[asia-apec 1332] Democratic Trade Union Responses to Globalisation

[rc-am]

The rest of the paper can be read online here:
<http://www.labournet.org/1999/Oct/amf.html>

Democratic Trade Union Responses to Globalisation: A Critique of the
ICFTU-APRO's "Asian Monetary Fund" Proposal

Gerard Greenfield

1. Introduction: Control in the Global Economy

When we talk about "control" in the global economy, we can identify two
forms of control: corporate control and popular democratic control.
Corporate control involves the increased power of corporations and the
subordination of all aspects of social life and the environment to private
profit. In direct opposition to this, popular democratic control is based
the subordination of private profit to democratically-determined collective
needs and interests, particularly the advancement of the livelihood and
well-being of working people.

These two forms of control are clearly in conflict. Corporate control
relies on the ever-increasing freedom of capital in a "free market", backed
by government support for private corporations and the repression of labour
and social movements. Popular democratic control, on the other hand, is
clearly incompatible with corporate power and the "free market." As such,
any initiatives or proposals put forward by the labour movement as a
strategy for responding to globalisation must be assessed in terms of
whether or not it shifts the balance in favour of greater popular
democratic control, and less corporate control.
...

Unfortunately, most of the proposed strategies arising from the trade union
movement at the regional level are based on a short-term view of the crisis
and a flawed understanding of its real causes. In particular, there is a
tendency to place the blame solely on speculative financial capital, while
ignoring the role of industrial and banking capital.

In this paper we assess the most recent regional trade union strategy - the
creation of an "Asian Monetary Fund" - and argue that its over-emphasis on
speculative capital as the cause of the crisis leads to false solutions to
very real problems. Providing more "liquidity" to bail out corporations and
banks in the region at public expense ignores the failure of the
export-oriented industrialisation model, and the massive over-production by
corporations and over-lending by banks which underpins the crisis. The
proposed "solution" serves only to increase corporate welfare at a time
when social welfare continues to be cut back. Bailing out corporations with
public money does not guarantee jobs or income security, especially since
these bailouts involve even more corporate restructuring and `labour
flexibility' that further undercuts trade union and worker' rights and
interests.
...

It is often assumed that the Japanese government's proposal for an AMF was
"progressive" simply because it was opposed by the US government and the
IMF.  Since the labour movement opposes the IMF and its neoliberal
structural adjustment policies, it is assumed that anything the IMF opposes
must therefore be good for the labour movement. Of course, this is a based
on an over simplistic logic.

The conflict over the AMF idea was based mainly on two issues: First, the
IMF bureaucracy felt threatened by a regional fund that would take over its
activities in Asia. Second, since the Japanese government would control the
AMF in the same way that the US controls the IMF, the Japanese government
was challenging US economic power in the region. In this sense, the
Japanese government was seeking to extend its influence over economic
policy in the region, advancing the interests of Japanese corporations and
banks through the AMF - just as the US uses the IMF to advance the
interests of US corporations and banks.

>From this point of view, it is clear that the AMF concerns a fight over
corporate power and does not seek to limit corporate power.

...