Open Forum
Edwards, Beatrice
IMF and World Bank to Labor Unions: Drop Dead From October 23 to 25 of last year, the High Command of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank met ceremoniously at their...
...The Americas also include Colombia, where between January and June, 47 trade unionists were assassinated...
...The lucky stakeholders are allowed to pay in labor for the cost of their water connections...
...He recognizes that poor people are inordinately vulnerable to the impact of risk...
...Canadian Subscribers: Order from Social Justice Committee, 1857 ouest de Maisonneuve, Montreal, Que., H3H 19 (Tel...
...IMF and World Bank to Labor Unions: Drop Dead From October 23 to 25 of last year, the High Command of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank met ceremoniously at their splendid headquarters in Washington with the representatives of selected international trade unions...
...What you need is an income- and consumption-smoothing strategy to minimize your individual risk...
...Let's take an example...
...If you are a household around the poverty line, according to Dr...
...If you protest this treatment collectively, you and your compaheros could wind up down a well with your throats cut...
...Possible risk management strategies that you might plug in here include portfolio diversification, forward exchange contracts, dis-saving, selling your children's labor and moving away...
...Holzman goes on to point out that the tired, traditional approach to poverty reduction relied on the failed prescriptions of trade unionism, such as unemployment insurance, social safety nets and labor market interventions (minimum wage, health and safety standards, etc...
...Not just a safety net, but also a springboard...
...To be absolutely accurate, only the Bank commits itself to passion and professionalism...
...The Joint Chiefs themselves appeared for the initial encounter: Horst Kohler, Managing Director of the IMF, and James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank...
...You may photocopy this form...
...Six hundred and seventy-six trade unionists in 1999 publicly acknowledged that they had received death threats...
...514-933-6797...
...She is currently employed in Washington, D.C...
...As everyone knows, the IMF and the World Bank have the highest respect for national political processes and would never presume to boss supplicant governments around...
...The water workers union would have selfishly insisted that their members lay the pipe and sew- r erage according to tedious engineering and environmental specifications and that they be paid a living wage for doing it...
...Nonetheless, the questioner asked pointedly, would the IMF and the World Bank now require their borrowing countries to respect the core labor standards recognized in five International Labor Organization (ILO) Conventions...
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...During the first frank exchange, one brave working person referred hopefully to the new mission of the Bank and the Fund: fighting poverty with passion and professionalism...
...Unions, after all, tend to raise wages, and this is the best way we know of to reduce poverty...
...Fax: (212) 870-3305...
...We have learned a lot from these pilot projects," said one perky Aguas executive we met in the Bank foyer...
...unionized water workers don't have jobs anymore, so they can't pay either...
...It includes ethnic discrimination, illness, terrorism, high winds, volcanic activity, coup d'etat, currency crisis and-our favorite-output collapse...
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...Curiously, Holzman does not mention the most frequent World Bankinduced income and consumption menace, which is losing your reasonably remunerative job and bouncing into a maquila for S2 a day and a hairnet...
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...That's three out of five...
...Holzman, your strategy would look like this: [min Pr{ct<cnmin}]: probability where probability must be calculated using other letters, but we don't know what they are...
...Views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of NACLA...
...Now, in contrast, the ditch-digging volunteers from the barrios have a connection for water that they cannot afford to pay for...
...Trade unions actually hurt poor people, said the High Command and their proxies appearing in subsequent conference sessions...
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...For those of us in the Americas, Wolfensohn's statement that the World Bank does not recognize the right of association was especially alarming...
...The Fund only promises to fight...
...Unions create a rigid and inflexible economic environment in which it is impossible for the truly innovative and ambitious to flourish...
...Since there would be only middling profits in this approach and the public utility has been sold off, poor people would still be hauling their water...
...This is because many borrowing countries do not implement the standards nationally, and it would therefore be imperialistically intrusive for the Fund or the Bank to intervene in the political affairs of these sovereign states...
...They need microenterprises so that they can make some money by exploiting themselves -and their Readers are invited to address letters to The Editors, NACLA Report on the Americas, 475 Riverside Dr, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115...
...are a little trickier...
...And until that very moment, many labor reps harbored the illusion that one effective means of fighting poverty was to foster a climate in which trade unions can at least exist...
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...More than half...
...You may think that in these situations you will need job security, a living wage and quite possibly health insurance...
...and Aguas Argentinas can make more money providing less water because the company benefits from free labor...
...The Bank's promising new approach is based on social protection...
...Cases are legion...
...by Public Services International, the international secretariat for public sector unions...
...Of course, both institutions are on record as opposed to slavery, discrimination and--in most cases--child labor, he waffled...
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...Kohler can help you...
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...Wolfensohn nor Mr...
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...policy towards the region...
...If you are poor, these eventualities will really stop up your income stream...
...But the Bank takes a different tack on this than the ILO...
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...In the squatter settlements outside Buenos Aires, enterprising community groups are digging the ditches and laying the pipe for the French and Argentine-owned Aguas Argentinas...
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...After all, we have Brazil in our hemisphere, where ILO Convention 87 establishing the right of association has never been ratified, and income distribution is one of the most unequal in the world...
...Rather than relying on unions to protect their rights and wages, working people can now depend on the World Bank's evolving Social Protection and Social Risk Management Strategy...
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...According to the data base from the Escuela Nacional Sindical, 1,336 trade unionists were killed between 1991 and 1999, and 14 union headquarters bombed...
...As a result, they cannot engage in higher return activities...
...Like, what about structural adjustment...
...His paper, published by the Bank in 2000, informed us all that poor people are poor because they are insufficiently innovative, and that they cannot afford to be innovative because they "lack appropriate risk management instruments...
...You may also subscribe online at www.nacla.org VOL XXXIV, No 4 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2001 5 OPEN FORUM CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 net should exist, programs should also provide the poor with the capacity to bounce out of poverty," writes Holzman animatedly...
...What kind of intervention was that...
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...Of these, the majority were teachers and health care workers...
...Moreover, the spokespersons had become accustomed over the years to the unilateral demands--political and otherwise-of the Bank and the Fund...
...Wrong...
...Structural adjustment was simply sound macroeconomic policy advice, retorted the Joint Chiefs...
...This approach promotes "local ownership" of projects and persuades impoverished stakeholders to take heart and help themselves in an optimistic and industrious fashion...
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...They had hoped that someday soon the Bank and the Fund would formally recognize the signed conventions of the ILO, but they never expected the explicit repudiation of labor's international rights...
...Letters can also be sent by email to: nacla@nacla.org...
...his catalogue of calamity is comprehensive...
...The remaining two-the right of association and the right of collective bargaining-Beatrice Edwards worked for 12 years for the Organization of American States, managing technical cooperation projects in education and employment in Latin America and the Caribbean...
...And, poor people do not need unions...
...It's not their fault that you have an inadequate array of risk management instruments...
...She holds a doctorate in sociology and occasionally teaches at American University...
...A hasty consultation took place between the Chiefs before Wolfensohn responded...
...Unhappily, neither Mr...
...The spokespersons for organized labor sat back stunned...
...To explain this, the Bank produced Robert Holzman, the Director of the Social Protection and Human Development Network and the Bank's liaison to organized labor...
Vol. 34 • January 2001 • No. 4
