tag:www.globallabour.info,2010:/en//1 2010-07-25T20:22:34Z Movable Type 3.32 tag:www.globallabour.info,2009:/en//1.500 2009-09-15T15:32:08Z 2009-09-15T15:54:40Z

http://www.uniondemocracy.org September 4, 2009 Four locals in California, with a combined membership of 40,000 janitorial service workers, were ordered by SEIU President Andy Stern to join together in a new district council called United Service Workers-West. Here is something drastically new in the SEIU. Unlike the various mega locals created earlier by Stern by dissolving several locals into one, these four locals each retain a separate existence, but only as desiccated shells deprived of substance. Because the council is a "new" labor organization, Stern is allowed by federal law to appoint all its officers; and because the council is not a local but an "intermediate" organization, they hold office for the next four years. Not a man to evade appointive opportunities, Stern has chosen the council's three top officers and the 23 additional executive board members. In decreeing the council's formation on March 11, Stern prescribes its authority by informing his appointees, "I hereby impose the attached provisional Bylaws for USWW." Provisional? But it's impossible to change these bylaws without Stern's O.K. Only the executive board can amend the bylaws and then only by a 75% vote at two consecutive meetings. In any event, the imposed bylaws read, "No amendments shall be valid or become effective until approved by the International Union." Under these bylaws, the council swallows up the locals. Locals are instantly rendered powerless by one simple device: they are stripped of authority over their own treasuries. One listed basic "function" assigned to the council is "the collection of the dues paid to affiliated locals." Elsewhere the bylaws make clear what that means: "In consideration of the services being provided by the USWW to the affiliated Local Unions, all affiliated Local Unions shall pay to USWW any dues which it collects from its members or USWW collects on behalf of an affiliated Local Union." The council grabs all the money and then it---not the locals--- adopts "a budget for each affiliated local union, covering the resources devoted to servicing the members of the local union." With total control over the collection and distribution of money, the council inevitably assumes control over every significant phase of local activity. Almost everything requires money, including all phases of collective bargaining. At first glance, one may not notice that locals will actually lose control over collective bargaining. But you must read the bylaw double talk with care: Among the basic council functions are these: to "bargain [and] ...enforce collective bargaining agreements on behalf of affiliated local unions." That aim seems qualified by the words, "nothing in these Bylaws are intended to supplant or suspend the collective bargaining rights of any Local Union," a qualification that is reassuring only until you read on: "A Local Union may voluntarily transfer its collective bargaining rights to USWW." Putting it together: Any local which "voluntarily" refuses to cede control over collective bargaining to the council, can be financially starved of the resources necessary to conduct its own effective collective bargaining and so forced into submission. It can't happen here, you will say? Then you don't know where Stern is taking the SEIU. The locals have no right to their own money. The council president is endowed with sweeping financial powers. He or she is authorized to hire and fire and direct the whole council paid staff and set their rate of pay and to retain attorneys, accountants, and other consultants. The president is insulated from membership control. Because the council is an intermediary body, not a local, the president, despite those enormous powers, is not elected by the membership but by a delegated body, in this case by the council executive board. After their four-year appointive term is up, executive board members will be elected by the locals, but that status does not give them a paid job. The president's power of the purse extends even to those who have the constitutional power to elect him or her. An executive board member depends upon the president for a paid staff job. In the old style SEIU, the now-familiar mega locals remain formally autonomous; they collect and retain dues; their members elect local officers; they are responsible for organizing, collective bargaining, processing trials and charges --- all the authority and responsibility traditionally vested in local unions remains. With the new California janitors council, the role of locals is transformed. To sum it up: The council takes over dues and assessments. As required by federal law, after the appointive term has ended local members will be permitted to elect local officers, but not necessarily to pay them. Money for all salaries, including for elected local officers, depends upon decision of the council. Who pays the piper calls the tune. Without independent access to money, local members lose control over their own locals. The handling of grievances and the processing of charges and trials are removed a greater distance away from the membership. The council dominates the locals; the international president, through his appointive power, dominates the council. In all this, the SEIU draws upon an organizational form that has been perfected by its Change to Win partner, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. But there is this crucial difference: What the Carpenters have created impinges only upon the construction trades. But Andy Stern, SEIU president, has pretensions of emerging as the great new leader of American labor. What he has fabricated in California, therefore, has broad significance as a portent of how he would shape the emerging new labor movement. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2009:/en//1.501 2009-09-15T15:51:52Z 2009-09-15T15:59:54Z

http://www.uniondemocracy.org September 8, 2009 How things have changed for Andy Stern in five years! In 2004, he was the hottest labor celebrity in town. He was about to lead a coalition of major unions out of the AFL-CIO into the rival Change to Win, reorganize and galvanize his own SEIU, organize low-paid immigrants and minorities, and revive a declining labor movement. Labor activists, some out of the civil rights movement, some with honorable resumes in battles for union democracy, some students looking for a worthy cause, found a place with Stern. Pro-labor intellectuals ---writers, academics, researchers --- hailed the Stern-inspired movement as the greatest thing since the CIO left the AFL. The mainstream media, including even the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, featured him as the rising star of labor leadership. In five years, he solidified his power in the SEIU by merging old locals into new mammoth units with leaders who are appointed by him, often after pledging uncritical loyalty to the administration. The SEIU convention in June last year, overwhelmingly endorsed all he has done and proposed to do. The union has amassed a huge treasury for organizing and political action. He can afford to mobilize a paid staff and some supporters for mass demonstrations against rivals in the labor movement. His power is respected ....and feared. But he has created a problem for himself: Entrenched at the height of organizational authority, he is losing the moral high ground he once occupied so prominently. Change to Win, the union coalition he led, is falling apart. Back in May 2005, in the celebratory spirit of the day, Sal Rosselli contributed a long piece to Labor Notes, the bottom-up troublemakers' newsletter, welcoming Stern's call for a new way. "At our international convention in June 2004," he wrote, "we authorized our officers to put forward a set of proposals to produce fundamental change in the AFL-CIO. If that change were not possible, we authorized our officers to withdraw from the AFL-CIO to build something stronger. [T]he AFL-CIO needs a new leader. It is just common sense that a new industry-based strategy and structure could only be led by someone who fought for ---and not against--- that change." Years before, Rosselli, as an insurgent, won office as president of SEIU Local 250. As part of the Stern team, he became president of United Healthcare Workers-West in California, one of the largest SEIU locals, president of the SEIU California Council, and a member of the SEIU executive committee. But by 2007, Rosselli learned that everything had changed. After he criticized one healthcare agreement negotiated by Stern as near-company union contract, Stern embarked on a relentless campaign to destroy him, ending in a trusteeship imposed over UHW-W and the removal of Rosselli and all the local's officers. Stern was able to use the power of the purse to retain Ray Marshall, a former respected Secretary of Labor and university professor, to conduct hearings and invest the trusteeship with the gloss of impartiality. But that power could not shield him from the public relations disaster that he inflicted upon himself. When rumors of a pending trusteeship first surfaced, over a hundred writers and educators expressed dismay in a long letter to Stern. "Putting UHW under trusteeship," they wrote, "would send a very troubling message and be viewed by many as a sign that internal democracy is not valued or tolerated within SEIU." Such a statement was a startling event. An assemblage of intellectuals in moral support of dissidents facing repression inside a union: nothing like it in memory. (But for the SEIU, it soon became almost routine!) Some of the signers, unaware of its implications, imagined that the letter would remain an unheralded private complaint; but, when it was published as an ad in the New York Times; and Stern expressed his displeasure, a few got the nervous jitters and hastened to backtrack. But only a few. On November 9, 2008, when trusteeship had been transformed from rumor to imminent reality, a second group of 51 academics, writers, and labor educators, joined by the presidents of two Teacher locals ---all from California --- spoke out. "We in California have a great deal at stake... [An unjustified] takeover of the 150,000-member UHW would be a disaster....We urge you to avoid such a tragedy by respecting the autonomy and constructive dissent of UHW." This time, none got nervous; they all held firm. A week later, opposition to the pending trusteeship had spread beyond the narrow circle of intellectuals to representatives in California of community, ethnic, and religious organizations and local and state political leaders. On November 17, 2008, the San Francisco Business Times reported: "More than 240 lawmakers, community leaders, urge SEIU to hold off on UHW takeover." Signers of their letter included state senators, assembly reps, and country supervisors. "We ask," they wrote Stern, "that you accept [a] mediator's recommendation... rather than precipitate a crippling war inside SEIU." The San Francisco Board of Supervisors presented a "Certificate of Honor" to "Sal Rosselli and the 150,000 members of UHW-West for their continued fight for real democracy in the American Labor Movement and their commitment to building real power for healthcare workers." Meanwhile, Stern's Change to Win coalition was coming apart, plunging him into a second front in his war inside the labor movement. (The first is against the National Union of Healthcare Workers, the new independent union founded by Rosselli's team.) Two of Stern's major allies in founding Change to Win back in 2005 had been Bruce Raynor, president of UNITE the clothing union, and John Wilhelm, president of HERE, the hotel-restaurant workers union. The two unions, UNITE and HERE, had merged into the unified UNITE-HERE, with Raynor as its president. But when it seemed obvious that he would be defeated for reelection by the Wilhelm forces, Raynor split away, formed a rival union, Workers United, and turned it into an affiliate of Stern's SEIU. Welcoming Raynor, Stern loaned the new union a million dollars. Now, backed by Stern, Raynor is at war with Wilhelm's UNITE-HERE. Who is right and who wrong, who are the good guys and who the bad in this battle between Raynor and Wilhelm? Whatever the answer to that question, it will not alter one obvious fact: Stern's PR stock has fallen so low, his public reputation has been so damaged that he is widely blamed for provoking the internecine war. In July this year, in a letter to SEIU Executive Board members, 228 scholars and educators from universities all over the country, and some in Canada, (even 3 in Britain, and one each in New Zealand, Japan, and Guatemala!) protested Stern's role. They wrote, "SEIU's concerted efforts to undermine UNITE-HERE belie the progressive ideals SEIU has upheld for decades.... We are concerned that these actions are undermining the principle of union democracy and dividing the progressive movement at a critical moment in history. We urge you to stop your interference in UNITE-HERE, refocus on organizing the millions of unorganized workers...." If this array of public criticism from pro-labor intellectuals and public representatives is unprecedented, what follows is even more unusual. An unwritten gentlemen's agreement regulates relations among top labor leaders: "You can run your union as you see fit, even honestly, and I will never criticize you publicly. In return, you will never criticize me for running my union as I see fit." But that code was seriously breached in June when, in an obvious repudiation of Stern-Raynor, fourteen top labor leaders signed a statement of support for UNITE-HERE. The leaders of the presidents of all big Change to Win unions were among them. Taken together, all these events pose a portentous question: What will shape the future role of the SEIU: the organizational power and resources at the disposal of Andy Stern or the power of social opinion expressed by intellectuals, political leaders, and laborites? ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2009:/en//1.504 2009-10-07T17:00:25Z 2009-11-27T12:21:50Z

Bolerium Books Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co. Union Communication Services (UCS, Inc.) Left on the Shelf Pluto Press Verso Zed Books]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2009:/en//1.505 2009-11-02T17:47:19Z 2009-11-02T18:43:30Z

Interview: Dan Gallin Bureaucratism: Labour's Enemy Within By Peter Hall-Jones*, for the New Unionism Network (http://www.newunionism.net) 2009...

Bureaucratism: Labour's Enemy Within By Peter Hall-Jones*, for the New Unionism Network (http://www.newunionism.net) 2009]]> New Unionism: The union movement is the largest democratic force in the world today, by far. However, too many union members complain about bureaucratic behaviour at leadership level. Do you accept this is a problem, and, if so, what do you think are the root causes? Dan Gallin: First, let’s get the problem in perspective. The level of bureaucracy in unions is constantly overstated. We have much less difficulty in this area than corporations do, for instance. Of course corporations are, by their very nature, top-down power structures – what could be less democratic than your average workplace? – and I cannot imagine anything as wasteful as some management bureaucracies. Similarly, think about bureaucracy in government, or in tri-partite bodies, or in non-governmental organisations. The difference is that unions, by their very structure and purpose, are consciously committed to internal democracy, and so failures are clearly seen as such. The basic structures of unionism are democratic and the internal struggle to assert and reassert democracy is always there. Trade unions have to deliver; there is a very short time span between demand and the delivery. Think of collective bargaining, for instance. Unions are constantly being held to account by their members. NU: Are you trying to tell us there's no real problem, then? DG: No. I am not trying to minimize the problem. What I am saying is that bureaucracy is a pervasive feature of all institutional and organizational life. What, after all, is a bureaucracy? It is an administration, and all organizations need an administration. The problem arises when this administration develops a collective interest of its own, separate and eventually even opposed to the interests of the people it is supposed to serve. This is serious enough in government, where the civil service constitutes a bureaucracy that can easily overreach its authority. In a democracy, the civil service is supposed to be the servant of the people. When it starts to act as its master, democracy is in danger. In the trade union movement, the problem is even more serious because its administration, its own civil service if you wish, must represent people who have no other source of power than their organization. If this organization ceases to be responsive to their needs, they lose everything. An administration that builds its own power at the expense of the membership is betraying its trust – that is treason. NU: If, as you say, trade unionism is inherently democratic, why is it that we hear these complaints about unions being run as dictatorships and/or oligarchies? DG: Actually, there are not so many cases of this, in proportion. What happens is that we have some spectacular examples of organizations which degenerate and then become notorious. They are falsely represented as typical of the movement, most often in anti-union propaganda. But there is never any guarantee against an organization, even with the best democratic traditions, being hijacked by anti-democratic cliques or personalities. The hijacking of the Russian revolution by the Communist bureaucracy led by Stalin is a classical example. After four or five short years, a vibrant, radically democratic, revolutionary mass movement started giving way to the rule of a bureaucracy which first asserted, then consolidated power by means of terror, police and military terror against its own people, on a scale not seen before in modern times. A whole new society with a bureaucratic ruling class! How do these things happen? In order to work, democracy needs the active support of large masses of people at all times. In a union, this means the active participation of most of the membership. Democracy is not a state of being, it is an activity, it is in fact hard work, and it is a constant work in progress. You might say the same thing about freedom. Most people are not able to maintain a high level of commitment over time. They are not organization professionals, they need to get on with their lives, as they should, so "democracy fatigue" might set in; especially after periods of great social stress. They might not pay attention to what happens in the organization for a time, routine sets in and the professionals take over. If the leaders are not trained in the right kind of politics, if they are not persons of the highest individual integrity, and if they are not supervised and controlled, they may start treating the organization as if it were their own property. This is why it is the responsibility of every progressive and democratic trade union leadership to maintain constitutional and practical conditions in which membership participation and control is ensured and welcomed, without making conditions of participation too onerous for ordinary members. NU: Just by way of clarification, can you explain what you mean by "trained in the right kind of politics"? DG: Socialist politics, of course. And by that I mean the kind of politics based on the values that were at the origins of the labour movement and that made it great: solidarity, selflessness, respect for people, a sense of honour, and the modesty that comes with the awareness of being a soldier in the service of a great cause, a contempt for self-promotion, or "le refus de parvenir" as Monatte (17) called it. NU: Do you think the Cold War contributed to bureaucratizing the movement? DG: It certainly did. In a situation of extreme political polarization by outside forces, it is easy to lose sight of the original purpose of the exercise. First, let us be clear what we are talking about. The Cold War was a conflict between States, between two blocs of States, led by the two superpowers of the time: the United States and the USSR, more or less from 1949 to 1989. However, this conflict had nothing to do with a much older conflict within the labour movement. This earlier conflict arose after the October Revolution, when the Russian Communist Party created an International of its own and declared war on all other movements of the Left unless they accepted total subordination to its dictates (1). That conflict became unbridgeable once the Communist leadership had moved to imprison and execute activists of other Left tendencies in the territory under its control, including its own opponents and dissidents. Under Stalin, this became a systematic campaign of extermination, with hit men spreading out all over the world to assassinate opponents. It is small wonder that a majority of the Left, of all tendencies, became "anti-Communist", meaning that they organized to defend themselves as best as they could against Communist claims of hegemony and terror. When Nazi Germany attacked the USSR in 1941, breaking the treaty it had signed two years previously, the USSR found itself part of the anti-fascist war-time alliance. Despite past history and experience, much of the Western trade-union movement, which was predominantly social-democratic, was ready for organizational unity with Soviet bloc labour organizations. The result was the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), which was founded in 1945. However, it lasted only four years as an inclusive organization of the world's labour movement (though it continued, and still exists, as a Communist rump). The unity on which the WFTU had been founded was the temporary unity of governments, not a unity of labour – none of the contentious issues between the Communists and everyone else on the Left had been resolved. When the unity of governments gave way to the rivalry between the US and the USSR for world power, the artificial top-down unity of the WFTU also broke apart. What happened then was a race between the two blocs to secure the support – in fact, the control – of civil society organizations (labour, youth, students, women, etc.), with trade unions as prime targets. And now comes the complicated part, which must be clearly understood. The Western governments and the non-Communist Left suddenly had the same enemy. The conflict between governments – the "Cold War" – and that earlier conflict within the labour movement, became superimposed. For some, they became indistinguishable. This is how the war-time relationships which some socialists – and others –had formed with the political services of the US or UK governments (among others) to fight the Nazis continued seamlessly into the fight for a "free world", against the new totalitarian menace. In reality, we were of course still dealing with two different conflicts and two distinct interests. One was fighting Stalinism to defend working class interests, the other was fighting the USSR as a rival imperialism to that of the US. These are hardly compatible positions, but the most difficult thing to comprehend in politics, especially if you have the knife at your throat, is that the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. Despite the apparent symmetry of the situation of the trade union movement within the two blocs, the reality was quite different. In the Soviet bloc, the trade union apparatus was part of the government structures of a police state, and a fairly subordinate structure at that. Dissidence was treated as a criminal offence or as a mental disorder. So in that context, the bureaucracy issue does not even arise in connection with the Cold War -- the whole system had been thoroughly bureaucratized long before. In its first decades, that system was impossible to crack from within. The situation in the West was much different: here a three-way battle was being fought between the advocates of an alignment on pro-American policies, the advocates and apologists for Soviet policies, and those who kept saying that neither option represented working class interests and that the labour movement should refuse to be aligned with either side. Those of us who held the latter position believed that the lines of cleavage that mattered most in the world were not the vertical ones separating the two blocs, but the horizontal ones between the working class and the rulers of both systems, a fundamental division cutting across both blocs. This was not an easy position to hold. The pressures to align and to conform were very strong. Having been put in charge of the AFL-CIO's International Department by George Meany (2), Jay Lovestone (3) -- the Dr. Strangelove (4) of the labour movement -- with his acolyte Irving Brown (5) and the various AFL-CIO Institutes, were running around the world buying unions with US government money, in close cooperation with the CIA , and trying to destroy any organization or individuals that did not accept their line, whether Communist or not. They were not looking for allies, they were recruiting agents. The Soviet bloc operators were doing the same for the other side, also backed by considerable diplomatic and financial resources. The result of this competition is not difficult to guess: it spread a culture of corruption, especially in Africa where the movement was weakest and most vulnerable, but also in parts of Asia, Latin America, Europe and the United States itself, where some labour leaders were co-opted into Cold War politics, although most had no idea what the International Department was up to, and did not much care until all these operations were exposed in the mid-1960s. In that sense the Cold War was a very powerful factor of bureaucratization in the West: it created and strengthened corrupt leaderships who no longer had to take their memberships into account, it enforced political conformity, stifled discussion, suppressed dissent and isolated all radical opposition through ‘red baiting’. NU: Some labour writers contend that the acceptance of Cold War politics, and anti-Communist purges by the leadership of the American labour movement, contributed to its paralysis during the conservative onslaught of recent years. DG: Yes and no. It's not that simple. True enough, after the anti-Communist purges in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the merger with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1955, the conservative elements of the AFL prevailed in the merged AFL-CIO. These people would later prove totally at a loss in the face of globalization and the conservative onslaught launched by Reagan, and continued by his successors, both Republican and Democrat. But the problem with this story is that it exonerates the American Communist Party of any responsibility in these developments. The CP and its trade union activists are cast in the role of innocent victims. This overlooks the war the CP waged against all of the Left from its earliest days: first against the IWW and the socialists, then against the Trotskyists and against every other kind of radical group it didn't control, and of course against most union leaderships, progressive or not. The CP did what it could to destroy the American Left and, like in Niemöller's poem (6), when they came to get it there was nobody left to defend it. This said, most conservative labour leaders didn't need the Cold War in order to be ferociously anti-radical, super-patriotic and, eventually, helpless before the anti-labour campaigns of the Right. You have to remember that we’re dealing here with very stupid people. They may have been street-wise and cunning, but they knew nothing about the world and couldn't think strategically. The roots of conservatism in the American union movement are very perceptively described by authors such as Daniel Fusfeld and Patricia Cayo Sexton (7). What the Cold War situation did, was to give people like Lovestone the opportunity to organize the right-wing of the American trade union bureaucracy as a base for a major international operation, and to isolate leaders of the labour Left, like Walter Reuther (8), Ralph Helstein (9) and Pat Gorman (10), as well as some good unions with a Communist history, like the ILWU and the UE. NU: Did the Communists not at least denounce the clandestine right-wing operations the American unions were involved in? DG: Not at all. Of course they would denounce operations like the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala, or of Goulart in Brazil, as examples of American imperialism in action, but there was never any exposure of the union involvement. The CIA and British government operations in the labour movement were blown open by Trotskyists and independent radicals in the mid-1960s. Then the New York Times picked up the story and it became a major scandal. But the CP had nothing to do with it at any stage. Afterwards, of course, everyone started writing about it. NU: While all of this was happening in the US, bureaucratization must surely have been a growing problem in the European trade union movement as well? DG: In Europe and elsewhere, for instance in Japan, the polarized politics of the Cold War also enforced political conformity and stifled dissent, but Europe is a complicated place with many political and trade union cultures, so generalizations are not very useful. In some countries Cold War politics played a major role in the labour movement, in others hardly at all. Far more pervasive and general were the consequences of the war. Today it is hard to imagine the extent to which the historical labour movement had been destroyed, first by the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, then by the war itself, with the occupation of most of Europe by the Nazi armies and police. In most of Europe the structures of the labour movement were wiped out, parties and unions of course, but also the entire institutional network that rooted the movement in society: welfare institutions, credit unions, co-ops, cultural and leisure time activities – everything. Most of the leadership of the movement, right down to local level, had to go into exile, or into concentration camps, or died in the war. Many of the best people were lost. One of the important parties of the Socialist International, the Jewish Labour Bund (11), was destroyed entirely, together with the population that supported it. No one had imagined anything like this could happen, and those who had hoped that the end of WWII would usher in another period of social revolution, a re-play of 1918, had lost touch with reality. Superficially, the unions emerged in a strong position – after all we were on the side of the victors, whereas big business had collaborated with fascism throughout Europe and had much to be forgiven for. In fact, labour was far weaker than it appeared, and far more dependent on the State than before the war. That too did not seem to be a problem at first, since most post-war governments were pro-labour in one way or another, but it did eventually lead to the loss of the political and material independence of the movement and, yes, it did promote bureaucratization. Whereas the pre-war movement conceived of itself as a counter-culture and an alternative society, at least in principle, the post-war movement made its peace with the "social market economy" and demanded no more than a better life within the system (full employment, welfare, social protection, good wages and working conditions). In that situation, the leadership of the movement became increasingly unwilling to maintain a whole network of flanking institutions. If you don't want to change society then you don't need to build an alternative counter-culture or an alternative economy. Think of all the money you can save. So the unions concentrated on their presumed "core business" - collective bargaining with "social partners" - the parties concentrated on elections, and the movement lost its roots in society, lost many of its think tanks and educational institutions, and lost its periphery, a sphere of influence and protection. At the same time, you had the surge of prosperity in post-war Western Europe through the Marshall Plan. An exhausted working class, after the deprivation and the sufferings of the war, started to get its life back and became gradually more comfortable over the next thirty years. And why not? But as it played out, as a major political factor, it created a problem the movement couldn't cope with, because it also coincided with the rise of media empires, with television, financed largely by advertising. Our movement was not ready to compete at that level. This is where we lost the communications war. We lost our press and any independent expressions of working class culture, with the long-term effect of losing the culture wars in the 1990s. Many of the issues of the vanished civil society of labour eventually got taken over by others (feminists, environmentalists, human rights activists, etc.), but that's another story. Then, in countries like France, Italy and Greece, where the CP was dominant in the labour movement, the working class became hostage to Cold War politics and political positions, as well as labour alignments. They were frozen for about thirty or forty years. In some other countries, notably Germany, Cold War polarization also contributed to deadening the political debate and distorting trade union priorities. Finally, European unions have become accustomed to State subsidies, in general for specific activities, such as education or participation in a host of official and quasi-official institutions and meetings. Today, in many countries, unions would be unable to function without the government subsidies they have become accustomed to. So what do you get? A heavily bureaucratized and passive movement, initially led by survivors, then rapidly replaced by complacent and arrogant careerists who are happy to depend on the State. They administer the gains of past struggles but are unwilling to conduct any new ones, opposing any ideas they have not thought of themselves and believing that nothing must ever happen for the first time. That kind of leadership educates union members to be passive consumers of union services, not participants in struggle. NU: You said before that, as far as Europe was concerned, generalizations were not very useful. Should we take that to include what you just said? DG: You got me there. I think what I have tried to do is draw a common denominator, a composite picture which applies in general but not exactly in any one country. For example, in the Nordic countries, except for a short-lived split in Finland, the Cold War had hardly any impact at all. In Spain, where the labour movement emerged from a fascist regime only in the 1970s, rank-and-file democracy is a strongly-felt aspiration. All of Eastern Europe is a different situation again, and a very complicated situation, with many cross-currents. And of course there are always exceptions. There have been outstanding labour leaders like Otto Brenner (12), Wilhelm Gefeller (13) in Germany, Jack Jones (14) in Britain, André Renard (15) in Belgium. So, one has to fine-tune every national situation. But some will recognize my descriptions and, as the saying goes, if the shoe fits, wear it. Neither do I want to idealize the pre-war labour movement in Europe. There were too many entirely avoidable and disastrous defeats. The leading labour parties of Germany and Austria had armed militias ready to fight which were awaiting orders that never came. The French Popular Front government refused to support the Spanish Republicans in the civil war, who, had they won, would have changed the course of history. Not to speak of the catastrophic Communist policies, in Germany, in Spain, all over. One needs to reflect on these defeats and learn from them. But even so, the level of ambition in those days was higher. NU: You were general secretary of the IUF for many years, and active in the international union movement. How does the international movement cope with the problem of bureaucratism? DG: With difficulty. You have to realize that the international movement is yet another level removed from the rank-and-file: the actual members of international trade union organizations, in a statutory sense, are national unions, not individual workers, so the international organization will reflect to a very large extent the culture and practices of its affiliated unions, particularly the large affiliates. So, structurally, it is almost inevitably bureaucratic. The politics of the leadership, basically the secretariat and the governing bodies, makes a big difference. You can have an organization with a deeply rooted culture of militancy and a democratic culture, which will do two things: first, ensure that democratic practices are respected and encouraged in the way it operates, within its own governing bodies, and, second, encourage democratic participation within its affiliates wherever it can, for example through its educational programs, in its publications, etc. NU: And then you have the others... DG: Indeed. Again, it is a question of politics, of how you interpret the situation and, consequently, how you evaluate the union response required. If you believe that "social partnership" is an accurate description of labour/management relations, and that social change occurs through conversations between political leaders and experts – "social dialogue" - then you will invest your resources and energies in a lobbying operation. The privileged counterparts in these conversations will be the bureaucrats of government organizations and of employers' organizations. In meeting after meeting, you will be bargaining about words, and you will believe you have won a significant victory when you have changed a sentence in a statement. This can go on forever, and no one will ever know the difference. The workers who are members of such organizations don't even know they exist. NU: How can workers, at rank-and-file level, learn to tell the difference between useful and useless organizations? Where does usefulness become apparent? DG: Very simple: workers certainly can tell the difference when they become involved in a conflict. When it comes to conflict, the differences are very quickly apparent. And whether our international sell-out artists like it or not, unions are about conflict. Either the international organization pulls out all stops and the saying "one for all, all for one", (especially the second part) becomes a concrete reality, for as long as it takes, or else the international organization starts mediating instead of fighting, tries to minimize and kill the conflict, even sides with the employer just to be rid of the problem. NU: How does this relate back to the issue of bureaucratism? Are you suggesting that bureaucracy and politics are related? DG: They are, very much so. However, the relationship is not a mechanical one. For instance it would be simplistic and wrong to say that left-wing politics protects us against bureaucracy. If we are talking about the Communist tradition, the opposite is true, almost always, and this includes Maoism, which is actually an extreme form of Stalinism. People who come out of that school are often dangerous authoritarians. Even when they change their politics, they don't necessarily change their methods. And of course social-democracy has its own awesome bureaucratic traditions; even anarchist and syndicalist organizations, contrary to legend, can be run in extremely authoritarian and bureaucratic ways. No, the only form of politics which is an effective antidote to bureaucratism is the kind of socialist politics that contains a strong element of radical democracy. This goes back to Marx himself, but despite appearances, this current was never dominant in the socialist movement. It surfaces from time to time, a person like Rosa Luxemburg would be fairly typical, there were others within the political families of the Left. Eugene Debs in the United States would be another example. NU: That’s not a very broad political base. If that’s all we have, is the struggle against bureaucratism lost in advance? DG: No, because in fact we have very much more. The politics of radical democracy respond to a very deep and fundamental need felt by workers. They keep coming back to this on their own, and they very often spontaneously develop democratic forms of organizing, of conducting struggles, of running their organizations. Rosa Luxemburg understood this. This aspiration is very strong. That is the basic reason why the labour movement has such a democratic culture, despite all the pressures to the contrary from the society that surrounds it… the "old shit", as Marx called it (16). NU: Do you see workers' desire for deeper forms of democracy extending from union HQ all the way down into the workplace? DG: Yes, except I would put it the other way around, from the workplace - the "point of production", as the IWW used to say - to union HQ. It has to start at the point of production. As I said, this is a very fundamental need of workers, and actually very often of people in general. Think of women's movements or peasant's movements - in all progressive mass movements there is this demand for transparency and accountability in the leadership. The point is to nurture and strengthen the politics of radical democracy, the particular strand of socialist politics which I believe is the authentic Marxism, which insists that power, where it matters, always has to remain in the hands of the workers. Today this means almost all of society, since nearly everybody is part of the working class, whether they know it or not. To get there, you have to start from the bottom, the point of production, and then build democratic institutions, like democratic unions, impose democratic procedures at every level, democratize the decision-making mechanism in public administration. We don't want to abolish bureaucracy if bureaucracy means administration, we all need administration and we want it to be honest, transparent and efficient, in our own organizations to start with, then in society at large. We want an administration built on our key values: justice and freedom. These will be the values of the society of the future - if we make it that far. -- end -- * A little more on Dan Gallin's life and work Dan Gallin is currently chair of the Global Labour Institute (GLI), a foundation established in 1997 with a secretariat in Geneva. The GLI investigates the consequences of the globalization of the world economy for workers and trade unions, develops and proposes counterstrategies and promotes international thought and action in the labour movement. Prior to this, he worked for the IUF from August 1960 until April 1997, since 1968 as General Secretary. He was born in 1931 as a Romanian citizen, became stateless in 1949 and was granted Swiss citizenship in 1969. He studied political science and sociology in the United States and in Switzerland and since 1953 has lived in Geneva. He joined the socialist movement as a student in the United States in 1951 and has been a member of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party since 1955. He is a member of the Swiss General Workers' Union UNIA and has been a member of one of its predecessors, the Swiss Commercial, Transport and Food Workers' Union, since 1960. He served as President of IFWEA from 1992 to 2003 and was Director of the Organization and Representation Program of WIEGO from June 30, 2000 to July 31, 2002. He continues to serve on the WIEGO Steering Committee. He is currently researching union organization of women workers in the informal economy, labour movement history and issues of policy and organization in the international trade union movement. Peter Hall-Jones Peter Hall-Jones is communications co-ordinator for the New Unionism Network (http://www.newunionism.net). The Network is an informal global group of union activists and labour academics (see http://www.newunionism.net/who.htm) who have united around four key principles: organizing, workplace democracy, internationalism and creativity. An illustrated version of this interview can be found at http://www.newunionism.net/redirects/gallin.htm Endnotes 1. The Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920 agreed on 'Twenty One Conditions', which formalised the beginning of 'the great split': a split which was to divide the labour movement for the rest of the century. For more on what is meant by this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-one_Conditions. Note in particular: ‘In the columns of the press, at public meetings, in the trades unions, in the co-operatives – wherever the members of the Communist International can gain admittance – it is necessary to brand not only the bourgeoisie but also its helpers, the reformists of every shade, systematically and pitilessly.’ 2. George Meany (1894 – 1980), president of the American Federation of Labor from 1952 to 1955, then, following its merger with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, president of the united AFL-CIO from 1955 to 1979. 3. Jay Lovestone (1906 – 1989), a founder of the American Communist Party, later leader of the Right-Wing opposition group (the pro-Bukharin faction) which dissolved in 1941. In 1943 Lovestone became international affairs director of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union and, in 1963, director of the international affairs department of the AFL-CIO. He held that position until 1974 and as the main architect of the collaboration of the AFL-CIO with the CIA. For more on Lovestone, see: ‘A Covert Life: Jay Lovestone, Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster’ by Ted Morgan (New York: Random House, 1999) 4. Dr. Strangelove: the 1964 black comedy film by Stanley Kubrick, featuring a paranoiac American general launching a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, hoping to thwart a Communist conspiracy to "sap and impurify" the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people with fluoridated water. The US president in the film is advised by a "mad scientist" type: Dr. Strangelove. 5. Irving Brown (1911 – 1989) , chief lieutenant and hatchet man for Lovestone since the 1930s, set up "anti-Communist" operations in the trade union movement, mostly in Europe, including the notorious Mediterranean Committee, organized with the help of gangsters in French, Italian and Greek ports. 6. Martin Niemöller (1892 – 1984), prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known as the author of the following lines (and variations thereof): "First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me." 7. Daniel Fusfeld: The Rise and Repression of Radical Labor 1877-1918, Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, Chicago, 1980 (ISBN 088286050X) and Patricia Cayo Sexton: The War on Labor and the Left – Understanding America's Unique Conservatism, Westview Press, Boulder/San Francisco/Oxford, 1991 (ISBN 0813310636) 8. Walter Reuther (1907 – 1970), leading organizer and after 1946 president of the United Auto Workers' union, a Socialist Party member until 1939, president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1952, negotiated the merger with the American Federation of Labor in 1955, eventually clashed with Meany over the conservative policies of the AFL-CIO and formed a short-lived alternative center, the Alliance for Labor Action (1958–1972) with the Teamsters and a few smaller unions. On May 9, 1970, Reuther and his wife May were killed when their chartered plane crashed while on final approach to the airstrip near the union’s recreational and educational facility at Black Lake, Michigan. In October 1968, a year and a half before the fatal crash, Reuther and his brother Victor were almost killed in a small private plane as it approached Dulles airport. Both incidents are amazingly similar; the altimeter in the fatal crash was believed to have malfunctioned. When Victor Reuther was interviewed many years after the fatal crash he said “I and other family members are convinced that both the fatal crash and the near fatal one in 1968 were not accidental.” 9. Ralph Helstein (1908 – 1985), president of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) from 1946 to 1968. Under his leadership, the union, a CIO affiliate, became one of the most militant and democratic unions in the US. It organized the meat packing industry in the US and Canada and played a leading role in fighting for minority and women's rights. When the UPWA merged with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters union in 1968, Helstein became vice president and special counsel. He worked with the union until 1972 and died in Chicago in 1985. 10. Patrick Emmet Gorman (1882 – 1980), a life-long socialist, International Secretary-Treasurer of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen (AFL) from 1942 to 1976 (the Meat Cutters were an old socialist union which had a European constitution, where the secretary-treasurer, not the president, was the chief executive officer). Gorman opposed Meany on the Vietnam war and on many other political issues. 11. The General Jewish Labour Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, in Yiddish the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland , generally called the Bund (from German and Yiddish: Bund, meaning federation or union) or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a Jewish political party and trade union in several European countries operating predominantly between the 1890s and the 1930s with remnants of the party still active in the United States, Canada, Australia, France and the United Kingdom. The Bund opposed Zionism and fought for the recognition of Jews as an autonomous cultural community within European countries. In this and in other respects it was strongly influenced by the Austro-Marxist school of socialism, and was a left-socialist party in the Labour and Socialist International. In WWII it was active in the resistance movement against the Nazi occupation in Poland and in Lithuania, one of its leaders, Marek Edelman, was a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, and later of the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR) in 1976 and of the Solidarity movement. Edelman died on October 2, 2009, at the age of 90. Two leaders of the Bund, Victor Alter and Henryk Erlich, who had sought refuge in the USSR after the German invasion, were executed in December 1941 in Moscow on Stalin's orders. 12. Otto Brenner (1907 – 1972), president of the German metal workers' union IG Metall from 1956 to 1972. In 1931 Brenner left the Social-Democratic Party (SPD) which he had joined as a youth to join the Socialist Workers' Party, founded by Left Socialists and dissident Communists, too late to prevent the seizure of power by Hitler. Brenner became active in the anti-Nazi resistance, was arrested in 1933, sentenced to two years' prison and kept under police supervision until the end of the war. In 1945 Brenner re-joined the SPD and became active in the reconstruction of the trade union movement. At the head of the IG Metall he played a leading tole in the defence of democratic rights and against rearmament. In 1961, he was elected president of the International Metalworkers' Federation. 13. Wilhelm Gefeller (1906 – 1983), president of the German chemical workers' union IG Chemie from 1949 to 1969 , one of the founders of the post-war German trade union movement, active in the SPD. Strong advocate of co-determination in German industry and at international level, and of democratic rights. President of the International Chemical and General Workers' Unions (ICF) in the late 1960s. 14. James Larkin (Jack) Jones (1913 – 2009), general secretary of the Transport & General Workers' Union (UK) from 1968 to 1978. Throughout his career he strove to increase the power and influence of shop stewards. In 1937 he joined the International Brigades in the Spanish civil war and was wounded in 1938. Jones was also Vice-President of the International Transport Workers Federation and, after his retirement, was a campaigner for pensioners' rights. His autobiography, Union Man, was published in 1986. 15. André Renard (1911 – 1962), Belgian trade unionist, active in the resistance under Nazi occupation, created an illegal united trade union movement independent of political parties and advocated its extension to the entire country at liberation, but could not overcome the split between socialist and Catholic unions. Deputy General-Secretary of the socialist trade union center FGTB, leader of the six-week general strike in 1960 -1961 against the austerity policies of the conservative government. A strong advocate for the autonomy of Wallonia (the French-speaking part of Belgium). 16. "…revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the old shit and become fitted to found society anew." Karl Marx: The German Ideology, Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook 1845 17. Pierre Monatte (1881 – 1960) A proof-reader by profession, he was a leader of the French CGT when it was a revolutionary syndicalist organization and, in 1909, founded its journal, La vie Ouvrière. He was an anti-war internationalist during World War I., joined the French Communist Party in 1923 and was expelled in 1924 for opposing its bureaucratization. He then returned to revolutionary syndicalism, and in 1925 he founded La Révolution Prolétarienne, which is still being published (http://revolutionproletarienne.wordpress.com). "Le refus de parvenir" means: "the refusal of social climbing". Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2009:/en//1.507 2009-11-30T18:38:00Z 2009-12-01T10:37:46Z

Global Labour Journal...

Global Labour Journal ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2009:/en//1.508 2009-12-01T16:33:30Z 2009-12-01T16:47:46Z

Financialization and Casualization of Labour – Building a Trade Union and Regulatory Response ILO/GLU International Conference on Financialisation of Capital: Deterioration of Working Conditions - TISS, Mumbai, February 22-24, 2009 Peter Rossman, International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering,...

Financialization and Casualization of Labour – Building a Trade Union and Regulatory Response ILO/GLU International Conference on Financialisation of Capital: Deterioration of Working Conditions - TISS, Mumbai, February 22-24, 2009 Peter Rossman, International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) ]]> In the final analysis, the fundamental issue we face is how to organize unparalleled accumulated global wealth to start feeding the hungry and provide potable water to the millions who have no access to it, restore vanishing topsoil, halt and reverse climate change and put the right to work, the right to decent work, at the center of the rights we demand. Financialization, climate change and growing global hunger are not three distinct phenomena, but aspects of a single, unified crisis. Last year saw the establishment of the first hedge fund dealing exclusively in carbon trading emissions. In January, a Wall Street firm, Jarch Management Group, bought leasehold rights to 400,000 hectares of fertile land in a remote part of the Sudan controlled by a local warlord. The company is also maneuvering with insurgents in Darfur, Ethiopia, and Somaliland. According to the CEO, "If you bet right on the shifting of sovereignty, then you are on the ground floor. I am constantly looking at the map and looking if there is any value." If financialized capitalism increasingly resembles a global casino, the casino is now selling death by derivatives. If, to answer Mr. Ackermann, we know that 25% is too much, and that it is neither environmentally nor socially sustainable, how much is enough? Singling out, for example, derivative markets or private equity or hedge funds detaches them from the wider environment in which they are embedded. The institutional investors who dominate world capital flows form a single investment pool - what matters is the return, not the nature of the investment. When we talk about restoring the flow of investment from finance to the real economy, this can obscure the extent to which the real economy's individual corporate units are themselves thoroughly financialized. How real is real when a company like Porsche last year earned 7 times more from exercising derivative contracts than it did from car sales? The Financial Times recently asked, rhetorically, "Is Porsche a Carmaker or a Hedge Fund"? The answer is that it is both, and the same applies, for example, to Cargill, the world's largest grain trader and primary processor, as well as to numerous other industry leaders. Our regulatory response to the current crisis and our political agenda depend on the questions we ask. Regulation is an ongoing task, since regulations and taxes are the mother of financial innovation. It is a social project, not an act of legislation. The paths of trade unionists and academic researchers rarely intersect. It is my hope that meetings like this, and many more such meetings, will help us to develop the answers we urgently need. ----------------------------- *Neil Fligstein and Linda Markowitz, “Financial Reorganization of American Corporations in the 1980s,” in W. J. Wilson (ed), Sociology and the Public Agenda. Newbury Park: Sage, 1990, p.187. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2009:/en//1.509 2009-12-01T18:04:17Z 2009-12-02T16:11:52Z

Ronaldo Munck is director of Foresight & Strategy at Dublin City University and visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool. He has worked and researched in his native Latin America and in Southern Africa as well as Western Europe and North America. For many years he has worked on international development and international labour issues. His books include Critical Development Theory: Contributions to a New Paradigm (London, 1999); and Globalisation and Labour: The new 'Great Transformation' (London, 2002), Globalisation and Contestation: The New Great Counter-Movement (London, 2007) and Globalisation and Migration: New Challenges, New Politics (London, 2008). Professor Munck is co-editor of an online Irish journal on migration issues: Translocations (http://www.translocations.ie/) Introduction “Thoughtful trade unionists have come to recognise that playing safe is the most risky strategy. The present is either the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end” (Hyman, 2004: 23). Up to a decade ago many labour movement strategists and analysts would probably have thought they were witnessing the beginning of the end of labour as a major political voice. 'There is no alternative' was not just a slogan of the political right but a palpable feeling in the general atmosphere. But by the turn of the century the mood began to shift as the labour movement regained some ground after the long neo-liberal onslaught. Maybe we were now at the 'end of the beginning' of a new era where the workers and their organisations would begin to impact on the new global order they had helped to create. That is the premise of this presentation. It is not, however, a falsely triumphal vision, but rather a realistic appraisal of the challenges of globalisation and possible responses by the labour movement. If we go back one hundred years we would see the formation of the trade union movement taking place as part and parcel of the formation of a national working class (see Van Der Linden, 2003). Industrialisation, urbanisation and unionisation all went hand-in-hand. And it all happened within the clear parameters of an existing nation-state or one in formation. In the original industrialised countries the formation of a labour movement was inseparable from the national and social integration of the working people. In the colonial world the creation of a working class was inseparable from the development of a nationalist anti-colonial movement. When the cycle of great revolutions began in Russia in 1917 through to China in 1945 thereafter the workers' movement was inevitably tied to the fortunes of the 'socialist fatherland' struggling against a hostile imperialist environment. So, from the 1870s through to the 1970s to put it crudely, workers organised within nation states in combinations (trade unions) set within those parameters and they addressed their grievances towards that nation state seen as the arbiter of a predominantly national class struggle over the distribution of wealth. What began to occur in the last quarter of the twentieth century was the break up of the dominant nation-state-based economic model as what we now call globalisation kicked into gear. Economic internationalisation had flourished previously (1870-1914) but this time round its momentum seemed unstoppable. The potential threat of an alternative social and political order had evaporated with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The 1990s were the period of easy globalisation: the corporations, the international economic organisations and the dominant nation-states paved the way for a new 'market-friendly' order. The trade unions oriented toward the nation-state found that the centre of gravity had shifted elsewhere. Back in the 1970s there had been sporadic moves towards trade union internationalism in a number of sectors but now a global outlook had become an imperative. A gradual realisation came across the labour movement that the old corporatist arrangements and partnerships with employers were no longer to be a viable mechanism to defend, let alone advance, the interests of working people. It is a known historical fact that labour movements take up to a decade to respond to the changing patterns of capital accumulation and employer strategies (see Arrighi, 1996). What we have begun to see from 2000 onwards is a clear recognition from the international trade union movement that globalisation is a new paradigm which demands new strategies, tactics and organisational modalities. So in 1997 the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions had declared that globalisation posed “the greatest challenge for unions in the 21st Century” (ICFTU, 1997). If the creation of a global economy was producing a global workforce then global unions might seem a logical development. But global economic power does not necessarily call forth a symmetrical global social counter-movement. The Netherlands Trade Union Confederation captured well the new mood when it declared that “the trade union movement must reinvent itself in order to deal with the challenges of the 21st Century” (Kloosterboer, 2007: 1). This will involve local, national and international action, basic organising and engaging in the battle of ideas. Our task is to assess the achievements and limitation of this complex and difficult but essential task, especially now after the virtual collapse of the neo-liberal free-market financial model. Challenges While globalisation had undoubtedly signaled the end of 'business as usual' by the labour movement it has generated a whole range of innovative responses as well as steadily increasing analysis (see Munck, 2002; Harrod and O’Brien eds 2002; Silver, 2003; Phelan, 2006; Bronffenbrenner, 2007; Stevis and Boswell, 2008; Webster, Lambert and Bezuidenhout, 2008; Bieler, Lindberg and Pillay, 2008; and Huws, 2008)). This innovation has been seen at the local, national, regional and global levels. Sometimes the turn has been pragmatic and sometimes advances have been only partial. However, we could now say that globalisation has opened as many doors as it has closed. We must also realise that labour responses at the global level are not in a zero-sum relationship with other national or local responses. There is no “one best way” (as Taylorism claimed to be) for labour responses to globalisation where flexibility is the only given. The Dutch trade unions have argued persuasively for the type of 'innovative trade union strategies' needed today to contest neo-liberal globalisation: “it will involve organising new groups hitherto under-represented in the movement, local and transnational actions, a clear orientation towards social justice and coalitions with community groups and, last but not least, a vigorous engagement in the battle of ideas in terms of a vision for an alternative social order” (FNV, 2008: 2-13). Of course, implementing this vision in practice is not so simple, it requires ‘buy in’ and a change of mid sets at all levels of the workers movement At the end of the twentieth century international trade unionism was confronted by a tragic paradox. There were more wage earners than ever before, around three billion according to Freeman (2006). The new International Congress of Trade Unions (ITUC) and Global Unions together have more than 150 million members and cover more countries, unions and workers than ever before. This was due to the incorporation of most of the formerly communist and national-populist unions. But neo-liberal globalisation implied the simultaneous weakening of traditional unionism's century-old national-industrial base, the shift of that base to countries of the South (particularly China), the undermining of traditional job security and union rights, and the decline or disappearance of support from social-democratic parties, social-reformist governments and the most powerful inter-state agencies. Moreover, the unions were being confronted with a fact that – ensconced in their industrial, national or industrial-relations cocoons – they had never previously felt it necessary to face: in this globalising world of labour maybe only one worker in 18 was unionised. Finally, with the disappearance of their competitors in Communist or national-populist unions, the ICFTU/GU found itself not only in an alien and hostile world but ideologically disoriented. Previously it had been able to see itself not only as representing the most advanced union model but as part of the 'free West', opposed to both Communist and national-populist unionism. Now it found itself left behind by the globalisation of capital and the decreasing political interest of the international hegemons. If the union internationals initially responded in equal measure with disorientation and retreat, they are now increasingly raising the old notion of 'social partnership' with capital and state from the national to the global level. This has implied a series of specific campaigns, addressed sometimes directly to multinational corporations, sometimes to the international financial institutions and other promoters of globalisation such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Economic Forum and so forth. Over the years, the global union federations have established an ongoing social dialogue with a number of multinational enterprises in their sectors or industries (Justice, 2002: 96). The three major areas of this union work are international labour standards, codes of conduct and corporate social responsibility policies (Jenkins, Pearson and Seyfang, 2002). Such voluntary global social contracts have been presented on a slightly more public stage by union endorsement of the UN's Global Compact. This is another voluntary initiative, aiming to 'mainstream' socially responsible business activities through policy dialogues, learning and other local projects. Union support for the Global Compact, even though the initiative lacked the power of enforcement or even monitoring, was revealed in a joint UN-ICFTU/GU declaration in 2000: It was agreed that global markets required global rules. The aim should be to enable the benefits of globalisation increasingly to spread to all people by building an effective framework of multilateral rules for a world economy that is being transformed by the globalisation of markets ... the Global Compact should contribute to this process by helping to build social partnerships of business and labour (ICFTU, 2000b). More recently we have seen union co-sponsorship of the ILO's World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation (also dominated by statespeople, corporate figures and academics) which has published a report on Fair Globalisation: Creating Opportunities for All. From the perspective of the great financial fall that began in autumn 2008 this perspective seems extremely limited and self-limiting indeed. When the theoretical organs of the financial bourgeoisie such as the Financial Times and The Economist openly proclaim the end of self regulating market capitalism it does seem pretty lame to call for ‘fair’ globalization. While such efforts suggest a reorientation in reaction to globalisation, international trade unions are also continuing their traditional efforts at union building, in defence of labour rights and in support of workers and unions internationally (see Fairbrother and Hammer, 2005 for a review). This seems to involve new and more assertive language. An exemplar might be the International Transport Workers Federation, the 2002 Congress of which was devoted to the theme of 'Globalising Solidarity'. A turning point in its practical solidarity activity is indicated by, on the one hand, its failure to effectively support the Liverpool dock workers during the major lockout of 1995-8 and its more effective support for the Australian dock workers during a related dispute later. But much national and international union solidarity activity is still carried out under the rubric of 'development co-operation' and financed by the state or inter-state organisations. At other times such activity is combined with union-to-union or worker-to-worker solidarity, as possibly with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU Global Solidarity). It is, however, notable that most of this solidarity appears to be in a North-South direction. A more holistic, multi-faceted and multi-directional notion of labour solidarity is yet to emerge, and the ICTU website reveals only an implicit recognition of the broader global solidarity movement. However, what the historical parallels of the late 19th Century and the emergence of the contemporary union movement teach us is that this necessary shift will not be smooth and organic. It is more likely that alternative social forces (the 'informal sector' for example) and geographical locations (the South, China) will challenge and subvert the current structures and strategies. There are signs that trade unions are looking towards the new social movements. Even in the USA, as Dean Clawson shows: “Labor's links with other [social movement] groups are denser and stronger than they have been for half a century ...” (2003: 205), and this interaction has led to new, more progressive policies for example, in relation to undocumented immigrants. Frances O'Grady, deputy general secretary of the British Trade Union Congress has recognised that: “Growing globalisation has demonstrated ever more vividly that going it alone [for the unions] is not an option” (O’Grady, 2004), and that not only do they need to engage seriously with the global justice movement, but if they wish to change the world they will need to start by changing themselves. I will focus now on the challenge of migration for a number of reasons. First of all it is an issue which causes severe discomfort for neo-liberal thought. Its one-time guru Milton Friedman is reported to have said that “About migration the least said the better.” This is understandable because there appears to be no logical reason why if capital, investment and ideas should flow freely across national frontiers then why not labour? At present international mobility is only granted to a very small elite of professional workers when their skills are required in the affluent countries. For the mass of the world's workers national borders are, if anything, less permeable in the so-called era of globalisation than in the past. Migration is securitised and the full panoply of state surveillance and repression falls on those who take globalisation at its word and go off to improve their situation. Despite some tentative international discussions about the need for a World Migration Organisation on a par with the WTO to regulate migration, it is most likely to remain as a messy and fuzzy issue for the managers of global capitalism. Could it be an opportunity for the social counter-movement now challenging the undisputed role of the unregulated market? Historically the trade union movement has also had severe difficulties in dealing with migration in a way which accorded with its basic principles. Labour activists and analysts imbued with the spirit of labour internationalism too often forget how workers draw on non-class forms of identity to protect themselves from the maelstrom of capitalist restructuring. While capital may well treat labour as an undifferentiated commodity workers invariably find bonds of gender, place and race to create solidarity around in their struggle to keep some kind of advantage in the chaos caused by modernisation/globalisation. For Giovanni Arrighi: “As a consequence, patriarchalism, racism and national-chauvinism have been integral to the making of the world labour movement” (Arrighi, 1990: 93). This is a history often overlooked in the annals of the official trade union movement (and its critics for that matter) which tend to airbrush out the sexism, racism and xenophobia which forms an integral element of most labour movements. To recognise it is, perhaps, the first step on the way to dealing with it, rather than relying on anodyne stories of solidarity and internationalism. There is perhaps a compelling argument that “solidarity with migrant workers is helping trade unions to get back to the basic principles of the labour movement” (David, nd). On the one hand trade unions have been facing a crisis of declining membership and influence over the last two decades. On the other hand many social and political organisations find themselves bereft of leadership on the question of migration. From either side of the argument therefore trade unions have now an opportunity as well as a challenge. Across the world trade unions are organising with and on behalf of migrant workers (see Kahman, 2002; Gray, 2007 and Wrench, 2004). Trade unions have made common cause with migrant-led associations and with NGOS supporting migrant workers and they have also sought to directly organise migrants (“workers are workers are workers” is a common slogan). Of course one effect of this drive is to minimise the ability of employers to use migrant workers to undercut pay and conditions for indigenous workers. Nevertheless, its net impact, as David puts it, is that “In response to economic globalisation, trade unions are organising the globalisation of solidarity in defence of migrants” (David, nd 74). In the years to come international labour migration is bound to become more important both in quantitative terms but also in qualitative terms, because it may pose a defining point for the trade union movement. One such 'tipping point' was the Irish Ferries dispute in Ireland in 2005 (see Krings, 2007). A well-unionised cross-channel seafaring group was faced by a cost-cutting employer who decided that Latvian agency workers who could be paid half the legal minimum wage made good economic sense. The Irish trade union movement was shaken to its very foundations and rumours abounded about the imminent displacement of native workers by cheaper foreign imports. Very soon this dispute became a test case not least because it involved Ireland's largest trade union SIPTU (the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union). Mass mobilisations occurred and the employers were forced to negotiate by a government committed to social partnership. Nevertheless the nativist reaction was just under the surface: in one mass mobilisation official banners with “no slave ships in the Irish sea” jostled with other calling for “Irish jobs for Irish workers”. In the end the Irish labour movement made the improvement of conditions for migrant workers a 'deal breaker' in the next round of partnership talks. Equalising the conditions of labour upwards won over the temptation to blame the 'non-national' workers brought in by employers. Responses There have been, over the last decade, a number of coherent responses to the challenges of globalisation or rather, to its downsides. In terms of achieving stable global governance it had become clear by around 2000 that unless globalisation achieved a 'human face' it was not sustainable. Thus the World Bank became concerned with establishing a 'safety net' to protect those excluded from the basic means to a livelihood by the free-marketisation implicit in globalisation. Even the much-vaunted Washington Consensus which set the tone for the 1990s in terms of an economic policy centred around privatisation, marketisation and liberalisation, was subject to an internal critique and revision. All of these reforms from above were designed to make globalisation more palatable, and not really to change its fundamentals. In relation to the world of work it was the International Labour Organisation which in 1999 created a new paradigm through its overarching strategy to achieve 'decent work'. Decent work was conceived as the main underpinning for social and economic progress in the era of globalisation and the vehicle for delivering the aspirations of people in their working lives. The International Labour Office (ILO) was set up in 1919 to promote labour standards and embed the economy in society. In Polanyian terms it would take labour out of the market place where it could be bought and sold like any other commodity. The ILO would set labour standards designed for varying national system of regulation. These would help regulate the national labour markets and offer protection for employees. These were assumed to be in stable full-time employment and predominantly male. There was also an explicit assumption that the Western European model of 'social partnership' was universal. This was the labour policy for the Keynesian era based on full-employment and the efficacy of macro-economic policy management. All this was to change in the late 1970s as Keynesianism was swept aside by the neo-liberal revolution. By the mid 1980s even in the European heartlands the ILO world had collapsed. Unemployment was rife, and the crisis of 'competitiveness' was blamed on the social model, including the protective regulation at the core of the ILO's raison d'être and the nefarious interference of collective bargaining institutions seen as distorting the market. In the late 1980s the ILO played a modest role during the disintegration of the Soviet system through the promotion of a social market model against the free-market fundamentalists. However, in the 1990s as globalisation and labour market flexibility became dominant the ILO began to lose direction. The Decent Work campaign was designed to overcome this crisis and at one level it has become widely accepted, at least at official level. Concerned to present Decent Work as a non-ideological issue the ILO seems to have lost any sense of vision. As a campaign it is even a step back from the historic ILO 'labour directives' now subsumed under vague rubrics which are part of international law anyway such as the prohibition of child labour. The main problem is that the world of 2009 is not the world of 1919 or even 1969 when the ILO received the Nobel Peace Prize. As Guy Standing puts it: “The ILO was set up as a means of legitimizing labourism, a system of employer-employee relations based on the standard employment relationship, and a means of taking labour out of international trade” (Standing, 2008: 380). Tri-partite labour relations are hardly dominant, the standard employment relationship survives only in small pockets, and labour is quite starkly a commodity on the global labour market. We could argue that 'decent work' is better than the 'race to the bottom'. Certainly it is motivated by a reformist urge but we can still question whether it is, or can be, a labour movement project. Peter Waterman has characterised the Decent Work campaign as “backward-looking utopianism” (Waterman, 2008). It certainly is premised on a world of nation states and orderly industrial relations which is either dying or never existed in most of the world. It is also Utopian in the sense that it is premised on the myth of a golden era of social harmony, which even in the imperial heartlands was not usually that real. Even so we might ask whether Decent Work could play a role for “poverty reduction and a fair and inclusive globalization” (ILO, 2008) as its proponents argue. Here, however, we need to be sceptical because of the inherent weakness of the ILO compared to the trio of global governance managers in the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF. Global governance must promote a 'human face' for its essentially neo-liberal project if it is to be seen as legitimate. However, the capital accumulation project and the social legitimation drive are, of course, part and parcel of an overall programme of capitalist modernisation detrimental to labour. If the ILO's Decent Work campaign is unlikely to deliver a decisive breakthrough for the workers of the world what is the potential of the organised labour movement? We should start from the basis that labour is set within a context of global complexity. We appear to be in a transitional situation described generically by Gramsci a long time ago as an era when “the old is dying but the new has not yet been fully born” (Gramsci, 1971: 106). Clearly the old national-statist-corporatist model is no more but what will emerge from the current period of global turmoil is not entirely settled either. There are also many contradictions within the global working class, not least the divisions based on the social and geographical positioning within the global division of labour. It is crucial therefore to understand the nature of its complexity of the pressures coming to bear on workers and their organisations. National-level trade unions may take up the economic or business unionism approach which once epitomised US trade unionism. They may also develop a political unionism oriented towards the state as potential benefactor as traditionally they did in Latin America. The regional dimension – too often neglected in analysis of labour and globalisation – can also take a more market orientation as labour does in Europe or it can move towards the social or state direction as they tend to do in Latin America. This is designed as a heuristic device to plot the possible strategies or combination of strategies that labour might deploy. The spatial dimension is not designed as a hierarchy with either global or local being better or more progressive in some way. It is simply seeking to articulate the complexity of choices and dilemmas facing labour in the era of globalisation. We could simply say that the new capitalism creates new types of workers and hence a new unionism will inevitably emerge. This would be closely modeled on the way in which the 'new social movements' and the World Social Forum organise. A networked society (Castells, 1996) will call forth a networked unionism. As a more democratic form of co-ordination it has captured the imagination. Yet there are many national, sectoral and ideological divisions to be overcome. Nor does the old labour movement problem of routinisation and bureaucracy disappear that easily. Organisation – of the unorganised and of the trade union and wider labour movements – is still an imperative. Many of the old problems still remain despite the much-vaunted arrival of a new capitalism. For example, we should probably need to reconsider the growing emphasis on the global domain to the detriment of the national. As Seidman put it recently: “Instead of boycotting brands, transnational strategies might look for strategies to push governments to strengthen labor law enforcement” (Seidman, 2008: 142). The new capitalism is underpinned by some remarkably traditional nation-states and capitalist classes in practice. Be that as it may there is now evidence of trade unions taking up a social movement orientation and not only in the global South. Thus in the very heartland of capitalism the US business unionism has been challenged since the 1930’s and increasingly in the 1990’s by a social justice or social movement unionism well described by Vanessa Tate (2005). The increasing weight of the informal economy more or less forced US trade unions to take up a broader orientation and they thus began to take ‘the form of a multifaceted political movement not limited to issues such as wages and benefits ‘ (Tate 2005: 8). Those in the informal sector were poor but they were also workers albeit often of a contingent status that deemed them ‘hard to organise’. But as workers of colour and women workers had in the past they organized themselves and often forced mainstream trade unions to organize in these sectors. These poor people’s movements often showed great degrees of inventiveness in period when the official labour movement was reeling from the organisational and ideological impact of neo-liberalism. They helped put the movement aspect back into the broader labour movement and broadened the trade union agenda to take up housing and health care issues and an understanding that fair pay was as important as more pay. With an emphasis on the new – be it capitalism, work or unionism – we can often neglect the value of looking to the past. Marco Berlinguer of Lavoro in Movimento argues that: “to recreate politics we need to rediscover labour” (cited in Wainwright, 2008: 3). This might entail going back to the formative stages of the labour movement before the consolidation of nation-states. What globalisation has undoubtedly generated is a potentially stronger workers' movement than ever existed before. To generate a new labour politics fit-for-purpose in the era of globalisation involves, as Hilary Wainwright puts it: “a rethinking and reasserting of labour as social, co-operative process and itself potentially a commons” (Wainwright: 2008: 3). Several decades of boycott campaigns seeking to 'name and shame' renegade corporations have shown their limitations. The trend towards reconfiguring labour issues as human rights issues within a generic global civil society is also running out of steam. Now is perhaps the time when an incipient global labour movement rediscovers some of its original characteristics of combination, a common moral economy and an instinctive internationalism. REFERENCES Arrighi, G. (1990) 'Marxist Century, American Century: The Making and Remaking of the World Labour Movement', New Left Review, No. 179, pp. 29-63. (1996) “ Workers of the World at Century’s End “, New Left Review, Vol. 19 No. 3. Bronffenbrenner, H. (Ed.) (2007) Global Unions. Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-Border Campaigns. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Bieler, A., Lindberg, I. and Pillay, D. (Eds.) (2008) Labour and the Challenges of Globalization: What Prospects for Transnational Solidarity? London: Pluto Press. Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Network Society Volume I: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Clawson, D. (2003) The Next Upsurge. Labor and the New Social Movements. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. David, N. (nd) 'Migrants get unions back to basics', Trade Union World Fairbrother, P and Hammer, D (2005) Global Unions: Past Efforts and Future Prospects, Relations Industrielles/Industrial relations, Vol. 60 No 3, pp. 405-443. Freeman, R. (2006) 'China, India and the Doubling of the Labor Force: Who Pays the Price for Globalisation?', Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Harrod, J. and O'Brien, R. (Eds.) (2002) Global Unions: Theory and Strategies of Organised Labour in the Global Political Economy. London and New York: Routledge. Gray, K (2007) 'From Human to Workers' Rights: The Emergence of a Migrant Workers' Union Movement in Korea', Global Society, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 297-315. Huws, U. (Ed). (2008) 'Break or weld? Trade union responses to global value chain restructuring', Work, Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, Vol. 2, No. 1. Hyman, R (2004) 'Agitation, Organisation, Diplomacy, Bureaucracy: Trends and Dilemmas in International Trade Unionism', Labor History, Vol. 45, No. 3. ICFTU (2000b) Joint UN-ICFTU State on the Global Compact. . ICFTU (1997) The Global Market. Trade Unionism's Greatest Challenge. Brussels: ICFTU. International Labour Office (2008) Measurement of Decent Work. Geneva: ILO. Jenkins, R., Pearson, R. and Seyfang, G. (Eds.) (2002) Corporate Responsibility and Labour Rights: Codes of Conduct. London: Earthscan. Justice, D. (2002) 'the International Trade Union Movement and the New Codes of Conduct', in R. Jenkins et al (Eds.) Corporate Responsibility and Labour Rights. London: Earthscan. Kahman, M. (2002) Trade Unions and Migrant Workers: Examples from the United States, South Africa and Spain. Brussels: ICFTU. Kloosterboer, D. (2007) Innovative Trade Union Strategies. Utrecht: FNV. Krings, T (2007) ‘Equal Rights for All Workers’: Irish trade unions and the challenges of labour migration”, Irish Journal of Sociology, Vol 16 No. !, pp. 43-61 Munck, R. (2002) Globalisation and Labour: The New 'Great Transformation'. London: Zed Books. O’Grady, F (2004) “ Globalisation makes unions and social movements natural allies”, The Guardian (October 16th). Phelan, C (Ed.) (2006) The Future of Organised Labour. Global Perspectives. Oxford: Peter Lang. Polanyi, K (2002) The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon. Seidman, E. (2008) Beyond the Boycott. Labor Rights, Human Rights and Transnational Activism. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Silver, B. (2003) Forces of Labor. Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Standing, G. (2008) 'The ILO: An Agency for Globalisation?', Development and Change, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp 355-384. Stevis, D. and Boswell, T. (2008) Globalisation and Labor. Democratizing Global Governance. London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing. Tait, V. (2005) Poor Workers’ Unions. Rebuilding labor from below. Cambridge, Mass: South End Press Van der Linden, M. (2003) Transnational Labour History. Aldershot: Ashgate. Wainwright, H. (2008) 'The commons, the state and transformative politics', Red Pepper, Waterman, P. (2008) Needed: A Global Labour Charter Movement. . Webster, E., Lambert, R. and Bezuidenhout, A. (2008) Grounding Globalisation. Labour in the Age of Insecurity. Oxford: Blackwell. Wrench, J. (2004) 'Trade Union Responses to Immigrants and Ethnic Inequality in Denmark and the UK: The Context of Consensus and Conflict' European Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp 7-30. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2010:/en//1.511 2010-01-19T17:05:47Z 2010-01-19T17:17:39Z

The Story of the First-Ever Bolivarian Maquila Factory by Rafael Uzcátegui The following appeared in the anarchist journal El Libertario, nr. 57 (www.nodo50.org/ellibertario) and on the website: A-infos, on December 18, 2009: http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en. It is a detailed examination of the events behind the mobile telephone manufacturer Vetelca, in which the notion of a "socialist industrial production model" in Bolivarian Venezuela is clarified. On May 10, 2009, President Hugo Chávez appeared on national television from the El Tigre region of Barinas state in order to announce to the nation the availability of a mobile telephone made under the supervision of the Bolivarian government. Some weeks earlier, he himself had named it «El Vergatario» [a crude term which roughly translates as “the biggest dick” - translator]. Rather typically for those familiar with chavista propaganda methods, the unveiling of this product - supposedly symbolising yet another step forward for his political project - coincided with the traditional Venezuelan national holiday for Mothers’ Day. That same day, Chávez declared that “this telephone will not only be the best-selling in Venezuela, but in the whole world”, referring to its imminent exportation ­ in an attempt to bolster the national economy ­ to a large area; including all the nations of the Andean region, Mercosur ­ which includes Brazil and Argentina, amongst others ­ and the Caribbean. Having heard of his ambitions, those of us who have read about late capitalism found ourselves asking how it could possibly become the premier product in a market as competitive as telecommunications merchandise? “With the help of the maquila manufacturing model!”, was the response of the prejudiced anarchists. However, all analysis of production in globalised economy indicates that the simplest way of joining the successful at the top of the pile is through minimising assembly costs. And, as companies like GAP, Nike and Adidas know well, China is an expert on the subject of “cost-effective” production methods, with respect to both economy and labour rights. Indeed, China is the business partner of the Bolivarian state in the public-private partnership company, Venezolana de Telecomunicaciones (Vetelca), established in the free economic zone of Paraguaná, Falcón state, in January 2009. Official reports tell us that production was started by “a total of 140 workers, 80% of which are women who live in the zone and who were chosen by various local community councils to work in the plant”. Their first objective is to deliver 10,000 units to Movilnet [the state-owned telecommunications company - translator], to be sold from Mothers’ Day onwards, as President Chávez had promised. However, it wasn’t long before these very same factory workers were confirming our prejudices, denouncing conditions ­ as they did ­ in the very same bolivarian press organs of the government. The workers’ version Levy Revilla Toyo, one of 56 workers (of both sexes) who were sacked from the factory, recently gave a detailed account of Vetelca’s origins. In his official complaint, Revilla tells us that recruitment for the factory started in October 2008, when the Ministry for Light Industry and Commerce gathered 250 people “from the missions [chavista social programmes ­ trans.], universities and communal councils from throughout Falcón state”. 60 of these 250 stayed on, and a total of 100 individuals survived the secondary training process in March 2009. March also saw the top-down election of the company’s board of directors, to this day presided over by Carlos Audrines Flores. On May 1, ­ the international day of the worker, ­ assembly of «El Vergatario» began. “We had to work into the small hours of the night,” Revilla testifies. “Everything was very poorly organised, which led to many of my workmates fainting and passing out due to hunger and difficulties with transportation”. However, the workers were rewarded with a productivity bonus and ­ with the models ready in just 10 days - the satisfaction of having honoured the President’s word. Following this though, new employees began arriving, “crowding the plant and the canteen and violating the rights and the direct participation of the communal councils and missions”. In accordance with the Organic Law for Prevention, Conditions and Environment at Work (LOPCYMAT in its Spanish initials), passed by the Bolivarian regime itself, workers started to elect «delegados de prevención» [roughly equivalent to health & safety representatives in the UK ­ trans.], despite the diverse, destructive obstacles placed in front of them by the board of directors. On July 7, eight Vetelca workers were sacked, including all three «delegados» that had been elected via workers’ assembly. The fired workers were resolute in the necessity of defending their rights; however, when they visited the factory in order to corroborate their complaints, they were informed of the following: “the workers [here] are students, and their salary isn’t a salary but a maintenance stipend; [moreover] said workers don’t have an organisational structure”. Later, management would request the presence of the National Guard onsite, while accusing the sacked workers ­ in terms which by now are all too familiar ­ of being counter-revolutionaries. They would soon fire 56 more workers, forcing them to sign redundancy agreements in order to receive their payments. A few days later, the total number of sacked workers rose to 86. The bureaucrats’ version On July 29, 2009, Jesse Chacón, Science and Technology Minister, visited the Vetelca factory in an attempt to calm winds of discontent amongst its personnel. The official press release notes that: “the minister toured the factory and met with the workers in order to announce that they could be signing their contracts within in as little as a fortnight”, also adding this particular gem: “up until now, employees have been coming onsite as operators in a volunteer capacity, receiving a monthly productivity bonus of 1300 BsF [£130 on the black market]”. The release claims that this is “a socialist model of production, with ‘integrated’ workers who rotate posts on a daily basis, therefore getting to know every stage of assembly and getting to understand the plant’s operations in their totality. Moreover, they participate in the planning of production, in stark contrast to the capitalist model.” Let’s continue to focus on reports in state media. Carlos Audrines, Vetelca President, stated in reference to the fired workers that “it was an exclusion of some individuals still in training due to their failure to comply with regulations”. ABN [official press agency] notes that Audrines “said that he could not comment on the dismissal of individuals who are not on the payroll, owing to the fact that Vetelca’s Human Resources [Department] is still in the process of formation, and, as a part of this process, is in a constant state of evaluation. This being so, it has taken some decisions based on the behaviour and activities of these individuals”. In another declaration, this time in [chavista daily newspaper ­ trans.] Ultimas Noticias, Audrines excels himself: “These 56 people were intending to form a combative and aggressive union for self-promotion or in order to gain themselves better posts”. The article adds that “Audrines explained that Vetelca is not registered as a company, and it is for this reason that there are no contracts. ‘Within two scant weeks,’ he said, ‘they will give us a budget for our initial capital.’ Once this is in place and Vetelca is granted company status, the next stage will be to consolidate a security department, ‘since the word ‘union’ does not fit within a socialist company, because this would contradict the principle in which we are all equal. Within a socialist system there is no need for a union,’ Aubrines added. In response to reports that the workers had to undertake maintenance duties, the company President replied that ‘due to a lack of funds, the participants [sic ­ trans.] perform cleaning activities on a voluntary basis’. However, this situation changed with the launch of «El Vergatario», when the company coordinated with mothers from the barrio that they realise these tasks.” On 25 August, Vetelca released, in an official press communication, the names and identity cards of the 190 workers who comprised the “first payroll” of the company. The anarchists’ conclusion Let’s go through this bit by bit. What Minister Chacón describes as an “integrated, socialist production model” is a euphemism for what everyone else calls «polivalencia» (job rotation), one of the characteristics of worker flexibility within the capitalist information industry. This job rotation ensures that workers must be able to take on different responsibilities, rotating their tasks according to the needs of the production process. In doing so, it differs from the labour specialisation of Fordist production methods. However, it is not true that workers understand “the plant’s operations in their totality”, nor that they “participate in the planning of production”. Firstly, Vetelca workers are mere assemblers of a final product whose parts are designed and manufactured in China, so they only participate in the assembly and packaging stages of «El Vergatario», and to a limited extent at that. As for Vetelca, despite its grandiose descriptions by high up Bolivarian functionaries, it is but a crude outsourcing operation which serves the purposes of the mobile phone company of the Venezuelan state. Audrines himself confirms this in an interview: “Vetelca’s sole purpose is to satisfy the product demands of Movilnet”. Movilnet determines the quantity of telephones to be assembled, their deadline and their model name at retail level, three decisions in which the workers ­ or, in the Minister’s words, the salaried volunteers - have no role. If it suddenly occurs to the President to launch a promotional offer on «Vergatarios» in order to commemorate Bolívar’s birthday (equating to a rise in production rates), workers will have to repeat the overtime Levy Revilla describes. And that’s not forgetting the sort of shift flexibility demanded by modern capitalism. For his part, the assertions of Audrines reinforce the notion that the Bolivarian process is more economic globalisation than socialism. This particular bureaucrat conceives of a formation period as being the undertaking of a request for 10,000 units, a task successfully completed simultaneously to on the job training. Moreover, the dismissals for organising a union and attempting to install some sort of job security ­ the motivations of pretty much any worker on the planet ­ are telling. Finally, Audrines’ admission that Vetelca won’t allow union organisation - “due to it being contrary to socialism” ­ speaks for itself. President Chávez, Jesse Chacón, Carlos Audrines and the Ninja Turtles can say ­ hundreds of times ­ that «El Vergatario» is a socialist phone, manufactured by a socialist company by socialist volunteers. In this case however, although they will repeat the lie thousands of times, the facts unmask another reality: that Vetelca is the first maquila in the country, inspired by the same Chinese model which produces Nike shoes, Adidas footballs and GAP shirts for the savagery of contemporary capitalism. ·www.nodo50.org/ellibertario [website in Spanish, English & other languages]. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2010:/en//1.524 2010-03-31T16:07:53Z 2010-03-31T17:03:22Z

Pravda in Russia on 23 February (8 March), 1913, one week before the first-ever celebration in Russia of the Day of International Solidarity among the Female Proletariat on 23 February (8 March), 1913. In St Petersburg this day was marked by a call for a campaign against women workers' lack of economic and political rights, for the unity of the working class, and for the awakening of self-consciousness among women workers For more of Kollontai's writing see the Alexandra Kollontai Archive. What is 'Women's Day'? Is it really necessary? Is it not a concession to the women of the bourgeois class, to the feminists and suffragettes? Is it not harmful to the unity of the workers' movement? Such questions can still be heard in Russia, though they are no longer heard abroad. Life itself has already supplied a clear and eloquent answer. 'Women's Day' is a link in the long, solid chain of the women's proletarian movement. The organised army of working women grows with every year. Twenty years ago the trade unions contained only small groups of working women scattered here and there among the ranks of the workers party... Now English trade unions have over 292 thousand women members; in Germany around 200 thousand are in the trade union movement and 150 thousand in the workers party, and in Austria there are 47 thousand in the trade unions and almost thousand in the party. Everywhere in Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland the women of the working class are organising themselves. The women's socialist army has almost a million members. A powerful force! A force that the powers of this world must reckon with when it is a question of the cost of living, maternity insurance, child labour and legislation to protect female labour. There was a time when working men thought that they alone must bear on their shoulders the brunt of the struggle against capital, that they alone must deal with the 'old world' without the help of their womenfolk. However, as working-class women entered the ranks of those who sell their labour, forced onto the labour market by need, by the fact that husband or father is unemployed, working men became aware that to leave women behind in the ranks of the 'non-class-conscious' was to damage their cause and hold it back. The greater the number of conscious fighters, the greater the chances of success. What level of consciousness is possessed by a woman who sits by the stove, who has no rights in society, the state or the family? She has no 'ideas' of her own! Everything is done as ordered by the father or husband... The backwardness and lack of rights suffered by women, their subjection and indifference, are of no benefit to the working class, and indeed are directly harmful to it. But how is the woman worker to be drawn into the movement, how is she to be awoken? Social-Democracy abroad did not find the correct solution immediately. Workers' organisations were open to women workers, but only a few entered. Why? Because the working class at first did not realise that the woman worker is the most legally and socially deprived member of that class, that she has been browbeaten, intimidated, persecuted down the centuries, and that in order to stimulate her mind and heart, a special approach is needed, words understandable to her as a woman. The workers did not immediately appreciate that in this world of lack of rights and exploitation, the woman is oppressed not only as a seller of her labour, but also as a mother, as a woman... However. when the workers' socialist party understood this, it boldly took up the defence of women on both counts as a hired worker and as a woman, a mother. Socialists in every country began to demand special protection for female labour, insurance for mother and child, political rights for women and the defence of womens interests. The more clearly the workers party perceived this second objective vis-a-vis women workers, the more willingly women joined the party, the more they appreciated that the party is their true champion, that the working class is struggling also for their urgent and exclusively female needs. Working women themselves, organised and conscious, have done a great deal to elucidate this objective. Now the main burden of the work to attract more working women into the socialist movement lies with the women. The parties in every country have their own special women's committees, secretariats and bureaus. These women's committees conduct work among the still largely non-politically conscious female population, arouse the consciousness of working women and organise them. They also examine those questions and demands that affect women most closely: protection and provision for expectant and nursing mothers, the legislative regulation of female labour, the campaign against prostitution and infant mortality, the demand for political rights for women, the improvement of housing, the campaign against the rising cost of living, etc. Thus, as members of the party, women workers are fighting for the common class cause, while at the same time outlining and putting forward those needs and demands that most nearly affect themselves as women, housewives and mothers. The party supports these demands and fights for them... The requirements of working women are part and parcel of the common workers' cause! On 'Women's Day' the organised demonstrate against their lack of rights. But, some will say, why this singling out of women workers? Why special 'Women's Days', special leaflets for working women, meetings and conferences of working-class women? Is this not, in the final analysis,a concession to the feminists and bourgeois suffragettes? Only those who do not understand the radical difference between the movement of socialist women and bourgeois suffragettes can think this way. What is the aim of the feminists? Their aim is to achieve the same advantages, the same power, the same rights within capitalist society as those possessed now by their husbands, fathers and brothers. What is the aim of the women workers? Their aim is to abolish all privileges deriving from birth or wealth. For the woman worker it is a matter of indifference who is the 'master' a man or a woman. Together with the whole of her class, she can ease her position as a worker. Feminists demand equal rights always and everywhere. Women workers reply: we demand rights for every citizen, man and woman, but we are not prepared to forget that we are not only workers and citizens, but also mothers! And as mothers, as women who give birth to the future, we demand special concern for ourselves and our children, special protection from the state and society. The feminists are striving to acquire political rights. However, here too our paths separate. For bourgeois women, political rights are simply a means allowing them to make their way more conveniently and more securely in a world founded on the exploitation of the working people. For women workers, political rights are a step along the rocky and difficult path that leads to the desired kingdom of labour. The paths pursued by women workers and bourgeois suffragettes have long since separated. There is too great a difference between the objectives that life has put before them. There is too great a contradiction between the interests of the woman worker and the lady proprietress, between the servant and her mistress... There are not and cannot be any points of contact, conciliation or convergence between them. Therefore working men should not fear separate Women's Days, nor special conferences of women workers, nor their special press. Every special, distinct form of work among the women of the working class is simply a means of arousing the consciousness of the woman worker and drawing her into the ranks of those fighting for a better future... Women's Days and the slow, meticulous work undertaken to arouse the self-consciousness of the woman worker are serving the cause not of the division but of the unification of the working class. Let a joyous sense of serving the common class cause and of fighting simultaneously for their own female emancipation inspire women workers to join in the celebration of Women's Day. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2010:/en//1.529 2010-06-03T17:29:43Z 2010-07-03T14:22:40Z

The following article was commissioned by the Sunday Times Magazine in 1972 and was withdrawn from publication at the last minute, as it was already in print, by its editor, Harold Evans, who, having read it, exclaimed: "But these are the people we support!". The author, Richard Fletcher, was an independent researcher and journalist, an activist of the Labour Left, a strong advocate or workers' control and an editor, together with Walter Kendall, of the Union Voice publications (see: Walter Kendall, under Persons, on this site). Related articles can be found on the site of the Working Class Movement Library: http://www.wcml.org.uk The Atlanticist Tendency of the Labour Party: Who were they travelling with? How CIA Money Took the Teeth Out of Socialism by Richard Fletcher Research: USA, Susan Bidel; France, Anthony Terry and Frank Dorsey; Netherlands, Leo Hendrick; Japan, Christopher Reed; Switzerland, Alan McGregor; Austria, Ritchie McEwen; Italy, Andrew Hale; England Philip Kelly and Jenny Richards. Since the Second World War the American Government and its espionage branch, the Central Intelligence Agency, have worked systematically to ensure that tha Socialist parties of the free world toe a line compatible with American interests...CIA money can be traced flowing through the Congress for Cultural Freedom to such magazines as Encounter which have given Labour politicians like Anthony Crosland, Denis Healy and the late Hugh Gaitskell a platform for their campaigns to move the Labour Party away from nationalisation and CND-style pacifism. Flows of personnel link this Labour Party pressure group with the unlikely figure of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who has for 20 years sponsored the mysterious activities of the anti-Communist Bilderberg group launched with covert American funds. There is no suggestion that these prominent Labour politicians have not acted in all innocence and with complete propriety. But it could be asked how such perspicacious men could fail to enquire about the source of the funds that have financed the organisations and magazines which have been so helpful to them for so long. Nevertheless, they are certainly proud of the crucial influence their activities had in the years following 1959 when they swung the British Labour Party away from its pledge to nationalisation, enshrined in the celebrated Clause IV, and back towards the commitment to NATO from which the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had deflected it. CIA operators take the credit for helping them in this decisive intervention which changed the course of modern British history. The cloak and dagger operations of America's Central Intelligence Agency are only a small part of its total activities. Most of its 2000 million-dollar budget and 80,000 personnel are devoted to the systematic collection of information - minute personal details about tens of thousands of politicians and political organisations in every country in the world, including Britain. And this data, stored in the world's largest filing system at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is used not only to aid Washington's policy-machine, but in active political intervention overseas - shaping the policies of political parties, making and unmaking their leaders, boosting one internal faction against another and often establishing rival breakaway parties when other tactics fail. In fact the CIA carries out, at a more sophisticated level, exactly the same sort of organised subversion as Stalin's Comintern in its heyday. One of its targets in the years since the Second World War has been the British Labour Party. The Labour Party emerged from the war with immense prestige. As the sole mass working-class party in Britain it had the support of a united trades union movement whose power had been greatly enhanced by the war, and it had just achieved an unprecedented electoral victory. The established social democratic parties of Europe had been destroyed by the dictators, while in America all that remained of the socialist movement was a handful of sects whose members were numbered in hundreds. Labour was undisputed head of Europe's social democratic family. But as the euphoria wore off, old differences began to emerge with prolonged post-war austerity. The Left wanted more Socialism and an accommodation with the Russians, while the Right wanted the battle against Communism to take precedence over further reforms at home. And those who took this latter view organised themselves around the journal Socialist Commentary, formerly the organ of anti-Marxist Socialists who had fled to Britain from Hitler's Germany. The magazine was reorganised in the autumn of 1947 with Anthony Crosland, Allan Flanders and Rita Hinden who had worked closely with the emigres as leading contributors. And Socialist Commentary became the mouthpiece of the Right wing of the Labour Party, campaigning against Left-wingers like Aneurin Bevan, whom they denounced as dangerous extremists. Crosland, who ended the war as a captain in the Parachute Regiment, had been President of the Oxford Union, and a year later, in 1947, became Fellow and lecturer in economics at Trinity College, Oxford. Flanders was a former TUC official who became an academic specialist in industrial relations and later joined the Prices and Incomes Board set up by the Wilson Government. Rita Hinden, a University of London academic from South Africa, was secretary of the Fabian Colonial Bureau - an autonomous section of the Fabian Society which she had set up and directed since the early Forties. In this position she exercised considerable influence with Labour Ministers and officials in the Colonial Office, maintaining close links with many overseas politicians. The new Socialist Commentary immediately set out to alert the British Labour movement to the growing dangers of international Communism, notably in a piece entitled "Cominformity', written by Flanders during a period spent in the United States studying the American trade union movement. The journal's American connections were further extended by its U.S. correspondent, William C. Gausmann, who was soon to enter the American Government Service, where he rose to take charge of US propaganda in North Vietnam, while support for the moderate stand taken by Crosland, Flanders and Hinden came from David C. Williams, the London Correspondent of the New Leader, an obscure New York weekly specialising in anti-Communism. Williams made it his business to join the British Labour Party and to take an active part in the Fabian Society. This close American interest in Socialism on the other side of the Atlantic was nothing new. During the war the American trade unions had raised large sums to rescue European labour leaders from the Nazis, and this had brought them closely in touch with American military intelligence and, in particular, with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), whose chief in Switzerland and Germany from 1942 to 1945 was Allen W. Dulles, later, of course, to become famous as head of the CIA in its heyday. The principal union official in these secret commando operations had been Jay Lovestone, a remarkable operator who had switched from being the leader of the American Communist Party to working secretly for the US Government. And as the Allied armies advanced, Lovestone's men followed the soldiers as political commissars, trying to make sure that the liberated workers were provided with trade union and political leaders acceptable to Washington - many of these leaders being the émigrés of the Socialist Commentary group. In France, Germany, Italy and Austria the commissars provided lavish financial and material support for moderate Socialists who would draw the sting from Left-wing political movements, and the beneficiaries from this assistance survive in European politics to this day - though that is another story. In America the New Leader came to provide one focus for these activities, organising a weekly meeting of minds for professional anti-Communists in the unions, universities and government service, both at home and abroad. It had a relatively large paid staff and a world-wide network of overseas and roving correspondents. Its guiding spirit as Executive Editor and business manager was Sol Levitas, a Russian émigré who had worked with Trotsky and Bukharin during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and had fled from Stalin's prisons to the US in 1923, bringing with him a life-long hatred of Bolshevism. Amongst Levitas's "boys", as he liked to call them, were Melvin J. Lasky, an ex-Trotskyist from New York City College who joined the staff in 1941; Daniel Bell, a former Managing Editor of the New Leader who is now a professor at Columbia University; and Irving Brown, Lovestone's hatchet man in the European trade unions.The New Leader claimed to be independent, but in 1949 it carried a piece by Allen Dulles advocating a "commission of internal security", to examine subversive influences in the US and to "use the institutions of democracy to destroy them" which, in the light of Dulles's work helping the White House reorganise OSS as the Central Intelligence Agency, was rather like the head of MIS writing for the New Statesman. And at this time too, although the New Leader was issuing frantic appeals for funds to pay off its $40,000 worth of debts, it started appearing in April 1950 as a new New Leader with an expensive Time-like magazine format. The importance of this dramatically reborn publication for British and European Labour parties was that it now began openly to advocate the infiltration of foreign socialist parties, echoing the arguments of James Burnham who, in his book The Coming Defeat of Communism, proposed that "the Western World, led by the United States should go over to the offensive by using the same sort of methods - open and covert - that the Kremlin has so massively employed". Allan Flanders contributed an article to the revamped magazine on the British Labour Movement, and in 1954 Denis Healey, who had entered Parliament as a Labour MP in 1952, became the New Leader's London correspondent. American Cold War strategy, as Burnham and the New Leader had proposed, now moved into the financing of world-wide front organisations, and in June 1950 the free world's top men of letters were duly assembled in the Titania Palace Theatre in the US zone of Berlin, before an audience of 4,000, to faunch the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a body whose purpose was to "defend freedom and democracy against the new tyranny sweeping the world". It was no coincidence that the main organiser and chairman of the Congress was Melvin Lasky, who in 1948 had been 'lent' by the New Leader to the US High Commission in Berlin, where he had set up a successful literary magazine, Der Monat. with the encouragement of General Lucius D. Clay, head of the military government. Nor that the man chosen to head the permanent secretariat of the congress was an official of the American military government, Michael Josselson, who administered and arranged the financing of the vast organisation. The Congress seemed to have unlimited funds which were said to come from Jay Lovestone's union in America, and CCF, as it came to be known, was soon organising political seminars and student exchanges, and publishing literature on a world-wide basis in support of the new youth organisations which suddenly emerged to fight the Communists - notably the International Student Conference at Leiden in the Netherlands. In 1953 the Congress for Cultural Freedom launched Encounter, an English language monthly which was an immediate success under the editorship of Irving Kristol, another of Levitas's New Leader proteg6s and an exLovestoneite, and soon a bewildering range of publications in several languages had joined the CCF stable, with Encounter becoming one of the most influential journals of liberal opinion in the West. As the CCF network grew it embraced many prominent figures in the British Labour Party -among them Anthony Crosland, who began attending CCF seminars, where he met Daniel Bell, who was at this period moving away from journalistic red-baiting in the New Leader towards academic respectability. Bell's thinking was later summarised in his book The End of Ideology, and it formed the basis of the new political thesis set out in the major work that Crosland was now writing and which was published in 1956 under the title The Future of Socialism. The book had also been influenced by the arguments put forward at the Conference of the Congress for Cultural Freedom held in the previous year in Milan, where principal participants had included Hugh Gaitskell, Denis Healey and Rita Hinden as well as Daniel Bell and a bevy of American and European politicians and academics. Put at its simplest. Bell and his colleagues argued that growing affluence had radically transformed the working-class in Europe - and Britain - which was now virtually indistinguishable from the middle-class, and thus Marx's theory of class struggle was no longer relevant. Future political progress, they thought, would involve the gradual reform of capitalism and the spread of equality and social welfare as a consequence of continued economic growth. Crosland's book, though not original in content, was a major achievement. In over 500 pages it clothed the long-held faith of Labour's new leader Hugh Gaitskell in the academic respectability of American political science and was immediately adopted as the gospel of the Party leadership. Labour's rank-and-file, however, still clung to their grassroots Socialism, and Gaitskell's obvious preferences for the small coterie of cultured intellectuals and visiting foreigners who met at his house in Frognal Gardens, Hampstead, alienated the Party faithful, and gave added bitterness to the internecine quarrels that were to follow Labour's defeat in the 1959 election. In 1957 Melvin Lasky had taken over the editorship of Encounter which had, by then, cornered the West's intelligentsia through its prestige and the high fees it was able to pay. Lasky was a trusted member of Gaitskell's inner circle and was often to be seen at his parties in Hampstead, while Gaitskell became at the same time a regular contributor to the New Leader. Sol Levitas would drop in at his house on his periodic tours to see world leaders and visit the CCF in Paris.It was during the Fifties furthermore, that Anthony Crosland, Rita Hinden and the other members of the Socialist Commentary group adopted the argument put forcibly in the New Leader that a strong united Europe was essential to protect the Atlantic Alliance from Russian attack, and European and Atlantic unity came to be synonymous in official thinking as Gaitskell and his friends moved into the Party leadership. They received transatlantic encouragement, furthermore, from a New York-based group called the American Committee on United Europe, whose leadership was openly advertised in the New York Times as including General Donovan, wartime head of OSS. George Marshall, the US Secretary of State, General Lucius D. Clay and Allen Dulles of the CIA. This high-powered and lavishly-funded pressure group - whose thesis was essentially that a United Europe would defend America's interest against Russia - financed in Europe the so called 'European Movement', whose inspiration was a friend, of Hugh Gaitskell's, Joseph Retinger, an elderly Polish James Bond, who, after a professional career as an éminence grise. had come to rest at the Dutch court under the patronage of Prince Bernhard. Retinger had, furthermore, secretly persuaded Shepard Stone of the US High Commission in Germany to finance his European Movement out of so-called "counter-part funds" - Marshal Aid repaynients which the Americans banked in Europe. Later he promoted select gatherings of European and American politicians, businessmen, aristocrats, top civil servants and military leaders to propagate the ideals of Atlantic and European unity. Invitations to these Bilderberg Group meetings -named after the Dutch hotel where the first gathering was held in 1954 - were issued personally by Prince Bernhard on Retinger's recommendation. Few of those who received the card of invitation embossed with the Royal Netherland coat of arms declined to spend three or four days in civiised discourse with the world's leaders in luxurious surroundings - certainly not Hugh Gaitskell and Denis Healey, who were founder members of the Group along with such diverse personalities as the President of Unilever and Sir Robert Boothby. Healey, an ex-Communist, had been head of the International Department at Transport House before entering Parliament in 1951. He was a convinced supporter of Atlantic Union and spread the message through Socialist Commentary and the New Leader, for whom he wrote nearly 80 articles before joining the Labour Government as Defence Minister in 1964. While top people were relaxing with Prince Bernhard, the Congress for Cultural Freedom was establishing solid ties with the coming man of the British Labour Party. Anthony Crosland, who was by now acknowledged as the Party's chief theoretician. He had lost his seat at Westminster in the 1955 election, but in the following years was travelling regularly to Paris to plan the International Seminars of the CCF with Melvin Lasky and Michael Josselson under the directorship of Daniel Bell. Michael Josselson, who in 1967 admitted that he had for 17 years been channelling CIA money into the CCF, has described to us Crosland's role at this period. Crosland's contribution, he says. was "encouraging sympathetic people" to participate in the seminars sponsored by the Congress all over the world. Hugh Gaitskell travelled in these years to Congress functions in Milan 1955. New Delhi 1957, the island of Rhodes 1958 and Berlin 1962. Crosland himself travelled to Vienna in 1958, to Berlin in 1960 and to Australia and Japan in 1964 on a Congress-sponsored tour. He was at this date a member of the International Council of the CCF after nearly a decade working to re-model European Socialism in the image of the American Democratic Party, cause for the sake of which the CCF had financed a systematic campaign of congresses, seminars and private gatherings for leading Socialists throughout Europe. This had been backed up by the fullest publicity in Encounter, Preuves. Monat and the other CCF journals - whose influence was further extended by discreet arrangements with Socialist Commentary for publishing each other's pamphlets and articles. Rita Hinden was by now the editor of Socialist Commentary and playing a similar role to Crosland in picking African participants for Congress seminars. Michael Josselson describes her as "a good friend of ours. We relied entirely on her advice for our African operations". She also visited India and Japan on a CCF-sponsored trip after the Suez crisis, speaking on the theme that traditional Socialism was irrelevant in a modern capitalist society where there was full employment. This was the nub of the matter. Many of Europe's Socialist parties still had old-fashioned Marxist notions written into their rule-books, which had become an embarrassment to their leaders. A glaring example was the British Labour Party whose Clause IV -"common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange" and so on - sounded to some like a passage from the Communist Manifesto. The proof of its irrelevance seemed provided by the 1959 General Election in which Anthony Crosland regained his seat at Westminster, but which represented a catastrophic defeat for the Labour Party. The day after Labour's defeat, Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland and Douglas Jay were among a small group who met with Gaitskell at his home. They decided that the time had come for Labour to drop its old commitments and get rid of its cloth cap image which had become an electoral liability. Douglas Jay immediately wrote the now celebrated article which appeared in Forward the following week, calling for the abandonment of Clause IV and a change in the Labour Party's name. And early in 1960, Socialist Commentary commissioned Mark Abram's firm, Research Services Ltd., to carry out an attitude survey on "Why Labour Lost". The results were published in the journal's May to August number, and they confirmed the Gaitskell thesis that nationalisation was a liability. This Abrams survey had been turned down by the Labour Party Executive before the 1959 election as being too costly. But now Socialist Commentary found the money to pay for it, and in February 1960 William Rodgers, General Secretary of the Fabian Society since 1953, organised a letter of support to Gaitskell signed by 15 young Parliamentary candidates. Shortly afterwards, a steering committee was set up with Rodgers as chairman, and including some of the signatories of the Gaitskell letter together with Crosland, Roy Jenkins, Patrick Gordon Walker, Jay, other Party members from Oxford and some sympathetic journalists. This group started work on a manifesto to be released in the event of Gaitskell's defeat in the defence debate at the Party Conference. This duly occurred in the autumn of 1960, when the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament triumphed in its campaign to win the Labour Party to a neutralist programme. So in October 1960 Rodgers and his friends released their manifesto in 25,000 copies with widespread Press coverage. Calling for "Victory for Sanity" - a dig at their old enemies the "Victory for Socialism" group - they appealed to Party members to rally behind Gaitskell and his Conference call to "fight and fight and fight again". They also issued an appeal for funds with which to continue the campaign, and in mid-November Rodgers reported to the steering committee that many small donations had been received, together with a large sum from a source which wished to remain anonymous. Rodger's windfall enabled the group to take a permanent office and appoint paid staff. The title "Campaign for Democratic Socialism" was chosen and a six-man Executive Committee set up with Rodgers as full-time paid Chairman. The Committee was told that available funds were sufficient for a year's activities, and CDS thus had a start on its opponents who, in spite of their widespread support in Labour constituencies and trades unions. were unable to raise more than a few hundred pounds over the following year and had to rely entirely on volunteer workers. At CDS's disposal were field-workers in the constituencies and unions, whom it supported with travelling expenses, literature and organisational back-up, tens of thousands of copies of the manifesto, pamphlets and other publications, plus a regular bulletin, Campaign, circulated free of charge to a large mailing list within the movement. And all this was produced without a single subscription-paying member. CDS achieved its objectives. The unions cracked under the pressure and the Labour Party returned to the Atlantic fold at the Party Conference in 1961 after a campaign by the most effective pressure group the Party had ever seen. Rodgers was its driving force. With financial backing assured, he created an organisation whose influence was out of all proportion to its original support among Party members. Whoever put up the money could justly claim to have changed the course of the history of the Labour Party and Britain in the 1960s.Nor did the importance of CDS vanish totally after it had restored the Labour Party to commitment to NATO, for its adherents felt bitterly betrayed when Hugh Gaitskell later qualified his support for Common Market entry at the Brighton Conference in 1962. Standing at the back of the hail Rodgers turned to the Party press officer. John Harris - later Roy Jenkin's PR man - and said "I'm through with that man, John". Anthony Crosland, furthermore, supported Gaitskell's compromise and so also lost the backing of the ardent marketeers, who henceforward rallied around Roy Jenkins. The main significance of all these divisions was that they helped Harold Wilson to capture the leadership on Gaitskell's death. Finding the Parliamentary Party moulded in the Gaitskell image, its policies firmly rooted in Crosland's Future of Socialism. Wilson made no attempt to alter the package which became the programme of the next Labour Government. Throughout this post-war period the Party apparatus remained firmly in orthodox hands, particularly the International Department of which Denis Healey had been head until he entered Parliament in 1951. Then in 1965 his old post was taken over by J. Gwyn Morgan, one of the rising generation of Party and union officials whose careers began in the National Union of Students, to whose Presidency he had been elected in 1960 on an anti-Communist ticket. As President he took charge of international affairs, representing the Union in the International Student Conference at Leiden, and on leaving the NUS in 1962 he became Assistant General Secretary of ISC in charge of finance. In this capacity he negotiated with the American foundations which supplied the bulk of ISC funds and supervised expenditure of the several million dollars devoted to world-wide propaganda and organisation. In 1964 he became Secretary General of ISC. In his five years' association with the organisation he visited over 80 different countries and got to know personally many heads of government and leaders of the world's principal social democratic parties. An ardent pro-European and active supporter of Roy Jenkins, he was an obvious choice to fill the vacant slot as head of Labour's Overseas Department at the beginning of 1965. Two years later Morgan was promoted to the newly-created post of Assistant General Secretary of the Labour Party, with the expectation that he would fill the top job on Harry Nicholas's retirement. But early in 1967 the US journal Ramparts revealed that since the early Fifties the National Student Association of America had, with the active connivance of its elected officers, received massive subventions from the CIA through dummy foundations and that one of these was the Fund for Youth and Student Affairs which supplied most of the budget of ISC. The International Student Conference, it appeared, had been set up by British and American Intelligence in 1950 to counteract the Communist peace offensive, and the CIA had supplied over 90 per cent, of its finance. The Congress for Cultural Freedom was similarly compromised. Michael Josselson admitted that he had been channelling CIA money into the organisation ever since its foundation - latterly at the rate of about a million dollars a year - to support some 20 journals and a world-wide programme of political and cultural activities. Writing of Sol Levitas at the time of his death in 1961, the editor of the New Leader, William Bohm said "the most amazing part of the journalistic miracle was the man's gift for garnering the funds which were necessary to keep our paper solvent from week to week and year to year. I cannot pretend to explain how this miracle was achieved.we always worked in an atmosphere of carefree security. We knew that the necessary money would come from somewhere and that our cheques would be forthcoming." The "Miracle" was resolved by the New York Times: the American Labour Conference for International Affairs which ran the New Leader had for many years been receiving regular subventions from the J. M. Kaplan Fund, a CIA conduit.The CIA had taken the lessons taught back in the early Fifties by Burnham and the New Leader to heart. With its army of ex-Communists and willing Socialists it had for a while beaten the Communists at their own game -but unfortunately it had not known when to stop and now the whole structure was threatened with collapse. Rallying to the agency's support, Thomas Braden, the official responsible for its move into private organisations, and Executive Director of the American Committee on United Europe, explained that Irving Brown and Lovestone had done a fine job in cleaning up the unions in post-war Europe. When they ran out of money, he said, he had persuaded Dulles to back them, and from this beginning the world-wide operation mushroomed. Another ex-CIA official, Richard Bissell, who organised the Bay of Pigs invasion, explained the Agency's attitude to foreign politicians: "Only by knowing the principal players well do you have a chance of careful prediction. There is real scope for action in this area: the technique is essentially that of 'penetration' . . . Many of the 'penetrations' don't take the form of 'hiring' but of establishing friendly relationships which may or may not be furthered by the provision of money from time to time. In some countries the CIA representative has served as a close counsellor... of the chief of state." After these disclosures the CCF changed its name to the International Association for Cultural Freedom. Michael Josselson resigned - but was retained as a consultant - and the Ford Foundation agreed to pick up the bills. And the Director of the new Association is none other than Shepard Stone, the Bilderberg organiser who channelled US Government money to Joseph Retinger in the early Fifties to build the European Movement and then became International Director of the Ford Foundation. When Rita Hinden died at the end of last year after 20 years as editor of Socialist Commentary. George Thomson - a pillar of CDS who resigned recently from Labour's front bench with Roy Jenkins - paid tribute to her key role in transforming the Labour Party. In the Fifties, he said, her "ideas were greeted with outraged cries of 'Revisionism'. But by the mid-Sixties the revisionism of Socialist Commentary had become the orthodoxy of the Labour Movement." And Denis Healey's comment was equally revealing. "Only Sol Levitas of the American New Leader." he said, "had a comparable capacity for exercising a wide political influence with negligible material resources." He obviously hadn't paid a visit to Companies House whose Register shows that in recent years Socialist Commentary has been drawing on a capital reserve of over £75,000. Through its network of front organisations, magazines and subsidies the CIA in the late Fifties and early Sixties had a decisive effect on Socialism throughout Western Europe. and in Britain in particular, but the Gaitskellism that it backed is now on the retreat. For those Labour leaders who, in all innocence, built their careers in the seminars of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the columns of Encounter or the New Leader, rather than in the trade union branch or on the Conference floor, are now feeling the lack of a mass base within the Party. Attacked by Gaitskell at the Labour Party Conference in 1960 as a fellow traveller, Michael Foot retorted 'but who are they travelling with?' and the question is one that other members of the Party echo. For the chairmen of the world's largest capitalist organisations, monarchists, ex-Nazis, commanders of the American and German forces, the Crown Princes of Europe and CIA agents do indeed make strange travelling companions for Socialists. ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2010:/en//1.530 2010-06-13T18:17:10Z 2010-06-29T18:04:03Z

GLOBAL LABOUR INSTITUTE Activities Report 2009 The Political Context What a difference one year makes! Last year I was worried that Obama might become the leader of a "Global Social Democracy" project, as Walden Bello called it, and thus pre-empt more radical alternatives, which seemed a plausible option in the light of the global economic crisis, merging with other global crises, old and new. If only! What in fact we got with Obama is a "centrist" (i.e. conservative) administration, totally at variance with the spirit of his campaign and the groundswell of opinion he got elected on. He could have been another Roosevelt, he chose to be another Clinton. The American labour movement has once again been disappointed, if not betrayed, by a Democratic administration. As Carter and Clinton before him, Obama has found other more pressing priorities and serious labour law reform (the Employee Free Choice Act) has been indefinitely postponed. Little else has changed since last year. The interrelated crises: "that of the financial system, spreading to the entire economy; critical stresses on the environment; the food crisis; the energy crisis; a social crisis caused by growing inequalities and poverty; and, inevitably, a cultural, ideological and political crisis" are still there. Despite the mounting dangers, there is no sign of true alarm or urgency, much less of solutions, about any of this. Last year I wrote that the crisis of the global capitalist system "could not be overestimated". It turns out that in fact it very easily could be. Walden Bello asked the rhetorical question: "Will government ownership, intervention, and control be exercised simply to stabilize capitalism, after which control will be given back to the corporate elites?", expecting neo-Keynesian solutions to be more likely. In fact, this is exactly what happened. The States have saved the banks with taxpayers' money and the pigs are back at the trough. What is lacking is effective resistance from the labour movement and from the political Left. There is a huge empty space in the global picture where labour and the Left used to be. Last year I wrote: "The social response to this onslaught on workers' lives has so far been remarkably muted". In 2009, it got worse. The American labour movement was embroiled in a totally destructive internal war caused by Andy Stern's megalomaniac adventures at a time when it should have been aggressively responding to the sidetracking of its concerns by the Obama administration. The European and international labour movements, in their institutional form (ETUC and ITUC) were entirely absent from world events or, in any event, there was no visible evidence of their existence. This is not to say that there were no labour struggles: there were many, often very hard fought, and even successful some of the time. But they were local, and if they had any international dimension, it was confined to a sectoral basis. They were invisible, except to readers of LabourStart, in other words, to other committed trade unionists. As long as they remain local und unrelated in time and space, the system can very well absorb them and eventually roll them back. The machinery that was invented to prevent this from happening was the international labour movement. The Internationals were created to be the multipliers of local struggles, to coordinate them within an ideological framework so that each struggle would be a step towards lasting social change. Their function was to provide a perspective based on a common understanding of society and of the process of social change. This machinery is broken, largely through its own doing. The merger of the ICFTU and WCL in 2006, hailed as a "historical" event, produced an organization which has inherited the defects of both the ICFTU (depolitization) and of the WCL (overcentralization). This merger, based on the lowest common political denominator of both organizations, proved once again that bigger is not necessarily better. What we got is an organization that in its four years of existence has produced nothing but a stream of press releases reporting what others have done, with a commentary from the general secretary apportioning blame, praise and advice.. There is no hint of any challenge to the system, of serious involvement in any significant workers' struggles, of an alternative vision of society. The ITUC now functions like an NGO with an exaggerated claim to labour representation, increasingly irrelevant and remote from its own membership. This void at the top makes it very difficult for the ongoing labour struggles to break out of their isolation, relate to and support each other, to be perceived by public opinion as more than yet another instance of "labour unrest", to gain public support and to make a political impact, to be seen as part of a broader struggle in the interests of all society, not just of an "interest group".. The summit of the international labour movement, and this includes its European side show, has thus become a major roadblock to the development of a political and social alternative which would enable the movement to progress towards a solution of the multiple crises society is faced with. It is unlikely that the congress of the ITUC in Vancouver, in June 2010, will produce a significant change. There will be a new general secretary, with proven credentials of honesty, militancy and a broader view of her mission. She has, however, allowed herself to be nominated without the conditions that would give her the necessary elbow space, she will be a prisoner of the Brussels apparat and she believes the Chinese State labour organizations are real trade unions. This could work out in various ways, including disaster, but the worst is never certain. The World Social Forum has served to some extent as an alternative venue for social movement and labour convergence, but after nearly ten years it has become clear that an annual festival cannot be a substitute for international organization, even though it has helped generate a number of regional and international associations. At the same time, there is now a multiplicity of blogs and websites dealing with labour and socialist politics, many of which are very interesting and some brilliant. News services like LabourStart, and a website like New Unionism, among others, have contributed to fill the void at the level of information and political discussion (check them out under "Links" on the GLI site). Whether and when a new movement can emerge from this broth remains to be seen. Introduction What can an organization such as the GLI do in this context? Our mission statement ("Introducing the GLI", on the website under "About the GLI") remains a fairly adequate guide. In 2009, we have focused on the following tasks: (1) participate, with the Cornell GLI, in an effort to renew and clarify the international agenda of the labour movement; (2) participate in efforts to organize workers in the informal economy, particularly domestic workers; support the activities of WIEGO, the international movement of informal women workers, particularly of its organizing program; (3) the publication and dissemination of labour movement history; (4) the publication and dissemination of the history and the ideas of independent and democratic socialism. We have done this through the GLI website, by participating in meetings/workshops/seminars with associated organizations, by preparing workers' education material and by assisting with the publication of relevant material by associated organizations, including editorial and financial contributions, to the modest extent of our possibilities. The GLI library continues to grow through new acquisitions and now probably ranks among the main sources of labour and socialist literature in Geneva, if not in Switzerland. We propose to continue these activities in 2010, while strengthening the network of our fraternal and associated organizations. D.G. Meetings January 5 (DG,KP): GLI Board Meeting, Geneva January 12-13 (DG): UNRISD/NGO Consultation on Future UNRISD Research, Geneva March 27-28 (DG) Rotschuo Retreat April 19 – 21 (DG): Global Trade Union Task Force, Cornell GLI, San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago June 3-19(DG,KP): International Labour Conference, Geneva June 16 DG,KP): GLI Board Meeting, Geneva July 17-19 (DG): Association Club Mohamed Ali de la Culture Ouvrière (ACMACO), Université d'Eté, Gammarth, Tunisie October 7(DG,KP): Meeting on GLI/IUF/WIEGO Moldova Project), Geneva November 20(DG): Book launch Fil rouge, Geneva December 7-11 (DG): IUF Asia/Pacific Advanced Education Course, Bogor, Indonesia WIEGO January 22-23 (DG,KP): WIEGO Board Meeting, Manchester January 24 (DG,KP): WIEGO ORP Advisory Committee Meeting, Manchester March 3-4 (DG): HomeNet South Asia and HomeNet Bangladesh: Regional Workshop: Toward a National Policy on Homebased Workers and the Ratification of C.177, Dhaka March 30 (KP): EFFAT/IUF women’s committee meeting, Brussels April 6-8 (KP): Workshop: Organizing informal workers in Eastern Europe – partnerships between NGOs and trade unions; jointly with ITUC-PERC, FES, Homeworkers Worldwide, Clean Clothes Campaign, Bratislava April 19-20 (KP): ILO ACTRAV/ITUC consultative meeting to prepare for an ILO Convention for domestic workers. Geneva April 21 (KP): Meeting with Andrea Nahles (MP Germany) on ratification of C 177, jointly with DGB and German Commission of Justice and Peace, Berlin April 27 (KP): side meeting with members of the working group on migrant domestic workers of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, Geneva May 5 (KP): IUF Women’s committee meeting May 7-8 (KP): ITUC-PERC Women’s Committee, regional workshop on the economic crisis and informalization of the economy, Sofia June 3 – 19 (DG, KP): International Labour Conference June 6-12(DG,KP): side meetings with Steering Committee of the Domestic Workers' International Network (IUF), Geneva June 8-9 (DG,KP): Seminar on People-Centered Economy June 11 (DG,KP): Meeting of the International Co-ordinating Committee (ICC) on Organizing Workers in the Informal Economy, Geneva June 12: (DG,KP): Meeting of the Advisory Committee of the Organization and Representation Program, Geneva June 18 (DG): Management Committee (conference call) June 19 (KP): WIDE Conference, Basel August 20-21 (KP): Meeting with RESPECT Network, Amsterdam August 26-27 (KP): Meeting with Oxfam (Novib), Amsterdam September 16 (KP): Steering Committee IDWN (conference call) September 17(DG): Management Committee(conference call) September 21 (KP): Meeting with Jo Becker (Human Rights Watch), Geneva September 29 (KP): Staff WIEGO (conference call) October 14 (KP): Day of General Discussion Migrant Domestic Workers, UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Geneva October 19 (KP): Side meeting with EFFAT/IUF Women’s Committee on domestic workers, Berlin October 23-29 (KP): WIEGO staff retreat, Boston November 30-December 1 (KP): International Workshop “Strategies of Empowerment of (Migrant) Domestic Workers”, Geneva Solifonds Board Meeting (DG): May 6 (Bern), November 12 (Zürich) Swiss Socialist Party May 25, September 7, November 23 (DG): International Policy Committee, Bern Oltener Kreis/Cercle d'Olten DG: April 4, October 3 – Bern Pages de Gauche DG: Editorial Board, Lausanne: April 24, June 19, September 18, November 27 Collège du Travail Committee, publications sub-committee(DG): February 5, February 27, June 22, September 1 Round Table Domestic Workers, Germany (Bremen) KP: Group meetings: January 28, February 18 Meeting with MPs of Federal State of Bremen: February 12 Denknetz/Réseau de réflexion Working Group on Precarious Employment (domestic workers) KP: Group meetings: June 24, September 4, Oct 6, Dec 3 Nov 6 : Conference on Globalized Wage Work in private households – ways out of precariousness” Publications DG: Fil rouge: Expériences et écrits sur le syndicalisme international, Collège du Travail, Genève, 2009, 271 p. (an anthology of writings by DG on a wide range of political and labour subjects, in different contexts). 700 copies were printed. DG: The Labour Movement, Indonesian edition (Gerakan Buruh). The first edition was published by the IUF Indonesian Project Office in February 2006 as a 70 page booklet. A first print run of 2,500 was followed by another 2,000 in December 2006 and another 500 in July 2009, so as of July 2009, 5,000 copies had been printed. A specks is due to the Iuf Asia/Pacific Regional Organization for its support of this publication. DG: The Labour Movement, Thai edition. The historical overview by DG(cf. GLI website, under "International Labour Movement") was published in November 2009 by the Thai Labour Campaign together with Hal Draper's "Two Souls of Socialism". The two essays are printed in the same volume, upside down (139 p. for Draper, 264 p. for DG). Two thousand copies were printed. There was a book launch in Bangkok in December and reportedly the book has already given rise to lively discussions. This is not surprising since it is the first ever serious radical narrative about the labour movement and socialism in Thailand that is not Maoist and, in fact, a direct challenge to the Maoist interpretation of history. The GLI contributed CHF2,200 to the publication of this brochure. Moldova Project Following conversations between GLI, IUF and WIEGO. which started in 2007, about ways of organizing support for independent trade unions in the Republic of Moldova (at that stage only SindLUCAS, the IUF affiliate representing HRC and other service workers), and about organizing workers in the informal economy (home-based workers, street vendors and domestic workers) into unions, the following developments took place in 2008 and 2009: (1) In May 2008, Svetlana Boincean, IUF representative in Moldova, established a labour support NGO called Formal, with the aim of informing workers, particularly informal and migrant workers, about their rights. (2) In May 2009, Svetlana created a website: http://muncaformala.md/new/ (in Romanian and Russian with links to English, Russian, etc. sites) for Formal. DG is able to follow the Romanian version of the website. (3) At about the same time, the GLI submitted a project proposal to the International Solidarity Service of the Republic and Canton of Geneva. The total budget of the project for one year is CHF31,000, of which CHF25,000 are contributed by Geneva and CHF6,500 are the contribution of the GLI in terms of DG and KP working time. Out of the CHF25,000, CHF3,000 can be claimed by the GLI as overhead costs. The objectives of the project is to provide Svetlana with support for organizing workers in the informal economy, particularly women, in addition to the work she is already doing as part of her IUF activities. This means principally to strengthen the work of Formal, help develop the website, and support SindLUCAS activities directed towards organizing informal workers (legal aid, training courses, etc.). (4) In September 2009 the authorities of the Canton of Geneva approved the project for one year (November 2009 to December 2010) with possible extensions in 2011 and 2012, subject to annual evaluations starting with 2009/10. A contract was signed between the GLI and Geneva on September 26, 2009. (5) On October 7, 2009 a meeting took place between Svetlana Boincean (IUF), Barbro Budin (IUF), DG (GLI and WIEGO), Joëlle Kuntz (GLI) and Karin Pape (GLI and WIEGO) at the IUF to work out the operational details of the implementation of the project, which started according to plan in November. Since StreetNet International has also started working in Moldova in 2009, with the assistance of Svetlana Boincean, it is likely that co-operation will develop between our related activities. Domestic Workers The GLI has played a significant role in the international domestic workers' movement which developed since November 2006, when an international conference on "Respect and Rights: Protection for Domestic Workers" was held in Amsterdam under the auspices of IRENE and of the IUF. Some 60 participants came from domestic workers' organisations, networks, trade unions and support organisations as well as researchers from all continents. Barbro Budin represented the IUF and Karin Pape represented the GLI. It was the first-ever such global meeting to discuss the situation of domestic workers and to develop effective international action to fight for their rights. The conference adopted a statement setting out ideas for future work and affirming the need for a permanent international network to help coordinate it – this network to be run by domestic workers' organizations themselves. At a follow-up conference in September 2008, a provisional Steering Committee was formed. The IUF agreed to provide the logistic base for the network and designated a coordinator (Anneke van Luijken from IRENE). WIEGO had also decided to support the domestic workers organizing project, since domestic workers represented a significant portion of women workers in the informal economy. The WIEGO contact person for this project is Chris Bonner, director of its Organization and Representation Program. The group decided to use the ILO progress to create an international convention for domestic workers, and representatives from domestic workers' unions, invited by the IUF, attended the 2009 International Labour Conference (ILC) in Geneva, to prepare for negotiations over an international instrument for domestic workers in 2010 and 2011. However, by the end of 2008 it became clear that the Steering Committee expected improved procedures for information, communication and coordination. The GLI then stepped in: in the first months of 2009, DG reorganized the IDWN website (www.domesticworkerrights.org) and KP activated the exchange of information. The IDWN website was taken over by Kathleen McKenzie in October 2009, in cooperation with Karin (GLI and WIEGO), Giulia and Barbro (IUF), Chris (WIEGO) and Dan (GLI). At its June 2009 meeting in Geneva, the Steering Committee elected its office bearers, agreed on a name for the network (International Domestic Workers' Network, or IDWN) and elected Karin Pape as Acting International Coordinator (until 2011 at the latest; with the ILC and the Convention issue out of the way, the IDWN would convene its first congress in the second half of 2011, adopt a constitution and elect an International Coordinator from its member organizations). In her capacity of IDWN Acting Coordinator, Karin, who is a WIEGO staff member, is "on loan" from WIEGO to the IUF, and becomes an IUF staff member for the duration of her IDWN assignment. DG continues to act as an informal advisor to the IDWN (website, networking). The GLI activity with the domestic workers organizing project has been funded partially by the Berti-Wicke-Stiftung, a Swiss foundation supporting socialist and feminist causes, which contributed CHF10,000. (In addition, of course, of Karin's salary contributed by WIEGO and CHF1,000 contributed by the IUF for work on the website in early 2009). HNSA/GLI Project HomeNet South Asia (HNSA), one of two regional organizations of home-based workers which survived the collapse of HomeNet International in 2003, is interested in creating the conditions for a reconstruction of HomeNet International and has offered a contract to the GLI to assist in this project. This would principally entail: · mapping exercise organizations working with home workers in Europe, Latin America, Africa · Report of mapping exercise-name of organizations, type of home-based workers, type of trades engaged · International Workshop or seminar for the formation of HomeNet International-content for the seminar, objective of the seminar · drafting Bylaws and registration of New HomeNet Intentional This is a three-year project, starting in 2009, with a total budget of USD25,000 per year. A first instalment of USD25,000 for 2009 was received in February 2010. The mapping exercise is in progress, and Dave Spooner has written an education manual on the Home Work Convention (C. 177), which has been delivered to HNSA and which is in the process of being subedited. A second assignment of the GLI for HNSA is to assist in the campaign to ratify C. 177. This entails: · Regional workshop on C 177 in Bangladesh-developing content for the workshop, papers for the workshop, information from HomeNets · Background work in country HomeNets-meeting with Govt. officials, ILO, organizations · Developing information material for C 177 · Developing campaign strategy for C 177 for the countries like Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka WIEGO History Project In early 2009 WIEGO proposed a contract to the GLI to undertake a historical analysis of informal workers' international organizations, to be published as a sequence of three studies: home-based workers, street vendors and waste collectors. The contract provides for an initial payment to the GLI of USD5,000 and of a further payment of USD15,000 upon completion of the project. Although DG signed this contract in May 2009, it subsequently proved that neither the deadline originally envisaged, nor the volume of work involved in all three studies, could be carried out by the GLI. The reasons are limited capacity and the pressure of other commitments, which are detailed above. The GLI therefore applied for a revision of the contract, limiting it to home-based workers,. and for an extension of the deadline (to March 31, 2011). It is hoped that by concentrating on home-based workers, this project may be a useful complement to the HNSA/GLI project and might contribute to the reconstruction of HomeNet International. Secretariat Karin Pape has continued working part time as an administrative assistant and as a researcher and writer on informal economy issues (see above). As in the past, Oscar and Nora Payuyo have been responsible for cleaning and maintenance. Finances Ms. Mariane Grobet-Wellner has kept the GLI accounts in the period under review. The financial report for 2009 is attached as an annex. Download file ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2010:/en//1.531 2010-06-13T18:46:49Z 2010-06-13T19:18:32Z

Junya Yimprasert is the director of the Thai Labour Campaign, a labour support NGO, and the leader of the Migrant Workers' Union of Thailand. Download file ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2010:/en//1.532 2010-06-13T18:50:09Z 2010-06-13T19:17:37Z

Junya Yimprasert is the director of the Thai Labour Campaign, a labour support NGO, and the leader of the Migrant Workers' Union of Thailand. Why I don’t love the King? Why are Thai people issuing orders to the Royal Thai Army to kill Thai people? Why is the Royal Thai Army being engaged to prevent Thai people from expressing their legitimate grievances on the streets of their capital – the City of Angels? What and where are the root cause of the madness that has overtaken Thailand at the start of the 21st century? To all conscious Thai, and to all non-Thai people, the recent issuing of orders that allow Thai to kill Thai was just further shocking evidence of the impact of 64 years of ‘Love the King’ propaganda. After the military crackdown on red-shirt protesters in April (2010) and the street battle that followed, Thailand’s mainstream TV channels screened interviews of Bangkok people crying for their burning buildings and largely ignored the scenes of human carnage in the streets, where 88 people lay dead. There came no words of sorrow for the bereaved from the Prime Minister, his government or their followers. It became clear to the whole world that indeed their material values stood above their concern for the lives of ordinary Thai. The state violence that killed 88 people in April was a terrible exposure of Thailand’s class divisions. There are 3.4 million Thai Face Book users comprised mainly of the educated elite. Although the Thai Government has blocked tens of thousands of websites critical of the monarchy, Face Book stays open as a forum for each side to throw accusations at each other. Here’s a classic statement from the ‘Protect the King’ camp: “We knows who we are. We insist for our monarchy. We are not dependency like other countries in Asia, bcoz we have king. We are proud that we have a most sincere king. The money of our king use for his people. He exemplify to not extravagant and etc. I prefer to respect my King instead of respect the greedy political. I shall better ask you why you keep coming to the topic relevant of Thailand which was raised by Thai people???” Since 2008 the King of Thailand has been nominated by Forbes as the richest royal in the world, owning property worth 35 billion USD. In a ceremony to accept a Best Supporting Actor Award on 16 May 2010, in the middle of the military crackdown, a well-known Thai actor said (in Thailand): “. . if you hate the father, don’t love him anymore, please leave, because this is the home of the father, this is the land of the father. I love the King, and I believe that every one of us here love the King, we are the entire same colour. My head is belonging to the King.” This magical speech was followed immediately by an internet attack on another actor - for walking-out in the middle of the speech. Also at the ceremony, his unfortunate daughter had been captured on TV not singing a song with lyrics composed by the King. She was also attacked. Overnight both father and actress daughter were bombarded with accusations and contract cancellations, and pressured into stating that they were loyal monarchists. The speech was then printed on the website of the Centre for Resolution of the Emergency Situation, the Government set-up that issued the orders to use live ammunition against the people. Just recently an 18-year-old student was refused entry into two government-funded universities, because she participated in red-shirt demonstrations and criticised the monarchy. An internet witch-hunt was mounted to corral this girl into bowing before a picture of the King. She was rescued from physical danger by a scholarship to study abroad. When students who have passed exams to enter a university are prevented from doing so, hunted down and victimised, because they dare criticise the King, it is necessary to speak-out even more strongly. These are but minor examples to illustrate the huge madness that is engulfing the Thai public at the start of the 21 Century. All people have their limits and I write this letter to let people know why I don’t love the King. Born to love the King and Queen Old pictures of the young and beautiful King and Queen, and of the prince and princesses, were always on the empty wall of our family’s house. No matter how many times we had to build or rebuild our home, these pictures were always with us, and always returned to the highest spot of the wall. They were still there on the empty wall when I last visited my home, colours faded and stained at the corners by rain drops. As soon as I could open my eyes I saw the picture of the King, as soon as I could understand a few words I was told that we must love the King and Queen because they are our King and Queen. We were made to believe they are the greatest of all Kings and Queens, and in those days TV was saturated with programmes about royal projects and charities to prove it. No one in my family had ever met the King, but we all loved the King because everyone said he is a good King. When I was very small we used to go to the neighbours to watch TV. My grandmother and mother were addicted to the regular 8 pm news about the Royal Family. Making sure they watched the royal news was part of their code of practice for being a proper citizen. When the Government said light a candle for the King they did so without question, and they really did love the handsome King and the beautiful Queen, the young prince and the princesses, and never stopped commenting on how graceful they looked. Nevertheless, as small children we couldn’t wait for the royal programmes to pass, so we could continue watching the regular Thai soap-operas. My village is an old, collective, rice-farming village of around 200 households. In the 1960s into the 1980s it was a very lively village. Everyone knew everyone and half the village were relatives. Almost everyone participated in everyone else’s household ceremonies - from birth to death. For nearly half the year our village was flooded and many houses were linked by shared, raised, wooden walkways. For us small children it was easy and fun to skip along from house to house without having to negotiate ladders. We could enter everyone’s kitchen with ease and see what food they had, and we would eat together according to each other’s ideas about how and what to cook. But usually there was not much, just rice, noodles, chillies, vegetables and fish. Because of the floods few houses in our village kept chickens. We had to buy almost everything on credit, and I don’t remember having a whole egg just for myself before I entered secondary school. The flooding meant that we could only cultivate one crop a year. During the floods we became fishermen. There were many local festivals and we travelled mainly in boats. We would spend days preparing food for the festivals and play our own music. Nowadays many of the festivals have disappeared and the simplicity, ceremony and rituality of those that remain has changed, with villagers contracting outside catering and hiring bands with dancing bikini girls. The 1970s brought some improvements to our village. A dirt road was built to link us to the District Office, and with that there came electricity and a lot of dust. A canal and irrigation channels were dug to limit flooding of the fields. This enabled villagers to plant more than one crop a year, and four of my brothers and a sister now grow rice two and very occasionally three times a year. At the end of 1990 the road was expanded and covered with asphalt, and less dust blew into our houses. The village did not receive a drinking water supply until the mid-90s. By the time the long-promised telephone line had reached some houses almost everyone had a mobile phone. My village is 100 kilometres from Bangkok, but hundreds of kilometres away, up in the northeast, the same developments came later. After the grain was sold and villagers had a bit of money, lines of vendors with baskets of this and that on their shoulders would pass through the village. Many walked from village to village selling all kinds of goods; mosquitoes nets, pots, pans and blankets - and pictures of the Royal Family. I remember when my Grandma bought pictures of the King and the Queen, each in a flaming, gold-painted frame, and hung them with great pride in the high spot of her house. And I remember how my Mum was down-hearted because we couldn’t afford to buy our own. This is how I loved my village and how we ‘loved’ the King and Queen, long before I was able to think about the meaning of love. Our love for the Royal Family was an unquestioning love, a tiny part of the great ‘capital of love’ that the Thai King and Queen have been so privileged to receive from the Thai people, and become accustomed to taking for granted - as if it were their divine right. Aside from the fun we small children had with our big space to run around and big water to swim in, with 9 children my family struggled with the low price we received for our grain. In the early 60s my parents decided to move to the mountains 100 km to the north. Here we worked to clear the forest until we had about 8 hectares of upland ready for planting the cash crops the Government was promoting, but my family had no luck. No matter which of the new cash-crops we planted (cassava, maize, soybean, peanuts, sunflower, cotton, sugar-cane etc.), according to the advice of the Government, by the time we were ready with our harvest the market price had fallen too low to make any profit. As soon as I could walk and run I worked in the fields with my family. By modern standards what me and my brothers and sisters did would be regarded as child labour. By the time I was nine I was already the family cook and cleaner. As it was for most farmers like us, the cost of seed, fertilizer, insecticide, farming equipment and general household maintenance meant we never had cash and that our family was never not in debt. We lived in an endless cycle of debt which only ever increased. We ate what the forest and streams could give us. All other items were bought on credit. Since the time when the Green Revolution spread through Thailand, the farming debt of small farm families has never stopped growing. These days the average debt of farming families in Thailand is around 6,000 Euro. I was a weak and frequently sick child. My mother was constantly running with me to the doctors, actually just paramedics and nurses, but in our village we called them doctors. Then, finally, two of my sisters took me and my parents to the Sirirat Hospital in Bangkok, where both were working as cleaners. It was here, in 1977, when I was 11 years old, that I was first examined by a real doctor, and diagnosed as having been born with Thalassemia, a common genetic ailment. My family had never heard of it, nor one can only assume had our village ‘doctors’, and it amazes me to this day that I survived all the treatments they prescribed. In those days there was not public health service. If a member of a poor family fell ill the cost of private clinics and hospitals often meant they had to sell their land. Many families were pushed into bankruptcy and destitution, and many still are, because few families dare as yet to place their loved ones in the hands of the ‘free health-care’ system. When I was a child, Thai families, rich and poor, paid a lot of attention to courting the favour of government officers and politicians. For the poor this was especially important: one child in Government employ meant free medical services for their parents. The two sisters who took me to their Bangkok hospital for my first proper check-up are real angels. Both had been working at the hospital, around the clock, since they were about 20, to pay for my own and my younger sister’s education and ensure my parent’s health care. Often I criticised my Mum for being the most unorganised woman in the world, and that was true, she didn’t know how to clean or wash clothes and she was not a good cook, but she was a very handy woman when it came to making nets, baskets and fishing gear, and also to planting. She was much better in the fields than my father, and with the fishing. My father was the opposite, he liked cooking and cleaning. My mother was a kind and generous person, always giving to those who were poorer than us and always feeding the cats and dogs that came to the house, but, besides her addiction to chewing beetle-nut, she had a habit that often embarrassed the whole family. She could not stop herself chatting to complete strangers. As soon as she had sat down in a bus she would start talking to the person next to her. Most of her talk would be about how bright we were in school and, laughingly, about her drunken husband. Nonetheless, whenever I or my younger sister, her ninth child, were sick, she was always there right beside us. She never left me alone in a clinic and often we stayed together over-night. With people these days becoming increasingly hard and cold, when I look back I realise what a beautiful person my Mum was, with her ready, positive energy to connect with other people. For me, my Mum was and is the greatest mum in the world. When the Government promoted the Queen to be the ‘Mother of the Nation’, just before the bloody, military crackdown in 1976, I was unable to think of her as a mother. The Queen was the Queen, but my Mum was the greatest woman in my life. This doesn’t mean I didn’t admire the Queen in all her glamorous dresses and jewellery. The media had long been attempting to proclaim her the most beautiful queen in the world and, since we had never seen any other queen, we had all come to believe that she was. Well, surely it is not just me that thinks my own mum is the greatest mum in the world. Communists will eat your liver and burn you alive! During my first and second year in school, two of my brothers, one sister and I, all four of us, would walk barefoot to and from our primary school, in all about 4 kilometres. The school formed a part of a small temple complex in the middle of the jungle. We walked everywhere barefoot. There was nothing special about that in those days, it was still common for most Thai to go barefoot and for most people throughout Southeast Asia. When we sold our land in the highlands and moved back to the rice fields I was in my third year in school. That was in 1976. At my new school we were taught the King’s songs and made to feel proud of our talented King for composing such beautiful songs. For an inter-school competition in 1977 or 1978, I remember we had to practice a couple of the King’s songs, for weeks and weeks. When the day came my brother and I were dressed-up in traditional dress and went marching and dancing along a two kilometre dirt road, to a bigger school in a bigger community. It was a long time ago but that day is vivid in my memory. The whole family was excited but we didn’t have any money to prepare for the event, and we had no cooking oil either. So my sisters awoke early to squeeze juice from the flesh of some coconuts and boil it on the fire until the oil came out. With this they fried rice and egg for our lunch, which they wrapped beautifully in lotus leaves, but we went with some feelings of shame that we didn’t have nice rice boxes. These days a rice lunch wrapped in lotus leaves might be considered cool, but at that time it was cause enough for kids like us to feels pangs of shame. We were proud of our part in the activity and had fun with the song called ‘We fight’ (Rao su), which talks about fighting the enemy to death, but none of us understood what the song was all about. From the age of seven or eight I was told to “Beware of communists” because “They are devils that will eat your liver and burn you alive”, and that “If you are stubborn the communists will come and take you away”. I remember how much I was afraid of ‘communists’ and how that fear entered my dreams. In my secondary school, Pridi Phanomyong, the father of Thailand’s democracy, was openly labelled a ‘communist’ by our social science teacher, and all events around his life were passed-over with as few words as possible. Several years were to pass before I learnt that Pridi was no communist, that he was in fact Thailand’s first champion of social welfare and social security, and that the Constitution produced by his Government in 1946 was the most democratic constitution that Thailand has ever seen, and that since the royalist coup that kicked-out his Government (in 1947) democracy in Thailand has done little more than stagnate. I was also interested to learn that there are many countries where communist parties are an accepted part of mainstream life. Wow! How come my Government could get it so wrong? Lucky number 7 Most of my sisters and brothers did really well in primary school, but the family was too poor to send nine children to high school. Besides, the youngest couldn’t be left alone without supervision and the elder ones had to look after them when the adults were out working. Luck came to me, the seventh child. I was destined to become the first woman from my family and the first from the village to graduate from a famous university, but I didn’t know that then. In my last year in high-school I won a King’s Competition Award for my Education Region. My family and school were exhilarated. My name was on the board reserved for students with the highest marks. I couldn’t believe it. I had never thought of myself as intelligent. I was a shy, simple student, nothing special. I was dumbfounded. How was it possible that I had won such a big competition? I managed also to pass the examination to enter the famous Silpakorn University. A couple of months into my first semester at Silpakorn I had to go to Bangkok to receive my King’s Award. A senior teacher and my mother were to accompany me to the Palace and I was to receive the award from Princess Sirindhorn, the Crown Princess. My mother and the high-school were highly excited. The teacher, my mother, one sister and I came together in Bangkok, at some Ministry of Education building, where we spent a full day practicing how to appear before a member of the Royal Family. All went well with the ceremony. My school took my certificate and hung it on the wall of the Rector’s Room, still the only such certificate to be awarded a child from my District Secondary. I received 2,000 Baht in a gold-coloured box, and my mother a picture of the Princess handing me the box. The picture was hung on our big empty wall for the neighbours and visitors. The box still sleeps in the wardrobe. The expense of going to receive the Award was surely equivalent to my prize money, but the value to my family and the school was much greater, and that 2,000 Baht (Ministry of Education money) helped me through a couple of months at university. University I was not long in university before I began to think about how much the students must be costing the state budget, and realising that only 5% of the student body came from poor families like mine. It was in the Faculty of Arts, in the Department of Social Sciences and Development, that I learnt about social justice, and quite early on I understood that I must work for the poor, for the small farmers. It was here that I promised in my heart that I will dedicate my life to reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. I was a very active student and took every opportunity I could to go out to the villages, and I travelled widely, to every region, learning about self-sufficiency, declining self-sufficiency and poverty. It was Silpakorn that taught me that, in order to bring justice, harmony and development to our society, the privileged must stop exploiting privilege and lower their consumption. It was here that I realised we should all be working for the exploited and marginalised, for justice and equality, and here that I learnt about freedom and democracy, and developed my passion for working for the poor. I was grateful for what I learnt at Silpakorn. When I heard it was my university that had refused to admit that 18-year-old girl, the university that had taught me why our society is divided by classes, I was shocked: my own beloved faculty refusing to admit a bright, female student because she practiced her right to freedom of expression! This came as a blow and yet another wake-up call. The greatest gift of my life has been education, and I thank my family from deep within my heart for their decision to send me to school. I thank and cannot thank enough my parents and sisters and brothers - for starving themselves so that my sister and I could go to the university. I don’t want more from my family. Uniforms On entering university I found the Sotus Ceremony unnecessary. The SOTUS Ceremony (Seniority, Order, Tradition, Unity, Spirit) is becoming an increasingly common, and frequently ugly and cruel practice in higher education institutions in Thailand. It is designed to humiliate students and further accustom them to accepting hierarchical inequality. I disliked the university uniform and rarely wore it. I felt disgusted that, though we were over 18 and had the right to vote, the university policy-makers supposed that we didn’t know how to dress and that they knew what clothes were good for us. More and more Thai universities and colleges have adopted rules governing what students may or may not wear, and many are forcing their students to wear uniforms, thus deepening and strengthening divides within the class system. What other country orders their university students to wear uniforms? In most countries not even primary school children are made to wear uniforms. Only in a country as hypocritical as Thailand could university authorities pretend that they know better than the students what students should wear for their own good. The increasingly compulsory use of uniforms in Thailand goes hand-in-glove with the state machinery for suppressing freedom of expression, and freedom to think, analyse and generate new ideas. No wonder the educated classes are the most royalist and most cruel, and most unable to identify and correct their own fallacies. No wonder they stand behind the military against their own people and encourage their Prime Minister to use live ammunition against the lower classes that dare set foot in their precious shopping centres. I was told recently that I don't love the country, don't have faith in any Thai institutions and that I am not justified to call myself a Thai etc. Thailand’s so-called educated classes are making the mistake of linking the legitimate struggle of the poor for democracy and justice with not loving the King and ‘anti-monarchy’. This is a serious, tragic and extremely dangerous mistake - the result of an education system that is deprived of good human reason. Most of the clothes I wore during my four years in university were given to me by my sisters. My hair was cut by friends who learnt hair-dressing as a hobby. If I’m not mistaken I was to the cinema only once in my four years in university. I received money from one of my sisters, about 40% of her salary. This provided me with three simple meals a day and occasionally the bus fare to my hometown. Another 40% she gave to my parents. To be able herself to live she would take whatever extra work she could get. She is a bright woman, but being before me in age she had no chance to go to university. It was me, the seventh child, with elder brother’s and sisters at work, who was the first to get that possibility, and I shall live with the guilt of this all my life. Studying and living on a very tight budget I tried to work through every summer holiday, selling noodles or conducting field surveys for the professors. On three occasions I applied for and received a university stipend (2-3000 Baht) and managed to graduate in 1989. Who paid for my education? My poor family and the tax-payer. Facing life as an activist. For a serious student with no experience of sex, my first job was a tough one: to work as a research assistance for a PhD student on the ‘Impact of tourism in Koh Samui’. Koh Samui is the third largest island in Thailand, well-known to tourists and back-packers around the world, especially from Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia, as a sex paradise, not only then but still also today. In 1989 Koh Samui was going through a critical period. Big hotel chains were moving-in to purchase coastal property, at a pittance, to build luxury resorts. The local farmers and fishermen were pushed to the mountains of the mainland, where they attempted to start again, for instance with growing coffee. There were about 250 hotels and guesthouses in Koh Samui and my task was to go around interviewing local people and proprietors and their staff. Da was my first friend on Koh Samui, a girl from the same Province as myself that had sold her virginity for 10,000 Baht. When I asked her why she answered quickly: “The poverty at home”, the poverty that I knew so well. Jan was a cook, a middle-aged women well-connected to the bar owners. Like many women in Koh Samui she was searching for a foreigner to carry her away from her misery. She is a beautiful and generous woman, one of the most charming and honest women I have ever met. I will never forget her generosity and her efforts to guard me from the crazy tourists. When they insulted us with sentences like: “I can buy any women I want in Thailand”, I would fight back: “Not true” I would yell. Nui, a local bungalow-owner, was a ‘good woman’ who lived her life with pride and integrity. Her restaurant was one of our favourite hang-outs at the end of Lamai Beach. The busiest sex bars were at the other end, just a 10-minute walk, but only once did I manage to drag her there. I moved around the bars talking to the bar girls, sometimes helping them with translating or writing letters in English. My English was not good but far better than theirs. If Jan and Da didn’t find anyone they liked we would all hang around together. Some nights I would keep them company until early morning, and I have some beautiful memories of just the three of us lying on the beach after the noisy bars had closed, listening to the waves and talking about our lives and dreams while waiting for the sun to rise. I wanted some experience of working in a bar myself, so Jan got me a job as a waitress in a lively bar with a boxing ring. After two days I quit because I couldn’t stand seeing old sex-workers, who couldn’t hook a customer, going onto the floor to fight each other for a 100 Baht. Two women fighting like enemies for a 100 Baht. What kind of life is that? In 1990 the NGOs that studied the situation were stating that Thailand had over a million sex workers. The families of these poor girls took their money to build bigger and better houses and temples. So long as their daughters sent money they might still be welcomed home, but when they failed to send money, or find a foreigner that would send their parents money, the ‘bad woman’ stigma grew stronger and unbearable. I witnessed many girls that needed drugs and alcohol to perform their bikinied go-go acts. Many had wounds on their wrists and arms, every slash a mark of deepening hatred. The person I worked for got his PhD, and somehow I managed to escape the whole 8 months without losing my virginity. These days Thailand’s sex trade has a turn-over of 4 – 5 billion USD / annum and employs around 2.5 million workers. What kind of country lives on the body and soul of women and sex tourism? After two month stay in Australia learning about democratic freedom with students from Sydney University, I took a job in Hong Kong with the Asian Migrant Centre, a regional NGO. My job there was to help Thai migrant workers who had run away from evil bosses report to the police, to file their complaints at the Hong Kong Labour Office, and to help women process new employment contracts at the Immigration Office, if they could find new employment. Sometimes I would find myself at police stations late into the night. It was tough work, but once again I met many beautiful, hard-working women. Women who had been sacrificing their lives for years in Hong Kong to be able to send money to meet the never-ending demands of their families in Thailand - for a brother’s education or motorcycle, for their father’s hospital bills or, even, for their nieces to go to school. Many of these women had never had a chance to start their own families, and the middle-aged women could only hope that, when they returned home for good, their brothers and family would take care of them. I could not believe that a little over one year after leaving university I was in contact with thousands of Thai women who, for the sake of their families, were sacrificing their own lives and happiness to shoulder social responsibilities that had been classified as ‘communist’ by the Kingdom of Thailand since the 1940s. Santhana Just here we can raise the story of Santhana, the 30-year-old woman from Northeast Thailand who was shot dead like a wild animal, and her boyfriend seriously wounded by military gunfire, when they were passing the Bangkok battle zone on 14 May this year (2010). Santhana had worked in a garment factory in Taiwan for three years and then done another three years in Japan, all the while teaching herself, until she was able to get a job as a tourist guide for a Japanese company, and later as a shipping manager for an export-import company. She was a self-made woman shot by the Thai military in her peak of time. The family lost their breadwinner. By way of compensation they received 50,000 Baht (1,200 Euro) from the Palace. As usual, this family had no choice but to accord their loss to bad karma. The story of Santhana is terribly familiar, and I was deeply angered when the Government labelled the 88 people it murdered on the streets of Bangkok last month, as armed, anti-monarchy terrorists. In my 20 years of activism, I have met hundreds of thousands of women like Santhana, not just from Thailand but from dozens of other countries, wonderful women carrying huge responsibility for the well-being of their families, and the economy of their country. After all our previous uprisings and bloody crackdowns, the bloody events of April-May this year, that saw 88 people murdered by our power elite, presents ghastly evidence of how the class system in Thailand has been allowed to develop unchecked. Growing doubts In 1992 I participated in the Bloody May uprising. The sound of empty plastic drinking bottles beating on the asphalt of Ratchadamnoen street still echoes in my mind, a sound that chilled the heavens with the determination of the will of the citizenry to kick out dictatorship. After 48 people had been shot dead by the Royal Thai Army, the uprising was ended through the intervention of the King, who gained popularity in being seen to talk down the military generals and protest leaders. All were accorded amnesty. This is the customary practice in Thailand for solving political conflict - to seek, over the bodies of a few dead citizens, the forgiveness of the King. The King’s word is the justice and that’s it - no more talk of justice. The general that commanded the military that killed 48 people was pardoned and allowed to continue to live in luxury. Like all our previous tyrants, before and after, he, nor anyone else, was ever taken to a court of justice. I began to feel seriously disturbed. Far, far behind time the people of Thailand were pleading, once again, for participatory democracy, and what did they receive? 48 murdered working class heroes and a royalist Prime Minister appointed by the King (not just once but twice) - a CEO from the clothing business with a long record of union-busting. He was welcomed by middle-class academics and royalist NGOs. 1992 was yet another juncture in the institutionalisation of political corruption. After 20 twenty years of working to lessen the gap between rich and poor all that could be observed was a continuous widening of the gap. And violent suppression of those who struggle for justice and democracy, or just think differently, appeared to be never-ending. Destruction and chaos. Once again in 2006 the tanks of the Royal Thai Army rolled bravely into Bangkok to rob Thailand of what little democracy it had managed to achieve. The coup was hatched when Prime Minister Thaksin was in New York. He never returned to Thailand, but did he ever have any real interest in supporting participatory democracy? Immediately after the tanks rolled into Bangkok I sent out a statement condemning the coup, and participated in several anti-coup demonstrations. I protested the coup not through any interest in Thaksin, but because I felt that the coup was an insult to our struggle for democracy. And it was. Since 2006 we have seen zero democracy and nothing but non-stop, violent, political turmoil. (See: http://www.networkideas.org/focus/may2010/fo31_Thailand.htm) If the last four years can be said to have a positive aspect it is that debate about Thailand’s double-standards can never again be contained. Now out in the open the debate is stimulating a new, far more critical political consciousness. Despite the imposition of Emergency Laws and massive Government censorship, more than ever before, rural and urban workers are discussing the role of their monarchy and the involvement of the King, Queen, Palace and royal regiments in Thai politics. Tens of thousands of web-sites have been blocked by the Government, although many have re-opened under altered addresses. Under Thailand’s draconian Lèse Majesté law (Article 112 of the Criminal Code), which states that: ‘Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent, shall be punished (with) imprisonment of three to fifteen years.’ Many people are already facing 6, 10, and 18 year jail sentences for expressing their views on-line, and also in public places. The manager of the on-line newspaper Prachatai (www.prachatai3.info) was arrested. Out on bail she is facing some 50 charges, and websites have been created to follow these cases e.g. http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/ Alongside the official criminalisation of those who are critical, and their victimisation by the ‘Love the King’ and ‘Protect the Monarchy’ factions, open criticism of the role of the monarchy continues to grow. Millions have started to doubt that their love for their King is worth the insults and scars they receive in return. What role for the monarchy in Thailand? Instead of trying to listen to their critics, the royalist Government and Palace institutions attempt to shut them down. When I look at Thailand as a Thai and visit countries which retain a monarchy, and when I reflect on the situation in Nepal, I cannot but feel amazed that the Thai royals do not learn from these examples. I remember one dinner in a small restaurant in Oslo. A woman was leaving the restaurant and my friend said: “She’s a princess”. The woman drove herself away alone, nobody followed her. And again on a walk with friends I found myself in a beautiful garden. What a surprise, I was standing in a garden of the residential Palace with not a soldier in sight. In Copenhagen I was walking with a friend past the Palace gate when the Crown Prince drove out, followed by one car. There was no road block to clear the traffic for his passage. In Thailand, when members of the Royal Family are on the move, in Bangkok or to some royal destination like Chiang Mai, streets and foot-bridges are cleared by police for 10 minutes or even 30 minutes before the fleet of royal cars comes streaking through at twice the speed limit, a law unto themselves. We used to count how many cars. A convoy of 30 expensive cars, all the same colour, is quite usual for senior members of the Thai Royal Family. Take the story of Bouquet in July 2009, a 6-year-old who died because she was delayed one hour by a royal road block on her way to hospital, because a member of the royal family was visiting a Spa. The father requested that the soldiers inform the princess that his daughter was very sick. His call was refused so he detoured to another road and found that blocked too. As his daughter lay dying in hospital, he wrote to the Samesky web-board. We all prayed for Bouquet but, as her father said, “She died so that a ‘singer’ could go to the spa”. On 13 October 2008 a civilian yellow-shirt protester, a woman that died fighting the Royal Thai Police defending Parliament House, was given a royal cremation attended by the Queen, the youngest Princess, the Privy Council, Abhisit & co., and much military top-brass. In May 2009 the commander of an infantry division that died in the crackdown on red-shirt protesters on April 10 was also given a royal cremation, attended by the Queen and Crown Prince. The wife of the dead soldier was made an Advisor to the Prime Minister. The families of the 88 protesters who died were granted 50 000 Baht (1 200 Euro) by the Palace etc. Where is there any justice in all of this? There is no justice in any of it. There must be an independent investigation into Thailand’s most recent state violence against civilians, and the investigation cannot stop at the Abhisit Government, the role of the monarchy in the crackdown, and in the four years of political chaos that preceded it, must also be investigated. With all of the ‘love’ that the Royal Family claims, why is the Thai monarchy behaving in a such a paranoid fashion in the 21st century? Why does the Palace refuse to allow open discussion of how the Thai see the role of their beloved Monarch? Could it be that the Palace itself is so sunk in scandal that it is afraid to open the doors? The fear of communism that pushed the Thai Royal Family into becoming strong allies with corrupt generals is understandable. Why Thailand fell into the USA’s anti-communist war is well known. Why the Royal Family befriended tyrants like Marshal Thanom, and why they helped him and others avoid criminal charges and provided them with soft beds and royal cremations is also understandable. Why the Royal Family did not support Pridi Phanomyong, the father of Thai democracy, why in 1947 the Royal Family supported the general that kicked him out, why the Royal Family did not pardon Pridi, why the royal family did not allow him to return home as an old man, even if only to console his family - is not understandable. If in 1973 Pridi’s Economic Plan had been adopted as proposed, and not rejected as ‘communist’, Thailand would not now be facing, at the start of the 21st century, the ugly diversion of a medieval battle between the people and the monarchy. Thailand by now would be fully concentrated at all levels on the essential task of advancing democracy for sustainable development. Pridi’s Economic Plan was aimed at achieving a state of net happiness through development of cooperative activities, social welfare, state support for domestic, social economies, barter trade, equal education for all with maximum engagement of the rural work force, support for state enterprise, as well as taxation of the rich and the introduction of a people’s wage etc. Quite recently the www.weareallhuman.net chat board reviewed two letters written by the King, one to Marshal Pibun and royalists after they had ousted Pridi, and the other to Marshal Thanom after he had staged the 1971 military coup. The 1947 coup destroyed the most democratic constitution Thailand has ever seen. It returned huge powers to the monarchy, and all Crown properties. Since 1947 Thailand has remained in the clutches of the Royal Thai Army. Why? In Spain transition to democracy during the late 70s (after decades of dictatorship under General Franco that began in 1939 and ended with his death in 1975) was generating considerable animosity within the Spanish armed forces. This culminated in an attempted military coup on 23 February 1981. The coup was thwarted by an unambiguous television broadcast by King Juan Carlos, in the uniform of the Supreme Commander of the Spanish armed forces. He called on the public to support their legitimately elected Government. The leader of the coup was sentenced to 30 years in jail. The King’s action led to a strengthening of Spanish democracy and to renewed respect for the monarchy. In contrast, since 1947 the King of Thailand has personally approved 7 successful military coups. At any time during the last 60 years the Royal Household of Thailand could have stood-up for the people’s struggle for democracy and ended Thailand’s endless string of military coups and violent crackdowns. The violent crackdown by the Royal Thai Army on the people in April 2010 has pushed Thailand further down the slippery road to the ignoble status of ‘failed state’. It is long past time for the Thai to engage in wide-open public debate on the role of Thai royals, their Palace institutions and the huge military force they command, and on the problems that emerge from their absolute powers and extremely expensive absolute privileges, that absolutely do not promote the ‘sufficiency economy’ promoted by the King himself. By opening real space for public criticism, the Royal Family could still rescue itself and become a real player in the work of preventing further domestic violence and bringing internal justice to Thailand - without the use of the military or para-military gangs, who can have no role in the civilian life of a country like Thailand in the 21st century. The Palace must allow all Thai people to freely air their feelings on what they feel about their monarchy and the Palace must order an end to the ‘Love the King’ and ‘Protect the Monarchy’ propaganda. From the day I was born the Royal Family had my love, but slowly they have been losing that love. If the Palace makes me choose between loving the Royal Family and loving the Thai people I can only choose the latter. Nothing and nobody can compete with my love for the people of Thailand. When it comes to the institutions of monarchy there are issues that the public must be able to debate, without fear of years in prison, for example: v The wealth of the Thai King has been increasing steadily for the last 60 years. With property worth 35 billion USD, in 2008 Forbes anointed the Thai King with the title of Richest Monarch in the World. With the glaring gap between rich and poor in Thailand, the Thai public must be allowed to analyse and discuss the vast wealth of their monarchy . v During the last 20 years the Palace Budget has been increased 20 times, from 3 million Euro (141 million Baht) to 65 million Euro (2.6 billion Baht). (Note: The poor English Queen has hardly seen a rise in her Palace Budget in 20 years and has to manage with a meagre 8 million Euro.) v The use of the 150 million Euro (6 billion Baht) that is paid-out annually from the State Budget to finance Thailand’s ‘Royal Projects’ must be subjected to public scrutiny, debate and evaluation. v Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code that covers Lèse Majesté must be removed for the good of the nation and of the monarchy. v The Privy Council’s ability to intervene in Thai politics must be outlawed. v The Thai people do not need 60 military units with over 30,000 soldiers to guard a monarchy that claims all people love the Monarch. In June this year, the Thai Ministry of Interior, specifically the Director-General of the Department of Provincial Administration, started a project entitled ‘Volunteers to Protect the Monarchy’, to recruit volunteers from villages across the country, including youth. The initial target is to raise 1,000 volunteers from each District. The idea is to unify all people under the banner of His Majesty the King. Volunteers are to protect the monarchy with their lives and ensure that the King’s philosophy of Sufficiency Economy is put into practice across the country. On 8 June, the Director General presided over the opening ceremony of the project for the southern border provinces, in Yala, with the participation of over 2,000 people, including villagers and local officials. Identification cards were issued to representatives of volunteers from 33 districts and participants took an oath of allegiance before a photograph of His Majesty the King. Needless to say assassination of village leaders who participated in the red-shirt demonstrations has already begun. v It is nothing less than sickening to witness that every time ordinary people attend meetings to bring worker’s and villager’s problems to the attention of the authorities their mouths are shut with statements from the authorities like: ‘I am the servant of the King. I work for the King’. Such phrases are used by the authorities as a spiteful weapon to suppress the development of the people, the authorities that the people pay to serve them – not the King, who has more than enough servants. Use of such statements by municipal and government authorities prevents real discussion of real, necessary and urgent issues, and must be banned. v Many grass-root environment protection groups and local community development programmes point-out that if a project does not have a sign saying ‘This project is under the patronage of this or that member of the Royal Family’ they will not receive the co-operation of government officers, not to mention financial support. Without direct royal patronage, many local community development programmes and environmental protection initiatives are, in this way, conveniently ignored or outlawed by the authorities, however sensible and well-organised. v The Royal Family has highly developed and sophisticated mechanisms for collecting huge sums of money from corporations and through public donations. All collections and donations to the Royal Family, and the use of collections and donations, should be transparent and accountable to the public. v There are many other established, royal practices and customs that need to be reviewed and largely eradicated e.g. the Royal Family’s expectation that public money will be used to block roads for their convoys of shiny cars; that people who go to a Charlie Chaplin movie must stand to bless the King before it starts; that millions of Baht from much needed local budgets must be spent on building temporary palaces for visiting royals; that when they meet the King or Queen they must crawl before their feet and recite some hocus pocus like: "May the power of the dust on the soles and the dust under the soles of your royal feet protect my head and the top of my head." ใต้ฝ่าละอองธุลีพระบาทปกเกล้าปกกระหม่อม ‘Tai-Fa-La-Ong-Thu-Lee-Pra-Bart-Pok-Klao-Pok-Karmom.’ No person on this planet today is dust under the feet of any other person. Even the great Lord Buddha gave up his kingdom to be equal with everyone else. These are some of the reasons that make it difficult for me to love the King. The current ‘Protect the Monarchy’ mobilisation for a ‘Sufficiency Economy’ is leading us to civil war not peace. When will the monarchy and it’s institutions be kind enough to accept, welcome and support our struggle for equal rights, justice, democracy, the results of free and fair elections and our basic rights of Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association? Junya Yimprasert 12 June 2010 ]]> tag:www.globallabour.info,2010:/en//1.535 2010-07-03T15:09:19Z 2010-07-03T15:10:11Z

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