Workers’ Voice @ WTO weblog

Everyone stares at each other, each asking themselves what they are doing there. Members of government delegations, journalists, trade unionists, development experts… they clearly have a faint idea, but have been forewarned: the aim of the Conference is not to conclude an agreement with any solid content. The only aim is to keep negotiations going.

Behind this fall in aspirations, to which the WTO itself has admitted, is a deep-seated problem, a problem all those present in Hong Kong are acutely aware of, given that an agreement is, in fact, impossible: the WTO no longer works.

The WTO is not a decision making body, but a negotiating body. It is for this reason that it does not operate on the basis of majority votes, each nation having a vote, but on the basis of consensus. The subject of the negotiations is international trade. Like in the playground, trading is only possible if each player agrees to give the other a share of the marbles.

The development issue

During the Uruguay Round, the member countries agreed on the modalities for trade agreements. The countries of the North secured “flexibilities”, restraints, in other words, on free trade, in agricultural or textile goods, for example. At the time, the European Community was applying the community preference, thus protecting its industry.

The countries of the South accepted these restraints in exchange for a twofold promise: restraints would be removed in the long term (a precise deadline was established, for example, for textile trade), and, above all, the promise that the fall in customs duties in all other sectors would fast track development and the creation of wealth and employment in their countries.

The Doha Development Round was initiated with an admission that already heralded its death. Given that the trade liberalisations of the Uruguay Round had not contributed to development, the Doha Round was to prioritise this question.

By naming it in this way, the Doha Development Round called into question the very foundation of the WTO, as it constituted an admission that free trade does not systematically lead to development. To promote development, specific measures are required.

Since then, the growth in inequalities between rich and poor countries, and within even the richest countries, has become an undeniable fact. The conclusion of the ILO Report on the social dimension of globalisation is clear: globalisation has not promoted job creation; on the contrary, unemployment has risen, along with the poverty and insecurity it entails.

The first of January 2005, the long-awaited moment (which developing countries had negotiated so hard for during the Uruguay Round) had finally arrived when textile quotas were to be removed. Has it allowed them to find new wealth thanks to new exports? Is completely free trade advantageous? The answer is, in fact, no.

The initial project was upset by a significant event: China’s entry, in 2001, to the WTO. This unforeseen development has had dramatic consequences, as the end of the quota system has, ultimately, benefited no one but China.

As in other labour intensive industries, labour costs have become the decisive factor in competition between countries. The developing countries that had placed their bets on their “comparative advantage” in this area are now faced with the stark reality that no one can compete with China when it comes to labour costs.

At the ICFTU (International Confederation of Free Trade Unions) meeting I attended yesterday, Pascal Lamy stated that “trade liberalisation, overall, had created jobs”. Whilst recognising that jobs had been lost in virtually all countries, he pointed to the creation of jobs in other countries, mainly China.

This remark underpins the future unfeasibility of the WTO. Ministers do not come to the WTO to create jobs “overall”. They come to create jobs at home. Their political programme cannot be resumed to advising their compatriots to go to China to seek work!

If the WTO has nothing to offer in this respect, then it has no other purpose than to defend the interests of multinational enterprises, which are not attached to a people or territory.

We, as trade unionists, have an international conscience, and are capable of understanding an objective such as creating jobs in absolute terms at a “global” level, but we ask ourselves the question: what type of jobs?

The ICFTU has just published a very eloquent report on the Chinese “miracle”. It reveals that, in China, 250 million people have to survive on less than a dollar a day and that 700 million people (47% of the population) live on less than two dollars a day. According to the official Chinese union, wage arrears amount to twelve billion dollars. The workers, mainly migrants, reach the point where they throw themselves or threaten to throw themselves off the top of buildings to draw the attention of their bosses.

At the same time as aspiring to bring some responses to the problem of development, the WTO refers to China as an example of its good results, “in global terms”, whilst the majority of developing countries capable of exporting to the United States, the EU or Japan, are literally being brought to their knees by this country.

Negotiations under surveillance

Trade unions, development associations, agricultural workers’ movements and political parties now have a much greater knowledge of the subjects negotiated at the WTO. There is a level of expertise that was once the reserve of the experts within the Ministries and multinational companies. As a result, governments are now under constant surveillance. They can no longer, as in the past, give a little bit of industry in exchange for a little bit of agriculture, or open such and such a service to competition in exchange for access to a new market or a certain sector. The stakeholders demand accountability from their governments, whose hands are therefore tied.

Aside from the progress this new situation represents in terms of democracy, it must be understood that it seriously calls into question any chances of progress at the WTO. The WTO ’s structure is not adapted to transparency and democracy; it needs secrecy to function. Secrecy is an essential factor in any trade negotiation, otherwise all that is done is to announce the points of agreement and disagreement without modifying them. Herein lies another reason for the deadlock, and there will be no turning back the clock on this evolution.

This is no longer a negotiation, as there is nothing to exchange.

Some governments are in the process of arguing for the end of flexibilities for the North and the recognition of certain flexibilities for the South. They consider it to be only fair, to be the regularisation of an irregular situation that has gone on for too long.

The countries capable of exporting agricultural products are demanding the elimination of subsidies. Sugar, banana and cotton producers are the worst affected by the inability to export to rich countries owing to the competition from the subsidised producers of the North. In the case of cotton, for example, 4 million workers, and 10 million people in total, in four African countries, are dying because they are not able to sell their cotton, despite its high quality. And yet the United States and the EU are entering the Conference with an inflexible stance on this point.

The developing countries with emerging industries or industrial sectors with high job creation potential want to protect them, in order to develop their economies. It seems only natural and fair, but the EU and the United States are demanding drastic cuts in the customs duties in these industries.

The countries of the South say that they have already paid too much, and refuse to negotiate the opening of the service sectors, as demanded by the European Union.

The key argument put forward by developing countries is that some liberalisations are owed to them, as of right, independent of any negotiations, independent of any exchange. These claim are being made in the name of development. This recognition that some subjects are non-negotiable is strange within the context of the WTO. Such discourse is usually found in the context of international organisations built on universal values, shared global objectives, in other words, organisations linked to the United Nations system. The WTO, in view of its workings and sphere of action, is totally unadapted to these new demands.

With what should the WTO be replaced?

There is a kind of “end of the road” feeling at the Convention Centre in Hong Kong. Some perhaps see it as a cause for anxiety, but ignore the great wealth available within the multilateral system as a whole. UNCTAD knows a great deal about international trade. If we were to give it the power and authority, it could deal with trade, economic and social issues in a much broader manner, including, for example, issues such as the price of agricultural goods, which is the number-one cause of poverty among farm workers in the world, workers who are fleeing rural areas en masse and gathering at the factory gates for jobs paying ever-lower wages. Let us not forget the ILO, half of whose members are the actual creators of wealth (employers and workers), and the other half government representatives. This organisation has already established a body of fundamental universal rules, which, if they were actually applied, would be capable of enabling trade competition that is not distorted or won in advance by those dragging down the living standards of men and women throughout the world. The search for a development model democratically chosen by the peoples of the world is possible, and the multilateral system, rather than compromising this objective, could contribute to it by promoting the distribution of wealth (and thus the fight against poverty), through the creation of jobs, but, above all, the creation of decent jobs.

Everyone involved in this year’s monumental anti-poverty campaign knows that compared to our ambitions on debt and aid, trade is the toughest political and media sell. It simply isn’t sexy.

NGOs and trade unions have done a damned good job of making fairer trade a popular and newsworthy issue. An indispensable tool in their armoury is the photo opportunity/media stunt. It’s absolutely true that for sheer numbers a good picture in the front pages of a newspaper beats a thousand words buried in the middle, as pictures are the first thing readers look at, and TV lives for good images.

Healthy competition has driven NGOs to conjure up more and more powerful and extreme stunts and they are scaling creative heights to get those vital media inches and seconds in Hong Kong.

“Bring me the head of media stunts”, screams a livid senior spokesperson of RAAT (Really Angry About Trade - a made up NGO) at a photo op this morning with 100 migrant worker mime artists, eight months in planning. “Why is there only one photographer here? Where the hell are AP, AFP, AFX and PA? What? Old ladies in the park doing a trade balancing act with massive papermache heads, right now? Goddamn Oxfam, why didn’t we think of that? Heh, somebody move that migrant worker, they’re blocking our banner.”

Meanwhile at the Oxfam stunt a photographer, Kim, takes a call from a colleague, Geoff. “Forget the Tai Chi grannies; get yourself down here to the politr protest zone right now, you’re going to love this one.” She arrives at the GOD (Get Organised for Development - another made up NGO name) media stunt just in time to catch the unveiling of a giant fortune cookie.

“Told you it would be worth it”, says Geoff as the giant plastic pink prop is revealed to the stunned press pack, “the newsdesk will lap this up”.

“Oh my god”, Sarah gasps in amazement, “It’s a giant nang nang. What the hell has a giant effigy of that very private part got to do with fair trade? No. They’re not going to pull out a fair trade message out? Gross. I think I’m going to be sick.”

Luckily for the red-faced NGO staff the whole press pack suddenly dashes off. Apparently some Korean farmers are popping out to Causeway Bay to do a bit of shopping and police are concerned it could get ugly.

The snappers almost get their ‘minor planned scuffle rocks the WTO, again’ picture when the Koreans decide to smash through their police escort and make a break for a Benetton store with a winter sale on. But the ring of 2000 photographers and camera crews on full body-armour is too strong for them to get within 100 metres of the police, so they give up and go back to their hotel to watch the Arsenal Vs Everton match.

“Where was that migrant mime artist gig again?” says Geoff as he hails a cab.

From inside the Convention Centre, the strange parallel universe of serious
looking negotiators, government officials drafting text - the game of word
chess is being played out for the 5th day. Most others are playing a
waiting game - the lobbying and campaigning mostly exhausted - waiting for
the latest news on who stands where? which governments are lining up with
whom? did the words that were handed over to that drafter get up? It comes
down to the line I’m told. It all happens in the final hours.

At the computer in the NGO Centre, in the seats around me, there are people
typing hurriedly to get the latest out to others not on the inside. And
writing up comment, media releases, statements for distribution. The
registered NGOs here cover a huge range of interests. Trade unionists.
Environmentalists. Activists from all corners of the world. Academics.
Business coalitions. Grain producers. A man from a US grain producer’s
association is giving an interview to a European journalist about how
development has been overlooked at these talks. He says his passion is food
aid, and it’s not being handled well at these talks. The reason he is here,
he tells the journo, is to ensure that support payments to industry are not
given away without increased access (”real and quantifiable” he says) to
worldwide markets.

Meanwhile, the WTO free text message service sends us messages like the one
that just came though a few minutes ago: “Hundreds of protesters attacked
police. At least 3 persons were injured. WTO MC6 released proposal to end
all agricultural subsidies in 5 years.”

The clash of the different worlds! It is really a clash of worlds. Earlier
messages from the WTO added traffic advice. Indeed the people of Hong Kong
are not used to Korean farmers bowing and drumming on the streets in
protest. Traffic diverted. Not the talks.

The Hong Kongers gladly take the flyers being handed out about what this is
all about. Many Hong Kong people have been protesting too. Managing their
thousands of foreign guests with great warmth. The shoppers on the
footpaths enthusiatically take the white bands from GCAP activists, and
badges, “Down down WTO” in English and Chinese, pin them to their lapels or
pop them in their pockets. Many also gladly snap photos of the protesters -
colourful costumes of the migrant workers and women marching in the
streets, multilingual banners. A new phenomemnon, the Hong Kong newspapers
report, called “citizen photographers”. In addition to the massive
contingent of media papparazzi.

Police, groups of riot police, with their bags of riot contol gear plied up
ready,
had also been waiting in previous days, on many street corners. It seems
they stopped waiting today. Their lines and vans that had been lining many
streets around the Confrence Centre site in action.

Inside the Conference Centre, a revised text was distributed this
afternoon. The final text of the “Doha Work Program” where the words mean
everything. “SHALL” or “MAY”? Mandatory or not? One of the keys to progress
being achieved.

Interpretations of language, different perspectives on what any given word
means or COULD mean, or could be made to mean, a world of diplomacy, of
meeting upon meeting, of plans, of strategy, of lies, of exhausted
frustration, all a part of the human psychology of global trade talks -
exacerbated today by being the “almost” last day.

It will all ride on what is decided tonight. The Ministers and their
advisors have worked until 3am the past 2 nights. Another long night ahead.
That’s not to mention the people drafting the text and the people then
analysising it - for evening or morning briefing meetings.

In fact the next one starts in 10 minutes so I’d better finish up.

In the real world what does this round of talks mean? Massive layoffs of
workers and more restricted rights in the workplace? It seems so. “Social
impact”, the lives of people, is not the business of the WTO it seems. This
is the DEVELOPMENT round it is said. There is nothing in the text that
links trade with genuine development. The biggest lie of this process.

The developed countries, are not focusing on what these talks could do to
deliver development. I wonder how in fact a trade minister could?
Instead… the major players from the rich countries are looking for
rewards - to promote their exports or to get in return for concessions on
agriculture. They will only agree to deals as “a package” - more jargon
about linking progress on agriculture with progress on NAMA. The revised
text now includes dates for ending agricultural export support - in
brackets - meaning no deal yet.

The theme for our week here: “everything has been said, but not yet has
everyone said it”.

In what must rank as one of the most shameful abuses of power and bureaucratic obstruction of the democratic will ever seen in the WTO, the secretariat and political leadership of the WTO today tried to block the G90, representing the majority of the WTO’s members, from expressing their views on the unacceptability of the current Annex C on services in the draft MC6 text. Although several countries have supported a written statement from South Africa, Cuba, Venezuela, Kenya and Malaysia rejecting the proposed Annex C and although the G90 has submitted a new text to replace the Annex, the Facilitator of the services negotiations is maintaining the pretense that a majority of countries support Annex C in its present form and that, therefore, not only will no other text be accepted for discussion, but the brackets in the Ministerial text referring to this Annex should now be removed because there is consensus on the Annex.

Such an exercise of raw political power and bureaucratic rigidity in the face of the will of governments from the vast majority of humanity makes a mockery of any claim that the WTO is a member-driven organisation based on consensus decision making. That is now revealed to be a lie, and any credibilty that the WTO ever had must now be rejected as a sham.

Further, we should now investigate whether the OECD trade ministers should be individually sued for breaching the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, which outlaws the bribery of foreign government officials, since they have offered obscene amounts of money, conditional on the trade ministers of the developing world providing a service for the multinational companies to whom the OECD trade ministers are beholden.

HEALTH WARNING - SUPERFICIAL WTO ANALYSIS: I’m a press officer, my trade is PR (press relations). Us media relations professionals are often criticised for taking a glib and superficial approach to very serious issues, so I’ll do my best.

For a press officer trying to get your message through the media at the WTO, having all your specialist media contacts lined up in rows, tapping away on laptops in one aircraft hanger size space is paradise. Not so for the journalists. Not only do they have to endure piped lift music , in the WTO press centre the exposed journalists can’t hide. Their attention is a press officer’s to invade. They can’t even switch off their phone to avoid being harangued - we know where they sit. Only the most hardened hack scowls and tells you where to go while you try to gently shove a press release under his nose.

The media/PR relationship always has its healthy tensions but it’s rooted in an understanding of mutual reward. The journo gets a good story, the organisation or cause gets their message across to millions of people. The trouble for the WTO media pack is that there are hundreds of press officers here, many with imaginative and strong stories, and there are only so many WTO angles their editors want from them. There is a supply side surplus, to use the trade analogy.

A journalist at the WTO can’t even get up for a cup of tea without an NGO, government, business, trade union, faith group, turnip growers of Tooting (London) press officer accosting them: ‘Hi Sue, have you got a second? No, well this will only take half a second, I’ll walk with you. How are the kids, really, that’s awful? Anyway have you seen this report we’ve put out today?…’ The journalist makes it back to her desk two hours later carrying a lorry load of bumpf about Tooting turnips and only twenty minutes to file a 600 word story on the impact of trade distorting subsidies on Reindeer farmers in Kazakhstan.

Campaigners and NGOs need the media as much they need us. So next time you bump into a trade journalist who’s at or has just returned from the WTO (if you’re not here that is) give them a sympathetic hug, before of course showing them the new report we’ve just published on …

While ministers, negotiators and other officials officially started their five day marathon meeting inside Hong Kong’s stunning convention centre, just outside around a hundred protesters jumped into the polluted harbour - maybe to prove that whilst the WTO might sink, they know how to float - and smaller groups clashed with the local police. Hordes of photographers, thirsting for the visual excitement only physical drama can give, rushed to the embankment like starving predators hunting their prey as soon as they heard the first splash by Hong Kong’s dock. The disappointment was obvious among some of them as they realised the stunt wasn’t a mass suicide, and the jumpers had ‘cheated’ by wearing life vests underneath their clothes. But not long after, they got the action they wanted. A tiny fraction of demonstrators - first 10, then perhaps 50, out of more than 5,000 - decided to compare strength and endurance with the extensively equipped law enforcement. And that gave the picture that everyone around the world woke up to Wednesday morning: a handful of protestors kicking glass shields while pepper-sprayed by anti-riot police.

The deja vu had been secured and the pictorial cliché caught. The stage had been set for the next 116 hours of negotiating tariff cuts, support schemes and flexibilities. But what wasn’t in the picture was the way civil society representatives and Hong Kong inhabitants, this day and the previous five, had cast doubt on how the WTO is presently working. What was left out was the dead serious discussions hundreds of NGOs had with each other on how to advance their common interests, the singing and dancing migrant women workers, and the colourful representatives of the diverse Asian continent. What was omitted was the joy, the creativity and the optimism of civil society that has characterised the preparations for the big meeting.

Similarly, what’s not in the picture when international trade is profiled in the mainstream media, are the negative consequences free-for-all liberalisation has on peoples lives everyday. Indeed, what’s left out here are the reasons why people from all over the world cast doubt on the current multilateral trade system. That uncritical trade openings might increase world GDP by billions of dollars, euros and yen in extra GDP makes the headlines but not that this new growth most certainly would be shared among the richest 10 % of the world. The fact that unregulated changes in trade patterns create mass unemployment is ignored. And the studies that show that whilst trade is essential in lifting people out of poverty, it won’t do it alone (but needs complementary social and economic policies) are left for academics to repeat to each other.

So as the majority of protesters views go unrepresented , or are simplistically portrayed by those who get physical, you could be forgiven for thinking that they we are in fact protesting against human progress. No wonder its uphill for the global movement for trade justice. But what should be in the picture is this: if you’ve got nothing to sell, then you won’t get much out of the possibility to trade anything anywhere. And most of the people in this world have nothing of interest to anyone other than their closest neighbours, who have no money to buy it. That’s why they need other possibilities than just open markets.

For those of us from London, Hong Kong already has a certain sense of familiarity, the street markings, the orange Belisher beacons at the zebra crossings and the ford transit police vans, but for me a particular sense of recognition began to develop from Saturday afternoon as preparations for the Tuesday start of the Ministerial intensified. Why? Because Central Hong Kong is beginning to look like Notting Hill, West London in the run up to Europe’s greatest street festival, the Notting Hill Carnival, not sadly in the sense that sound systems are being set up in the streets, the smell of jerk Chicken is wafting through the air or the melody of steel bands coming from the assembly points, but because shops are being boarded up, windows covered in netting and bored looking police have appeared on every street corner.

The press as usual before big demonstrations is full of dire warnings and predictions of impending doom (and not because of the potential disaster posed by the threat of the ministerial text as it stands with all its implications for public services, deindustrialization in developing countries, lack of progress on removing agricultural subsidies or stopping the undermining of workers rights) but because of the various rampaging hordes of ‘militant Korean farmers’, ‘Italian anarchists,’ and Hong Kong teenagers on school holiday. The scene at the first demonstration on Sunday could not have been further from this exaggerated picture of potential catastrophe. Marchers assembled in Victoria Park in a spirit much closer to that of Carnival than riot. Women migrant workers from Indonesia and the Philippines, Hong Kong trade unionists, representatives of many NGOs and a selection of international trade unionists representing every continent on earth (well alright not the Antarctic). We chanted familiar slogans and less familiar ones in Chinese, listened to the internationalie in Chinese, English and Italian and in a more surreal moment sang the theme from Les Miserables,’ this is the sound of angry men who will not be slaves again . . .’

In ultra modern and somewhat sterile surroundings of the Hong Kong Conference Centre, cut off from the outside world by a ring of security which incidentally is several times tighter than that I experienced in September at the UN World Summit, which may say something about the relative value placed on heads of state and their trade and finance ministers, it is almost possible to lose sight of why we are actually here at a series of trade negotiations defending the interests of our members and working people generally, outside the Central Government building on Sunday afternoon listening to the speeches of our leaders and others and watching the faces of domestic workers who had given up their one afternoon off to demand justice and proclaim that our rights and our world are not for sale, it was impossible to forget.

We’re now only a handful of days away from the showdown in the Pearl of the Orient. The Draft Ministerial Text has been written, revised, analysed and commented. As could have been predicted, some complain it goes too far in identifying consensus while others grumble that its draftsmen have omitted some of the most obvious accords. The negotiating parties have been going through the text as industry lobbyists examine proposed legislation: meticulously looking for their particular interests, ignoring the broader picture and disregarding the sustainability of any deal.

In fact, a practice that nothing but resembles the run up to the ministerial, where members have cared for only one set of issues – their access, their protection and their prospects. Thus, in the round that what was supposed to establish the WTO as a holistic, development oriented multilateral body, it has emerged as the main global arena for self-interested bargaining. Nations horse trade their way through negotiations, giving an inch only if repaid correspondingly. And they’ve gotten more or less nowhere.

This leaves us in a situation where the strongest negotiators – the EU, the US, Japan, India and Brazil in particular, who are the only ones that can make the negotiations move – are engaged in a game of chicken. The popular American ‘dare’ in the 1960s and 70s, where teenagers would drive two cars towards each other to see who would pull away first and thus lose his pride and honour. In the WTO though with the twist that the ‘chicken’ is the one who first gives in to the other parties’ demands; loses at home but internationally will be credited for making the negotiations move.

The prospects for Hong Kong are clear and simple. Either the negotiations kick off through a ‘chicken’ or they break down as countries collide in their mutual stubbornness. For workers and the world’s poor this big crash, however, might be the better choice as the deal presently on the table will only leave them worse off. Yet the collision most probably won’t happen as trade ministers care about keeping face as American teenagers did for their cars. So get ready to put your money on who’ll be the chicken.

It has been reported that the covering letter contained in the 1 December draft ministerial text has gone missing. That letter, from Pascal Lamy and Amina Mohamed, General Council Chair, contained some important health warnings: it noted that the Annexes (except one) were produced on the responsibility of the relevant Chairs; it noted that these Annexes did not purport to represent consensus or convergence; and it noted that they were produced without prejudice to the interests of members.

That was important to many members, especially in relation to the services Annex C, which many members strongly oppose and do not want to be the basis of services negotiations, which is why they fought successfully to have the main text reference to Annex C put in brackets.

Now, it seems, that set of caveats has disappeared from what has been circulated to members since 2 December . If anyone knows the whereabouts of this letter (or knows that it has been found or out somewhere less obvious) or who may have been involved in its reputed disappearence, can they get in touch with me but, more importantly, with WTO member states, who may well want to know how such an ‘accidental loss’ could have occurred.

Mike Waghorne, PSI

Over the next ten days, a number of trade unionists working on questions of trade will be writing on this on-line journal about their impressions, thoughts and opinions on the WTO Ministerial. Through this blog we hope to bring you a view from workers’ representatives about what really happens when 15,000 delegates, 4,000 non-government organisations and 3,000 journalists descend on a city for a 5-day marathon meeting - from the engine room of the negotiations to the many seminars for reflection to the rallies taking over the streets of Hong Kong. Trade union leaders from throughout the world will be contributing to this journal, giving a culturally and politically diverse account of how trade unions are working to affect change in the global trading system.