Sam Shilowa on union rights || Labour Party Approach

International Centre for Trade Union Rights

Labour Party ApproachAuthor(s): Stuart BellSource: International Union Rights, Vol. 2, No. 1, Sam Shilowa on union rights (1995), pp. 7-8Published by: International Centre for Trade Union RightsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41937000 .

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Labour Party

Approach

Stuart Bell MP

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to speak. I would like to respond to some of the points that have been made as 1 go along. One of the previous speakers referred to the relevant proposi- tions which can be made in this field and 1 remember reading many years ago the constitution of the Soviet Union. If ever you wanted a model constitution which protected fully human rights that was the document to read. And of course as we all know in the end the constitution in relation to their reality were entirely different. And in terms of international solidarity and practical and sensible ways forward I think that is a hallmark for us all. Barry Campfield talked about activating our own

membership within the trade union movement, and I have to tell you that we have to activate our own La- bour Party. We as a party have to take the issue of trade very seriously, much more seriously than we have up till now. The question was raised by Des Farrell about clothing and the phasing out of the multifibre agreement. We recognise the importance of the textile industry in our country but what we also realise is that the textile industry itself has to contend with serious competition from Europe. Whilst we know the difficulties and the dangers of unfair imports from the far east and India and China, nevertheless we have to understand that in the next 10 years as the Multifibre agreement is phased out it will be for the apparel industries to cope with changes to meet with European competition which is very strong indeed. Speakers earlier talked of the human rights clause

and the question of child labour. I was in India last year. What strikes you in India is the population of 800 million people living there, and the population rising every year by 17 million. That is the total population of Australia. I was also in the United States earlier this year talking on trade matters. I talked about the child labour situation to leading officials who explained that in the third world there are difficult social consequences locally if you do not have child labour. And there you have the difficult dilemma that we have in the Labour movement and as socialists about having children at a very early age working in conditions that we eliminated in the last century - nevertheless at the same time realising the significance of their world and their environment, and you really have to look at that and consider a practical way forward. China was also referred to earlier. I was also in the

US at the time of the debate about the favoured nation status for China and it was an open debate - one of the striking things about the administration is the open- ness of the debate - and when you are there for a week they ask you what your views are. It is clear that there is a very strong view in the American administration that the Most Favoured Nation status should not be ex- tended to China because of their human rights record. Another view was expressed by Lloyd Benson who is Secretary to the Treasury that China is so important for American financial interests that they have to get in there. Another view was if you do not get in there and talk how do you improve human rights? So these are all difficult dilemmas we have when we consider trade in relation to human rights. We also had a speaker who talked about problems in

Ireland which I thought was very interesting, talking about an international framework of law and the Irish situation in terms of trade. I was a founder member of the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary body, the purpose

of which was to bring our nations closer together over a whole range of issues which were essentially non-political. One of the things we did was to study cross bor- der trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic. We discovered, which was amazing, that they do not trade with each other. They both trade with Britain, but give various reasons for not trading with one another. One of the consequences we hope of a peace settle- ment, apart from the political solution, is that these two parts of the same island will trade with each other. They will increase their trade and by increasing their trade will increase their prosperity. Another speaker mentioned the rights of workers in

Africa to be able to travel to look for work. We have looked at this issue, and we know that the Gatt en- shrines the right of companies to travel the globe in search of cheap labour. But there is no provision for labour to travel in search of work, even though accord- ing to the United Nations developing countries would earn at least 250 thousand million US dollars annually if the rich countries eased their immigration restric- tions. So I want you to know that we have that issue on board. Those were simply the preliminary remarks to my speech - you now have to listen to what I was going to say before I came! Gatt is not a sexy subject and we are not able to get a

great deal of interest on Gatt on the floor of Parliament or elsewhere. And if you do not read about what we are doing on Gatt it does not mean that we are not working on it - we have turned out 3 papers on Gatt; one published and two in the throes of being published. They are on 'Gatt and the Environment',' Gatt and the Third World' and 'Gatt and the Social Chapter'. Bill Brett mentioned Gatt and the environment in his speech. We say that uncontrolled free trade is no more capable of delivering social and environmental protection than any other form of unregulated market. And therefore we call in our document for a more direct and coordinated approach to trade. We believe as a party that trade should be fair and balanced. Regan Scott of the T&G made some reference to this when he talked about fair trade as opposed to free trade. We believe that the goal of fair and balanced trade should be met through the European Union, and through such organisations as the World Trade Organisation. The World Trade Organisation will come into effect on 1 January and is dependent on the US Congress ratifying the Uruguay Round and the Marrakech Treaty. The theoretical case for free trade as it is called is

that it allows the most efficient access to world markets and it also allows lower prices and forces domestic producers to become more efficient. Consumers benefit and the most efficient companies benefit. There is definitely a benefit the consumer in having choice made available through free trade. But we do believe in fair and balanced trade rather than simply the so- called free trade. In relation to our document 'Gatt and the Third

World' we felt it very important to link the Third World to Gatt because we have a lot of debate on the question of the assisted trade provision. We know about the fa- mous Pergau Dam and how it was linked to arms sales which has been a matter of great political controversy, and it brought into question the entire Assisted Trade Provision Scheme. But we believe that the Assisted Trade Provisions Scheme is an important scheme which this government should not be allowed to link to arms sales. We brought this in as a Labour Govern- ment in 1977 and it was a provision to assist third world countries. That was the criteria under which we operated it. Of course there were spin offs for our own industry because our own industry would benefit if they were selling goods or helping with infrastructure projects in the third world. But in 1981 there was a subtle difference introduced by the Conservative Gov- ernment. And that subtle difference in fact led them on to the situation in which they find themselves with the Pergau Dam where it became more important to link that to arms sales and to major construction companies who would benefit from that than it was to the

country concerned. And we would hope that we will get a proper focus now in our Assisted Trade Provi- sions and that they will be linked to the real interests of the country which is the beneficiary and of course benefit our own industry. We have many arguments within the party, and we

will have many more in the future, as to where we are going in our Assisted Trade Provisions. Some people believe that the actual Overseas Aid Department should not be simply an adjunct of the Foreign Office but should be in the Department of Trade and Industry. Others believe that it should be part of an Oversees Ministry dealing with aid. All of these matters we will have to debate and discuss. What is different in our discussions from now on is that we must prepare for Gov- ernment. We are going to form a government and therefore we have to look at all the issues of the ma- chinery of government - how we focus our trade policy, how we focus our aid policy, how we bring them together as a coherent whole. The question of aid and trade are not mutually exclusive. While aid is clearly important to a country, trade is infinitely more important. We have to remember that the value of exports to developing countries is 17 times greater than the total aid they receive, and more than 80 percent of developing countries income comes from trade as opposed to just 5 % from aid. So trade with the third world with the countries of Africa and elsewhere is a very important factor. What we say in our document 'Gatt and the Third World' is that the policy towards the third world countries is determined by tariff and non-tariff trade barriers which are imposed by the industrial countries. We estimate that the cost to developing countries is around 40 000 million US dollars in lost export revenue. Most developing countries rely on a small number of primary commodities which means they are extremely vulnerable to fluctuations in the world price of those commodities. Many of them rely on as few as three particular commodities as the bulk of their exports. When the commodity price falls the difficulties become even more important for those developing countries as their balance of payment deteriorates and they end up having to service their debt accounts to the financial world. That ends up, in some cases, as repre- senting a third of the foreign exchange which they make. We have heard about the IMF and the World Bank

and the stringent conditions that they impose upon developing countries and that, linking in with the difficulties in trade, makes it that much more difficult for those countries. And we have to remember when we do look at Gatt that those who are the contracting par- ties of Gatt account for 90% of world trade. The OECD estimate that a new Gatt agreement would inject something like $200 000 million into the world economy over a ten year period. Our own government has esti- mated $91 000 million would go to the third world as a consequence of that agreement. Of course we are all a bit hesitant about figures and you never can tell what will happen tomorrow or the day after. You never can tell what will happen in foreign affairs - the war of 1973 which quadrupled oil prices changed the face of the seventies in a way that nobody could have im- agined. Nevertheless we believe that on balance the Gatt Agreement is better than no agreement. We believe it offers an opportunity for developing countries. It would mean western markets being more open to their agricultural and textile products and the resulting increase in trade could exceed the total western aid bud- get. But many of the issues which effect these developing

countries remain on the periphery of the Gatt agenda. I have already mentioned the questions of debt, of international commodity prices, of environmental protection. There are also the questions of the right to self-sufficiency even in such vital industries as agricul- ture and food production. We are not entirely sure that Gatt fully recognises these issues. We are concerned about transnational companies

the danger they pose to developing countries, and their

INTERNATIONALunion rights January 1995 GATT, International Trade and Trade Union Rights CONFERENCE REPORT Page 7



fear that their own industries will never survive infancy if it is left for the transnational to corner their own particular market. I did refer earlier to our paper 'Gatt and the Environment', where we call for managed sustainable trade recognising the value of Gatt as a rules based system. We have outlined some of the longer term concerns which need to be addressed by the international community in defining a trading pattern which promotes rather than hinders sustainable development. We fully understand the difficulties in the ten- sions which exist between environmental concerns and the concerns of manufacturing industry. At our party conference we had a document on the

environment with a policy on energy which did not go down well with trade unions represented at the conference. They felt that a restrictive energy policy might cost them jobs. The difficulty we as politicians have, and the seriousness with which we deal with these issues will be judged by just how hard we work to find solutions to these different problems. Bringing the environment to the forefront, but not in a way which hinders development. In our document, again in relation to Gatt, we have declared that the structures of the world trading system however democratic, can not themselves ensure that trade becomes fairer and more sustainable. The point made from the floor was that the structures themselves will not bring about the changes that we would like to see. So what we need to ensure as we look at the Gatt and the World Trade Or- ganisation is that these new organisations are suffi- ciently responsive. So that when the political will is created changes to global trading patterns can be quickly put in place. Even if all these changes were made the battle to make world trade sustainable would be far from won and therefore in our document we call for more radical ideas about the relationship between trade and the environment. We draw attention for example to the effects of increased transport resulting from higher levels of international trade on the global environment. That also has to be considered. We also want the Gatt working party on trade and the environment to be made a formal and permanent committee of the World Trade Organisation alongside other committees, such as the one on trade and development. So our document on Gatt and the environment calls for the trade and environmental committee to include environmentalists, those who are specialists in the subject, as well as trade experts. And what we want from that committee if it can be incorporated into the World Trade Organisation is a new view. We also have a document, which I referred to ear-

lier, 'Gatt and the Social Chapter'. It links in to the Eu- ropean social chapter in the European Union and our commitment to bringing that in to our own legislation. So I feel we should call our document 'Labour and the Social Chapter' so that we can bring that into line in terms of politics with the social chapter in the Euro- pean Union. In that document we say we believe developing coun-

tries can ultimately benefit from better working conditions, providing them with respect and dignity and an appropriate base on which to build a decent standard of living. We reject the Government's complacency to- ward the third world and its inability to focus on the human aspects of trade. We know that Conservatives believe in deregulation and low protection. But we believe as a party in planning that leads to prosperity, and we want that prosperity throughout the world. This can only be achieved with a committed, trained and edu- cated workforce. In the place of child labour, which I referred to earlier, providing adequate educational fa- cilities which obviates the need for children to go out to work. We do not aim to protect British industry at the expense of jobs in developing countries. We believe that our competitive challenge comes from skills and technology within Europe and other parts of the in- dustrialised world. It is in the interest of developing countries to ensure that the benefits of trade feed through to workers and their families.

In our document Gatt and the Social Chapter it is stated that we do not intend to remove the legitimate trading advantages of developing countries, including their lower labour costs. Nor will we impose standards which are out of line with each countries stage of development. We believe, and Bill Brett has touched upon this, in the broad spectrum of human rights throughout the world but we have to accept various stages of development within those countries. A Social Chapter within that will establish the basic rights for people in work which every country should be ex- pected to achieve. These include freedom from forced labour, and the right for workers to form their own in- dependent trade unions if they choose. Worries about unfair trading already lead to protec-

tionist pressures in the United States and other developed countries. Bill touched upon this earlier. And he mentioned a particular multinational, which said that if they had proper trade union rights in Malaysia then they would move their factory to China. That is why it is important at the end of the day that China does become part of the Gatt and the World Trade Or- ganisation. But they should not come in simply on that, but must meet the criteria laid down. The same multinational chief executive recently told me that if there was a Labour Government all the middle management of the company would leave the country. When I asked where they would go he said possibly Malaysia, and after that China. Nevertheless we believe that there should not be protectionist pressures in the United States in relation to Gatt nor in the other developed countries. Without social chapters, as we have outlined in our document, we can not avert these pressures whilst in the World Trade Organisation we can curb these protectionists pressures. And none of the decisions under the social chapter will be applied in a punitive way. We have heard a lot today about enforcement, which is a legitimate concern. At this moment in time the battle is getting the social chapter in to the World Trade Organisation. What we can not do is be punitive, if we do get them in, in how we then react to those who do not follow the given line. When we had difficulties with Malaya and the Malaysians were cut- ting off our contracts because of statements printed in the Sunday Times, I asked the British Government to take these matters through the Gatt procedure - why should our businessmen suffer because of something in the Sunday Times? They said it takes five years to get all this through the Gatt. But within the World Trade Or- ganisation it would only take about a year or 15 month- s. The whole purpose of the World Trade Organisation is to speed up disputes. They can be dealt with properly, and within that you can see an appropriate enforcement for our social rights chapter if we can get it integrated into the Gatt and the World Trade Organi- sation. Now we accept fully that one thing we know is that there is no hope of persuading a Tory government to seek a social chapter or a social clause in the World Trade Organisation. But having said I was told in my discussions with the American Administration that the British Government have agreed through the OECD to look at the question of a social chapter and what its consequences might be. This is not information that they are giving to the House of Commons or the British public, but when I returned I put a question to a Brit- ish minister who confirmed that the British Govern- ment, through the OECD are looking at the social chapter. This is a small step forward but an important and significant one. What we will do is to keep pushing them on to see what the report actually said. Most of you may remember a play in the West End

theatre called 'Waiting for Godot'. We are not actually waiting for Godot, but for Tony Blair. We may have to wait for 2 years, and meanwhile what do we do about Gatt and the environment, Gatt and the third world and Gatt and the Social Chapter? What we propose to do, and this is one reason why I was so pleased to accept the invitation today, is to join with you in a campaign, with our members in the European Parliament, in the Socialist International, within the new World Trade Or-

ganisation, to involve ourselves in this campaign. I was pleased to hear Bill talking about the social summit in Copenhagen next spring. We would wish as a Labour opposition to get involved in that. Because what we want is a clear and defined link between basic human rights in employment with fair and balanced trade. And we want that not to the detriment of the developing world , not to enhance protectionism, but on be- half of workers and their families everywhere. #

Glossary

ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations EC European Community ETUC European Trade Union Congress GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GSP Generalised System of Preferences G7 Group of Seven largest trading nations ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions ICTUR International Centre for Trade Union Rights ILO International Labour Organisation NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement NUKFAT National Union of Knitwear, Footwear and

Apparel Trades NGO Non-Governmental Organisation OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and

Development OTV Gewerkschaft Öffentlich Dientse, Transport

and Verkehr (Public Services and Transport Workers, Germany)

SWAPO South West African Peoples Organisation TUPE Transfer of Undertakings

Acquired Rights Directive WCL World Confederation of Labour WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions WTO World Trade Organisation

Contents

2 International Trade and Trade Union Rights John Hendy QC, Vice-President of ICTUR

3 Trade Union Rights and the Social Clause John Monks, General Secretary of the TUC

4 The International Labour Organisation and the World Trade Organisation Bill Brett, Chair of the Workers Group on the ILO

5 Questions and discussion

7 The Labour Party's Approach Stuart Bell MP, Front Bench Spokesman

8 GLOSSARY of terms used

CONFERENCE REPORT Page 8 GATT, International Trade and Trade Union Rights INTERNATIONALunion rights January 1995



Documents

Sam Shilowa on union rights || Labour Party Approach