Review of Globalization, Employment and Income Distribution in Developing Countries

Globalization, Employment and Income Distribution in Developing Countries edited by Eddy Lee and Marco Vivarelli. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2006, xvii + 253 pp., ISBN 0 230 00783 X, £65.00

This book presents the findings of the second stage of a research project funded by the UK Department for International Development and carried out by the International Policy Group of the International Labour Office. The focus of the project was on the impact of trade and investment liberalization on employment, within-country inequality and poverty reduction in developing countries. While the first stage of the project carried out a general worldwide review, this book is based on country studies of Morocco, Ghana, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Nepal.

Imagine There's No Countries, Nothing to Kill or Die For (from 'Imagine,' by John Lennon)

 

I would like to look at the issue of community and nationalism and its continued relevance at the present, and in particular to analyse its association with authoritarianism, militarisation, nuclearisation, terrorism, and questions of war and peace in South Asia.     Within this region, there is a very close parallel between the current situation in Sri Lanka and developments which have taken place much earlier in India, Pakistan, and later Bangladesh. In both cases, we see the development of strong authoritarian tendencies, linked up to either religion or ethnicity.

The Case for Banning the VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS

In the context of the prolonged and horrific violence in Gujarat, there have been numerous calls for the VHP and Bajrang Dal to be banned. For some people, evidently, the well-documented role of these organisations in planning, inciting and perpetrating systematic attacks on Muslims – destroying their livelihoods, driving them out of their homes, raping hundreds of women and girls, and murdering thousands of men, women, children and babies – seems an obvious reason for outlawing them.

Others, however, disagree. Even if we leave aside members and supporters of the VHP and Bajrang Dal, there are objections which can be summarised as follows: (1) Bans are undemocratic. (2) Who will ban them? Not this government! (3) It won’t work – they will go underground, or change their names. (4) Endorsing the use of a ban against them will make it easier for the government to ban organisations and harass individuals engaged in legitimate activities.

Trade Unions and Women's Autonomy: Organisational Strategies of Women Workers in India

 

Introduction

 

The labour force in India is as diverse as Indian society itself, divided by gender, religion, caste, region, ethnicity, language and history. In this context, the issue of equality assumes extra importance, yet trade unions have failed to tackle it with the seriousness it deserves. This failure has had an adverse effect on all sections that suffer from discrimination, above all on women, and also on the movement as a whole.

 

This chapter looks at some examples of the ways in which women workers have organised successfully, and tries to assess how far these attempts go towards addressing the issues of discrimination and equality. It adopts a case study approach, looking at six cases from a diversity of locations: The All-India Chemical and Pharmaceutical Employees’ Federation and its activities in Bombay, Maharashtra, in Western India; the Women’s Wing of the All-India Bank Employees’ Association which has branches throughout the country; The Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh and Mahila Mukti Morcha from Madhya Pradesh, Central India; the Navayuga Beedi Karmika Sangam in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, Southern India; Sarba Shanti Ayog and Sasha based in Calcutta, West Bengal, in Eastern India; and SEWA, based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in Western India. The absence of North India is not accidental; this is the region where women face the most brutal violence and oppressive patriarchal control, and organising autonomously is most difficult. I have also included material from a project sponsored by Women Working Worldwide to find out if Codes of Conduct can help women workers in the garment industry, although this cannot count as a case study since the overwhelming majority of the women remain unorganised.

 

The chapter aims to show that while some progress has certainly been made, women and other disadvantaged sections remain marginalised in the labour force, and trade unions still fail to recognise the importance of tackling this issue. Finally, it argues that globalisation perhaps opens up possibilities of using new resources which might aid in the struggle for equality.

The Only Alternative to Global Terror

 

Father, Son and Holy War

My apologies to Anand Patwardhan, but I can’t resist the temptation to borrow the title of his film as an apt description of what is happening in the world right now (i.e. October 2001, the month after the terrorist attacks in the USA). Whether the father is Saudi billionnaire Mohammed bin Laden, with his close ties to the Saudi royal family, the son is his estranged offspring Osama, who is enraged every time he thinks of infidel American troops stationed on the holy soil of Saudi Arabia, and the holy war is the jihad which the latter has declared against America and Americans; or the father is George Bush Sr, who started it all with his war to defeat Saddam Hussein by gradually exterminating the people of Iraq, the son is George Jr., who has trouble opening his mouth without putting his foot in it, and the holy war is the crusade the latter has declared against, well, let us say vaguely specified enemies who happen to be Muslims – in both cases, the themes of religious communalism, militarism and machismo are inextricably intertwined. 

There is even an uncanny similarity in the ways that the two sons think, if we ignore the cowboy rhetoric of one (‘wanted - dead or alive’, ‘smoke 'em outa their holes’, etc.) and the pious expressions of the other (‘may God mete them the punishment they deserve’, etc.). Bush tells us, ‘either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists’ (statement of 20/9/01); Osama tells us the entire world is divided into ‘two regions – one of faith… and another of infidelity’ (statement of 7/10/01). In other words, they both want us to believe that the population of the world is divided into two camps, one headed by Bush, the other by bin Laden.

World Trade and Workers' Rights: To Link or Not to Link?

 

The saddest thing about the confrontation which took place at Seattle in November-December 1999 was the absence of any voice speaking for Third World workers, either among official delegates to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), or among the protesters outside. One reason could be that it would be difficult for workers or their representatives from developing countries to travel to Seattle. But at least a subsidiary reason is the failure of trade unions from our countries to articulate a clear and consistent standpoint which could be argued at such a forum. This is a lack we urgently need to remedy.

Before we look more closely at the issues raised by the meeting, I would like to make my basic standpoint clear. Very simply, as I see it, the present world system is a capitalist one, and capitalism is by its nature exploitative and oppressive. I would like to see it replaced by a more egalitarian, cooperative, compassionate and caring system. However, I do not think that this end can be achieved without the active and conscious participation of the vast majority of the world's working people. This is not possible in the immediate future since these protagonists have a long way to go before they can unite around such a common goal. We are therefore constrained at the moment to work within the capitalist system in order to create the conditions in which a revolutionary transformation of the world system can take place. So the question which confronts us is: given these constraints, what should our attitude be to the linking of trade agreements of the WTO with workers' rights?

A Woman's Place: The Struggle for Employment in the Bombay Pharmaceutical Industry

If labour history earlier tended to ignore women workers on the one hand[2] and Third World workers on the other,[3] the point where these two streams of ignorance converged was the history of trade union organisation among Third World women workers. More recently, there has been a growing body of literature on ways in which women workers in the Third World have organised themselves in order to struggle for basic rights;[4] however, compared with the total volume of literature on trade unionism, this still remains a very small proportion.

This paper is a contribution to redressing the balance by providing an account of the struggle of women workers in the pharmaceutical industry in Bombay against the marriage bar – a struggle which made history by challenging norms which had hitherto been taken for granted. Demands for equal pay, maternity leave and workplace creches were also fought and won. However the outcome, paradoxically, was declining employment for women in the organised sector[5] of this industry: the consequence of a complex interaction between employers and unions where each learned from the other and from their own successes and failures.