INTERNATIONAL FOCUS

The new internationalism – a response to globalisation

Rob Lambert, a former South African trade unionist now based in Australia, looks at alternatives to globalisation posed by unions involved in the Indian Ocean initiative

We are becoming bad news messengers. Every union leader in Cosatu, from national level leaders to shopstewards and ordinary members in particular workplaces, experience the pressures of globalisation in their trade union work. The great catch cry of the 1990s is, "We must become internationally competitive!"

For private sector unions, this has meant acceptance of industry restructuring plans — "downsizing", sorry, "rightsizing" the workforce, "improving productivity", introducing "workteams", and above all else, "developing a new cooperative relationship with management".

In the public sector, marching towards international competitiveness in the new global context has meant accepting budget cuts to education, health and other services in the cause of an "efficient" public sector. It has meant a swift leap from a commitment to nationalisation and an expansion of the state sector in the interests of strategic economic control to the new language of "privatisation" and a smaller public sector in the name of global efficiency.

The dilemma for shopstewards in this new context is that they are being forced out of a role where they fought hard, went on strike and clearly represented workers’ interests and encouraged into a new uncomfortable role as a "bad news messenger".

Let us give some examples of this bad news role. When a private company restructures and downsizes its workforce it is the union organisers and shopstewards who have to pass on an unacceptable message that sends fear and insecurity into the entire workforce — certain comrades in the work force have to join the ranks of the unemployed in the cause of international competitiveness. When public sector companies privatise, work forces are dramatically cut and they have to give similar unacceptable news.

Workers are told that, by promoting international competitiveness of industry and the efficiency of the state sector, they are contributing to nation building.

Shopstewards are told that, "There is no alternative to these changes" and that the workers they represent will be worse off if the restructuring is not promoted. They need to always consider the "national interest" in their negotiations with management.

Why globalisation is leading us to hell itself

By accepting globalisation as it is presented to us, and by actively promoting workplace restructuring in the name of globalisation (international competitiveness) we are digging ourselves into a deep, dark pit, as fearsome as the medieval images of hell itself.

This is a serious and dramatic claim. I must therefore take time to explain why we need to be on our guard and why we need to develop our own independent, working class assessment of global change.

A process of internationalisation has developed over centuries, stimulated by trade and consolidated by European colonisation. When we challenge globalisation in the 1990s, we are not arguing for the impossible. We are not saying that the internationalisation process can be undone. What we are arguing against is the way the process is currently being promoted.

We are attacking the present ideology of globalisation which is shaping the internationalisation process. This is the conservative ideology of free market economics so successfully advanced by Thatcher in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. This is an ideology of unqualified free trade, economic deregulation, and reducing the role of the state that is being promoted by the major international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Under the new order, national economies have to reduce tariff protection of their industries and allow the free flow of capital. Privatisation is encouraged.

The reason that this course is a route to hell for working people is that the architects of these changes have consciously refused to address the issue of worker rights in this new free trade context. In particular, they have refused to address the role of Asia in the global change process.

Asian industrialisation and worker rights

World Bank projections show that the centre of the global economy will shift from Europe and North America to the Asian region by the year 2020.

Substantial segments of world manufacturing are moving to Asia. The rapid expansion of manufacturing investment in Asia has been accompanied by the de-industrialisation of the world’s traditional manufacturing centres.

These changes have been made possible by tariff reduction and financial deregulation. Companies can now produce in Asia without fear of being excluded from home markets.

Companies are moving their production base to Asia for obvious reasons. Anti-democratic, authoritarian regimes throughout the region are attracting investment on the basis of the most extreme conditions of labour exploitation the world has seen since the early days of industrialisation in Europe.

Effective trade union rights in most Asian nations are denied. In Indonesia, for example, those who are trying to establish genuine unions are presently standing trial. Many have been tortured in prison. There have been cases of shopstewards in the workplace being murdered. A young woman activist from Surabaya in East Java was raped and murdered. She was a leader of a strike committee. There are strong suspicions on the available evidence that the Indonesian military was implicated in her murder. In mid-April, another young woman organiser, Dita Sari, was imprisoned for six years.

The denial of union rights enables Asian nations to offer a "competitive advantage" in labour standards to potential investors. Wage levels range from R4–$20 a day. Working hours are extreme in many instances, ranging from 14-18 hour days, six days a week, or a 84-108 hour working week at a time when Cosatu is trying to negotiate a 40-hour working week in South Africa.

Health and safety standards are non existent. Children between the ages of 10 and 18 years are the majority in the factories. All of this is taking place alongside an explosion of wealth of the new Asian business class and new middle classes.

Factories are enticed into Asia through the promotion of Export Processing Zones (EPZ). These are specially designated areas where the denial of union rights is even more extreme and where taxation on companies is minimal.

How then is the new South Africa to compete with Asia under these conditions which are presently determining global investment flows?

Clearly, South Africa cannot become "internationally competitive" under these conditions, unless the government and Cosatu are willing to deregulate the South African labour market, deny trade union rights, lower company taxes, set up EPZs and allow conditions in South Africa to sink to the slave level that now prevails in Asia. This would not happen over night, but would be part of a slow drift downwards.

Such a choice is unthinkable. Many paid a high personal price for liberation so that the working majority would share in South Africa’s untold natural wealth and participate in economic restructuring as central beneficiaries and not the victims of restructuring.

There is an alternative

South Africa’s workers do not have to go down the route of competing with Asia’s extreme exploitation. There is an alternative route. This is the via the new internationalism. What do we mean by this? The idea is very simple. It is the same idea that took hold in South Africa during the 1970s when the position of workers was extreme. Workers had to organise and fight, factory by factory. Change will only come through organisation that is democratic, grassroots and militant. Cosatu’s leadership recognises that the same principle applies in Asia. Despite its numerous international obligations, the federation has placed engagement with the Asian region and the building of free and independent unionism in the region as a high priority.

Free trade unions are emerging in Asia in the same way as they did in South Africa in the 1970s. Our task is to support the process and to accelerate its development. To achieve this, the Cosatu leadership has played an active role in creating, sustaining and developing the Indian Ocean initiative over the past eight years. Together with the Australian, Indian and Philippine unions, Cosatu has played a leading role in the development of an effective strategy to promote trade unionism in Asia.

Most recently, at a conference of the initiative in Calcutta, India, decisions were made to more closely integrate the work of industry sectors across the region to counter the negative impacts of globalisation. In particular, attention will be paid to the transport and communications sectors. We have to make sure that we are well organised across the region in these sectors. This is where we have power over the global economy, if we are well organised.

Economic integration and sanctions

In the new integrated global economy, trade and communications sanctions will be a critical weapon in the struggle to build trade unionism.

Governments are overly concerned about their international image. Highlighting the absence of worker rights and repression and the threat of sanctions, sends fear into the hearts of government bureaucrats. The strategy worked in Western Australia in 1995, when the state government tried to introduce anti-union laws. At present these laws are being reintroduced at this very minute. Unions from across the region are threatening to isolate Western Australia. Unions everywhere are working together more closely in response to repression in Indonesia and in response to the Korean situation, which is not yet fully resolved.

Some in South Africa will argue that trade sanctions will hurt South Africa’s national interest and that such moves run counter to South Africa’s strategy of economic engagement with Asia.

During his recent visit to Asia, President Mandela visited Malaysia and praised its Prime Minister Mahathiar for the miracle of economic growth and for other policies on the promotion of bumiputra (Malay) interests. He said that in many respects, Malaysia could be a model for South Africa.

Minister Jay Naidoo praised the investment of a leading Malaysian company in South African telecommunications privatisation.

However, nothing is said of the Malaysian Internal Security Act and the way it has been used against trade unionists in Malaysia. In 1988 a leading Malaysian trade unionist was imprisoned for two years without trial. He was tortured in the most cruel manner by being kept awake for 30 days non stop. They sought to break him mentally. Today, nearly 10 years later, he still suffers severe health problems from his unjust detention.

Unions have to challenge the new government on their form of engagement with Asia. Trade union rights have to be promoted and not sidelined as they are at present. Some leaders seem to be so easily seduced by the Asian miracle of growth that they choose not to look beneath the miracle. A short visit to any industrial district and a brief meeting with workers would change forever the glitsy image presented in opulant government meeting rooms or company board rooms.

A continuing struggle

In the new global context, the struggle has to continue just as intensely and in new ways or else all the gains will be lost.

There are a number of things that shopstewards can do. These might include the following:

• Oppose tariff reductions whilst Asian countries retain high tariff protection and whilst they deny labour rights;
• Challenge the concept of international competitiveness in the Asian-dominated global economy;
• Challenge the reduction in the role of the state and the lowering of corporate taxation emanating from the Asian region;
• Actively support the trade union struggle in Asia, through the Indian Ocean region initiative. Cosatu is hosting the fifth regional conference of the initiative in 1999. Make sure that there is a strong shopsteward presence;
• Organise shopsteward exchanges with Asian labour movements;
• Support your International Trade Secretariats in their struggle for union rights in Asia;
• Challenge the government’s present Asian engagement. Pressurise them to take a strong line on union rights in Asia.

Just as the struggle for union rights was won in South Africa, despite the great obstacles faced, so too will Asian workers win their struggle. This is the key to the future of South African workers and the kind of nation being built in South Africa. J