Guinea Pig
Nicol, Alfred
trade unions," it affirmed, "are a cornerstone of any...
...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...
...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...
...For almost two years he has been promulgating a new "Global Compact" on human rights, labor standards, and the environment...
...United Nations Secretary General Kofi Nor ever speak till I be spoken through...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Annan is a convert to that cause...
...For many workers around and the financial fraternity close to governments...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...at the end of his three years as chief economist of the World Bank...
...Two of those newly enlightened institutions are the often euphoric about globalization, recognizes that fact...
...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...
...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...
...Since then, the ADB has gradually rated unions Inertia's own, quiescent as the sands, more positively...
...Regular and often inten- lowest standards...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...An answer well-considered and exact...
...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...
...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...
...Free in an international labor market that is still largely a lawCommonweal 14 September 22, 2000...
...In Washington-based World Bank and International Monetary The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Anchor, 2000), Friedman writes Fund...
Vol. 127 • September 2000 • No. 16
