Trade Unions Accuse WTO Rules of Undermining Human Rights as they Expose Exploitation of Workers
2 Sep 2003
According to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), the World Trade Organisation (WTO)-which meets in just over a week in Cancún- is promoting cutthroat economic competition that often deprives workers of even their most basic rights. Millions of workers, particularly in developing countries, are being left without any protection against governments who will continue to treat them as disposable resources until the WTO ensures respect for workers' rights in its trade agreements. And far too many employers are eager to take advantage of the situation.
This Race to the Bottom for workers has accelerated with the global expansion of Export Processing Zones (EPZs), which are specially designed to attract foreign investment. Though a valuable source of employment, they nearly always play host to systematic violations of workers' rights.
To raise awareness of labour standards abuses before the WTO meeting, a top-level trade union delegation, including Alisa Keane and Fiona Dunne of Congress, will visit several free trade zones in Honduras as part of a major initiative to focus on EPZs. The delegations will meet with the workers to show international solidarity support and will draw public attention to the situation inside the zones. As part of the mission, they will also meet the President of the Republic of Honduras and Honduran employers.
According to ICTU Development Officer, Alisa Keane, "In the eyes of the WTO trade panels, a product made illegally under hazardous conditions by children, or by a sweatshop worker on a 48 hour non-stop shift, is identical to one made under legal, safe and humane working conditions. The WTO's neutrality on this point is effectively an incentive to undermine international labour standards
In the name of economic development, workers around the world, and especially the estimated 43 million workers (mainly young women) employed in EPZs, are locked into factories to carry out forced, often unpaid overtime work; they face the sack for getting pregnant; and have been fed amphetamines by managers to keep them going through excruciatingly long shifts. There are also countless examples of repression of trade union activists in EPZs.
Globalisation has the potential to bring enormous benefits to millions, but although all WTO members -our own government- have committed themselves to defend fundamental workers' rights - they are failing monumentally to make good on this commitment, by allowing the international trading system to undermine these very same rights. Workers everywhere are trapped in a destructive 'Race to the Bottom'."
WTO members have deliberately chosen to exclude consideration of the worst forms of child labour, the rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining, as well as principles of equality for women and other workers often suffering from discrimination. The refusal to take these fundamental workers' rights into account in trade agreements makes it possible for investors to roam the world in search of governments which, in constant competition not to lose out on investment and contracts, choose not to enforce their international and moral obligations to protect their domestic workforce.
While Congress is supportive in principle of a multilateral rules-based trading system, it strongly opposes a system rigged to allow companies to take advantage of workers who have little to no protection against exploitation. Countries which, on the whole, are trying to guarantee respect for international labour standards (such as Brazil, South Africa and Jamaica) are losing out on foreign investment to countries that do not.
The process is made worse by the accession to the WTO of China, which, as quota systems are dismantled under WTO agreements, is succeeding in enticing investors away from many other developing countries to its bargain basement economy, which is notorious for banning independent trade unions outright, and for thwarting any attempts by workers to improve their own situation.
According to David Begg, General Secretary of ICTU: "In the absence of binding international rules covering workers' as well as investors' rights, the dice are very much loaded against those at the bottom of the supply chain who work the longest hours for the least pay."
Congress is therefore urging our government's representatives when they attend the Ministerial Conference in Cancún - not to ignore the debilitating effects of the race to the bottom on workers in rich and poor countries. A free trade system with no respect for fundamental workers' rights, currently pushed by WTO members, does not alleviate poverty. It exacerbates it."
END
NOTES TO THE EDITOR
Trade union representatives on the Honduras Mission will include:
- Guy Ryder, Secretary General International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
- Luis Anderson, ICFTU-ORIT
- Alisa Keane, ICTU Development Officer, Ireland
- Fionna Dunne, Chair ICTU's Women's Committee, Ireland
- José Ramírez, International Textile & Garment Leather Workers Federation
- Rodolfo Benites, UNI
- Stephen Benedict, CLC Canada
- Ruth Vermuelen, FNV Netherlands
- Lee Changeung, KCTU Korea
- Preben Foldberg, LO-Denmark
- Bob Welsh (ACILS) and Teresa Casertano, AFL-CIO USA
- Raquel Clavillas, TUCP Philippines
- Raquel Garrido, FO France
- Maria Elena Muñoz and Maria Ibec Gómez plus additional CTH representatives, CTH Honduras
In calling for respect for workers' rights at the WTO, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is backing the Global Unions Campaign on Globalisation, which aims to build community awareness and public support for putting the interests of people first in these processes. For background information on the international trade union position on development at the WTO, visit: http://www.global-unions.org/globalisation
Congress is affiliated to the European Trade Union Confederation and International Confederation of Free Trade Unions which represents 158 million workers in 231 affiliated organisations in 150 countries and territories.