22 April 1999 Edition
Workers in struggle: Just another week of world domination
BY NEIL FORDE
Have you ever heard of the WTO, the IMF, the EBRD, the ECB, the World Bank, NATO, NAFTA. If you have, you fall into three possible categories. First, you might be a politically aware very informed person involved in ceaseless struggle for social revolution. Two, you are an overeducated pub philosopher who collects acronyms and urgently needs to get a life. Three, you have been on the receiving end of the policies implemented by these bodies.
If the third option is the case, you are most likely to be living in what the International Monetary Fund and World Bank bureaucrats call a HIPC, a Highly Indebted Poor Country. I kid you not. There are 40 or more HIPCs in the world. The IMF and World Bank want to help these HIPCs to become LIPCs, Less Indebted Poor Countries. They have now concluded that their 1996 debt relief scheme was ``less helpful than it looks''. The IMF has realised that the first five countries that they helped to make less indebted are in fact not any better off nearly three years later.
So what do these magnificent seven organisations have in common - nothing, except this week they are having meetings, some important, some just taking care of business. While the rest of us have another week of work if we are lucky, licensed slavery and sweat shops for the not so lucky, or just plain unremitting poverty, a select group of super bureaucrats are shaping the world we live in. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is sadly real life. So here it is, the quick guide to who's making decisions without consulting you this week.
WTO
The World Trade Organisation will today publish its assessment of international trade in 1998 and forecasts for 1999. The WTO was set up to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), one of the many organisations set up by the USA and Britain after World War II. It now has over 130 members. In 1999, the WTO will begin the ninth round of trade negotiations. It is highly likely that this new round will be dominated by trade disputes between the EU and the USA, with the rest of the world going along with whatever is agreed.
IMF and World Bank
The IMF was set up in 1944 to co-ordinate dollar/sterling currency exchange policies. Since then, it has become a dynamic duo with its partner in crime, the World Bank. Their aim is supposedly to aid what used to be called Less Developed Countries (LDCs) and help them industrialise. Instead, as mentioned already, the LDCs have become HIPCs.
NATO
The leaders of NATO are taking time out this week, while their armies continue indiscriminate bombing of Yugoslavia and Kosovo, to celebrate their 50th anniversary and admit three new members. They are Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. NATO was set up in 1949 to form an alliance against Soviet expansion. In 1956, 1968 and 1979, when the tanks rolled into Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan NATO did nothing. However with the end of the Cold War, NATO has suddenly found its teeth and has run wars in the Gulf, Bosnia and now Serbia and Kosovo.
EBRD
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is also meeting this week to assess its work over the past year. The EBRD is supposed to help business develop in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European states. In 1992 to 1993, it managed to spend more money on its headquarters in London than it did in loans to Eastern Europe.
ECB
The President of the European Central Bank, Wim Duisenberg, engages in a rare exercise this week. He has to account for his actions to the European Parliament. The ECB is the unelected body that controls the single currency as well as the EU's monetary policy and has no Irish officials in its senior management.
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement was supposed to be the USA's answer to the EU. It has only three members, the USA, Canada and Mexico. The trade ministers of the three meet this week for two days of talks. The day NAFTA came into being,1 January 1994, was also the day the Zapatistas in Mexico began an uprising of the Chiapas peoples.
On this side of the world, the word strike is increasingly a dirty word. Workers are not supposed to take industrial action. Instead they must seek arbitration and conciliation and ultimately in many cases give way. The whole industrial relations process in Ireland, Britain, and most of Europe is prefaced on the belief that both parties have equal rights and are equal parties to any dispute.
The reality that the police force, the legislative system, the mainstream media and other establishment interests are pitted against the workers is often overlooked and ignored. Instead, when we hear of industrial relations issues we can believe the myth that everything will be resolved in an equitably happy fashion on the proverbial level playing field.
So it is refreshing to hear that the power of industrial action is being exercised by workers across the globe
Canada
800,000 commuters had to find an alternative means of travelling to work in Toronto this week as striking transport workers shut down the city's public bus and rail system. The 7,800 subway conductors, bus drivers and ancillary staff have received a 1% pay rise over the past seven years.
The transport workers had voted down the offer of 2% annual wage rise. They want 3% per annum for each of the next three years. Now that does not seem a lot to ask!
Romania
Tens of thousands of Romanian workers took to the streets of Bucharest on Monday 19 April. The beef of these workers lead by the state's four largest unions was falling living standards as well as a demand for increased wages. Workers in utilities, mines, public transport, ports healthcare and other sectors left work for several hours in the day to show support for the stoppage.
Bangladesh
Most businesses shops and schools closed for the eighth time this year in Bangladesh last Sunday, 18 April. The general strike was called by opposition political leaders who want an end to harassment of their supporters and the removal of the state's chief election official. The strikers are also protesting at electricity power cuts and water shortages.
Have you ever heard of the WTO, the IMF, the EBRD, the ECB, the World Bank, NATO, NAFTA. If you have, you fall into three possible categories. First, you might be a politically aware very informed person involved in ceaseless struggle for social revolution. Two, you are an overeducated pub philosopher who collects acronyms and urgently needs to get a life. Three, you have been on the receiving end of the policies implemented by these bodies.
If the third option is the case, you are most likely to be living in what the International Monetary Fund and World Bank bureaucrats call a HIPC, a Highly Indebted Poor Country. I kid you not. There are 40 or more HIPCs in the world. The IMF and World Bank want to help these HIPCs to become LIPCs, Less Indebted Poor Countries. They have now concluded that their 1996 debt relief scheme was ``less helpful than it looks''. The IMF has realised that the first five countries that they helped to make less indebted are in fact not any better off nearly three years later.
So what do these magnificent seven organisations have in common - nothing, except this week they are having meetings, some important, some just taking care of business. While the rest of us have another week of work if we are lucky, licensed slavery and sweat shops for the not so lucky, or just plain unremitting poverty, a select group of super bureaucrats are shaping the world we live in. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is sadly real life. So here it is, the quick guide to who's making decisions without consulting you this week.
WTO
The World Trade Organisation will today publish its assessment of international trade in 1998 and forecasts for 1999. The WTO was set up to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), one of the many organisations set up by the USA and Britain after World War II. It now has over 130 members. In 1999, the WTO will begin the ninth round of trade negotiations. It is highly likely that this new round will be dominated by trade disputes between the EU and the USA, with the rest of the world going along with whatever is agreed.
IMF and World Bank
The IMF was set up in 1944 to co-ordinate dollar/sterling currency exchange policies. Since then, it has become a dynamic duo with its partner in crime, the World Bank. Their aim is supposedly to aid what used to be called Less Developed Countries (LDCs) and help them industrialise. Instead, as mentioned already, the LDCs have become HIPCs.
NATO
The leaders of NATO are taking time out this week, while their armies continue indiscriminate bombing of Yugoslavia and Kosovo, to celebrate their 50th anniversary and admit three new members. They are Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. NATO was set up in 1949 to form an alliance against Soviet expansion. In 1956, 1968 and 1979, when the tanks rolled into Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan NATO did nothing. However with the end of the Cold War, NATO has suddenly found its teeth and has run wars in the Gulf, Bosnia and now Serbia and Kosovo.
EBRD
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is also meeting this week to assess its work over the past year. The EBRD is supposed to help business develop in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European states. In 1992 to 1993, it managed to spend more money on its headquarters in London than it did in loans to Eastern Europe.
ECB
The President of the European Central Bank, Wim Duisenberg, engages in a rare exercise this week. He has to account for his actions to the European Parliament. The ECB is the unelected body that controls the single currency as well as the EU's monetary policy and has no Irish officials in its senior management.
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement was supposed to be the USA's answer to the EU. It has only three members, the USA, Canada and Mexico. The trade ministers of the three meet this week for two days of talks. The day NAFTA came into being,1 January 1994, was also the day the Zapatistas in Mexico began an uprising of the Chiapas peoples.
The power of the picket
On this side of the world, the word strike is increasingly a dirty word. Workers are not supposed to take industrial action. Instead they must seek arbitration and conciliation and ultimately in many cases give way. The whole industrial relations process in Ireland, Britain, and most of Europe is prefaced on the belief that both parties have equal rights and are equal parties to any dispute.
The reality that the police force, the legislative system, the mainstream media and other establishment interests are pitted against the workers is often overlooked and ignored. Instead, when we hear of industrial relations issues we can believe the myth that everything will be resolved in an equitably happy fashion on the proverbial level playing field.
So it is refreshing to hear that the power of industrial action is being exercised by workers across the globe
Canada
800,000 commuters had to find an alternative means of travelling to work in Toronto this week as striking transport workers shut down the city's public bus and rail system. The 7,800 subway conductors, bus drivers and ancillary staff have received a 1% pay rise over the past seven years.
The transport workers had voted down the offer of 2% annual wage rise. They want 3% per annum for each of the next three years. Now that does not seem a lot to ask!
Romania
Tens of thousands of Romanian workers took to the streets of Bucharest on Monday 19 April. The beef of these workers lead by the state's four largest unions was falling living standards as well as a demand for increased wages. Workers in utilities, mines, public transport, ports healthcare and other sectors left work for several hours in the day to show support for the stoppage.
Bangladesh
Most businesses shops and schools closed for the eighth time this year in Bangladesh last Sunday, 18 April. The general strike was called by opposition political leaders who want an end to harassment of their supporters and the removal of the state's chief election official. The strikers are also protesting at electricity power cuts and water shortages.