The trade-union revival - Bread roses - international in scope

New Internationalist, Dec, 2001 by David Ransom

But corporate globalization has thrown everything into the air. What is self-evidently needed now, and is finally starting to happen, is an internationalist process of 'globalization from below', in which unions and aid agencies have an overriding, urgent responsibility to collaborate. (9) Trade unionists have, after all, taken the first step by providing the bulk of the anti globalization demonstrations in Seattle, Quebec City and Genoa.

'Tempestuous' was how Ed Sweeney described the current state of the relationship between unions and NGOs when I talked with him in his office near Wimbledon. He is the General Secretary of UNIFI, the finance-workers' union in Britain, and one of a new, young, articulate breed of union leaders whose views have been forged by corporate globalization. He also chairs an informal International Development Committee at the Tratles Union Congress.

'I just think it's all wrong, daft, really silly,' he says. 'It's difficult if they [NGOs and unions] question each other's integrity. But that's what they've all started to do. I've made it my goal in life to try and smooth that over... Some trade unionists are surprised that somebody like me could have such an interest in globalization. We're private-sector, we deal in the finance world, our people do nothing but exploit money. Well, our industry is global. We've seen the interconnection at first hand, We were able, for example, to use the debate about asylum-seekers to say: "Hold on a moment! Don't say it's just about economic migrants. This is actually an impact of globalization."'

Another impact is privatization. Whether the push comes from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund via 'structural adjustment', or from a New Labour government in Britain in the form of 'public-private partnership', the same motive force is at work: transnational corporate capital and the lust for lucrative tax dollars. And around the world, from Colombia to Mauritius, trade unions are mounting a rebellion against any further extension of the private profit motive into public services. They are going to need all the allies they can get. We need to break down the artificial barriers that have been erected between 'producers' and 'consumers' of public services, so that the struggle includes us all.

Not so long ago I was asked to speak to a union meeting in Birmingham. Rather to my surprise, they wanted to know more about the Tobin Tax on currency speculation. It is being promoted by War on Want, an aid agency with close links to trade unions. Then someone spoke about the liberation struggle in Western Sahara (see NI 297). A few of the people at the meeting had undertaken the difficult journey there -- in solidarity with a place that has no obvious connection to their daily working lives. And then Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, delivered a whistle-stop homily on the eradication of poverty and the New Labour Government s prescription for 'development', which evidently would not include a Tobin Tax.