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4 February 1999 Edition

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Workers in struggle

Rotten Apple



Apple sells out Irish workers



     
The Apple debacle shows yet again the need for an industrial development strategy that does not depend on how much money you can shove at transnational companies
``Hello again'' ran one of the many advertisements used to launch the iMac computer last year. Now Apple computers has said goodbye to 450 workers in the most unfriendly and nasty way.

Having being told that their jobs would be secure if the iMac computer was successful they now find that because of the phenomenal sales of the iMac their jobs are actually to be lost.

The job cuts were compounded by the fact that the details of the losses were disclosed to investment brokers in Wall Street and leaked to the press days before Apple workers themselves were told of the problem.

The Korean company LG Electronics will make the iMac under licence for Apple. LG has plants in Singapore, Mexico and Wales. One of these plants will manufacture the iMac supposedly more cheaply than is possible in the Cork Apple plant.

It will be little comfort to the Apple workers that there is an economic theory which accurately describes their predicament but it is indicative of the scope of the problem.

The product cycle theory states that transnational companies need first world countries to develop their new products. Once the new product is being manufactured successfully and the technological development is stabilised then the product can be manufactured at higher volumes in more low cost locations. This is essentially what has happened to the Cork Apple workers.

What is worse is that the Dublin Government, and more specifically the minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment Mary Harney has done little to force Apple to honour their commitments to Cork workers, whose efforts have helped Apple to return to profitability after running losses of $1 billion.

Apple have sold over 630,000 iMacs and had net earnings for the first quarter of 1999 of $152 million. How much more did they need to make?

Much has been made in the media of the turnaround in Apple's fortunes achieved by chief executive Steve Jobs. However, if the decision to renege on their promise to keep jobs at the Cork plant is representative of Jobs' management then maybe we would be better off without Apple.

Most importantly the Apple debacle shows yet again the need for an industrial development strategy that does not depend on how much money you can shove at transnational companies on the basis of unkeepable promises.

There are thousands of jobs in the Irish computer industry, over 12,000 in software alone. Many of these Irish-owned companies do not make huge profits. They do however employ huge numbers of people and receive less funding than the high profile multinational companies that the government courts endlessly.

Surely these companies deserve the same amount of funding and aid as the multinational companies. As long as the Dublin Government bases its job development policies on fickle multinationals who are interested only in profit there will be more Apples and more Fruit of the Looms.

The lesson of the week then is that a promise from a politician is only slightly less worthless than one from a multinational company.


Fighting the financial markets



     
Fischer also said that it was ``an illusion to think that the IMF have no social conscience and do not care''.
A smiling Al Gore with a varying cast of international leaders and executives graced many newspaper pages and TV bulletins over the last week. Gore was speaking in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum, an annual meeting of top business executives and invited politicians.

The core topic of the week-long conference was the impact of the ``Asian flu'' on global financial markets.

An alternative set of meetings to the World Economic Forum's was organised by Attac, the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions. Attac was launched in France in June 1998 and has 6,000 members, mostly in France.

The main aims of Attac are to: counter international speculation; tax capital revenue; punish fiscal parasites; stop the extension of pension funds; promote transparency of investment in developing countries; establish a legal framework for financial and banking operations which would not penalise consumers and citizens; press for a cancellation of the debt of developing countries and for the uses of resources freed in this way in favour of the people and of sustainable development.

Attac came into being when a journalist in the paper Le Monde Diplomatique wrote an article critical of the way financial markets operate and the implications for ordinary people of their activities. The groundswell in opinion following the article led to the formation of Attac, whose initial aim was to ``fight the dictatorship of financial markets''. They want to tax financial transactions ``for the benefit of citizens''.

Attac believes that ``Financial globalisation increases economic insecurity and social inequality. It bypasses and devalues people's choices''. They want to ``recapture the spaces of democracy lost to the financial sphere''.

Attac stress that they are not ready to ``offer ready-made solutions''. Instead they are calling for ``a democratic exchange of ideas and working out of alternatives''.

Judging by the events at the World Economic Forum Attac will have their work cut out for them. Stanley Fischer, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, told the Forum that he was fed up hearing ``arrant nonsense'' from those who claimed IMF programmes did not include measures to deal with the social consequences of its programmes, meaning in plain English the poverty the IMF creates.

Fischer also said that it was ``an illusion to think that the IMF have no social conscience and do not care''. It was, he said, an ``outrage and an offence to be told things which are patently not true''.

Well, when it comes to deciding whether you believe the IMF or Concern, Oxfam or Attac it doesn't take long to make up your mind.


Fianna Fail - U-turn



Changing their position on Irish neutrality was not the only U-turn implemented by Fianna Fáil in the last week. In the heady days of the 1997 election campaign Fianna Fáil told Oxfam that ``we will continue to withold funds from the ESAF, pending reform of the IMF, which we believe is very important as a policy issue. The IMF must undertake a complete debt-relief programme, which must include debt forgiveness, particularly for several indebted low-income countries''.

Now the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat coalition is set to allocate £7 million to the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) which it previously criticised.

The IMF fund imposes tough conditions on the states who get the money. These states often have to cut spending on public services such as health and edcuation as well as privatising state companies. The outcome is that the IMF funds can actually lead to increases in poverty in the recipient states.

Fianna Fáil's short memory is only matched by the silence of PD minister Liz O'Donnell who threatened to resign before last year's budget if the level of aid to less developed states was cut. Now when the government is set to increase poverty in the states who receive aid she is nowhere to be seen.

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