http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?article2848
Burma: Historic Trade Union Congress Reaffirms Campaign for Democracy and Workers’ Rights
Brussels, 24 March 2009 (ITUC OnLine): An historic three-day Congress of the Federation of Trade Unions of Burma (FTUB) concluded on the Thai-Burma border today, with the adoption of the organisation’s new Constitution, and the re-election of U Hla Oo as President and Maung Maung as General Secretary. The FTUB, which was founded in 1991, has been at the forefront of the struggle for democracy and human rights since its inception. The Constitution confirms the status of the FTUB as an independent, democratic trade union organization, committed to bringing about respect for labour rights, in particular the standards of the International Labour Organisation, for all Burmese workers.
Congress delegates expressed their thanks to the international trade union movement for the strong solidarity shown by trade unions across the globe in support of their Burmese colleagues, and pledged to strengthen cooperation with trade unions around the world.
A key feature of the Congress was the re-affirmation of the FTUB’s commitment to an end to military rule and the introduction of democracy. The Congress called for a boycott of the military’s sham “elections” in 2010, which are intended to bring a measure of credibility to the regime without it having to concede the absolute power that it currently holds. The Congress also pledged to carry on the fight against the systematic use of forced labour by the military, with evidence that the regime has been using forced labour on reconstruction projects following the devastating Cyclone Nargis of May 2008.
The FTUB also maintained its call for economic sanctions against the military junta, noting that 90% of the people of Burma have to live on less than 1US$ per day, and that the only people gaining any real benefit from Burma’s trade and economic relations with other countries are the small minority of the population who run the regime and their closest supporters.
“The FTUB comes out of this Congress strong, unified and determined to work for a better future for Burmese workers and the entire population of the country. The Federation clearly has extremely strong support within the country, despite the ongoing harassment and brutality of the regime towards anyone who they suspect of supporting genuine trade unionism. The ITUC and its international partners will continue and strengthen our support to the FTUB in its struggle for democracy, justice and workers’ rights,” said ITUC Deputy General Secretary Jaap Wienen, who represented the Confederation at the Congress.
The ITUC represents 170 million workers in 312 affiliated national organisations from 157 countries. http://www.youtube.com/ITUCCSI
For more information please contact the ITUC Press Department on: +32 2 224 0204 or +32 476 621 018 .
themes : Trade union rights
Burma:Historic Trade Union Congress Reaffirms Campaign for Democracy and Workers’ Rights
Toyota City, Japan Is Beginning To Look A Lot Like Detroit
http://helpthemiddleclass.com/2009/03/23/toyota-city-japan-is-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-detroit/
The ultimate company town thought it was immune from economic downturns. But that was before the global recession hit and the automaker started slashing jobs.
Reporting from Toyota City, Japan — When times were good and the auto business hummed along like a finely tuned engine here in the Detroit of Japan, this tightknit company town was considered a workers’ utopia.
City officials were the envy of the nation, nursed by a paternal multinational firm that paid generous wages and showered the community with perks such as a top-notch sports stadium, concert hall and art museum — all carrying the Toyota brand name.
That was before the worldwide economic pileup that brought widespread personal wreckage to the hometown of the world’s mightiest automaker.
Unlike in Detroit, where years of steady decline preceded the current financial crisis, Toyota City’s fortunes went from cruise speed to brick wall. Regarded a model of economic prosperity, it endured an unthinkable drop from first in the country to worst in less than nine months.
In this community three hours southwest of Tokyo, it’s a phenomenon known as Toyota Shock.
“Toyota City is hurting,” said Norio Seki, general director of the city’s industrial labor division. “We’re in trouble.”
Last summer, Toyota was just months away from overtaking General Motors as the world’s biggest car company. Jobs were plentiful here in Toyota City, where 80% of workers are employed in the auto industry.
Then Japan slumped into recession. Exports in the world’s second-largest economy plummeted at a record pace, and domestic demand dropped alarmingly.
Mammoth blue-chip firms such as Toyota and Sony weren’t exempt from the financial carnage. Even before announcing last month that it was facing its first annual net loss in 59 years, Toyota had begun an unprecedented production slowdown that called for reduced shifts and 10-day closures at its 12 domestic plants.
It also fired 9,000 contract workers — more than 10% of its 85,000 employees — and warned that more firings could follow, even among once-protected full-time workers.
As a result, Toyota City saw its number of available jobs fall more than 50% between October and December compared with the same period of 2007, officials say.
January brought more bad news: The number of job seekers soared 130% from the same month in 2008, from 1,489 to 2,627. That brought Toyota City unwanted attention as Japan’s most out-of-work town.
“There used to be so many jobs we couldn’t fill them all, but that all dried up overnight,” said Masami Kawajiri, director of a federal job center in Toyota City. “Now our only choice is to do our best for job seekers, one by one. To think about them all at once would be too overwhelming.”
City hall has fared no better: Officials predict a 96.3% drop in the corporate taxes they’ll collect this year, a loss that jeopardizes city services. The Aichi prefecture government, which relies on Toyota for one-fourth of its corporate tax revenue, is projecting a $1-billion shortfall in 2009.
For its part, the automaker can only watch the decline of its home city as its scrambles to climb out of its own financial hole.
From an operating profit of $37 billion last year, Toyota expects a $5-billion loss for the fiscal year ending March 31. The company is also seeking government loans to hold off private investors demanding as much as 50% in interest on the company’s debt.
“We know Toyota City has been hit on the chin, and we feel a responsibility to the community,” said Paul Nolasco, a Toyota spokesman in Tokyo. “But here’s an indication of how cloudy our situation is: We haven’t even come up with a global production and sales plan for this year.
“We usually release that in December, but here it is March and we haven’t done it yet. That’s the biggest indication that we’re still looking for direction.”
Hurting just as much are hundreds of smaller companies here that supply the Toyota colossus with the parts to construct its cars, including mufflers, door parts, windshield wipers and headlights.
In a city where one-third of the 1,400 employers are auto-related, many of the firms say Toyota’s production cuts will cause bankruptcies unless they too can qualify for government loans.
“We have no way to make the situation better — we just have to wait and see what happens with Toyota,” said a manager in a car window parts company who asked not to be named. “People are afraid to talk because they are afraid of Toyota, but we’re all very nervous.”
Toyota City’s downturn baffles residents. After all, this was the home of Japan’s largest company. Financial woes might be a reality in other parts of Japan, but not here.
“This thing took us by surprise,” said one former Toyota employee who declined to give her name. “Who would have ever guessed that recession would come home to roost here? This is a car town and the world needs cars, right?”
Toyota City is a somewhat isolated community on the last stop of a subway line based in the nearby bigger city of Nagoya. Most people here support the hometown company and drive Toyotas.
Not far south of downtown sits the automaker’s massive complex of factories and research and development centers. It carries an air of big-brother mystery, even among locals.
The main gate is guarded, and a visitor who tried to take pictures from the public street was quickly shooed away.
The city has the typical signs of stress: plummeting property sales, empty storefronts and restaurants. But there is another commodity that the town has lost to the recession: foreigners. The representatives from Toyota suppliers and customers from the U.S. and Europe who used to pack downtown’s hotels are gone. Some say occupancy rates have dropped 90%.
For 13 years, Kevin Yuhara has run his tiny restaurant-pub in the heart of downtown, catering to foreigners who did business with Toyota. The U.S. college sports memorabilia, collection of Toyota caps and Polaroids covering the walls capture the atmosphere of drinking and laughter of the mostly American clientele.
Now the place sits empty, except for the occasional Japanese customer.
“For more than a decade, we had some good times here,” said Yuhara, standing next to a flying-pig toy hanging from the ceiling. “But now the party’s over, the town’s major company is hurting, and the foreigners have all gone home.”
At city hall, faces are grim as officials look for answers.
Seki, the industrial labor division head, said Toyota City and Detroit have for years been “sister cities” and share several cultural exchange programs.
Though he has never called his counterpart in Detroit for advice, Seki says there are many questions he’d like to ask. The economic malaise has prompted officials to reconsider the city’s future as a one-company town, he said.
“I’d like to know how they handle unemployment at this scale,” he said of Detroit. “I’d like to know what other industries they are looking into. How can you use the technology used in the auto industry for other kinds of enterprises?”
Seki says the two cities are different in key ways. Unlike most American workers and employers, Toyota City and its citizens have savings they hope will see them through the hardest times.
Toyota City has remade itself before, locals say. During the Depression, the city was a silk production center named Koromo. The stock market crash destroyed the industry, so an ambitious loom maker named Kiichiro Toyoda turned to automobiles instead.
Nobody here expects that another such drastic personality change is in Toyota City’s future. “In the long run, we don’t think the auto industry will fail,” Seki said. “Humans drive cars. It’s what they do.” (FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND RELATED ARTICLES PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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Article by John Glionna for the Los Angeles Times
In Toyota City, Japan, the good times rolled . . . away - Los Angeles Times.
Posted by Man In The Middle on Mar 23rd, 2009 and filed under Big Business/Wall Street, Careers, Credit & Debt, Economy, Human Interest, Latest Job News, Latest News, Money, News, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site
UN rules detention of Myanmar's Suu Kyi illegal
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/23/un-rules-detention-of-myanmars-suu-kyi-illegal/print/
Originally published 11:22 p.m., March 23, 2009, updated 10:26 p.m., March 23, 2009
UN rules detention of Myanmar's Suu Kyi illegal
DENIS D. GRAY ASSOCIATED PRESS
BANGKOK (AP) - The United Nations has ruled the continued detention of Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi violates the country's own laws as well as those of the international community, a legal document says.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has spent 13 of the last 19 years under house arrest, with the ruling junta yearly extending her detention despite international outcries.
"The latest renewal (2008) of the order to place Ms. Suu Kyi under house arrest not solely violates international law but also national domestic laws of Myanmar," said a legal opinion by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions that has been sent to the Myanmar government.
Although the ruling is unlikely to spring Suu Kyi from detention, it is uncommon for the world body to accuse a member country of violating its own laws, and while the junta has always marched to its own tune it has also resented being regarded as an international pariah.
The working group, an arm of the U.N. Human Rights Council, said Suu Kyi was being held under Myanmar's 1975 State Protection Law, which only allows renewable arrest orders for a maximum of five years. This five-year period ended at the end of May 2008.
The opinion also questioned whether Suu Kyi represented a threat to the "security of the State or public peace and tranquility," the provision of the 1975 law authorities have pointed to as the reason for her continued detention.
Jared Genser, a Washington-based attorney retained by Suu Kyi's family who provided the document to The Associated Press, said while the United Nations group earlier found her detention arbitrary and in violation of international law, it was the first time it cited the junta as failing to abide by its own law.
He said the government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, has not responded to the U.N.'s legal arguments and has not commented on why Suu Kyi is still being detained.
Suu Kyi, who rose to prominence during a pro-democracy uprising in 1988, was placed under arrest before her party swept the 1990 general elections, which the junta did not recognize. Over the years, the government released her several times only to have her virtually isolated again in her compound in Yangon.
The United Nations has for years attempted without success to bring about political reform and a dialogue between Suu Kyi and the military.
"I am under no illusion that the junta will be listening to the United Nations," Genser said in a telephone interview. "There is no quick and easy answer to the problem of Burma, so we have to take it one step forward at a time."
In Myanmar, the spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, Nyan Win, said over the weekend that her lawyer had sent a letter to Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein on March 13 asking for a hearing to appeal for her release when the one-year detention period expires in May.
The lawyer, Kyi Win, sent the appeal letter last October but has had no response from authorities, the spokesman said.
"The reason for her detention is false because Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who advocates a nonviolence policy, has not caused any threat to public order," he said.
Nyan Win said every time Suu Kyi's detention is extended, authorities read out the order "but no explanation or reason was ever given for the extension or detention."
Asked if Suu Kyi's detention might be lifted in May, Nyan Win said, "It is very difficult to make any predictions as the government does not have a transparent policy."
Activist groups, under a Free Burma's Political Prisoners Now Campaign, are attempting to collect 888,888 signatures for a petition calling for the release of Suu Kyi and more than 2,100 other political prisoners.
The petition is to be sent to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The number "8" is regarded as highly auspicious by many Burmese.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. Its leaders have scheduled elections next year that they say will lead to democracy. Critics say the balloting, held under a junta-orchestrated constitution, will merely perpetuate military control.
Army Uses Dynet People for Forced Labor
http://democracyforburma.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/army-uses-dynet-people-for-forced-labor/
2009 March 23
tags: Arakan, Burma, Human Rights, Junta, world focus on Burmaby peacerunning3/23/2009
Buthidaung: Dynet tribal people in northern Arakan have been forced by the Burmese army to work at many government construction sites and on other projects without any pay, said a tribal leader.
“we have to send at least three or four people, along with our own food, from each village in a week to army headquarters to labor at the army compound,” he said.
Most of the villagers have been working in the army compounds on tasks such as carrying water from the pond to the base, clearing out brush and grass, transporting letters from one battalion to another, and cooking for the soldiers.
“The army authorities have used forced labor at LIB 353 and 534 based in Buthidaung on a rotating system where the villagers work one group at a time. One group is able to return home when another group arrives at the headquarters. If any group does not arrive, the previous group has to continue working at the headquarters until another group shows up,” the leader said.
Dynet villagers from Long Chaung, Tet Ma Chaung, Kyauk Pru Daung, Pyin Kaung, and Nga Kyin Dauk villages are being forced to work on a daily basis. The Dynet people are an ethnic group in the Arakanese community that lives in the border area of Burma near Bangladesh. Most of the community members are uneducated.
Since the people are unable to complain about the use of forced labor by the army to the Rangoon ILO office, the army has taken advantage of them and used them for labor whenever they need work done, the leader added.
According to local source, forced labor is continuing in Arakan State but is primarily now occurring in remote areas near Bangladesh where foreigners are unable to visit
Narinjara News
from → Burma
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Citizen groups support unemployed homeless people in 3 prefectures-JAPAN
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/citizen-groups-support-unemployed-homeless-people-in-3-prefectures
Sunday 22nd March, 06:39 AM JST
TOKYO —
Citizen groups kicked off campaigns Saturday in Saitama, Aichi and Osaka prefectures to throw support behind people faced with the dual hardships of losing their jobs and homes as the Japanese economy sinks deeper into recession.
At the two-day events running through Sunday, doctors, lawyers and representatives from labor unions will give advice on issues concerning health and day-to-day life, the organizers said.
In January, hundreds of homeless people, including laid-off temporary workers, flocked to Tokyo’s Hibiya Park, seeking shelter at a ‘‘temp worker village’’ to stay through an uneasy New Year’s Day.
‘‘The only food I got last night was popcorn at a pachinko parlor,’’ a 37-year-old man from Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, said at the Saitama event.
He was thrown out of his dormitory after losing his job at a car factory last November and has been sleeping at train stations.
Unlike the temp worker village in Tokyo, the organizers are not offering shelter to spend the night at the venues, but they will offer advice on other accommodation, they said.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare estimates that the number of temporary workers who will lose their jobs during the period from last fall through the end of this month could reach more than 150,000.
The citizen groups organized the events after similar ones were held in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, and Kyoto, amid growing concern that more part-time workers will become unemployed at the nearing end of the current business year.
‘‘I’ve been looking for a live-in job, but to no avail. There are few job openings now,’’ said a 43-year-old man who has spent nights in his car since early February after he got fired from a warehouse company in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture.
‘‘Even if I see an opening, the next minute it’s gone,’’ he said.
On Saturday, the events were held at three venues in Omiya, Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo, Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, and Kita Ward in Osaka.
‘‘When I went to a job placement office in Aichi with no identification card at hand, one of the staffers said to me, ‘What are you doing here?’’’ said a 46-year-old man who visited the event in Osaka. He lost his job in January at a car company in Aichi Prefecture. Aichi is the home of Japan’s auto industry, with Toyota Motor Corp. and its affiliated parts suppliers based in the central Japanese prefecture.
‘‘After that, I gave up looking for a job,’’ he said.
CHILD LABOUR-THE BANE OF DEVELOPMENT
http://connectafrica.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/child-labour-the-bane-of-development/
Posted on March 20, 2009 by connectafrica
The figures are troubling and child labour is steadily become a unifying social economic problem amongst developed and developing countries. The International Labour Organisation (ILO), reports that based on a nation-wide survey of child trafficking, approximately 19 percent (%) of school children and 40 percent (%) of street children have been forced into child labour.
According to the Save Our Soul (SOS)-a Nigerian NGO, there are over 15 million Nigerian working children -7.9 million boys and 7.3 million girls are currently being dragged into working long hours and in inhumane conditions
A University Professor, Sarah Oloko says that the tradition of forcing children to work goes back many years and that most adults in the country today have been victims at one time or the other.
She says this is having a negative effect on the education of many young people living in Nigeria and that there is a thin line between children helping their parents out and being forced to work in dangerous conditions.
“When children, especially young ones are exposed to long hours of work in harsh and dangerous environments, which threatens their lives and limbs as well as jeopardize their normal physical, mental, emotional and moral development, it is termed child labour” the Professor concluded
In the eastern part of Nigeria and some Southern states such as Cross River and Akwa-Ibom, child trafficking has been the focus of intense media attention
It must be emphasized that child trafficking is the end product of child labour. Most children are either abducted or leave home with traffickers who promise their captives educational opportunities and other enticing incentives. They are taken to neighbouring African countries, principally Nigeria, Cameroon, Cote d’ Ivoire and Gabon-all transit points before they are sold off into servitude in agriculture, domestic labour or worse still end up as commercial sex slaves
Okeke Sandra, GUEST AUTHOR
Shift to labour-intensive industry -INDIA
http://www.centralchronicle.com/viewnews.asp?articleID=2782
Category » Editorial Posted On Friday, March 20, 2009
There are widespread reports about job loss in various countries, including India thanks to the global meltdown. According to the Union Labour Ministry, around 5 lakh workers have lost their jobs between October and December last year. The figure is based on a study that covered 2,581 units. The affected workers belonged to 20 sectors in 11 States and UTs, including textiles, metals, gems and jewellery, automobile, transportation and mining. For a labour-intensive country like India these reports are indeed intriguing as unemployment and underemployment has been increasing among a large segment of the working population.
The biggest knock has, however, been suffered by the export-driven gems and jewellery units a fall-out of the slump in demand from foreign markets, most of whom are reeling under the impact of the downturn. In fact, the impact of retrenchment has already become evident in Gujarat , which has a large number of diamond units, where even suicides have been reported. But its not just Gujarat, some other States have also been affected by closure due to dwindling orders.
The automobile sector has also suffered badly coinciding with poor demand in the last few months of 2008. However, there are expectations that the economy would improve in the second half of the year and the job loss in this sector may be checked to some extent.
Meanwhile, based on the dwindling export orders, industry inputs have predicted a crore job losses, an estimate that is obviously a cause for worry, specially for the government with elections nearing. The figure, arrived at by the Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO) survey, reflects that textiles, garments and handicraft sectors have been found to be the worst-affected. And it is generally believed that these sectors would find the going tough during the current year.
It may be recalled that a disturbing trend of Indias economic performance has been a deceleration in employment growth of 1.92 per cent per annum from 1993-94 to 2006-07 from 2.61 per cent per annum between 1983 and 1993 although growth in terms of GDP was rapid. Clearly, there has been a decline in employment per unit of GDP growth or employment elasticity of 0.28 from 1993-94 to 2006-07.
Applying this elasticity to the likely GDP growth of below 7 per cent in 2008-09 and around 5 per cent in 2009-10 to project the generation of employment provides an average of 7.5-8 million work opportunities this year and 6 million in the next financial year. This is much short of the 10-million opportunities generated during each of the last five years. In other words, there will be around 6 million fewer jobs during 2008-10.
However, the job loss has affected other parts of the world more--a staggering 50 million figure by 2009-end, according to the International Labour Organization. The slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million American jobs. High unemployment rates, specially among young workers, have led to protests in countries as varied as Latvia , Chile , Greece , Bulgaria , and Iceland and contributed to strikes in Britain and France . In emerging economies such as in Eastern Europe , there are fears that growing joblessness might encourage a move away from the free market and pro-western policies while in developed countries unemployment could bolster efforts to protect local industries at the expense of global trade.
Interestingly, in 2008, the 61st round survey of the National Sample Survey Organization, carried out in 2004-05, covering a sample of six lakh people in both rural and urban areas, found that the workforce participation rate (the number of persons working as a percentage of the total population) had increased by 2.85 per cent a year between 2000 and 2005. This is well beyond the current population rate. However, things started changing since early 2008 after the global recession set in.
India has been generating more jobs than any other developing country such as Brazil , Russia and China , as per a study conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD). India generated 11.3 million new jobs annually between 2000 and 2005, which is over 60 per cent more than 7 million jobs created in China every year. The performance looks even more impressive when contrasted with Brazil as the S American giant clocked 2.7 million new jobs annually over the five-year period while Russia added some 700,000 new jobs every year.
It has been estimated that there are 130 million surplus workers in rural India and around 170 million in rural China and the figures are likely to grow as agriculture becomes unremunerative and the farmers debt continues to increase. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that as per a government report around 48.6 per cent farmers in India are presently in debt though the actual figures may be much more.
With increased mechanization, the informal sector has obviously been the greatest contributor to employment generation with nearly 72 per cent of workers in cities and 82 per cent in villages engaged in this sector. But various factors, including competitiveness, economies of scale and lack of financial resources may close down many of these units in the coming years unless the government decides to help them.
Importantly, entrepreneurship development has to be a vital tool for employment generation. There are around 33 million entrepreneurs in India today with 45 per cent belonging to the backward community. According to FICCI estimates, with an enterprise to employment ratio of 1:3, creation of five million new entrepreneurs would result in generating 15 million additional jobs for individuals. Thus, it is necessary to promote entrepreneurship in a big way, specially among the weaker sections in the rural areas through easy access to capital, technology and market distribution channels. Meanwhile, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which has been extended to all the 615 districts, has been allocated Rs 30,100 crores in the interim Budget. This should provide four crore jobs per annum.
Some economists and planners have voiced the need to reverse the planning strategy and concentrate on the rural sector with industries, which would generate adequate employment and at the same time utilize local skills and technology. Remember, Mahatma Gandhi had advocated strengthening the rural sector to upgrade life and livelihood of the vast majority, which languish there. In recent times, our former President, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, had echoed the same by suggesting the need for PURA (providing urban facilities in rural areas) to boost up the development process.
Clearly, if the demand of the right to work is accorded Constitutional guarantee, which may not happen now, one could see a perceptible change in the strategy towards generating employment. Obviously, this would call for giving more incentives to the sectors that are labour-intensive and also have high employment potential. Agro-industries and rural industries come to our mind immediately, but there are many areas in the manufacturing sector which could too generate sufficient employment and become competitive.
Thus, there is a need to change the outlook of our politicians and planners, who concentrate on GDP growth through labour-reducing techniques without caring for the population, which languishes in poverty and squalor. Indias growth strategy in the coming years would need a drastic reorientation aimed towards labour-intensive sectors, where entrepreneurship development could perform the dual task of employment generation and self-employment. The countrys rural sector offers enormous possibilities and a national dialogue is necessary.
Dhurjati Mukherjee, INFA
Economic crisis to hit women harder than men, ILO report says
http://working.canada.com/resources/story.html?id=9fae403a-43d1-4ffb-b59e-4603c3cbf4c2
Economic crisis to hit women harder than men, ILO report says
In its annual report Global Employment Trends for Women, the Geneva-based employment equity organization said up to 22 million women could join the ranks of the unemployed in 2009.
Becky Rynor, Financial Post
E-mail
Font: * * * * The continuing global economic crisis will likely see more women than men lose their jobs in the year ahead, the International Labour Organization warns.
In its annual report Global Employment Trends for Women, the Geneva-based employment equity organization said up to 22 million women could join the ranks of the unemployed in 2009.
"Gender inequality in the world of work has long been with us, but it is likely that it will be exacerbated by the crisis," said Juan Somavia, director-general of the UN agency whose mandate is to promote "decent work" internationally.
"In times of economic upheaval, women often experience the negative consequences more rapidly and are slower to enjoy the benefits of recovery. And already before the crisis, the majority of working women were in the informal economy with lower earnings and less social protection."
The report indicates that of the three billion people employed around the world in 2008, 1.2 billion were women.
In 2009, it predicts the global unemployment rate for women could reach 7.4 per cent, compared to seven per cent for men.
"Women's lower employment rates, weaker control over property and resources, concentration in informal and vulnerable forms of employment with lower earnings, and less social protection, all place women in a weaker position than men to weather crises", said ILO spokeswoman Jane Hodges.
The report predicts the gender impact of the economic crisis is expected to be worse for women in most parts of the world, but particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The countries where unemployment rates may have less of an impact on women include East Asia, developed economies and the non-European Union which had narrower gender gaps in job opportunities prior to the current economic crisis.
© The Vancouver Sun 2009
Cracking the Bedrock of Democracy: Destroying the Secret Ballot in Union Elections
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Labor/lm0038.cfm
March 20, 2009
by Hans A. von Spakovsky
Legal Memorandum #38
Repealing a right—to secret ballots—long considered fundamental to democratic culture would be a radical act.
—George F. Will, 2007[1]
If the act of voting were performed in secret, no bribed voter could or would be trusted to carry out his bargain when left to himself.
—The Nation, 1888[2]
The Employee Free Choice Act of 2009 (EFCA), also known as the "card check" bill, has been reintroduced in Congress.[3] The EFCA would fundamentally change the nature of the relationship between unions, employers, and employees. Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago School of Law calls the EFCA "the most transformative piece of labor legislation to come before Congress since the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA)."[4]
The EFCA would destroy the underpinnings of the National Labor Relations Act, which established a structured system in which unions and employers— not the government—would negotiate the terms and conditions of their collective bargaining agreements. Section 3 of the EFCA mandates that if the parties cannot agree to a contract within 130 days after a union is first recognized, an arbitration panel established by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service will be able to impose the terms and conditions of a collective bargaining agreement that is "binding upon the parties for a period of 2 years." As the Supreme Court has said:
[The object of the NLRA] was not to allow governmental regulation of the terms and conditions of employment, but rather to ensure that employers and their employees could work together to establish mutually satisfactory conditions.... [I]t was recognized from the beginning that agreement might in some case be impossible, and it was never intended that the Government would...become a party to the negotiations and impose its own views of a desirable settlement.[5]
But it is the EFCA's effective elimination of the secret ballot in union elections that is its most shocking provision, since it creates ideal conditions for individuals to be subjected to intimidation, threats, and coercion. The secret ballot was implemented to prevent these ills not only in union elections, but in all elections. The secret-ballot election was one of the "central pillars of the original NLRA" that was intended "to introduce a system of union democracy whereby unions could only obtain the rights of exclusive representation for firms if they could prevail in an election held by secret ballot."[6]
This paper will discuss the election change, not the serious constitutional and property rights issues arising in the mandatory arbitration provision.[7]
Development of the Secret Ballot in Political Elections
The secret ballot that most modern democracies, including the United States, take for granted today was first widely used in Australia in 1856. It was introduced by South Australian Electoral Commissioner William R. Boothby because the traditional public process of voice votes "made the voter vulnerable to both bribery and intimidation."[8] England adopted the secret ballot in 1872 after the Queen urged that the conduct of elections be examined by Parliament and "further guaranties adopted for promoting their tranquility, purity and freedom."[9]
The secret ballot began to be adopted in this country after 1888 to counter widespread instances of bribery and intimidation of voters. In fact, the 1888 presidential election is considered to have been "one of the most corrupt in American history."[10] This after the notorious election of 1884, in which New York Governor Grover Cleveland won a narrow victory over Republican James G. Blaine, polling 4.876 million votes (48.5 percent) to Blaine's 4.852 million (48.26 percent), although there was a wider margin in the electoral college: 219 votes to 182. Cleveland won despite Blaine's having generated the slogan "Ma, Ma, Where's my pa? Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha!" against Cleveland based on the accusation that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child.[11] The election was so close that a "mere 600 votes in crucial New York would have thrown the election to Blaine."[12]
New York, of course, was the home of Tammany Hall, probably the most efficient and ruthless vote fraud machine in the history of American elections. Even after Boss William Marcy Tweed's fall from power, Tammany Hall continued to manufacture votes, "especially during the zenith of its power in the second half of the nineteenth century."[13] Since there were no secret ballots, "Tammany fixers could ensure that voters would cast ballots as promised."[14] Manufacturing 600 fraudulent votes in New York through bribery, intimidation, or outright fraud was something Tammany Hall could have done easily, given its prior record and the lack of a secret ballot.[15]
Charges of fraud also enveloped the 1888 election when Benjamin Harrison challenged incumbent Grover Cleveland. Harrison lost the popular vote by about 100,000 votes but won the electoral college by a margin of 233 to 168.[16] Harrison won his home state of Indiana by only 2,376 votes. Indiana had "a notorious reputation in the annals of electoral corruption"[17]and in fact was infamous "for the buying and selling of votes."[18] This was particularly noticed during the 1888 election when a circular from a Republican national committeeman, W. W. Dudley, "instructing Indiana party leaders to make sure that purchased voters cast GOP ballots" was publicized.[19] GOP Chairman Matt Quay said that Harrison never knew "how close a number of men were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him President."[20]
In 1888, Louisville, Kentucky, which had experienced "a series of fraudulent city elections," became the first municipality in the nation to adopt the secret ballot after a state representative read an article on the new secret ballot being used in Australia.[21] Massachusetts became the first state to adopt it that same year.[22] The secret ballot spread quickly as other state legislatures implemented it and former President Grover Cleveland supported its passage, calling for citizens to "restore the purity of their suffrage."[23] In 1889, nine states implemented the secret ballot—including Indiana. By the time of the 1892 presidential election, "citizens in 38 states voted by secret ballot."[24]
Over the past 120 years, the secret ballot has become the bedrock of our democratic election process in the United States, as well as in those of numerous other democracies around the world. Even the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the importance of periodic and genuine elections "by secret vote."[25]
Any proposal to eliminate the secret ballot in our political elections would rightly be met with protests and outrage at the very concept of taking away such an important guarantee of an individual citizen's freedom of choice. Vote buying loses its appeal when the vote buyer cannot be sure that an individual votes the way he was paid to vote. The ability to cast a vote without fear was also one of the major reasons for adoption of the secret ballot, because "it would protect [voters]...against intimidation and coercion."[26]
Yet a return to that environment is exactly what is being proposed for union elections in the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that represents a radical departure from democratic ideals. As the Buffalo News opined, "[m]ore than most people, members of Congress should be publicly devoted to the concept of the secret ballot...[the] democratic act upon which this county is predicated. Without it, everything else dies."[27]
The Secret Ballot in Union Elections
The provisions for secret ballots in union representation elections are outlined in Section 9 of the National Labor Relations Act, codified at 29 U.S.C. §159 and first passed in 1935. The original language stated that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) could provide for "a secret ballot of employees, or utilize any other suitable method to ascertin [sic] such representatives."[28]
This provision was amended by the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947 to delete the "other suitable method" language after Congress found that "the American workingman...has been cajoled, coerced, intimidated, and on many occasions beaten up, in the name of the splendid aims set forth in section 1 of the National Labor Relations Act."[29] Thus, the right of employees to a secret ballot has been in existence for over 60 years.
In essence, unions first obtain authorization cards signed by employees indicating their approval for union representation (thus the term "card check"). Once the union files a petition with the NLRB indicating that it has the support of a "substantial number of employees" who "wish to be represented for collective bargaining," the Board is charged with investigating the petition.[30] If the Board determines that a question of union representation exists, "it shall direct an election by secret ballot and shall certify the results thereof." Such an election can be requested only once every 12 months.[31] In essence, the NLRB will conduct a secret-ballot election if at least 30 percent of employees indicate support for a union.[32]
The median time for conducting elections in 2007 was only 39 days from the filing of the petition—little more than one month.[33] The NLRB conducted 1,905 "conclusive representation elections" in cases closed in fiscal 2007, and unions won 55.7 percent of those elections.[34]
If an employer does not contest the union's assertion of representation through card checks, the union can be instituted in the workplace without an election. But an employer can refuse to recognize a union based solely on card checks and can insist on a secret-ballot election.[35] However, the decertification of union representation at the request of employees can be accomplished only through a secret ballot.[36] When faced with decertification, unions have taken the position that "elections are the preferred means of establishing whether a union has the support of a majority of the employees."[37]
Through these provisions, as a former member of the NLRB has said, the National Labor Relations Act "establishes a system of industrial democracy that is similar in many respects to our system of political democracy. At the heart of the Act is the secret ballot election process administered by the National Labor Relations Board."[38] The basic premise is that workers express their true wishes based on information from all sides of the issue. When an election is conducted, the NLRB brings in "portable voting booths, ballots, and a ballot box."[39] No supervisors or managers from the employer and no campaigning are allowed in the voting area, although designated employee observers may be present.
Under 29 U.S.C. §160, the NLRB can prosecute any employer who is engaging in an unfair labor practice—and that includes interfering with the election process. In fact, the Supreme Court has confirmed that the NLRB can recognize a union based solely on union authorization cards if an employer has committed unfair labor practices "that tend to undermine the union's majority and make a fair election an unlikely possibility." [40] However, "secret elections are generally the most satisfactory—indeed the preferred—method of ascertaining whether a union has majority support."[41]
Disenfranchising Workers to Facilitate Union Membership
Section 2 of the EFCA eliminates the right to a secret ballot provided in 29 U.S.C. §159(c). It amends part (c) by providing that if a union presents a petition to the NLRB "alleging that a majority of employees" want to be represented by the union, "the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative." In other words, if 50 percent of the workforce plus one employee sign union authorization cards, the NLRB must certify the union without any actual election.[42]
However, if a group of employees become unhappy with their union representation and want to get rid of the union, they cannot simply collect authorization cards. Decertification of the union at the request of employees can still be accomplished only through an election held by secret ballot.
The coercion and intimidation that an employee can face from a union and its supporters for refusing to sign an authorization card was recognized by the Supreme Court in National Labor Relations Board v. Savair Manufacturing Company:
If we respect, as we must, the statutory right of employees to resist efforts to unionize a plant, we cannot assume that unions exercising powers are wholly benign towards their antagonists whether they be nonunion protagonists or the employer. The failure to sign a recognition slip may well seem ominous to nonunionists who fear that if they do not sign they will face a wrathful union regime, should the union win. That influence may well have had a decisive impact in this case where a change of one vote would have changed the result.[43]
As the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has said, such "‘cards are not the functional equivalent of a certification election' and elections have a ‘preferred status' as a means of determining representation."[44] The court also pointed out that the NLRB has concluded that card checks give a "greater opportunity for coercion of employees by union organizers, as compared with a secret ballot"; that "[a]rguably, employees may misunderstand the import of signing an authorization card, because of misreading, failure to read, or union misrepresentation"; and that "[w]hen cards are used, the employer has no opportunity to speak to his employees concerning their determination to have union representation."[45]
The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit concluded that it would "be difficult to imagine a more unreliable method of ascertaining the real wishes of employees than a ‘card check,' unless it were an employer's request for an open show of hands."[46] The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said that "it is beyond dispute that [a] secret election is a more accurate reflection of the employees' true desires than a check of authorization cards collected at the behest of a union organizer."[47] When a union obtains a majority of authorization cards, that by itself "has little significance" because "[w]orkers sometimes sign union authorization cards not because they intend to vote for the union in the election but to avoid offending the person who asks them to sign, often a fellow worker, or simply to get the person off their back, since signing commits the worker to nothing."[48]
A former union organizer for UNITE HERE, a union that represents employees in the textile, lodging, food-service, and manufacturing industries, testified in 2007 about the "disgraceful practices" that unions use to obtain card checks from employees.[49] Those manipulative tactics included:
A "blitz" in which "teams of two or more organizers" go to the homes of employees, most of whom have no idea there is a union campaign underway, and "use the element of surprise to get ‘into the door.'" Usually, when someone signed a card, "it had nothing to do with whether a worker was satisfied with the job or felt they were treated fairly by his or her boss.... [M]ost often it was the skill of the organizer to create issues from information the organizer had extracted from the worker during the ‘probe' state of the house call."
Avoiding showing employees the union contract or talking about "topics such as dues increases, strike histories, etc."
Manipulating the size of the group of workers they were supposedly organizing "after the drive was finished" if required to reduce the number of cards needed to obtain a majority "regardless of [the employees'] level of union support."[50]
The former organizer admitted that he knew "many workers who later, upon reflection, knew that they had been manipulated and asked for their card to be returned to them." But the union's strategy was "never to return or destroy such cards, but to include them in the official count towards the majority." That is why he concluded that "the number of cards that were signed had less to do with support for the union" and more to do with the tactics of the organizers. This was consistent with the actual results from "secret ballot elections that are conducted in which workers are able to vote and make their final decision free from manipulation, intimidation or pressure tactics."[51]
Another former union organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers local in Indianapolis confirms that testimony. His experience obtaining card checks was that you ended up with "an employee who doesn't understand what they're signing, doesn't understand the ramifications of that transaction, and yet it costs them nothing to give that person that signature and get them to go away or leave them alone."[52]
The same individual also points out that the current NLRB election process weeds out the "bad union organizers" who are willing to lie, intimidate, or threaten employees to get their signatures on card checks because cards obtained through such means will not "stick" when you have a secret-ballot election where the employee knows he can vote his conscience without the union organizer knowing what he did. But the card check system will encourage the "organizer that wants to lie to [employees] and tell them blatant falsehoods, gets the card signed and gets out the door. Understand, there is no right of rescission on that card.... [Y]ou can't get that card back."[53] The organizers who bring in the most cards, no matter how they do it, will be the ones who get promoted within the union leadership, and that will not be good "for the labor movement" because the decision-makers will end up "being the most unethical" members of the union.[54]
The National Institute for Labor Relations Research has collected thousands of reports of union violence involving both property damage and personal injury, only 3 percent of which have led to arrest and conviction. Unfortunately, federal law enforcement has been limited in trying to stop such incidents because of a prior Supreme Court decision holding that unions can engage in violence, intimidation, and coercion as long as "the use of force [is] to achieve legitimate collective-bargaining demands."[55]
In fiscal 2007, 5,992 charges were filed with the NLRB against unions, and 84.4 percent alleged illegal restraint and coercion of employees. The overwhelming majority of the complaints (82.8 percent) were filed by individuals, while other unions filed at least 90 such charges.[56]
All of these reports show that union organizers have engaged in coercion, deception, and other forms of manipulation. Under current law, these tactics can get them an election, but they are not tactics that can be used effectively during the election when employees can cast a secret ballot in an independent process. Because unions could establish union representation through a system that allows them to know exactly how every employee is voting and therefore take steps against workers who refuse to agree to authorize the union, the changes in the National Labor Relations Act made by the EFCA would provide greater opportunities for union organizers to engage in intimidation, coercion, and manipulation.
It would also encourage the outright forgery of signatures on card checks. Employers cannot interrogate the employees even if they suspect forgery (or intimidation), or they will be committing an unfair labor practice. The NLRB will not investigate a complaint without evidence that the employer is foreclosed from obtaining. All the NLRB does when it receives cards with signatures from a union is to "compare the names on the cards with the names on the [employee] list, and there's no process for evaluating the authenticity of the signature." Therefore, it is unlikely that such fraud would ever be discovered.[57]
Unlike the current process where a neutral third party (the NLRB) conducts an independent election, the new system under the EFCA would put the candidate in charge of conducting the election, including collecting all of the "ballots." There would also be no observers present to watch the behavior of union representatives. Every state guarantees the right of candidates and political parties to have observers in polling places because it is a fundamental assumption that transparency is the best guarantee of a fair and secure election. The EFCA would destroy such transparency.
The tactics used by union organizers described above are strikingly similar to illegal conduct engaged in by some political campaigns to obtain absentee ballots from voters.[58] They send campaign workers to residences to pressure voters into applying for absentee ballots, even when the voters do not need or want one. They come back when the absentee ballots arrive in the mail, making sure the voters vote the "right" way on the ballots, sometimes marking the ballots for them, and then taking the ballots for delivery to election officials.
The EFCA would legalize, in the union context, conduct that is illegal in political elections, including allowing the union to campaign for the vote as the voter is "voting" and then taking charge of the "ballot." Every state prohibits electioneering inside and close to polling locations precisely to avoid manipulation and intimidation of voters when they are casting their ballots; yet that is exactly what the EFCA would legalize.
Imagine also a situation in which "the challenger in a political election could campaign and poll the electorate without the incumbent's knowledge"[59] and obtain votes while the incumbent does not even know there is an election going on. The EFCA creates that situation for employers: An election for union representation could be over before the employer (or employees known to be hostile to a union) even knows it is happening. As an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal said, "[t]here is simply no legitimate government interest in promoting unionization that justifies a clandestine organizing campaign which denies all speech rights to the unions' adversaries."[60]
The basic unfairness of this is so obvious that this type of EFCA system, if proposed for our political elections, would certainly raise serious constitutional questions about the fundamental rights to free speech and a fair election process. Even if the constitutional requirements are not the same here, it is no less outrageous for union representation elections.
EFCA supporters are not always against secret ballots, however. One of the most outrageous hypocrisies of the push for passage of the EFCA is a letter sent by a number of its original sponsors to the Mexican Junta Board of Conciliation and Arbitration in 2001. Representative George Miller (CA– 7), the EFCA's chief sponsor in the House, as well as other cosponsors, urged the use of "the secret ballot in all union recognition elections" in Mexico. This is because "the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose." In fact, it is the use of the secret ballot in such elections that "will help bring real democracy to the Mexican workplace."[61] Regrettably, the sponsors of this bill do not seem to want the same protection for American workers that they have acknowledged is "absolutely necessary" to ensure that workers in other countries are not intimidated.
Similarly, former Congresswoman Hilda Solis, President Obama's new Secretary of Labor, who was also a sponsor of the EFCA, wrote a letter several years ago to Representative Joe Baca objecting to his election as head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus because it had not been held by secret ballot.[62] Jim Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in praising the sponsors of the EFCA, called elections "divisive" and said that the secret ballot is not "a basic tenet of democracy."[63]
Of course, the Teamsters do not quite have that attitude toward their own internal elections. Their constitution requires that all elections for officers "shall be conducted by secret ballot."[64] Delegates to conventions where officers are elected must also "be chosen by secret ballot"—the rules governing the delegate elections must "be designed to ensure a fair, free, and democratic election."[65] In other words, Hoffa does not support the basic procedural protections to assure that union representation elections are "fair, free, and democratic," just his own elections to lead his union.
Conclusion
As the New York Herald said in 1888 when the secret-ballot reform movement was sweeping the nation, the only people against using a secret ballot were "the leaders and managers, whose power depends upon their successes in manipulating the ballot so that the suffrage will express, not the will of the people, but the success of their schemes."[66] What the New York Herald said 121 years ago about the opponents of the secret ballot holds true today for supporters of the EFCA.
The only reason to eliminate the secret ballot in union elections is to give union leaders and managers the power to manipulate individual workers to guarantee the success of the union and not to reflect the true choices of the employees. The fact that the requirement for a secret ballot for decertification of a union remains unchanged by the EFCA shows the bad faith of the supporters of this legislation. In fact, AFL–CIO President John Sweeney's claims that card check is needed "to restore working people's freedom to make their own choice to join a union" is nonsensical: It would do the exact opposite by permitting that freedom to be coerced away.[67]
The Employee Free Choice Act represents a betrayal of the hard work, personal sacrifices, and progress that has been made over the past 120 years to secure the voting rights of Americans, from the implementation of the secret ballot beginning in 1888 to the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 to the ballot protections in the Taft– Hartley Act of 1947. It is as if, instead of having their current election process that protects the independence and privacy of every voter, New Yorkers decided to reinstitute the Tammany Hall machine with all of its accompanying intimidation, coercion, fraud, and manipulation. The last thing American workers need is a 21st century Tammany Hall in the shops, factories, and offices where they work.
Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Legal Scholar in the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation and a former Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission.
China, India and the Doubling of the Global Labor Force: who pays the price of globalization?
http://japanfocus.org/-Richard-Freeman/1849
By Richard Freeman
[In this concise article, Harvard Economist Richard Freeman shows us that a spectre is haunting the industrialized societies, and above all the workers of these countries. Though little recognized in Japan and elsewhere, there has been an effective doubling of the global labour force (that is workers producing for international markets) over the past decade and a half, through the entry of Chinese, Indian, Russian and other workers into the global economy. The effective supply of capital, on the other hand, has virtually remained unchanged. With such a massive increase in the supply of labour, its relative share of the returns from production inevitably decline. One important dimension of this decline is the ability of increasingly footloose capital to find cheaper labour to employ. Morgan Stanley's Chief Economist Stephen Roach has long referred to a "global labour arbitrage" wherein high-wage jobs in the developed world are eliminated in favor of low-wage jobs in the developing world. He has argued that this is not limited to manufacturing, but also extends to such service industries as banking. But capital does not have to move to keep pressure on wages and salaries. Even work that is not at present outsourced may experience this pressure if the cost of labour becomes excessive relative to global benchmarks (including premiums for developed world levels of political stability and infrastructure).
Small wonder, then, that the labour share of compensation in Japan, the US and the EU countries is almost flat (indeed, incomes are declining for much of the workforce), while corporate profits are robust. What is more than a little strange is the general lack of recognition of this labour supply shock and its sobering implications. The public debate on globalization is largely dominated by pressure to open markets in order to attract more capital or at least keep what one has, while progressive taxes, regulations, unions and the other means of collective provision and action are either ignored or dismissed as "socialistic" impediments to growth. But Freeman rightly argues that capital can take care of itself and that it is time for domestic and international politics and policy to shore up the woefully eroded position of workers, a proposition that applies no less in the periphery than in the core. Japan Focus]
The global economic community, and economic policymakers in governments and global institutions alike, has yet to fully understand the most fundamental economic development in this era of globalization — the doubling of the global labor force.
I estimate that the entry of China, India and the former Soviet bloc into the global economy cut the global capital/labor ratio by just 55% to 60% what it otherwise would have been.
The doubling I am referring to is the increased number of persons in the global economy that results from China, India and the ex-Soviet Union embracing market capitalism.
1. Chinese workers assemble computers in Fuzhou, Fujian
In 1980, the global workforce consisted of workers in the advanced countries, parts of Africa and most of Latin America. Approximately 960 million persons worked in these economies.
Population growth — largely in poorer countries — increased the number employed in these economies to about 1.46 billion workers by 2000.
New players enter the scene
But in the 1980s and 1990s, workers from China, India and the former Soviet bloc entered the global labor pool. Of course, these workers had existed before then. The difference, though, was that their economies suddenly joined the global system of production and consumption.
2. Indian programmers
In 2000, those countries contributed 1.47 billion workers to the global labor pool — effectively doubling the size of the world's now connected workforce.
Competing globally
These new entrants to the global economy brought little capital with them. Either because they were poor or because the capital they had was of little economic value.A decline in the global capital/labor ratio shifts the balance of power in markets away from wages paid to workers and toward capital, as more workers compete for working with that capital.
Using figures from the Penn World Tables, I estimate that the entry of China, India and the former Soviet bloc into the global economy cut the global capital/labor ratio by just 55% to 60% what it otherwise would have been.
The capital/labor ratio is a critical determinant of the wages paid to workers and of the rewards to capital. The more capital each worker has, the higher will be their productivity and pay. A decline in the global capital/labor ratio shifts the balance of power in markets toward capital, as more workers compete for working with that capital.
Even considering the high savings rate in the new entrants — the World Bank estimates that China has a savings rate of 40% of GDP — it will take 30 or so years for the world to re-attain the capital/labor ratio among the countries that had previously made up the global economy.
Pressure to compete
Having twice as many workers and nearly the same amount of capital places great pressure on labor markets throughout the world. This pressure will affect workers in the developing countries who had traditionally participated in the global economy, as well as workers in advanced countries.
Countries that had hoped to grow through exports of low-wage goods must look for new sectors in which to advance — if they are to make it in the global economy.
The effect on advanced countries
Mexico, Columbia or South Africa cannot compete with China in manufacturing, as long as Chinese wages are one-quarter or so of theirs — especially since Chinese labor is roughly as productive as theirs.
The entry of China, India and the former Soviet bloc to the global capitalist economy is a turning point in economic history.
The ending of the apparel quotas in January 2005 has brought this point home to many countries, which are now rethinking their growth strategy.
But the advent of 1.47 billion new workers also pressures labor in advanced countries. The traditional trade story has been that most workers in advanced countries benefit from trade with developing countries because advanced country workers are skilled, while developing country workers are unskilled.
But this analysis has become increasingly obsolete due to the massive investments that the large populous developing countries are making in human capital. China and India are producing millions of college graduates capable of doing the same work as the college graduates of the United States, Japan or Europe — at much lower pay.
A shifting monopoly
By 2010, China will graduate more PhDs in science and engineering than the United States. The huge number of highly educated workers in India and China threatens to undo the traditional pattern of trade between advanced and less developed countries.
Historically, advanced countries have innovated high-tech products that require high-wage educated workers and extensive R&D, while developing countries specialize in old manufacturing products. The reason for this was that the advanced countries had a near monopoly on scientists and engineers and other highly educated workers.
Job migration
As China, India and other developing countries have increased their number of university graduates, this monopoly on high-tech innovative capacity has diminished. Today, most major multinationals have R&D centers in China or India, so that the locus of technological advance may shift.The world needs to abandon the Washington Consensus model of globalization that was designed, not all that successfully, for an utterly different global economy.
Certainly, the rate of technological catch-up will grow, reducing the lead of advanced countries over the lower wage developing countries.
Business experts report that if the work is digital — which covers perhaps 10% of employment in the United States — it can and eventually will be off-shored to low-wage highly educated workers in developing countries.
If and when Russia gets its economic act together, labor market pressures on educated and skilled workers will grow.
Transitioning to global market capitalism
The entry of China, India and the former Soviet bloc to the global capitalist economy is a turning point in economic history. For the first time, the vast majority of humans will operate under market capitalism, with access to the most modern technology.
3. Kunshan development zone: the epicenter of Taiwan high tech investment in the Shanghai-Suzhou corridor
The workers in these new entrants to the global capitalist system should make great gains, reducing rates of poverty, as indeed has occurred in China and India over the past 10-15 years.
A difficult change
But there will be a long and difficult transition for workers throughout the world to this change — a more formidable transition than that associated with the recovery of Europe and Japan after World War II.Countries that hoped to grow through exports of low-wage goods must look for new sectors if they are to make it in the global economy.
In advanced countries, real wages and/or employment are likely to grow more slowly than in years past. In developing countries that have traditionally been part of the global economy, manufacturing jobs are at risk.
They are likely to see a shift in labor to the informal sector with rising poverty, as indeed has occurred in many countries. China and India themselves are likely to face problems. Inequality in China and the former Soviet bloc has risen at rates unprecedented in economic history. Inequality has historically been high in India.
Large numbers of rural workers in China and India could lose from globalization, creating dangers of social unrest, particularly in non-democratic China.
Responsibility of policymakers
What does all this mean for economic policymakers and officials like Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank and his counterparts at the International Monetary Fund?
So far, the World Bank and the IMF have tended to blame economic problems on insufficient labor flexibility, or fiscally irresponsible governments with excessive expenditures on social safety nets, as well as on government interventions in markets.
The role of the IMF and World Bank
The IMF, in particular, has sought to protect capital, particularly foreign capital, as its actions in Argentina make clear. But with a doubled workforce, capital should be quite capable of taking care of itself.The huge number of highly educated workers in India and China threatens to undo the traditional pattern of trade between advanced and less developed countries.
Instead of seeking to protect capital, the World Bank and the IMF need to help countries develop policies to minimize the costs of adjustment to workers during what is likely to be a long transition.
The global community needs to make sure that the gains of globalization are spread widely, to avoid backlashes and instability. And the world needs to increase savings as rapidly as possible to build up the global capital stock.
For its part, the United States has to shift from being the world's greatest debtor to becoming a giant creditor to the global economy.
A new consensus
In short, the world needs to abandon the Washington Consensus model of globalization that was designed, not all that successfully, for an utterly different global economy.
The world needs a new model of globalization and new policies that put upfront the well-being of workers around the world. They will be on the short end of the stick for a long time to come.
Richard Freeman is a Harvard University economist and co-chair of the Harvard Trade Union Program. This article appeared in The Globalist on June 3, 2005. Posted at Japan Focus August 26, 2005.
Hitachi, Sony freeze wages, to implement work-sharing
http://www.domain-b.com/economy/worldeconomy/20090320_hitachi.html
20 March 2009
Responding to the Japanese government's attempt to help companies retain employees during the current economic turmoil, Hitachi and Sony will freeze wages and introduce work sharing.
Hitachi said it had formed an agreement with its labour union to freeze its regular workers' salaries form April for a period of six months. Hitachi will also implement the Japanese work-sharing style concept under which employees will take one day of unpaid leave during weekdays said company officials.
Hitachi is expected to record a hefty net loss in fiscal 2008 ending March 31, taking this into view the labour union made considerable compromises at the annual spring wage negotiations, inorder to retain workforce in these trying times where companies are on a massive lay offs mood.
Similarly, Sony Corp also has agreed to freeze the monthly wages of its workers starting from April to sustain and improve its revenue, the financial reported daily Nikkei reported .
In a further move, Sony expects to cuts bonuses and salaries of executives. The labour staff's bonuses will be reduced from 6 months to 4 months and for managers the annual salary compensation will be reduced by 10 to 20 per cent and reduction in bonuses to the tune of 35 to 40 per cent bonus, said the paper.
Sony, too is expected to post its first loss in 14 years as the global recession coupled with a strong yen force it to revise its forecasts downwards for fiscal 2008 ending. (See: Sony braces up for recession; cuts jobs, closes factories)
The government too along with employers as well as labour union is forming a tri-party agreement to protect jobs. (See: Japan mulls work-sharing agreements to protect jobs)
A prominent labor rights activist, Su Su Nway, 37, is in poor health
http://democracyforburma.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/a-prominent-labor-rights-activist-su-su-nway-37-is-in-poor-health-and-has-received-medical-treatment-at-kalay-general-hospital-outside-kalay-prison-in-sagaing-division/
A prominent labor rights activist, Su Su Nway, 37, is in poor health and has received medical treatment at Kalay General Hospital outside Kalay Prison in Sagaing Division.
2009 March 20
tags: Human Rights, world focus on Burma, Junta, Burma, 88 students, prisoner, NLDby peacerunningSu Su Nway in Kalay Hospital
A prominent labor rights activist, Su Su Nway, 37, is in poor health and has received medical treatment at Kalay General Hospital outside Kalay Prison in Sagaing Division.
“Her health condition was getting worse and worse in Kalay Prison,” said a local resident close to Kalay Prison. “She is suffering from heart
disease because of her long-term imprisonment.” No details were available about her condition.
According to her sister, Htay Htay Kyi, Su Su Nway has hypertension and heart disease.
Su Su Nway, a member of the opposition National League for Democracy, was sentenced to 12 ½ years in prison for participating in the 2007 democracy uprising. She was transferred from Insein Prison to Kalay Prison in November 2008.
In 2006, Su Su Nway won the John Humphrey Freedom Award for promoting human rights.
Su Su Nway is among more than 2,200 political prisoners in Burma.
Unions fear 50m jobs may be lost
http://www.theage.com.au/national/unions-fear-50m-jobs-may-be-lost-20090319-93fg.html
Daniel Flitton
March 20, 2009
UNIONS fear that unless world leaders agree soon on a plan to stimulate the global economy, the worsening financial contagion will cost well over 50 million jobs worldwide.
ACTU president Sharan Burrow will lead an international trade union delegation to next month's G20 leaders' summit in London, calling for co-ordinated stimulus packages to lift economic growth.
"You've got to look at where you can drive stimulus that will target employment growth, most efficiently, most speedily, and with a capacity to influence not just national economies, but indeed the global economy," she said.
Global unemployment was put at 190 million last year, with an average jobless rate around the world of 6 per cent.
The International Labour Organisation warned earlier this year of a 1.4 per cent jump in global unemployment. But unions now worry that such estimates seem too optimistic.
In a statement to be presented to G20 leaders, unions will argue that the stimulus packages announced since the crisis began would have had twice the impact if they had been better co-ordinated.
They are also pushing to bring the ILO into the G20 leaders' summit to ensure that promoting job growth is a key concern.
Fears about a slide towards protectionist measures will also be at the top of the summit's agenda. Australia has warned that G20 leaders have already lost some credibility on a pledge last year to keep open markets, despite the financial downturn.
But Ms Burrow said governments must support strategic sectors of the economy to help solve the crisis.
"You have to be careful when you're talking about not becoming protectionist — which I support, we live in a global economy — that you're not actually also ruling out sensible measures that would provide for maintaining robust demand," she told The Age.
"Economics 101 says if you maintain demand, if you maintain jobs, then your contribution to a global economy will be more robust than if your own domestic economy is going down the tube."
Ms Burrow, who also heads the International Trade Union Confederation, will take part in a march through London to highlight campaigns against poverty and climate change.
She said the G20 had emerged as a serious body to tackle the crisis and leaders had the opportunity in London to build a new institutions to support the global economy. "If you step back from it, and absent the crisis, it is historic potentially in terms of the emergence of the global architecture," she said.
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For Japanese Workers, Good Times Seem Over
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/19/japan-labor-sony-markets-equity-wages.html
Chana R. Schoenberger, 03.19.09, 02:54 AM EDT
Downturn is degrading pay, perks of seniority.
BATS Real-Time Market Data by XigniteTOKYO -- The Japanese worker was once king. In his name, companies kept open unprofitable divisions, fought takeovers and paid out generous pensions. But the economic downturn sweeping the world may spell the end of the good times for salaried and hourly employees here.
Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) announced Thursday that it won't be giving its workers raises this year as it struggles to return to profitability after a projected $2.9 billion loss for the fiscal year that ends March 31. The consumer-electronics giant will give bonuses of four months' wages instead of the traditional six months. And those employees are the lucky ones: In December, Sony unveiled plans to shutter factories and cut 16,000 jobs worldwide. (See "Stringer Tries To Turn Sony's Distress To Advantage")
Yahoo! BuzzJapan is being hit by waves of layoffs, and unemployment is on the upswing as demand falls worldwide for its cars and electronics. (See "Labor Casualties Dim Land Of Rising Sun") A strong yen, which was trading below 96 to the dollar Thursday, hasn't helped matters, making Japanese goods more expensive overseas. Japanese manufacturers are the least optimistic they've ever been about the country's economy, according to a Reuters survey of industrial sentiment for March. And the trade deficit is widening. (See "For Japan, Once Unthinkable Becomes Routine")
This week, floundering tech behemoths Toshiba (other-otc: TOSBF.PK - news - people ), NEC (nasdaq: NIPNY - news - people ) and Hitachi (nyse: HIT - news - people ) (See "Hitachi Injects Old Blood") said they might have to take more drastic measures with their own workforces.
For the first time in four years, Japan's major automakers and electronics companies offered no base wage increases to their labor unions during their annual spring negotiations. Toyota (nyse: TM - news - people ), Honda (nyse: HMC - news - people ) and Nissan (nasdaq: NSANY - news - people ) said Wednesday they would continue to make automatic pay hikes based on seniority, one of the standard features of Japanese corporate life that has helped to keep workers loyal and tied to their employer for life. However, a number of major electronics makers, including Toshiba, Sharp and NEC, are reportedly planning to break with the practice and freeze automatic seniority raises.
Work-sharing programs and reduced pay could be in the offing to prevent layoffs, according to press reports on emergency measures under negotiation between the government and industry that were broadly confirmed Thursday afternoon by Labor Minister Yoichi Masuzoe. Masuzoe said the government is planning 1.5 trillion yen ($15.6 billion) in spending to help the unemployed and preserve jobs.
Mitsubishi Motors (other-otc: MMTOF.PK - news - people ) illustrates the gloomy employment trends as the auto market worldwide shrinks. The company cut some 250 workers in its Illinois plant last year and declined to renew the contracts of 1,100 Thai workers in January. By the end of the fiscal year, which finishes in March, the company will have also let go nearly all the 3,300 contract workers in its Japanese factories by failing to re-sign them. "We have to adjust our production volume with the demand, and we have to decrease the number of inventories," a company spokesman said.
High-risk cancer screening urged for overnight workers
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/03/17/cancer-night-shifts.html
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 | 10:40 AM ET Comments13Recommend18CBC News
Denmark's move to compensate women who developed breast cancer after working night shifts shows a need for new vigilance when it comes to people working overnight, Canadian cancer and labour advocates say.
The Danish government made the decision following a ruling in 2007 by the World Health Organization's cancer wing that declared overnight shift work "probably carcinogenic to humans."
The ruling stems from a review of scientific research including several population studies
"The Canadian Breast Cancer Network would really call for high-risk screening groups to include women who are working shift work, working at night, and the high-risk screening involves having an MRI," said the group's president, Diana Ermel of Fredericton. "It's not just a mammogram."
About 20 per cent of Canadians work shifts, many of them overnight, including 10,000 postal workers who sort mail into the morning.
Their union highlighted studies linking cancer to shift work over a decade ago, and used them to support their case for more time off.
"We will really look at these new studies coming out and really find ways to maybe negotiate with the employer," said Denis Lemelin of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers in Ottawa.
In Canada, it would be up to provincial health ministries and workers' compensation boards to decide if the links between cancer and overnight shift work are strong enough to warrant further investigation.
Global Labor’s Forgotten Plan to Fight the Great Depression
http://laborstrategies.blogs.com/global_labor_strategies/
In the early 1930s, as global unemployment tripled in two years and the world plunged into the Great Depression, the world’s labor movements developed a program for fighting the global crisis through international public works. It’s a little-known historical might-have-been that could have helped halt the Great Depression, the rise of Adolph Hitler, and the Second World War. And, as the efforts of world leaders to address today’s “Great Recession” threaten to break down in nationalist rivalry and petty political bickering, it bears lessons – and perhaps an alternative vision – for today.
Workers and organized labor have historically advocated government public works as a solution to unemployment. Not only would they provide jobs and income for those directly employed, but they would raise overall purchasing power, thereby creating demand for the products of other workers and creating a virtuous circle of economic growth. In the context of swelling unemployment in the early Depression, discussion of national public works programs developed in many countries.
The proposal for international public works originated with General German Trade Union Alliance (ADGB), which included most of Germany’s trade unions and represented the great majority of its workers. The plan won the support first of the German union alliance, then of unions around the world, and finally of the League of Nations’ International Labor Organization.
The plan was worked out by the head of the Alliance’s statistical department, W.S. Woytinsky. Woytinsky was a Russian émigré who had been president of the St. Petersburg Council of the Unemployed during the 1905 revolution and had organized mass action to force the city to provide public works employment. Observing Germany’s combination of spiraling deflation and spiraling unemployment in the early 1930s, he came up with the idea of using credit expansion to finance massive public works.
Taking a cue from recent League of Nations policy proposals, Woytinsky proposed an international agreement that would allow the lowering the gold reserve requirements for national currencies. That would let central banks create new money that could finance international public works and thereby create the purchasing power needed to reflate the economy.
In a June, 1931, article, Woytinsky proposed an “Action Program for Reviving the Economy.” It called for the labor movement to “assume the role of conveyor of the idea of an activist world economic policy.” It was up to the labor movement to “force the state and all public institutions to implement measures to revive the economy.”
Labor’s policy “must be a global economic policy. All nations are suffering because the world economy is sick, and therefore they must all concentrate their forces upon joint action to overcome the worldwide crisis.” The international agreement would provide an alternative to the rise of economic nationalism, supporting “tariff reductions and European economic unification” as well as “internationalization of wage policy and social policy.” The program would also support workers’ fight for higher wages, shorter hours, social rights, and regulation of business.
The funds freed up by international money-creation policies would be applied to job creation through “public works on a grand scale” for a “grand plan for European reconstruction” with “the employment of one million unemployed.” The creation of jobs would “spark a revival of the consumer goods industry, thereby sucking a further, considerable number of unemployed back into employment."
A primary objection to such a plan was that it would lead to runaway inflation like that which had been so devastating to Germany in 1922-23. But Woytinsky argued that the conditions were entirely different. “We have a huge amount of unutilized capacity in our productive apparatus. Consequently, increases in production can, without difficulty, follow along in the wake of planned increases in purchasing power.”
Why international public works?
As the International Labour Organization’s International Labor Review explained in its introduction to Woytinsky’s January, 1932 article “International Measures to Create Employment: A Remedy for the Depression,” there were two problems with big public works programs to fight unemployment. First, it was hard to find enough money. Second, “in a worldwide depression like the present one, if one country goes very much ahead of other countries in its public works program” there is “danger of price inflation.” Both, the Review noted, “can be overcome by international cooperation.”
Woytinsky elaborated the danger. The creation of credit on a large scale “represents a daring experiment for any one country, and failure would shake and weaken the economic system of the country, and more especially its finances.” An international agreement is “the only method of avoiding this danger and clearing the way for individual countries to undertake schemes of this kind.”
How would such a plan work in practice? An international office would “collect the newly-created capital from every country” to create a fund for creating new purchasing power and new employment on an internationally agreed plan. “From the fund thus constituted, different countries would be granted loans in proportion to their needs for the creation of employment.” Two or two-and-a-half billion dollars would employ four to five million workers and provide the economic stimulus the world required.
Such programs should be selected for their social usefulness, not to their profitability for one or another company. Such works “must produce something of lasting value, but they do not need to be productive in the sense in which private enterprise employs the term and show a direct profit to meet the interest and redemption charges on the capital employed.” Each part doesn’t need to show a profit on capital. What is necessary is that “the plan as a whole” will reduce the resources wasted by the Depression and “improve the conditions of life throughout the world.”
In Europe, the funds would be used for “the construction of an international network of motor roads, of canals to link up the most important waterways of the Continent, and the international supply of electric power.” In individual countries they would be used for such purposes as land improvement, roads, and housing.
In 1933, sixty nations sent high-level representatives to the London Monetary and Economic Conference to forge a solution to the Great Depression. The ILO had voted to present its plan “to set on foot immediately large-scale public works” and “to coordinate these measures on an international basis” there. But instead of developing an international strategy to solve the Depression, the Conference broke down in nationalist bickering. The worldwide spread of mass unemployment, Hitler’s rise to power, and World War II followed apace.
Lessons for today’s “Great Recession”?
After the meeting of finance ministers from the world’s major economic powers in mid-March, 2009 the participants issued a statement saying, “We have taken decisive coordinated and comprehensive action to boost demand and jobs” and “we are prepared to take whatever action is necessary until growth is restored.” It sounds as though the lessons of the Great Depression have been learned and a plan like that advocated by the unions in the early 1930s for job creation and economic stimulus has been adopted. But, as one news account put it, the ministers “stopped short of announcing any details.” In fact, world leaders are facing the same paralysis in the face of the “Great Recession” that they did in the face of the Great Depression eighty years ago.
What would it mean for the world’s labor movement, and the broader community of allies often known as the “Global Justice Movement,” to develop an “activist world economic policy” to confront today’s “Great Recession”? Conditions are of course different, but in many ways the core of such a program can be the same.
That core can be public works to create jobs to meet public needs. In today’s world, threatened as it is by global warming, the number one public need is to rebuild the world’s economy in a way that protects the Earth’s climate. So a global jobs program today means primarily a program for global green jobs.
Such a program needs to be global for the same reasons that it did in the 1930s. First, the problems are global, and therefore require a global solution. Second, if any country expands credit too much by itself, it is likely to face rebound effects from the international economy. (Think about the way the Chinese, who hold much of the U.S. debt, recently forced Barack Obama to give assurances that the U.S. would not inflate its currency.) Such measures by one country alone also lead to loss of trade.
There are ways to provide international credit expansion today that didn’t exist in the 1930s. The primary one is a kind of international money, known as “Special Drawing Rights” (SDRs) or “paper gold” that allows countries to create new currency reserves through the International Monetary Fund. Countries can hold SDRs in their treasuries and release other currencies they are holding there – creating new money in very much the same way as Woytinsky’s proposals for lowering gold reserve requirements.
The U.S, Britain, and many other countries are currently calling for an expansion of SDRs to help poorer countries get through the current economic crisis. George Soros has called for the issuing of trillions of dollars of SDRs to counteract the downturn. And Joseph Stiglitz has proposed that SDRs be used to create an international fund for supporting projects for “public purposes” in poorer countries. Expansion of SDRs, or some other form of internationally agreed global credit expansion, can be the basis for a new era of global green public works, what has recently been dubbed a Global Green New Deal.
World leaders didn’t face up to their responsibility for countering the Great Depression, and it looks like the same is true of today’s leaders in the face of the Great Recession. The idea of international public works financed through global agreement to credit expansion could provide a global program around which labor and popular organizations around the world could unify to “force the state and all public institutions to implement measures to revive the economy.”
21st-century unions
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2902296
A labor union should be organized voluntarily by union members and run autonomously by them.
March 17, 2009
When children are little they listen to their parents, trust what they say and obey them. But as they grow up they can discern right from wrong and they observe their parents’ words and actions carefully. If parents force children to obey them without practicing what they’re preaching, children will refuse to do as they are told.
Since rationality is inherent in human beings, irrational relationships are hard to sustain.
These days an increasing number of labor unions want to break away from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. This seems a natural result of how the umbrella union has been behaving.
Labor unions are seceding from the KCTU or refusing to pay union dues. But this is more than the simple act of cutting ties. It seems as if the foundation for a new labor union, one that fits our times, is being built.
The biggest reason the KCTU finds itself in its current deep trouble is that the organization has carried out a labor movement for itself, led by only a few leaders.
A labor union should be organized voluntarily by union members and run autonomously by them, so their rights and interests are protected. Democracy must be practiced in organizing and running a labor union, but members of the KCTU have had extremely limited opportunities to take part in the decision-making process.
On the surface, conventions are supposed to the highest decision-making bodies. But now they are nothing more than rubber-stamp events, and do not deliver the opinions of union members. A few leaders dominate the decision-making process.
Even when decisions are made to stage a host of strikes motivated by political issues, such as opposing importation of American beef, they are made regardless of how union members feel, and the decisions go unchecked.
As a result, the umbrella union has lost the support not only of the people, but also of its own members.
The recent move by many labor unions under the KCTU umbrella can be seen as a democracy movement breaking away from the undemocratic structure in which power is concentrated in a higher body, and to restore the centrality of each workplace and union member. They do not want their labor unions to cater to the umbrella union, but to work for the members.
A labor union can pay up to billions of won, or millions of dollars, to its controlling union.
But each union receives few benefits in return even as its members are mobilized for a variety of events. Such practice should not continue in this era. The labor unions also want to abandon arbitrary fights and confrontations.
These days it’s hard to survive even if labor and management cooperate. The leadership of the KCTU may not know it, but those who work in the field know how fierce competition is.
The practice of labor and management posing together in photo-ops to pretend they collaborate no longer works. A new structure so that labor and management can co-exist is being formed. Under this setup, the two work together to overcome difficulties that their companies face.
Such labor unions are common in other countries.
In Europe, where the labor unions the KCTU is now desperately trying to emulate hail from, negotiations within each company are replacing negotiations in each industry. As a consequence, industry-wide labor unions are losing their power because different companies have different situations, even within the same sector.
Since 2000 in Japan, collective agreements on freezing basic salaries have become commonplace. The labor union of Toyota Motor Corporation, the company that generates the most profits in its industry, proposed it first. The union members froze their basic salaries out of concern for other companies that were having difficulties in bad times.
The KCTU must think hard about the meaning of today’s resistance from factory-floor labor unions.
If the umbrella union regards the moves simply as resistance from opposing factions and only tries to maintain its control, it will face disaster. It can no longer survive by pursuing the confrontational paradigm of labor versus management.
In a 21st-century labor union, each union and its members take central roles and a higher organization supports them, cooperates with companies and looks out for workers in the workplace.
*The writer is a professor of economics at Sogang University. Translation by the JoongAng Daily staff.
by Nam Sung-il
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