WORKERS OF THE WORLD
Senser, Robert A.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD It's time to unite Robert A. Senser he computer-generated sign at the door of a program ends, Konishi, the bank official, emphasizes...
...government to use trade agreements (for example, 'fast track,' WTO) to deal with labor standards...
...The idea of "negotiating" raises eyebrows and an objection: how can unions, with only a minority of the labor force as members, claim to represent all workers...
...worker rights, jobs, the right to organize, and the right to deIn 1995, for the first time in its history, the World Bank cent working conditions...
...Asper's point is later amplified by his four colleagues, all members of the Philippine branch of a new network of trade unions, nongovernmental organizations, and academics in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand...
...During fifteen minutes of friendly conversation after the Robert A. Senser is the editor of Human Rights for Workers (www.senser.com...
...has been the International Labor Organization...
...in the twentieth century some distinguished international Those developments at the UN, the World Bank, and sevinstitutions awakened to an everyday reality whose signifi- eral other international institutions reflect the gradual awakcance they had not grasped earlier-the role of "civil soci- ening of the world's elite to the fact that globalization, for all ety" (all those private individuals, groups, agencies, and or- its marvels, has serious downsides...
...Even Thomas L. Friedganizations that interact to create a society's patterns and man, foreign affairs columnist of the New York Times, who is tone...
...Brown Bag: 12:15 P.M...
...The raison d'etre of unions is not to drive burdens many poor nations...
...In a remarkable address to the Industrial Relations A little thing of breath and heat compact, Research Association in Boston, Stiglitz said: "Labor unions Mildest of spirits, in a flask of fur, and other genuine forms of popular self-organization are Without even a sound as signature, key to democratic economic development...
...He insists that capitalism is a IMF, is not part of the UN system...
...For the Jubilee Year, howshare of its bounty...
...The World Bank now move their manufacturing from country to country, constantly has "civil society specialists" in about seventy-five of its nine- in search of those who will work for the lowest wages and ty offices in the developing world...
...Still, that meeting is a sign of the times, exemplifying a In a half-hour slide presentation, Isidro Antonio Asper, global phenomenon...
...As a consequence, Friedman points out, sive consultations with labor and environmental groups- "people in the developing world are increasingly focused on national and international-are becoming standard...
...to the neoclassical economic assumption that considers Instead, he became the human labor as just another "factor" of production, Stiglitz Pope of Transition by has attacked a great batch of faulty economic propositions convening the Second that have "served to eviscerate the rights and positions of Vatican Council in workers...
...cept for prison-made goods), is to permit any country to ban the importation of goods made in gross violation of its own Christian Feldman standards...
...It is the first- via e-mail: "Getting through the door, and being taken seever dialogue between bank staffers and people representing riously by the ranking hierarchy, are two entirely different working men and women from the country in which the matters...
...The real controversy, therefore, is not over whether to re- THE CROSSROAD PUBLISHING COMPANY 481 Eighth Avenue, Suite 1550, New York, NY 10001 form the WTO and its sister institutions but over how to do At your bookstore or call 1-800-395-0690...
...al arena...
...One bank staff memwith five Filipino guests: three union leaders and two rep- ber, although also impressed, sent me a cautionary note later resentatives of nongovernmental organizations...
...The ILO, It is simplistic, therefore, to categorize these controvernever before widely favored in its eighty-one-year history, has sies as globalism versus antiglobalism...
...In contradiction a transitional papacy...
...They should be free, for example, to regcuss the state of worker rights in the global economy-failed, ulate cross-border capital movements themselves, instead but the campaign nonetheless scored a public-relations tri- of bowing to international rules dictating the unimpeded umph...
...WORKERS OF THE WORLD It's time to unite Robert A. Senser he computer-generated sign at the door of a program ends, Konishi, the bank official, emphasizes that meeting room in the Asian Development Bank ADB could benefit from outside input, especially to "chal[ADB] headquarters near Manila announces: lenge our assumptions," and that it needs to engage in "di"WORKER RIGHTS...
...proposal-to establish a committee to dis- velopment paths...
...He Giuseppe Roncalli was has developed a strong case that "worker rights should be a only expected to stage central focus" of economic development...
...At UN headAlfred Nicol quarters on July 26, executives of nearly fifty multinational corporations became the first business members of a new international coalition of private-sector leaders to "embrace and enact" the compact, not only in their individual corporate practices but also in lobbying for public policies...
...TV coverage of large and occasionally violent street flow of such transfers...
...1] Commonweal 16 September 22, 2000...
...In Drawing on her this raging controversy, many influential individuals and experience as a teacher organizations have voiced their discontent with the present in the Catholic school shape of globalization...
...The ening but by what means...
...But that new paradigm, whether inspired by Stiglitz or John Paul II, position is losing ground...
...enforcement...
...It goes goal: canceling or reducing the huge international debt that against their nature...
...A bank staff member challenges Asper's assertion that the ADB imposes labor restrictions on some loans...
...The maneuvering is a continuing drama, with A Woman Confronts the plot action taking place not in isolation but within a larg- Her Church er context-the conflict over the direction of globalization...
...That spirit carries over to the internation- in a position to foster solidarity among peoples...
...Commonweal 13 September 22, 2000 trade unions," it affirmed, "are a cornerstone of any effective system that seeks to balance the need for enterprises to remain competitive with the aspirations of workers for highGuinea Pig er wages and better working conditions...
...The other school has a narrower focus...
...devoted its prestigious annual World Development Report to But the challenge remains of how to achieve those rights the working world, with an entire chapter on unions...
...ADB has its headquarters...
...Solidarity too must become globalized" (italics in the Vatican 0-8245-2356-3 $19.95 hardcover text...
...Amid the prolonged economic tu- system, a former nun, mult that first erupted in Asia in mid-1997, Robert E. Rubin, and an outspoken then secretary of the U.S...
...Richard B. Freeman, pro- eration-a commitment on a scale equal at least to, say, the fessor of economics at Harvard, agrees with the union-backed project to chart human DNA or to build the international proposal to have the WTO adopt labor rules that, like many space station...
...It needs a huge commitment of human into see the need for a governmental role in linking trade rights genuity and funding, along with public and private coopwith some form of worker rights...
...Another option, now illegal under WTO rules (exE "I am called John...
...due consideration [to] the universal destination of resources...
...remove On the Dignity of Women pressure on the U.S...
...A great deal of the new support for the ILO has an ulterior Joanna Manning motive: to ensure that, among international institutions, the IS THE POPE ILO keeps the labor cause as its own property, not to be touched by the WTO or any other effective mechanism of CATHOLIC...
...at the end of his three years as chief economist of the World Bank...
...I couldn't but be impressed...
...A year ago, at a conference on corporate responsibility I'll learn from this one how much not to do, and globalization held at the U.S...
...Hal Ponder, Philippine country representative of the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, who is sitting in on the meeting, responds with a question of his own: "If trade unions can't speak for workers, who can...
...It is time, he asserts, to "begin a shift in the pre1962...
...ever, the pope has translated the principle into a very specific Nor does antiglobalism appeal to trade unions...
...And shy to venture even round the hutch, In January, Joseph Stiglitz, former chairman of the PresiHer pleasure is a motor in my hands, dent's Council of Economic Advisors, testified to that change An instrument set racing with a touch...
...The report then weighed the "positive" and "negative" sides of unionizaA pet, domesticated overmuch, tion, and concluded cautiously that the effect of unions can Inhabiting interminable lulls, be positive or negative, depending largely on government Most pusillanimous of animals, regulation...
...On May Day he renewed his corporations out of business but to reach binding agree- call for debt relief, appealing "to the rich and developed naments with them, whether at the plant, company, industry, tions, but also to people of great wealth and to those who are or national level...
...legal minimum wage, for example, the ADB "should help our government understand that workers need a living wage," " so that (among other reasons) child labor can be eliminated...
...alogue on overall issues-we have not done this...
...Two of those newly enlightened institutions are the often euphoric about globalization, recognizes that fact...
...In Washington-based World Bank and International Monetary The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Anchor, 2000), Friedman writes Fund...
...Globalization "must be managed wiseabating the old pomp, and leading the Church ly," he told a crowd of two hundred thousand on May Day...
...elite"-on Wall Street, in the Treasury Department, State An unforeseen consequence of the campaign aimed at the Department, the World Bank, and the IMF-of promoting WTO has been to reinforce labor initiatives that bypass the free capital mobility to pursue the self-interest of Wall Street, WTO...
...employers in the ILO's tripartite structure, now says openly that "strengthening the ILO to deal with egregious violations of labor practices...
...How, specifically, can wealthy nations and people, through ust as the debates over globalization no longer expanded international trade and investment, do more to center on whether global financial institutions achieve the universal destination of resources...
...They The U.S...
...United Nations Secretary General Kofi Nor ever speak till I be spoken through...
...He favors letting nations from the governments of some developing countries, even a have the widest possible latitude to choose their own devery modest U.S...
...Jagdish Bhagwati also feels strongly demonstrations made millions here and around the world about this issue, and has accused a largely American "power aware of issues that the media ordinarily consider boring...
...lasted for five years and saw his death, but it Pope John Paul II is the world's leading advocate of the opened wide the windows of the Church - by same general idea...
...Chamber of Commerce How large a silence to accumulate, in Washington, the Reverend Leon H. Sullivan, author of To serve with those who only stand and wait, the Sullivan Principles for companies in South Africa in the To change alfalfa, sawdust, water, salt, apartheid era, spoke about the need for new Sullivan PrinFor other needs as moderate and few, ciples to "help companies to put their houses in order" in the To thrill when lifted, visited exalt, global economy...
...Dani Rodrik favors such a procedure, but only in a limited way: for example, to comply with widely held JOHN XXIII norms of the importing country barring child labor...
...Another beneficiary which that elite "equates with the good of the world...
...reformed, so the controversy over international In fact, we have hardly scratched the surface of the poworker rights is no longer about whether they need strength- tential for human progress opened by globalization...
...Achieving that solidarity will require a commitment from everyone, including owners, managers, financiers, reTHE CROSSROAD PUBLISHING COMPANY tailers, professional people, and workers, he said, because of 481 Eighth Avenue, Suite 1550, New York, NY 10001 the world's failure fully to respect human dignity and to give At your bookstore or call 1-800-395-0690...
...Regular and often inten- lowest standards...
...Although the concept of international vice president of the Philippine Federation of Free Workers, worker rights is a far from recent creation, in the past few focuses on how ADB policies affect ordinary people and why years it has reached the "tipping point" of recognition where the bank must become more responsive to their needs...
...adopt reforms aimed at giving it a "human face...
...Annan is a convert to that cause...
...An answer well-considered and exact...
...A 1996 comment of Renato Rugno longer suffice, many unions in both devel- giero, the WTO's first director general-"We are writing the oped and developing countries have long cam- constitution of a single global economy"-epitomizes that C paigned to link worker rights and trade rights in sweeping vision...
...Thanks in part to opposition model on the world is a grave error...
...True-blue antiglobemerged with unprecedented financial and moral support alists-those wanting to shut down or cripple the WTO, the as the international organization to deal with worker rights...
...They are listening to and talking the ADB...
...Most mainstream economists con- prevailing paradigm no longer suffices to take advantage tinue to hold that the elimination of labor abuses depends of today's boundless opportunities...
...That is why today No bark or whinny, whistle or meow, the World Bank supports the labor standards of the ILO [InNo word to instigate or to react, ternational Labor Organization], including the rights to orShe gently nods assent to here and now, ganize and collectively bargain...
...Founded, funded, and controlled by governments, that it is necessary to address the problem of sweatshops and until recently both limited their operations to governments other abuses of workers' rights...
...There are two schools Commonweal 1 5 September 22, 2000 of the WTO's other rules, would ultimately be backed by 11 sanctions...
...The dominant school sees the inand practice, between rhetoric and action...
...Inside, more than two dozen ADB staff members, none It was during a four-week research trip to Southeast Asia with a brown bag but some with sandwiches, are assem- this spring that I had the opportunity to attend the session at bled during lunch time...
...It is the rule-making and rule-enforcing powers of the World represented by Dani Rodrik, professor of international poTrade Organization (the WTO, like the World Bank and the litical economy at Harvard...
...Jagdish Bhagwati, a professor of economics and a Manning powerfully vigorous proponent of free trade and of the WTO, never- articulates how John Paul [I's current views on theless criticizes the WTO's powers to enforce patents and women are not only a disaster for the Catholic other intellectual property rights through trade sanctions...
...Treasury Department, called for re- advocate for women's forming "the architecture of the international financial sys- equality, Joanna tem...
...World Bank, the IMF, or the ADB, or all four-are few...
...That question J need reform but rather on how they should be has still not been given due consideration...
...ternational agencies' role as guiding the evolution of a global economy according to a single capitalist model, with onvinced that the toothless rules of the UN's ILO various minor variations...
...Among Like the distinguished seventeenth-century Frenchman in other things, the compact calls on world business to uphold a Moliere play who exclaims, "My Lord, I've been talking "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the prose for the last forty years and have never known it," late right to collective bargaining...
...For almost two years he has been promulgating a new "Global Compact" on human rights, labor standards, and the environment...
...A Spiritual Biography The position of Joseph Stiglitz, now a senior fellow at the Already seventy-seven Brookings Institution, transcends both the minimalist and years old, Angelo maximalist approaches to shaping the global economy...
...As a moral principle, the "universal destination of resources" is traditional in Catholic teaching (it is discussed in did not find workers shouting "Stop the world-we want to the new Catechism in the chapter on "Thou Shall Not Steal"), get off...
...darity: foreign investment and trade in goods and services...
...Council for International Business, for example, are scarcer still among workers...
...During my trip to Asia I which represents U.S...
...In- it can now be discussed even in the hallowed halls of the stead of imposing loan conditions restricting increases in the ADB...
...That campaign, embraced country-by-country phenomenon, with versions that vary by the Clinton administration, shook up the historic WTO widely, and that trying to impose a single global capitalist meeting in Seattle late last year...
...None of 0-8245-1869-1 $18.95 paperback them-Rubin, Bhagwati, or Clinton-fits the caricature of being antiglobalist...
...so, and ultimately for whose benefit...
...Despite increased globon economic growth, without the intervention of govern- al awareness and concern, designing and implementing a ments or government-run international institutions...
...should...
...into a New Age...
...Free in an international labor market that is still largely a lawCommonweal 14 September 22, 2000 less jungle, with a globe-girdling gap between principles of thought on the matter...
...Rather, workers are demanding reforms so that but its meaning is usually kept safely general, certainly not they can get on the globalization bandwagon and gain their as specific as the teachings on sex...
...Under pres- the world, he says, oppression by totalitarian states "has been sure, the two vast bureaucracies have gradually opened their replaced with oppression by the unregulated capitalists, who offices and their minds to outsiders...
...Church, but are also a threat to the well-being of President Bill Clinton has repeatedly pressured the WTO to all women, regardless of belief...
...The UN Global Compact is one...
...For many workers around and the financial fraternity close to governments...
...His first article in Commonweal, 'Appeal of a Catholic Workman," appeared in the February 2, 1940 issue...
...Since then, the ADB has gradually rated unions Inertia's own, quiescent as the sands, more positively...
...A few economists have even come will not be easy...
...There, the union goal is to get an agreement on But globalization has built into it a larger set of powerlabor rights fit for the modem world economy, not to throw ful instruments that, for good or for ill, affect human solia monkey wrench into it...
...But a senior bank official, Ayumi Konishi, intervenes to say that ADB has indeed imposed such restrictions, and cites a specific case in Thailand in which he was personally involved...
...One of Asper's key points is that, before making major decisions-such as on privatization or deregulation-the ADB should release information about its plans and should negotiate with nongovernmental representatives of civil society about the plans' impact on people...
...The Council vailing paradigm...
Vol. 127 • September 2000 • No. 16
