ICFTU OnLine…
204/980930/LD

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 30 1998. (ICFTU Online): In a personal meeting today with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Bill Jordan, General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the world's largest trade union body, appealed to him to release all political detainees under the Internal Security Act (ISA) of Malaysia and to ensure the fullest respect of workers' rights and other human rights in Malaysia.

"The ISA is a throwback to the colonial era, and now, forty-one years after Malaysia has achieved its independence, there is no excuse for it any longer in the independent Malaysia of 1998", Bill Jordan continued.

"The ISA removes the right to a fair trial, it denies the access of detainees to lawyers and even to the closest members of their families, and it lets the government keep people locked up indefinitely. It should be urgently repealed and all those detained under its provisions must be released."

Bill Jordan was speaking at the end of the fourth Conference of the Asia Pacific Labour Network (1), which met in Kuala Lumpur, hosted by the Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC), in preparation for the APEC Leaders' Meeting there on 17-18 November 1998.

The Conference proposals were discussed in a meeting with the Malaysian Prime Minister.

Time to take on the hedge funds

The meeting with the Malaysian Prime Minister discussed the growing world economic and financial crisis. The near-collapse of the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund last week made it plain for all to see that the continued freedom of the hedge funds to risk colossal sums of money, speculating against the exchange rates of the countries which are victim to their predatory attacks, threatens to cost billions of dollars to both the people of developing countries like Malaysia and to the taxpayers in the industrialised countries who are asked to pay the price for their failure.

"What is needed", said the ICFTU General Secretary, "are greater transparency and regulation of financial markets with internationally mandatory reserve-to-asset ratios, disclosure of asset holdings of hedge funds like the LTCM, and a "Tobin Tax", to make speculators pay a penalty for their foreign currency transactions..

Recovery from the Asian crisis

"The Asian financial and economic costs has brought increased poverty to hundreds of millions of Asian working women, men and their families and is seriously undermining the progress achieved during several decades of economic development. More and more children are being forced to leave school and look for work", said Bill Jordan, "The APEC Kuala Lumpur Leaders' Meeting urgently needs to adopt specific measures to tackle child labour and develop strategies leading to its elimination."

IMF austerity programmes have added to the recession and contributed to unemployment and impoverishment through the raising of interest rates, measures to deregulate labour markets, and cuts in state spending and privatisation. The trade union conference said the APEC Leaders' Meeting should call for structural reform of the international financial institutions to ensure economic development goes hand-in-hand with social progress.

Their existing programmes are too rigid in their conditionality and should be replaced by measures to stimulate investment, job creation and training, maintain and develop education, health and social security programmes and maintain essential public services in public ownership.

APEC should talk to social partners as well as business interests

APEC already regularly consults with academics and with the formally-established APEC Business Advisory Council. The ICFTU believes that achieving recovery from the Asian crisis requires balancing this by formal involvement of trade unions as well. In recent years trade unions from several APEC countries have been invited to meetings of APEC Working Groups. This should now be put on a formal setting, and the ICFTU's Asia Pacific Labour Network, which represents trade unions in the area, should be given a recognised role in APEC arrangements, through an APEC Labour Forum.

The APEC Countries must agree to give APEC a proper social dimension, as their former obsession with deregulating the economy is failing APEC's own stated objectives of 'improving the standards of living of all our citizens on a substantial basis'. The Conference called for the setting up of a new APEC Working Group dedicated to the "Social and Employment Dimension of APEC" with the full participation of trade unions and other social partners.

(1) The APLN was established in 1995 to support trade unions of the APEG region. It consists of ICFTU affiliates from 15 APEC countries, together with International Trade Secretariats. Its contact point is the ICFTU's Asian Pacific Regional Organisation in Singapore.

The ICFTU has 125 million members, represented through 206 affiliated organisations in 141 countries.