From 25 to 27 March 2015, the second
meeting of the Futures Commission, hosted by the Chris Hani Institute, was held in Cape Town/South Africa. The
Futures Commission had initially been set up in a
first meeting in Johannesburg/South Africa in June 2013 as the result of an
initiative by the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights
(SIGTUR) (see SIGTUR’s
Futures Commission). The Futures Commission, consisting of left academics
and trade union representatives from SIGTUR affiliates and supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, was entrusted with
the task to develop alternatives to neo-liberalism. At its Congress in
Perth/Australia in December 2013 (see SIGTUR’s
tenth Congress), SIGTUR identified four key themes as common challenges for
all SIGTUR affiliates: (1) the growing power of transnational corporations (TNCs)
especially expressed in a new round of free trade negotiations such as the
Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement; (2) the loss of government revenue due to
tax avoidance in tax havens; (3) the restructuring and privatisation pressures
on the public sector; as well as (4) the problem of climate change and the
related need for a just transition to a post-carbon based economy. At its
meeting in Cape Town, the Futures Commission focused on proposals in all four
key areas. In this blog post, I will report on these discussions.
On Monday, 16 March Naomi Fowler from
the Tax
Justice Network gave a presentation at Nottingham University as part
of the Centre for the Study of Social and
Global Justice’s (CSSGJ) seminar series. Formed in 2003, the Tax
Justice Network includes many former employees in the financial industry
amongst its activists and the monthly Taxcast
is one of the key ways of influencing political debate.
