Contact: Alexandra Strickner (Tel. +41 22 789 0724 or +41 79 764
8658, astrickner iatp.org “mailto:astrickner iatp.org” ) or
Mike Waghorne (Tel. +33 450 40 11 70 or +33 685 66
03 41, Mike.Waghorne world-psi.org “mailto:Mike.Waghorne world-psi.org”
’After ten years of the WTO, unemployment has climbed around the world.
There has been an increase in dirty, dangerous and degrading work. Much
of that employment is precarious. Many more people are being driven into
the informal, unprotected and unregulated economy from both the formal
economy and from the devastated livelihoods of peasant and family
farming. In transnational corporations (TNCs) many employees
increasingly find themselves in a casualised, precarious relationship
with the companies they produce for but no longer work for.’
So say over a hundred social movements, trade unions and NGOs in
releasing a statement on the employment and unemployment effects of the
present WTO negotiations. Yet, according to the statement, when the
world’s trade ministers put their signatures to the founding document of
the WTO, their very first sentence committed them to raising standards
of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing
volume of real income. The reality today, according to the civil society
statement, sees entire countries giving up hope in employment as a means
to development and empowerment.
International Union of Foodworkers spokesperson Peter Rossman notes
that, ’for developing countries, “diversification” into flowers and
“niche” products is being promoted as a solution to the collapse of
agricultural commodity prices. In the global countryside, there is more
unemployment, more hunger, more food insecurity. Those who help to feed
the world are increasingly unable to feed themselves.’
Henry Saragih, international co-ordinator of La Via Campesina, claims
that ’Increased liberalization of trade in agricultural products brought
disastrous effects for peasants based agriculture. The only winners were
the global agri-food TNCs. These TNCs are driving the overproduction and
export of food crops from a handful of producer countries, driving down
prices and eliminating millions of jobs, fuelling the massive migration
of agricultural workers, peasants and family farmers from the
countryside and sending waves of dispossessed people into already
overcrowded cities or abroad, where they lack the most basic protection
of their rights.’
The groups’ statement also casts its eye over the likely impact of the
non-agricultural market negotiations (NAMA). These negotiations threaten
to aggravate the situation in developing countries for industrial,
fisheries and forestry products. They are being pressured to
significantly reduce their tariffs on these goods. Whilst this may lower
the costs for these goods, it will often be at the expense of current
and future employment. ’Fisheries and forests provide livelihoods and
essential nutrition and medicines for millions of people across the
world’, according to Jacques-chai Chomthongdi from Focus on the Global
South.’ Ninety percent of fishers worldwide - nearly 40 million people -
are employed in small-scale artisanal fishing and these men and women
are overwhelmingly impoverished. A further 13 million are employed in
the formal forestry sector and more than 1.6 billion depend on forests
for their livelihoods. WTO proposals to fully eliminate tariffs in both
of these sectors could have extremely serious consequences for these
people’.
Carla Coletti, from the International Metalworkers Federation points out
that ’if cheap imports flood countries with weak industrial sectors,
these industries could be wiped out, causing higher unemployment. In
countries where such industries are yet to be established, these imports
will prevent the development of the kinds of sustainable industrial
employment that is often the route to development. Current negotiations
will deliver neither decent employment nor development and may cause
massive unemployment and the destruction of existing livelihoods.’
Are services, the fastest growing employment sector, the magic recipe
for employment creation, the statement asks. The services negotiations
depend on governments privatising, outsourcing or otherwise liberalising
their services sectors as a basis for being able to make irreversible
commitments under the GATS. "None of these measures has a good record in
terms of employment: people either lose jobs or have insecure, lower
quality and low-paid jobs,’ says Mike Waghorne, from Public Services
International ’Many multinational enterprises are footloose and have a
history of quitting as soon as profits slow down or dry up, leaving
service workers stranded, competing for more hamburger-flipper or
call-centre jobs.
The groups conclude that the current trade->growth->development paradigm
is a failure, as even World Bank, IMF and OECD data is beginning to
acknowledge. Florence Proton from ATTAC Switzerland summed up the
groups’ feelings by noting: ’More trade can sometimes create growth. Yet
we must always ask: what kind of growth; growth for whom? Today it is
jobless growth. Trade and domestic growth statistics today are
meaningless indicators of true national wealth, the well-being of the
people of a country. What ultimately counts is whether farmers and
workers are on the way to obtaining decent incomes and decent working
conditions and livelihoods.
No matter what kind of deal is patched together in Hong Kong, the
fundamental rules of the WTO are a recipe for job destruction. For
working people and small rural producers, there is nothing on the
table, and a “Development Round” deal to get the negotiations "back on
track" will only spell more unemployment and social dislocation. For
this reason, the trade union and civil society organisations who have
signed the statement call on WTO members to:
– put a moratorium on the present negotiations; and
– undertake full public assessments of the employment, social,
environmental and cultural impacts of existing trade and investment
rules.
Copies of the statement in five languages, with all of the signatories,
can be found at www.world-psi.org/wtoandjobs
“http://www.world-psi.org/wtoandjobs”
Questions about this statement should be addressed to Alexandra
Strickner (Tel. +41 22 789 0724 or +41 79 764 8658, astrickner iatp.org