TNCs and APEC, 17 November. A motorcade-march-rally from the site of the conference to the offices of transnational mining companies in Makati City, specifically the Placer Dome and Western Mining corporations. They are two of the largest mining companies operating in the Philippines with the worst record of human rights violations, environmental disaster, landgrabbing and community displacement.
Significantly, November 17 is also the opening of the 6th APEC Leaders Summit in Malaysia. Thus, the motorcade-march-rally will proceed to the US Embassy to highlight the continuing people's campaign against APEC and imperialist globalization.
III. THE PARTICIPANTS
The conference aims to gather 150 participants (100 foreign and 50 local) from:
IV. REGISTRATION FEES
The registration fee will cover all conference-related expenses such as food and accommodations (from date of arrival, 08 November to date of departure, 18 November), conference kit, cultural presentations, solidarity night, and the motorcade-march-rally:
US$ 200. for mass leaders and/or delegates of mass organizations: indigenous peoples, peasants, fisherfolk, women, workers, students; and for representatives of liberation movements
US$ 300. for NGOs, church organizations, donor agencies and advocates
The fact finding mission-related expenses will be taken care of from solicited funds and resources by the conference secretariat and host communities.
V. THE PHILIPPINE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (POC)
The Philippine Organizing Committee (POC), composed of major people's organizations actively campaigning against mining TNCs and imperialism, is the official organizer of the conference. The international conference and its concomitant activities are part of the sustained People's Campaign Against Imperialist Globalization.
BAYAN (New Patriotic Alliance) CPA (Cordillera People's Alliance) INNABUYOG (alliance of indigenous women's organizations in the Cordillera) KAMP (Alliance of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines) TABAK (alliance of indigenous people's advocates) KATRIBU (youth advocates of indigenous peoples) KALIKASAN (People's Network for the Environment) Alliance for Genuine Development (Far South Mindanao) SAGIP (Southern Mindanao) SILDAP-Sidlakan (Northern Mindanao) HALAD - Western Mindanao HUGPONG-NA Negros CLAA (Central Luzon Aeta Association) UMALPAS KA - Albay (People's Network Against Mining And Land Conversion) KMP (Peasant Movement of the Philippines) PAMALAKAYA (national fisherfolk organization) AMIHAN (Federation of Peasant Women's Organizations) GABRIELA (national alliance of women's organizations) KMU (May First Movement) HEAD (Health Alliance for Democracy) Promotion of Church People's Response (PCPR) MIGRANTE International KARAPATAN (Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights) COURAGE (national organization of government employees/workers)
For registration and more information, please contact: The Conference Secretariat Attn: Ms. Dayling Java P.O. Box 10296 Broadway Centrum 1112 Quezon City, Philippines Phone: (63-2) 435-9151 Telefax: (63-2) 922-5211 E-mail: bayan@iname.com
DIRTY SECRETS OF THE CHIPMAKING INDUSTRY
(Excerpts)
A toxic yellow-brown cloud rose from the floor at a Teccor Electronics computer chip plant in Irving, Texas. Acids had leaked from a faulty pump onto silicon wafers littering the floor. The reaction created the dangerous fumes.
Three employees, dizzy and struggling to breathe, wound up in the hospital. For weeks, they suffered respiratory problems. Teccor President Al Lapierre says employees "needlessly stuck their noses" in the fumes.
But federal investigators saw another problem that day in 1995. "Safety was secondary to production" wrote an investigator for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which governs workplace practices.
Supervisors knew the floor was dirty but did not clean it because they would have had to close the plant for several days, OSHA said.
The Teccor incident is one of many that exposes the dark side of a high-wage, fast-growth industry that is coveted by states and cities across America. A six-month examination of the $150 billion semiconductor industry, also known as the computer chip industry, reveals that the economic engine powering America's technological renaissance and churning out vast Wall Street fortunes is not nearly as clean as its image.
The USA TODAY investigation, based on dozens of industry interviews and thousands of pages of regulatory documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, found that some semiconductor companies:
In at least one plant, employees were exposed for years to acids and solvents that workers and doctors say caused mouth sores, headaches, nausea, mood swings and blackouts, according to internal documents from the Zilog chip plant in Nampa, Idaho.
The industry is the target of two sets of lawsuits involving IBM and Motorola. Workers and communities allege that chemicals used to make chips caused cancer, birth defects, and neurological and respiratory disorders.
The industry also has a toxic past. In California's Silicon Valley, at least 18 of 29 federal Superfund sites -- the nation's most polluted sites -- are tied to the chip industry. Covering miles of aquifers, most of the sites are tainted with trichloroethylene (TCE), a solvent once widely used to clean chips. Regulators now suspect it might cause cancer. TCE is still used at some plants.
More workers and communities are likely to face dangers from the industry as it roars ahead. Thirty major chip plants will open in the United States during the next five years. The giants -- Intel, NEC, Motorola and Texas Instruments -- are widely known. But scores of other companies supply chipmakers with everything from silicon wafers to equipment.
The industry turns wafers made of silicon, Earth's second most common element after oxygen, into fingernail-size chips powering computers, cars, TVs, high-tech weapons and hundreds of other electronic products.
More than 50 other U.S. industries released more pollutants to the air, land, water and public waste-water treatment facilities than did the semiconductor industry in 1995, the latest year for which EPA data is available, an analysis shows. The industry has largely replaced ozone- depleting compounds with less harmful chemicals, and many toxic solvents, used to clean chips, with water-based cleansers.
...
...the industry poses dangers, some of which are not obvious. The employees work inside low-story buildings in "clean rooms" that are so free of dust that even hospital operating rooms are dirty by comparison. Workers wear head-to-toe suits not to protect themselves but to keep their skin flakes, breath and hair from contaminating the valuable chips.
Surrounding the workers, though, in pipes overhead and waste drains below, flows a perpetual chemical river. More than 60 hazardous acids, solvents, caustics and gases are used to make chips. The chemicals etch microscopic circuits onto the wafers, which go through dozens of steps.
Some chemicals are suspected carcinogens and reproductive toxins. Others, such as hydrogen fluoride, a colorless liquid or gas, are so strong that they can cause severe burns deep beneath the skin. Arsine gas is the most toxic and attacks red blood cells. A leaking cylinder in a typical living room would be lethal with one whiff. Phosphine gas, also toxic, destroys lung tissue. Silane gas ignites on contact with air and has engulfed workers in flames.
"If we could do it with water, we would do it with water. But we cannot make semiconductors without chemicals," says Lee Neal, head of health and safety for the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), a trade group. Big chemical accidents at the plants, though rare, have killed workers, contaminated streams and forced plant and neighborhood evacuations.
Small accidents, more frequent, have burned fingers, damaged lungs and irritated skin.
JOBS AND WONDERS GALORE
... U.S. companies employ 265,000 people worldwide. In the United States, the industry provides the building blocks for the $300 billion electronics industry, which employs 2.4 million people. Intel, the largest chipmaker, is one of the world's most profitable companies, with a market value of $117.6 billion, more than the Big Three automakers combined.
SAFETY SOMETIMES SACRIFICED
Yet a probe into the safety and environmental record of the industry reveals that the risks are not always negligible---or mitigated.
At the 500-employee Zilog plant in Idaho, workers had complained of problems for years. In 1993 and 1994, they were repeatedly exposed to acids, solvents and chemical fumes in an old and poorly maintained plant. Thirty workers sued. They said the exposures made them sick and, in some cases, caused miscarriages. The workers settled for $2.25 million in 1996.
Erin Leishman, 29, a mother of three, chose not to sue. She wanted to forget the three years she worked there and the four miscarriages and one stillbirth she endured during that time. Chemical fumes, she says, drifted over her. "I had mouth sores," she says. "Sometimes, I would go home and vomit."
Zilog denies wrongdoing. But its former safety manager, in a resignation letter, admitted that employees were exposed and that the company should have taken action.
James Cochran, now a safety manager for Philips Semiconductor, wrote: "Corporate management has stated that if they did everything that has been recommended to them, they would be out of business. . . . A company with $50 million to $75 million in cash has a poor defense when stating, 'We can't afford it.'"
An LG Epitaxy plant in Santa Clara, Calif., has worried safety officials for years. The 62- employee plant, in a crowded industrial park adjacent to homes, uses toxic gases and chemicals to grow ultrapure layers of silicon on top of wafers. Those wafers then go to other plants, where they are made into chips.
In 1992, city officials ordered workers to evacuate the Epitaxy plant because they believed it was too dangerous. Building officials said the plant was not built to safely house the hazardous chemicals the company used. Fire officials found several problems, including drums of hazardous waste improperly placed next to the property line; inadequate monitors to detect chemical leaks; and incompatible gases stored together, increasing the risk of fires and chemical releases.
In 1996, the plant released a cloud of deadly phosphine and hydrogen chloride, which can cause severe skin burns. The cloud spread over the parking lot. A badly worn electrical plug had come undone, disabling the equipment that was supposed to clean the exhaust, a company report says.
Last year, employee Jeffrey Saurman, 30, died after an accident at the plant. Saurman used powerful acids to clean equipment. He thought he mixed hydrofluoric acid with nitric acid. Instead, he added alcohol, which was in a similar bottle. The mixture exploded, creating a toxic yellow-red plume. The acid splashed. The burned worker ran to an emergency shower. He died two weeks later from chemical burns and inhalation.
In the two years before the accident, the fire department had responded to the plant 32 times -- an unusually high number for semiconductor plants in the area. In 1996, it investigated four incidents involving hazardous chemicals at the plant -- also a high number.
At Teccor, workers inhaled the dangerous fumes for a few minutes, evacuating only after another worker entered the room and began to choke. OSHA cited Teccor for training deficiencies regarding chemical hazards.
COURTS PUSH ISSUE
For Keith Barrack, 33, of Beacon, N.Y., the concern is immediate. Every time he gets an ache, he thinks his cancer is back. Barrack worked at IBM's East Fishkill plant in New York between 1986 and 1989. He was 30 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer — cancer that he believes came from exposure at work to chemicals known to cause cancer in rats. Two people who worked near him got cancer, too. One died.
Zachary Ruffing, 12, was born with extreme skeletal deformities. His mother and father worked at the same IBM plant in the 1980s. While pregnant, his mother was barred from handling chemicals suspected of causing birth defects and miscarriages.
But "I was breathing everything," says Faye Calton, 35, now of Lexington, Ky. "You could taste the chemicals." She says IBM officials told her she was safe because the plant was properly ventilated. "I trusted them," she says.
Barrack and Ruffing are among 128 former IBM workers and their families who have filed a lawsuit, saying the chemicalsgave them cancer or caused birth defects. The case is the biggest to attempt to tie chipmaking to cancer. It is in the discovery phase. Filed in 1996, the lawsuit is against chemical makers, including Union Carbide and Eastman Kodak. Workers' compensation laws prevent employees from suing IBM directly.
Copyright By Julie Schmit, USA TODAY; Contributing: Database editors Barbara Hansen and Anthony DeBarros
sent to Bayan by Leslie Byster Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 760 N. First Street San Jose, CA 95112 408-287-6707-phone 408-287-6771-fax svtc@igc.apc.org
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 12:15:33 -0800 (PST) From: "Camp. Resp. Tech." svtc@igc.apc.org Subject: Chips Dirty Secrets, Part 5
1958--The first integrated circuit, commonly known as a computer chip or semiconductor, is demonstrated by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments.
1961--Fairchild Semiconductor in Santa Clara County, Calif., the emerging Silicon Valley, releases first commercial chip.
1971--Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sets limits on how much workers can be exposed to chemicals over a 40-hour week without ill effects. Today, many large semiconductor companies set internal standards lower.
1977--The Apple II, the first fully assembled, programmable personal computer, is introduced. IBM launches its line of PCs five years later, igniting the PC revolution and driving demand for chips.
1980--Intel announces plant in Rio Rancho, N.M., the new Silicon Desert.
1981--Fairchild Semiconductor reports massive leak of 50,000 gallons of industrial solvents, which are used to clean chips, from an underground tank in California. Similar leaks occur at numerous semiconductor sites in the Silicon Valley leading to the creation of 18 Superfund sites.
1983--Intel passes the $1 billion annual revenue mark and eventually becomes the biggest chipmaker and one of the worldÕs most profitable companies.
1984--Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that workers in the semiconductor industry experienced respiratory problems "due to toxic agents" at a rate three to five times higher than workers in other manufacturing industries.
Accidental release of methyl isocyanate at Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills thousands of people. Event fuels support for public's right to know about chemicals used and released by companies.
1985--First building codes governing semiconductor plants are written. Before, companies were free to use the hazardous chipmaking chemicals in regular warehouse-like buildings. California releases study showing three times as many birth defects in the neighborhood near the Fairchild plant, where groundwater was contaminated. The study does not identify a culprit. A follow-up study fails to confirm the initial findings.
1986--Congress passes law requiring companies using hazardous materials to submit chemical list to local fire departments, or other agencies, so they can prepare for accidents. Today, the law covers about 650 toxic substances and roughly 23,000 plants.
Study of semiconductor workers reveals a potential link between chemicals used in the chipmaking process and miscarriages. The ethylene-based glycol ethers have been associated with reproductive toxicity in animals dating to 1981.
1987--Companies are first required to make public their releases of toxins to the environment.
1991--State of California Bureau of Labor Statistics and Research stops tracking "systemic poisoning" though the state found that the rate was three to four times higher in the semiconductor industry than in all manufacturing.
1992--Industry-sponsored study shows a 40% higher rate of miscarriages among chip workers exposed to ethylene-based glycol ethers (EGE). Companies, including Intel and IBM, permit women who become pregnant to take jobs outside the areas where the chemicals are used. Major U.S. companies eliminate EGEs over the next three years. Some health officials continue to question whether the glycol ethers were really the culprit. Study also shows that respiratory symptoms and dermatitis are more common among chip production workers than other workers.
1994--Industry emits 1.27 million pounds of hazardous air pollutants, down by almost two-thirds from 1987. U.S. companies employ 250,000 workers. Chips are essential to virtually all electronic products.
1995--The electronics industry, of which semiconductors are part, is the biggest polluter in 26 U.S. counties, including those encompassing Albuquerque, N.M.; Austin, Texas; Phoenix; and Fort Collins, Colo., according to Environmental Protection Agency toxic emissions data.
1996--Thirty chipmaking employees settle lawsuit against Zilog in Nampa, Idaho. Employees say overexposure to chipmaking chemicals made them sick; caused miscarriages. Former workers at IBM plant sue chemical makers alleging that they got cancer from chipmaking chemicals.
1997--Motorola, with help from the EPA, begins testing technology from Radiance Services of Bethesda, Md. Technology employs lasers to clean chips, which would reduce the need for chemicals and water.
1998--First trial is scheduled in one of five lawsuits against Motorola and other entities responsible for contaminating underground water in Phoenix. Hundreds of plaintiffs allege their properties lost value or that they suffered cancer, neurological and respiratory disorders from being exposed to TCE in water, air or soil.
Timeline by Genevieve Lynn, USA TODAY Source: USA TODAY research by Mary Cadden
Leslie Byster Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 760 N. First Street San Jose, CA 95112 408-287-6707-phone 408-287-6771-fax svtc@igc.apc.org
ACCELERATED DESTRUCTION OF PRODUCTIVE FORCES MESSAGE OF SOLIDARITY TO THE PEOPLE'S CONFERENCE AGAINST IMPERIALIST GLOBALIZATION Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada By Prof. Jose Maria Sison International Network for Philippine Studies November 21, 1997
I wish to express my solidarity with all the participants in the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization: Continuing the Resistance, from November 21 to 25, as well as with those in the NO to APEC International Youth and Student Caucus on November 27.
I congratulate the NO! to APEC Coalition for its successful preparatory work and I wish the aforesaid conference and caucus the utmost success in continuing the resistance to APEC and the monstrosity that is imperialist globalization.
You hit the nail on the head when you speak of imperialist globalization. The monopoly capitalists, their political stooges in states and their reformist "civil society" apologists try to bamboozle people with the term "globalization" as if it were a brand-new fact of life that one cannot do anything about, except to adjust to it or at best plead to the monopoly capitalists and their states to reform and improve themselves.
Retrogressive Meaning of "Globalization"
"Globalization" is a term to which the imperialists and their camp followers attach a retrogressive meaning, denoting the hoary dogma of "free trade" and the entire antipeople train of liberalization, deregulation and privatization. The neoclassical and neoliberal terminology of free competition capitalism simply does not apply to the reality of monopoly capitalism and neocolonialism.
We are still very much in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, especially because of the betrayal of socialism in the Soviet Union since 1956 and in China since 1976 and the persistent predominance of monopoly capitalism. The higher technology that is now available and that further compresses the globe has a higher social character than the earlier electro-mechanical technology and is far more suitable to socialism than before. But unfortunately, the capitalist social relations and the private methods of appropriating the product of labor have become even more avaricious and antisocial.
As the imperialists use the term, globalization means a policy shift from Keynesian or social-democratic methods to neoliberal methods, or rather to the use of neoliberal jargon to rationalize the unmitigated greed of the monopoly capitalists. It is meant to disparage the idea and experience of state intervention for social welfare, economic development and coping with the crisis even within the world capitalist system and, most of all, to counter the cause of socialism.
The neoliberal bias disdains fiscal measures and favors the use of monetary measures in running the economy and letting the monopoly capitalists have the utmost free play in the market. At any rate, the monopoly capitalists still use both fiscal and monetary measures to aggrandize the monopoly capitalists.
It is untrue that there is a growing separation between the multinational corporations and banks on the one hand and the states on the other hand. States have always been the instrument of the ruling class, now the monopoly bourgeoisie. It is also untrue that multinational firms and banks have no national basing. National stockholders own and control each of them, even as their predatory operations are borderless.
The 18 chiefs of state in the APEC Summit are subdivisible into the representatives of a few imperialist states and the more numerous client-states. They are all servants of monopoly capitalism. Under the neoliberal policy shift, pushed vigorously by Reaganism and Thatcherism since the 80's, these states shamelessly abandon social pretenses, accelerate the delivery of public resources to the monopoly capitalists and push corporate welfare at the expense of social welfare in the very centers of global capitalism and prevent economic development in the neocolonial hinterlands.
For a long time, until the '70s, the traditional imperialists had to adopt the fiscal measures of state intervention in order to cope with the crisis of overproduction during the Great Depression, to run war economies in the course of World War II, to combat socialism and national liberation movements in the aftermath of World War II and subjugate Soviet monopoly bureaucrat capitalism in the Cold War.
Destructive Character of "Globalization"
In comparison, the neoliberal policy-shift is proving to be far more destructive to the forces of production and far more shortlived. In the last ten years, from 1987 to 1997, we have witnessed a series of worsening crises, the stock market crash of 1987, the debt crisis and hyperinflation in Latin America in the late '80s, the Mexican peso collapse and the current economic and financial turmoil. Also within the last decade, the growth rate of all the OECD countries have fluctuated between 1 and 3 percent, despite the extremely speculative overvaluation of assets and the more than 30 times overvaluation of the real value of world output.
The national profit rates in the three global centers of capitalism, the United States, Japan and the European Union have drastically fallen. Winning monopoly firms maximize profits by putting in more capital into new technology and by downsizing their labor force, generating mass unemployment and increasingly utilizing untenured and part-time labor under the so-called flexible labor policy in both imperialist and client states.
The United States has relatively the strongest economy among the imperialist powers because it uses its technology lead and its politico-military strength and attracts funds into its stock and bond markets from the weaker and more stagnant imperialist economies. It benefits most from the investment and trade liberalization that it is pushing most vigorously under the WTO and through trade blocs like APEC and NAFTA.
However, the accumulated costs of the Cold War and imperialist preeminence as well as the decline of its client economies reduce and adversely affect the growth of the US economy. The United States is still suffering from a huge debt burden and trade deficits, even as its export drive has undercut Japan and the European Union and such old tigers as South Korea and Taiwan.
Since its economic bubble burst in 1990, Japan has continued to languish in economic decline, despite its exceptionally heavy deficit-spending on public works, shifting plants abroad, export of supplies for export-oriented manufacturing in East Asia, investments in US bonds and financing real estate speculation mainly through Honking banks. The European Union suffers from an official rate of unemployment at 12 percent and has adopted austerity measures.
Seventy to 75 percent value-added by multinational corporations is still being produced in the imperialist countries. The process of concentration through mergers and acquisitions, assisted by bankruptcies, continues unabated. Only 100 MNC's or 0.3 percent of the total number own one-third (USD1.8 trillion) of the total of foreign direct investments.
Seventy per cent of the total global flow of direct investment is concentrated in the three global centers of capitalism and some neighboring countries. In turn, 30 percent is concentrated in only some ten so-called emergent markets, with East Asia taking the lion's share. Up to the eve of the current economic and financial turmoil which conspicuously started in Southeast Asia last July, the imperialist finance companies and multinational firms put their funds into the so-called emergent markets in Southeast and Northeast Asia because they could get here the highest rates of profit in the world.
Surplus capital from the global centers of capitalism went into financing in the client states of East Asia budgetary and trade deficits, privatization of state assets, importation of luxury goods, supply of components for low value-added export-oriented manufacturing, sale of telecommunication equipment, real estate development and other speculative activities. If the most conspicuous construction under Keynesian economics was that of public roads and bridge, that under neoliberal economics has been that of office and residential towers and golf courses.
Of course, the overborrowing and overspending by the "emergent markets" must come to a dismal end. Now, there is gross overproduction in low value-added, labor-intensive export-oriented manufacturing. The oversupply of garments surfaced in 1994, followed by that of consumer electronics in 1996. The old tigers also find their higher value-added products squeezed by the US export drive and the continuing decline of the Japanese economy.
The debt problem of Southeast Asia has gone from bad to worse at an accelerated rate. The causes have also gone from bad to worse. Whereas up to the late '70s the debt problem involved heavy borrowing and spending for infrastructure and expansion of raw- material production, it has now involved frenzied use of private speculative capital from abroad to sustain upper class consumption, real estate speculation and other antipeople and antidevelopment activities.
Obscurantism in the APEC
The current economic and financial turmoil now shaking the entire world capitalist system is inevitably the focus of discussion in the APEC summit. The summiteers are bound to expose themselves as obscurantists when they gloss over the rotten fundamentals of the world capitalist system, especially because of the neoliberal policy-shift, push further for trade and investment liberalization under the WTO and promote the entire range of prescriptions in the Multilateral Agreement on Investments from the OECD.
There is massive capital flight from the "emergent markets" in East Asia. Austerity measures are certain to be applied on them. They are being required to accept new conditionalities from the IMF in exchange for bail-out funds, now running at more than USD80 billion for a number of East Asian countries. The deterioration of economic conditions in the client-states in the Asia-Pacific region means further shrinkage of the market and a dwindling source of superprofits for the United States, Japan and the European Union.
The crisis of the world capitalist system is certain to worsen, pushing the imperialist powers to redivide the world because of the shrinking market and reduction of superprofits. The client states are also driven to compete with each other in producing goods for export and in pushing down wage and living conditions and producing goods for export.
Volatility in the world capitalist system is induced by a large bloat of speculative capital, including the daily flows of more than USD1.2 trillion through foreign exchange markets and USD55 trillion traded in the derivatives market. In the stock markets, the multinational corporations buy back their own stocks or engage in cross sales of stocks with their sister companies to conjure the illusion of recovery. But in real terms, they are losing markets and profits and have to reduce production.
All the while, the overwhelming majority of third world countries, which have been brought down economically by the global overproduction of raw materials since the late '70s continue to sink in further underdevelopment, poverty and civil strife. Foreign exploitative capital have gone only in trickles into these countries, in contrast to the large amount poured into East Asia since the late 80's. At any rate, they continue to be crushed by the debt burden and ever deteriorating terms of trade for their raw-material exports.
The former Soviet bloc countries have been plunged into third world conditions. The most rapid destruction of productive forces is demonstrated by Russia, where production has gone down by more than 40 percent since 1991. Surplus goods from the West rather than productive capital have been dumped on Russia, which now is more than ever dependent on the export of oil and other raw materials. In the former Soviet satellite countries, production has gone down in the range of 16 to 30 percent.
Capitalist Crisis and Proletarian Revolution
The imperialist countries are themselves reeling from the crisis of their system and the class struggle between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat is coming to the surface. The old tigers and all the later "emergent markets" are in serious economic trouble fraught with social and political unrest. In Southeast Asia, the Filipino people are demonstrating to neighboring peoples that protracted people's war is possible and necessary. China which has gotten the lion's share of speculative capital for "emergent markets" has compradorized and made its economy lopsided, is now in economic decline and is vulnerable to renewed social turbulence.
In general, the third world countries and former Soviet-bloc countries are sinking deeper into lower levels of povety and misery and discontent. The people in these countries suffer stagnation and destruction of productive forces and the worst forms of oppression and exploitation. They are weighed down by the global unemployment of more than one billion people and a debt burden of more than USD2 trillion. They have no way out but to wage revolutionary struggle.
Conditions in the world capitalist system are now comparable to those during the Great Depression and even worse in several respects. The stage is set for far worse capitalist crisis and interimperialist war as well as for proletarian revolution and national liberation movements in the 21st century. I am confident that in the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and the people in the forthcoming century, the cause of national liberation, democracy and socialism will win victories greater than those in the 20th century.
I express my admiration for the organizers and participants of the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization for carrying on the criticism and repudiation of monopoly capitalism, the imperialist and client states and the reformists who use the slogan of "civil society" to inveigh against revolutionary mass struggles and who wish to keep the people within the confines of the capitalist system and neocolonialism. You help to light the way towards a new and higher level of revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism.
Once more, I congratulate you. I hope that your conference will inspire more people to continue the struggle against imperialism. Thank you.
From: gattwd@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 97 18:14:26 +1200 Sender: owner-apecforum-l@list.web.net
Investment liberalisation is an integral part of the APEC agenda. This was perhaps most clearly signalled at the 1994 leaders' meeting in Indonesia, where a "voluntary, non-binding code" of investment principles was endorsed, along with the 2010/2020 timetable for achieving free and open trade and investment in the region. The Statement of Investment Principles adopted at Bogor omitted the already weak section of the PECC Draft Investment Code dealing with the responsibilities of foreign investors. Investors were merely asked to act as "good corporate citizens" - little consolation for many of the region's peoples who have seen the social and environmental destruction already wrought by unaccountable investors taking advantage of liberal investment regimes to invest however and wherever they wish.
Seven of the 18 APEC member economies are currently involved in negotiations at the OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in Paris on a binding Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) described as a charter of rights and freedoms for transnational corporations, and a "quantum expansion of corporate power" beyond NAFTA and GATT.
If concluded, the MAI would be the first binding international agreement negotiated by the OECD - "the rich nations' club". Secretive negotiations began in 1995, with an original completion date of May 1997. Due to the failure to settle some major points of disagreement between contracting parties, formal acceptance of the MAI has been delayed, possibly until next May. 90% of the text is said to be completed, but the MAI's exact provisions are not yet known.
Since the leak of a January draft, its contents - and the secret, anti-democratic nature of negotiations - have provoked an international wave of outrage, criticism, analysis and action.
The MAI's stated purpose is "to ensure a high minimum standard of treatment for foreign investors and their investments" and prevent discrimination in favour of local investors or investments. It would protect investors and investments, affording them enforceable rights which are binding against signatory governments. Underlying the MAI are the principles of national treatment and most-favoured nation status. The former binds signatory governments to treat foreign investors at least as favourably as local investors, while the latter decrees that the best treatment given to investors from one country must be given to all countries.
Having circumvented the known opposition from many poor nations to such a treaty by choosing the OECD (instead of the WTO) as the forum in which to forge the MAI, the main advocates of an investment agreement - the USA, Japan and the European Union - aim to avoid the risk of its provisions being watered down. Once concluded among the 29 OECD nations, others will be invited to sign, and the role of maintaining and enforcing the MAI is likely to then be transferred to the WTO. Fear of being "left out", and the likelihood that accession to the MAI will become a condition of receiving loans from international financial institutions like the World Bank, IMF and ADB are likely to pressure the countries of the South into signing.
The MAI would effectively lock present and future governments - at national, state and local levels - into commitments made for 20 years. As a "top-down" agreement, everything is covered unless it is expressly reserved. Governments must lodge a list of reservations setting out areas where policies do not conform to MAI requirements. These are subject to "standstill and rollback" provisions; no new restrictions can be added by future governments, and current reservations are expected to be eliminated over time. This means locking in a regime which cannot be changed even if voters choose governments which seek to place some controls on foreign investment.
As drafted, the MAI could prevent governments from limiting what foreign investors can own (whether strategic assets or rural land) or from imposing performance requirements on them to use a set amount of local content, to hire local managers or staff, or to share technological knowhow. It would facilitate easier access for investors to be able to move assets - financial instruments or production facilities - across borders, regardless of social and environmental considerations. It would guarantee the free transfer of all payments relating to an investment in and out of a country.
The MAI lacks any regulatory framework or language about the responsibilities of investors regarding fair competition, treatment of employees, and environmental protection. Under the MAI, governments would not be able to adopt investment boycotts (of the kind used against companies active in apartheid South Africa) because of an investor's activities in another signatory country.
The MAI sets down no rules of behaviour for investors. But it grants them extensive rights, including the right to sue governments under a binding investor-state dispute mechanism for investors who claim they have been disadvantaged in actual or planned investments. Investors could seek to enforce the agreement in the courts of the country with which it has a dispute, or could sue a government before an international tribunal with the power to make legally binding rulings. For example, they could challenge environmental protection laws or those designed to support local businesses and develop economically deprived areas. Governments can also enforce the agreement against other signatory governments.
The capacity of governments to create employment will be severely eroded by the MAI. The commentary states that "the MAI should prevent the application of national employment quotas or labour market (economic needs) tests". In the event of a privatisation, the MAI could also prevent governments from utilising special share arrangements to encourage local workers and communities to buy the company or to distribute shares to the public.
Any reference to the OECD voluntary Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises or labour/environmental provisions included in the MAI are likely to be marginal and ineffectual, probably based on the labour and environmental side-agreements in NAFTA. TUAC (the Trade Union Advisory Committee of the OECD) has been consulted on the MAI, but has no direct influence on negotiations. It supports the MAI, and proposes the "affirmation of support for core labour standards and the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in the Preamble of the Agreement, the annexation of the Guidelines to the text of the MAI, and a specific clause that commits new parties to the MAI not to undermine labour and environmental standards in order to attract new investment" (TUAC 98th Plenary Session, Paris 15-16 May 1997).
References to the Guidelines in the preamble and annex would have no legal effect, and even in the highly unlikely event of strong labour or environmental clauses being included, they would still require governments or foreign investors to enforce them, as no-one else has any standing to bring a dispute under the MAI. Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and the UK all argue against the inclusion of a labour clause and only a weak reference to the Guidelines, while the US Council for International Business opposes any and all measures to create or imply binding obligations for governments or business related to environment or labour.
Indeed it is a bizarre notion that an agreement underpinned by such a strong deregulation agenda could somehow safeguard worker rights. As New Zealand unionist Robert Reid has said in relation to APEC: "For those organising at the grassroots...exploitation, discrimination and repression in the workplace are the natural consequences of globalisation, not an unfortunate by-product that can be fixed by a social contract".
By the time of the 1998 APEC Summit in Malaysia, the MAI may well be signed, sealed and delivered to serve the same narrow, blinkered set of economic and financial interests as APEC and the Bretton Woods toxic trio - the IMF, World Bank and WTO. It is vital that pressure be brought to bear both on OECD and non-OECD governments demanding that full, open and democratic debate take place before they sign this far-reaching agreement.