Tensions between European trade unions and
unions from the Global South over international free trade developed into an
open confrontation during the talks over the revival of the WTO Doha round in
2008. On the one hand, the European Metal Workers Federation (EMF) joined
forces with the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) in the
publication of two joint press releases demanding reciprocal market access in
developed, emerging and developing countries. On the other, this led to an
angry response by trade unions in the Global South and here especially the
Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The EMF was accused of
undermining workers’ solidarity, since their co-operation with European
employers in demanding equal market access would imply job losses in the Global
South and undermine the internal unity of the International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC) (
Bieler
2012: 9).
The WTO Doha negotiations have stalled for
years. And yet, free trade agreements (FTA) continue to be pushed in bilateral
negotiations by the USA and the EU with developing countries and emerging
markets. Importantly, these FTAs no longer only concern trade in manufactured
goods, but as part of an expanded trade agenda now also include issues of
intellectual property rights, trade in services and investment. Unsurprisingly,
the tensions within the international labour movement persist. In this
contribution, I will discuss the obstacles but also possibilities for
establishing transnational solidarity in relation to tensions over trade
liberalization.
Liberal economic theory and developmental reality
 |
| by Christopher Dombres |
In order to understand such tensions over free
trade policies, the historical dynamics of capitalist accumulation need to be
conceptualised. In a liberal understanding of capitalist development, free
trade is regarded as a win-win situation, a positive-sum game. As David Ricardo
famously argued, if every country concentrates on producing and exporting what
it is best at, i.e. on its comparative advantage, and imports all the other
necessities, an optimum outcome with everybody benefiting will be the result (Ricardo
1817). Neo-liberal economic thinking about the extension of free trade in
times of globalisation builds on this understanding. States should refrain from
intervening into the economy and deregulate and liberalise markets including
the labour market in order to facilitate free trade. If developing countries
open up to free trade and foreign direct investment, development would follow
and allow them to catch up with developed countries. However, reality has
unmasked the false promises of liberal economic thinking. In a study by the NGO
War on Want, it is illustrated that global economic growth in the 1980s and
1990s, the time of neo-liberal globalisation, was slower than in the 1960s and
1970s. Moreover, ‘the number of people unemployed and the number in unstable,
insecure jobs has actually increased – from 141 million to 190 million (1993 to
2007) and from 1,338 million to 1,485 million (1997 to 2007) respectively’ (War
on Want 2009: 4). Developing countries have been the main losers of this
period. Trade liberalization often implied deindustrialisation and import
dependence for them. An analysis of the consequences of trade liberalisation in
Africa and Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s reveals widespread job
losses, increasing unemployment and declining wages in both continents (War
on Want 2009: 5-13).
 |
| by ALDEADLE |
Workers in industrialised countries have been
predominantly employed in high-valued added, high productivity production
processes. Moreover, from 1945 onwards they have made significant achievements
within national social pacts. In exchange for accepting capital’s prerogative
over the organisation of the work process and the private ownership of the
means of production, they were allowed to participate in increasing profits
through rising wages and expansive welfare states. Increasing export through
free trade agreements implied directly secure jobs and higher wealth levels for
workers. By contrast, workers in the Global South have not experienced these
positive dynamics. They have mainly been integrated into the global economy as
exporters of agricultural goods and raw materials. Where there has been a
diffusion of manufacturing especially since the 1970s, it has often been in the
area of labour intensive industries, areas characterised by low productivity.
Even China, often hailed as a success story of development by liberals,
continues to rely on its vast army of cheap labour in order to remain
competitive. Moreover, while there has been a convergence in the importance of manufacturing
output for national economies between the Global South and industrialised
countries, this has been in a declining sphere of economic activity. With
services becoming ever more important for the generation of wealth, it is no
surprise that income inequalities between developing and developed countries have
remained. At the global level, therefore, free trade links countries in the
core, which export high productivity/high-value added goods and increasingly
services, with countries in the periphery, the exports of which are based on low
productivity. As Ernest Mandel argued, ‘on the world market, the labour
of a country with a higher productivity of labour is valued as more intensive,
so that the product of one day’s work in such a nation is exchanged for the
product of more than a day’s work in an underdeveloped country’ (
Mandel 1975: 71-2).
Hence, countries in the
periphery have become locked into relations of unequal exchange in which surplus
value is transferred from the periphery to the core. This has resulted in an
intensified polarisation between countries in the core and countries in the
periphery.
In short, capitalist development has been
highly uneven and so-called ‘free trade’ policies have extended this
unevenness. Free trade is only one component in the process of uneven and
combined development. And yet, especially after the expansion of the trade
agenda during the GATT Uruguay Round and the WTO Doha negotiations into areas of
intellectual property rights, trade in services and investment, free trade has
taken up an ever more central position in the current attempt to continue the
accumulation of surplus value on a global scale. In a way, the expanded free
trade agenda is a mechanism of reconstituting the exploitative relationship
between the core and periphery afresh.
Free trade and transnational labour solidarity
 |
by Alejandra
H. Covarrubias
|
As a result of this unevenness, different
national trade unions are in different positions within the global capitalist
social relations of production. Unsurprisingly, although workers from around
the world are exploited in the capitalist social relations of production based
on wage labour and the private ownership of the means of production, this does
not automatically imply that it will be in their immediate and obvious interest
to join forces. Transnational solidarity between national labour movements in
relation to free trade policies is anything but automatic. As indicated above in
the example of the WTO Doha negotiations in 2008, this expanded free trade
agenda has led to tensions within the global labour movement. On the one hand,
trade unions in the North especially in manufacturing have supported free trade
agreements. They hope that new export markets for products in their sectors
will preserve jobs. On the other, trade unions in the Global South oppose these
free trade agreements, since they often imply deindustrialisation and the
related loss of jobs for them. Transnational solidarity is difficult to achieve
as a result.
And yet,
the fact that different national labour movements are located in different
positions in the global economy does not imply that transnational solidarity is
impossible. The experience of trade unions in the Americas is illustrative in
this respect. When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into
force on 1 January 1994, there was no common trade union position. While the
Canadian Labour Congress had been opposed, the main Mexican trade union
confederation supported the agreement. The US trade unions presented a mixed
picture. As a result of experiences with NAFTA, however, a common position has emerged
over time. This new position does not only include a rejection of neo-liberal
free trade agreements such as the defeated Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA) initiative. As Bruno Ciccaglione, the European co-ordinator of the
Seattle to Brussels Network makes clear in his report, it also ‘seeks to design
a model of integration that is an alternative to free trade, not only because
it proposes alternative trade rules, but because it aims at moving away from
neoliberalism by giving a new centrality to the State, and to a new democratic
and participatory process’ (Ciccaglione
2009: 30). The related strategies include both cross-border co-operation
with trade unions as well as alliances with other social movements and, thus,
provide the basis for a common consciousness at the transnational level. Hence,
as a result of concrete struggles against free trade initiatives in the
Americas, labour has moved towards transnational solidarity. Such forms of
transnational solidarity may in turn provide the basis for developing new ways
of how trade is organized between countries. The Bolivarian Alliance for the
Americas (ALBA), for example, is already one practical example in this respect.
At its beginning in 2004 was a treaty between Venezuela and Cuba with the
former providing petroleum to the latter at very favourable prices in exchange
for doctors and teachers from Cuba, working in some of Venezuela’s poorest
states. Direct negotiations between the two countries had replaced a reliance
on prices set by the market.
 |
| by saguayo |
Global North and
Global South, core and periphery are not fixed categories, but are constituted
and re-constituted by concrete social relations. In response to the global
economic crisis, working relations are increasingly becoming informal in
industrialised countries too. There is also an increase in low wage service
sector jobs. In other words, the traditional Global South is also emerging in
the Global North, the periphery in the core and the clear boundaries are
disappearing. The realisation by workers in the North that further free trade actually
also requires further deregulation and liberalisation in the North and is,
thus, harmful to them too may provide the ground for more active transnational
solidarity. Samir Amin, the keynote speaker at a workshop on Trade
unions, free trade and the problem of transnational solidarity, held at
the Centre for the Study of Social and
Global Justice (CSSGJ) at Nottingham University on 2 and 3 December 2011, demanded
‘audacity, more audacity, always audacity’ in the search for alternatives,
including a move towards delinking from today’s neo-liberal globalisation. This would allow nations with advanced radical social and political struggles
to move towards a process of socialization of the management of their economy. Moreover,
‘delinking promotes the reconstruction of a globalisation based
on negotiation, rather than submission to the exclusive interests of the
imperialist monopolies. It also makes possible the reduction of international
inequalities’ (Amin
2011: 28). Provided such calls for audacity are
heard and delinking is put into practice, relations of transnational solidarity
between labour movements in the Global South and North are possible.
[This post was initially published by the
Global Labour Column on 13 November 2012.]
Prof. Andreas Bieler
Professor of Political Economy
University of Nottingham/UK
Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk
18 December 2012
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