ICFTU OnLine
259/981126/LD
Union international calls for action on economic crisis
Elsinore, Denmark November 25 1998 (ICFTU OnLine): "For millions of working people and their families around the world, many already battered by structural adjustment programmes and destructive advice to governments from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the present financial crisis has not only destroyed what had taken years to build but it has killed their hopes of a better future".
Introducing an international trade union debate on the impact of the world financial crisis, Bill Jordan general secretary of the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) attacked what he called "the rigid free-market ideology that allowed the problem to develop" but said that the political response to the crisis was now increasingly shifting to the trade union agenda of international support for social programmes.
Mr Jordan was addressing a session of a three-day meeting of the ICFTU Executive Board which opened in Elsinore (Denmark) on November 25 where senior trade union leaders from over 100 countries voiced their concern over the social impact of the economic and financial crisis and over its potential contagious effect.
In a statement, the Board adopted a series of specific demands addressed to governments, financial institutions and central banks aimed at restoring economic growth and promoting employment world-wide.
Among the proposals are a coordinated reduction of interest rates, a targeted expansion of investment plans, financial assistance to developing countries and those in transition, efforts to secure the payment of wage arrears that have become a feature in Russia, and most of the CIS countries and specific measures focusing on women workers who, the ICFTU says, have been worst hit by the crisis.
International aid to the developing countries and those in transition should focus on the protection of health and education budgets, the creation of social safety nets, the promotion of job-creating public works programmes and the need to foster tripartite dialogue between governments, employers and trade unions based on basic international labour standards.
The ICFTU also calls for the writing-off of the debts of the most heavily indebted countries (and specifically referred to those countries of Central America that were devastated by Hurricane Mitch), the establishment of an international independent commission to regulate international financial markets and for a tax on speculation (the Tobin tax).
The ICFTU demands which aim at securing a social dimension to globalisation will form part of an international trade union campaign leading up to next year's ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and which will include representations to the OECD, the G7, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
New affiliates
The Executive Board accepted five new organisations into affiliation with the ICFTU bringing its membership to 211 national trade union organisations in 143 countries representing over 125 million workers world-wide.
The new affiliates are: The Central Geral de Sindicatos Independentes e Livres (CGSILA- Angola), the Confédération générale des travailleurs de Mauritanie (CGTM - Mauritania), the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW - Namibia), the Autonomous Trade Union Confederation (ATUC - Hungary) and the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN - Canada).
For further information, please contact the ICFTU Press Office on: 322 224 0212
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)
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please contact: Luc Demaret on: 00 322 224 0212 - press@icftu.org