Thursday October 21, 7:03 pm Eastern Time Workers body says WTO labour rule would help poor By Robert Evans
GENEVA, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Officials of the biggest global labour grouping said on Thursday their demand for a social clause in World Trade Organisation agreements would mainly benefit developing countries.
At the same time, they warned that new WTO negotiations on service industries could lead to destruction of state health and education systems around the world, especially in poorer states.
``We are not launching a crusade against developing countries. They stand to benefit more than anyone if core labour standards are incorporated into WTO (open trading) rules,'' Eddy Laurijssen of the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Union's (ICFTU) told a news conference.
He said WTO member countries, presently totalling 134, who were fighting to end exploitation of workers were facing unfair competition from others who only paid lip service to it.
Laurijssen, ICFTU Assistant General Secretary, confirmed the body would urge at a WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle starting on November 30 that the trade body adopt a social clause.
Developing countries, which make up the overwhelming bulk of the WTO membership and can block any such move, have for years strongly resisted this idea.
They say it is aimed at opening the way for richer countries to use WTO rules to protect their markets, and their workers' jobs, against competition from goods produced more cheaply in states with lower labour costs.
SWING IN FAVOUR OF SOCIAL CLAUSE
In discussions over the past few weeks on the agenda for Seattle, and the new ``Millennium Round'' of trade liberalisation talks the ministers may agree to launch, emerging economies have refused to contemplate a labour discussion.
A new draft -- but highly provisional -- text of a ministerial declaration now under negotiation among envoys to the WTO makes no reference at all to the issue.
The United States, under pressure from its own labour unions, has made clear it wants to raise the issue. Within the European Union, France is the main proponent of a social clause but there is so far no common stand among all 15 member states.
ICFTU Chief Economist James Howard told the news conference at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) that some developing country governments were now swinging to the idea.
He said South Africa was firmly in favour, and that some other governments in Africa and the Caribbean were coming round.
Howard said the competition between coal produced in India and Indonesia was an example of how countries with a strong labour movement which protected work standards, like India, lost out to others were workers had little or no protection.
``We hope that we will be able to convince more and more developing countries that a social clause is in their interests,'' said Howard, accepting this would be a long process.
Howard said there was increasing concern among public sector workers in developed and developing countries that the services negotiations, already set to start early in the New Year, would undermine the principle of health and education for all.
There was especially strong pressure from private companies in the United States, where education services was a multi-billion dollar business and the fifth-largest export, for both sectors to be brought firmly under the WTO umbrella.
``If they are subjected to free trade rules, especially in developing countries, they face a very bleak future,'' he said.