UNIONS STEP UP SUPPORT TO GLOBALIZATION ACTIVISTS. US labor unions have broadened their support for anti-globalization protesters in advance of next month's annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank by financing training workshops for activists and transport to the protests, reports the Financial Times (p.6).
The AFL-CIO gave a late endorsement to the demonstrations around the World Bank and IMF meetings in April last year. But this year the unions have sponsored the Global Justice Week of Action meetings and have become a key player in the planning. "The labor unions and the AFL-CIO have a strong global justice agenda, calling for the international institutions to respect working people and not just corporations," an AFL-CIO official said yesterday.
The participation of organized labor also illustrates how the demonstrations have gathered momentum and are becoming a platform for more than just calls for fundamental reform of the Bank and the Fund.
Labor union members are being mobilized to protest against the international financial institutions but also to register their opposition to further free-trade agreements. Campaigners hope to show the strength of public feeling against plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA),a new world trade round, and the extension of the US president's power to negotiate trade agreements without consulting Congress.
The news comes as Caroline Anstey, head of media relations at the World Bank, writes in a letter to the editor of the FT (p.10) that the Bank found in a recent study that the three billion people living in the 24 developing countries that have integrated into the world economy most successfully have gained from higher incomes, longer life expectancy and better schooling.
At the same time, says Anstey, it is clear that globalization produces relative "winners" and "losers" between countries and within countries. While three billion have benefited from globalization, there are still many millions of others in sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union who have been left behind-in large part because of endemic corruption, poor policies, weak institutions and insufficient investment in health and education.
Some of the anxieties about globalization are well-founded, says Anstey, and finance ministers and international institutions need to pay attention to many of the concerns that have been aired recently in street protests in Genoa, Gothenburg and Seattle. But we cannot agree with those who say the answer is to retreat into a world of nationalism, protectionism and anti-industrial romanticism. Putting our heads, ostrich-like, into the sand is not the answer. Putting in place safety nets and sound policies, and pulling down rich-country trade barriers, just might be.
Commenting meanwhile, Philip Stephens of the FT (p.11) says the world's leaders are failing to address legitimate questions raised by protesters about the effects of global capitalism. There is only one way they can make themselves heard again over the angry shouts of the protesters. They must stop making the case for globalization-and start fighting the cause of better globalization.
Meanwhile, El País (Spain) says in an editorial that it is sad to observe that the World Bank and the IMF have had to compress their annual meetings to two days because of threats of violence by anti-globalization protesters and the inability of the police to contain the threat. The federal authorities ought to be able to provide the required support, and the IMF and the World Bank-which are of vital importance to the world economy and particularly to developing countries-ought to be able to meet for the length of time needed. The main losers, apart from Washington's hotels, are the developing countries, for whom the annual meetings were the best occasion to meet financiers from the rich world. The non-violent anti-globalization groups will also be prevented from meeting with the international institutions created to address the problems of global capitalism.
Also commenting, economist Alain Minc writes in Le Monde (France, p.1) that the opponents of globalization offer no counter-theory; they merely say no to the system, even as they reap the benefits from it. The do-gooders of the movement ought to ask themselves why countries of the Third World have not joined their struggle. Why were the big developing countries so wary of environmental and health norms at the WTO meeting in Seattle? Because they feared that excessive regulation would turn into instruments of rich-country protectionism at the expense of the poor countries. French farmers' union leader José Bové thinks he is missi dominici to Indian and Senegalese peasants, when he is perhaps their worst enemy.
Globalization can be good when the market and the law are twinned at the international level, Minc writes. Under no circumstances should the market retreat, and there should be more regulation on condition that the interests of developing countries are taken into account and so long as regulation does not result in the fantasy of a West wanting to do right by an unwilling world.