Globalisation refers to the liberal intercourse of widespread economic activity embracing the whole globe, a multidimensional process ultimately vectored towards the overall good of the global layman.
It necessitates the interplay of free global market forces, which are generally jeopardised by the issues like rigidities regarding reduction in the tariff and non-tariff barriers, tendencies towards privatisation, downsizing and the cost cuttings; and nevertheless the discouraging of inward FDI.
These issues, in turn, undercut the growth of industries; edge out the domestic production and manufacturing and hence propagate unemployment and breed poverty.
Be it production or manufacturing, the process mandates active inclusion of the human element. Rather, if there were no human element, the machines and plants whatever their level and intensity of automation would lie idle and processes dormant. Pitiably, the visible hand of humans, visibly dynamic and participative, is flagrantly rendered as invisible or at the least minimally visible on the part of industrialists.
Thus, there is ever-increasing need for safeguarding the rights and interests of these humans; the liveliest part of prime cost. Where, neither the depreciation thereof is reckoned, nor are the agonies and pangs deemed as sufferings and ailments. The cries stay unheeded and screaming mocked.
At the very outset, we see that the challenge of globalisation and human rights takes viewers on an endless journey, deep into the gold mines of South Africa, the oil fields of Iraq, the Nike shoes factory in Asia, and the mines and brick kilns in Pakistan.
In the recent past, a march attended by prominent figures of the world like US treasurer Robert Rubin, Nobel Laureates like John Sweeney and human right activists, is a small example to cite in this regard.
However, the growth of the role of social factors and respect for human rights (including trade union rights) can be linked back to the Copenhagen World Summit for Social Development in 1995, which has given an impetus to the clear social deficit, one of the causes of the Asian crisis.
It is believed that if social development, including institution-building and respect for core labour standards had been adhered to by the south-east Asian countries, it would have resulted in much more accountability, democracy and equity.
The International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU) has been focusing on respect for core labour standards, constituting the standards which are universally agreed to be in no way exclusive to industrialised countries, but instead applicable to every country of the world, regardless of its level of development.
However, these social values yet need to be fully translated into changed actions of the world's major institutions of globalisation viz. the IMF, the World Bank, WTO and IFIs.
In so far, the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) has been undertaking important work to introduce these values into the work of the OECD.
Another global challenge; the competitive advantage banked upon abusing workers' freedom (and child labour) has been observed in countries like Malaysia, where workers in the electronics export sector are denied the opportunity of joining national trade unions; Mexico, where a failure to apply the law in the "maquiladora" free trade zones deprives over a million, mainly young women workers, of freedom of association; Turkey, where free trade zone workers are denied the right to strike; Lesotho, where the mainly women workers in export estates producing goods like textiles and garments face violation of basic working conditions, police violence and even shooting; and Egypt, where child labour is extensively employed in export sectors like commercial agriculture, textiles, leather and carpet-making.
Again, India's failure to address child labour in its carpet sector is marred by the exporters in Nepal who are making carpets under good working conditions ensured by the trade union; similarly the trade unions of coal miners in India are helpless.
The whole developing world suffers from China's violation of all the core labour standards, magnetising it so as to induce multinational companies who tend to uproot their production from other developing countries in order to materialise low labour costs in China.
Where the twin objectives; attracting FDI and the MNCs stays at the heart of such manoeuvres, tackling these problems, calls for nothing but a gigantic collective effort from the WTO and the ILO.
Stale and worn-out ideas regarding unionism are another challenge. The INTUC, for instance, is committed to the Gandhian concept of self-sacrifice. Many of its former leaders practised it to an extent until they moved to political leaderships positions and began to hold ministerial offices.
This impedes the fructification of the idea of introducing salaried professionals in the trade unions. Maybe the idea of the revival of a trade union college as was run by ICFTU in 1950s and 1960s helps churn out qualified MBA's, oriented towards healthy and humanistic unionism in India.
A big challenge comes in the form of a lack of finances, not only in the Asian regions, but surprisingly in rich western countries as well.
For example, trade union laws provide for less than a cent as subscriptions. Seafarers and banking unions and other white-collar unions collect subscriptions almost equivalent to a US dollar.
In some cases union subscriptions are very low. National centers receive a measly fraction of the already small subscriptions. Therefore national trade union centers have to depend on outside sources.
In fact, in the civil services in India Pakistan, the British had introduced a Foreign Service concept of accepting an elected general secretary on duty with lien in service and seniority protected during the tenure of office of the general secretary. The salary was paid out of the union's funds as reimbursement to the government department. This is prevalent only in the Post Telegraph department or maybe in the railways.
For these and other relevant issues, the trade unions need not only to assure alliances with the International Trade Secretariats (ITSs), but also to promote global unionism using existing organisations to build tripartite social partnership at the global level, ceding more responsibility to the ITS and the ICFTU to play much more of an active trade union role at a transnational level and developing social-movement-based trade unionism involving direct contact between members and communities, to ultimately improve the plight of the underprivileged and exploited Lilliputians.
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