Facilitators: John Bamford & Mick Holder

There were 18 participants representing 8 countries: Austria 2; England & Wales 6; Germany 1; Hungary 1; Norway 2; Romania 2; Scotland 3; USA 1.

The aims for the workshop were to:

• identify the problems that globalisation has created for workers.
• identify and examine the role of current international institutions and organisations.
• suggest some steps that could be taken at local, national and international levels to address the problems.

The first small group activity identified the problems created for workers. The key points from the group reports and discussion are summarised as:

• Capital seizes every opportunity to maximise profits anywhere in the world. Trans-national corporations (TNC’s) calculate where they can operate to the best advantage, and take into consideration things like: low wage costs; the weakness of labour and health & safety regulation; quality of transport and communications; skills availability; inducements and bribes given to investors; preferential tax treatment; social and political stability (however maintained) and a passive labour force; the ability to externalise costs such as environmental degradation; lack of restriction on the repatriation of profits out of the country.

• Where Government's have accepted the neo-liberal agenda as the dominant economic and political philosophy, (and most have), they collude with capital to privatise, deregulate and create the conditions for the continued growth of globalisation. Governmental collaboration with capital includes offering inducements and preferential tax regimes; deregulation, privatisation, cuts in social programmes like education and health; lower labour and safety standards, removal or weakening of trade union rights etc. to attract and retain capital. This makes it difficult for workers representative organisations to influence or affect the political process and promote progressive social and economic policies that defend and advance workers interests.

• Where there is limited or no self-imposed collaboration with the neo-liberal agenda, the freedom of capital to move quickly (and the attraction of inducements offered by other Governments eager to attract investment) enables trans-national corporations to use the threat of relocation against both workers and Governments, creating a climate of job insecurity, lowering wages and worsening conditions; intensification of work rate and longer hours; use of casual labour and short-term contracts; weakening and derecognition of trade unions; and loss of employment. This all creates psychological and health problems for workers.

• Transfer of risk, from better regulated economies to less well regulated, enabling capital to lower costs by using old or unsafe technologies, materials etc. and even the creation of new risks. These all have the potential to harm workers and communities

• Move into union and regulation-free zones (commonly called Free Trade or Export Processing Zones (EPZ's)) where existing labour laws and H&S regulation is suspended.

• Exploitation, particularly of women workers, with part-time and casual employment, homeworking and unequal treatment.

• Surplus value is not used in host country for social benefit, (e.g. to fund public services via taxation), but profits are repatriated for the benefit of the TNC's shareholders and directors. This does not promote sustainable economic development or safe and healthy jobs, and also reinforces the growing inequalities of wealth and income distribution around the world, where the rich get richer at the expense of the poor.

• Global media (themselves part of the globalised network of TNC'S) propagandise the benefits of capital, select the news they want us to hear, and control information flows. The proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which aimed to give capital the means to override the policies of national and local Governments, was one of the best-kept secrets of 1998.

• There are huge problems related to ownership, ability to get information, accountability, and policing of regulatory standards globally, even those set by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which tend towards being the lowest common denominator.

• Globalisation and capital movements are cyclical, and no-one is safe. In such a cut-throat world, there will always be somewhere else for capital to go where the balance of advantage is (temporarily) better. TNC's have no loyalty to the communities in which they operate, but they can be cunning, by using public relations techniques to construct a 'local' or 'national' image for themselves, to mask the reality of their global nature and practices. The scramble by Governments to attract investment, and the way corporate and media 'spin doctors' reconstruct reality often means that workers in different countries are turned against each other.

• All these problems easily lead to the abuse of human and trade union rights, child labour, forced labour and even slavery. Corporate capital has supported some of the most corrupt and oppressive regimes in the world. The death toll and misery created is incalculable, and examples given included Cape Asbestos and Thor Chemicals in South Africa, and uranium miners in Namibia. Global capital equals death and disease for many.

Groups looked at the organisations that operate globally, and tried to evaluate their impact on workers. They can be identified as falling into a number of categories.

International trade and financial institutions: Organisations included the Bank of International Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), the International Monetary Fund (IMF); the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The consensus was that these organisations supported capital, and promoted the neo-liberal agenda for the benefit of capital. Their support and assistance to nation-states always comes with strings attached; the insistence on privatisation of state-owned industry, and cutbacks in areas like health and education. These represent attacks that undermine and eliminate improvements in the quality of life fought for by workers and their organisations.

The WTO polices the rules on derestricted world trade and adjudicates on disputes between states (Governments raise problems and disputes, but do this on behalf of capital). Examples given included the current problem with bananas, raised by the USA on behalf of Chiquita, a banana trans-national; and the Canadian reference on the French asbestos ban. The WTO has ruled against the US state of Massachusetts, which has been ordered to repeal a law that forbids trade with Burma, an oppressive military regime that subjugates its people into forced labour. Our view was that the WTO does not take into account workers interests, human rights or health, safety and environmental issues. Collectively, these institutions bear the primary responsibility for deregulated capital and the promotion of globalisation. There are also individual financial institutions, for example banks, insurance companies, accountancy and consultancy firms, that operate as global institutions, influencing governmental policy and promoting policies supportive of globalisation, helping to create a unquestioned global business culture promoting capital.

Treaty organisations and inter-governmental bodies: Organisations and treaties like the European Union (EU); NATO; North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA); the G7 (or 8 or 9) group of the world's richest nations; the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and others were organisations that promoted capital and either free trade or acted as cartels to control supply and prices on the world market. The continuing role of NATO now the cold war was ended was described as "scary' by one group.

International Political Organisations: The United Nations (UN) and its subsidiary bodies like UNICEF; International Labour Organisation (ILO); World Health Organisation (WHO) were believed to be organisations that attempted to promote socially beneficial policies; but with difficulty. The nature of the organisations means that they cannot achieve the highest standards, and that compliance with any standards agreed is unenforceable. It relies on national government's ratifying decisions and acting nationally.

Workers organisations: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU); the International Trade Secretariats (ITS’s) like the ICEM, PSI, IUF, IFJ etc; European TUC; Commonwealth Trade Union Council (CTUC), were all believed to act in the interests of workers, but there were many difficulties facing their operation. They offer assistance to affiliates, promote trade union organisation, lobby governments and international bodies, act as information collection and distribution channels, and bring workers together around the world. Informal networks such as the European Work Hazards Network; information exchange publications like Workers Health International Newsletter (WHIN) and lnternet networks like Labournet all help to generate awareness, organisation and solidarity.

Non-governmental Organisations: Examples included the Red Cross and Red Crescent; Amnesty International; Medecin Sans Frontiers (MSF); Oxfam; Friends of the Earth; Save the Children; CIIR; World Development Movement (WDM); Greenpeace, etc. The workshop believed that these organisations acted in the interests of workers, their families and communities and the environment, and act to support people and promote humanitarian policies, lobby governments, and propagandise against the worst effects of TNC's and unrestrained capital. Importantly, they involve local people in their activities and campaigns, almost always responding to needs identified locally. Workshop participants were more positive about the role of NGO’s.

Capital itself: Everything from CNN, with it's 24-hour barrage of pro-capital propaganda and media selection of what we should know; through Coca-Cola and McDonalds, and their propagation of US junk culture across the globe; to the global producers of clothing and footwear like Levi's, Nike and Reebok, producing cheap and selling dear to enrich US shareholders, and the global domination of Microsoft, not due to quality, but to monopolistic practices and aggressive marketing creating a stranglehold on computer software.

The problem that workers face in challenging the conventional wisdom and improving conditions is the effectiveness and resources available to the multiplicity of organisations that exist to promote capital and world trade, and provide a forum for capital and government's to get together and scratch each other's backs. Politicians continue to tell us that this is for our benefit, when in most cases, it is only too obvious that it isn’t. One problem here is that the multiplicity of organisations is confusing and the inter-relationship between them is difficult to understand. There are too many targets, and they constantly move. The workers side of the equation finds it much more difficult to organise and promote an alternative view, even where they challenge globalisation in policy statements and publications, lack of resources and media opportunities means that the message doesn’t travel very far outside the labour movement. They do what they can, particularly in those places where they have some influence, such as the workers group in the ILO. The ITS's organise around things like ILO Conventions to get them ratified and implemented, but worker's organisations generally still lack the cohesion and financial resources necessary to confront the worst excesses of global capital, and challenge the received wisdom of neo-liberalism at national and international decision and policy-making levels.

The workshop agreed that we could not solve the problems of world capital, globalisation and injustice in such a short time. There was a need to start building with conviction, to create channels and opportunities at local, national and international levels, using whatever resources we could command, and linking into whatever else was already being done.

Locally: Organise and educate within our workplaces and organisations; build contacts with NGO's locally and get involved in their activities; develop the knowledge and understanding of globalisation, and its importance; educate local representatives in the trade unions; subscribe to, and use WHIN to spread information; use technology to get on-line for information exchange; organise exchange visits; tap into funding sources at national and European level for solidarity projects.

Nationally: Need to change the culture of unions at local and national levels, to prioritise international issues; media and publicity campaigns; lobby Government's through our organisations and structures; conduct joint activities and campaigns with other sympathetic organisations; support campaigns like the current debt cancellation campaign; help to develop the 'power base' of pressure groups and trade unions; encourage links between national organisations; support campaigns in other countries.

Internationally: always work with colleagues as equal partners; learn from and teach each other; spread organisation to match that of capital; develop union structures to promote worker-to-worker contacts internationally; share information in many languages; build links using the lnternet and other communication media; use trade union action and campaigns to make TNC's adopt the highest standards globally; support and help to develop legal actions against TNC's in their home countries; promote more effective enforcement procedures globally; join in campaigns to get social and environmental clauses in international trade agreements and treaties; develop specialist groups around issues and problems; organise contact between inter-continental networks, and try to help build these where they are weak or non-existent; organise global conferences to help us build the global networks; organise protest and direct action, which has proved to be effective in the past.