Child labourers behind many products: Study
REUTERS, NEW YORK
Sept 11: Children and forced labourers are mining gold, sewing clothing and harvesting coco around the world, and India is the source for the biggest number of products made by these workers, a US government report said on Thursday.
The Department of Labour for the first time released a list of goods produced by child or forced labour in foreign countries after Congress told it to compile one. The department looked at 122 products in 58 countries.
Under international labour standards, child labour is defined as work performed by someone under the age of 15, or under 18 where specific forms of work are deemed harmful, the report said. Forced labour is involuntary or done under threat. In the new U.S. report, India was linked to the highest number of products made with child labour or forced labour including soccer balls and clothing, according to report.
Myanmar was noted the most often for forced labour for other products like rice, sugar cane and rubber. "The purpose for doing this is to shine a spotlight so more activities can take place that target these problems," said Sandra Polaski, deputy undersecretary for International Affairs in the U.S. Department of Labour.
"In our country we think of these at 19th century problems but these are 21st century problems," Polaski said.
Child labour laws vary widely and the practice is banned in many countries. An international convention ratified by 154 countries requires them to set a minimum working age and to work toward eradicating child labour.
According to the US report, Brazil, Bangladesh, China and the Philippines were also in the top six countries linked to individual products that use child or forced labour. The International Labour Organization has found that 69 percent of child labour worldwide is in agriculture, the report said.
The most common agricultural goods produced by child or forced labour are cotton, sugarcane, tobacco, coffee, rice and cocoa. Both forms of labour for cotton production were found in countries including China, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. In India, this was the case for cottonseed.
The listing of specific goods and countries, however, does not mean that total production of specific products involve forced or child labour. Instead, the report said it indicates a "significant incidence" of these types of labour.
For cocoa, the key ingredient in chocolate, countries found using both forms of labour include the world's biggest producer Ivory Coast, as well as Nigeria, the report showed.
The most common mined goods included gold, where Peru and Burkina Faso use both child and forced labour, according to the report.
"Elimination of exploitive child labour or forced labour from a sector or a country requires intensive, sustained commitment by governments, employers, workers, and civil society organisations," the report said.
Child labourers behind many products: Study
Global Unions: G-8 Didn’t Do Enough to Address Economic Crises
- AFL-CIO NOW BLOG - http://blog.aflcio.org -
Global Unions: G-8 Didn’t Do Enough to Address Economic Crises
Posted By James Parks On July 13, 2009 @ 5:15 pm In Legislation & Politics | No Comments
The leaders of the world’s top economies failed to adequately address the three major economic crises facing the world—unemployment, climate change and development, according to leaders of unions around the globe who had [1] called on the G-8 summit last week in Italy to take strong action to stimulate the global economy.
Said John Evans, general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee ([2] TUAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [3] OECD) :
There are no explicit commitments to making the necessary resources available for achieving employment and social protection goals, although the focus on the need to protect the tax base represents a welcome step in this direction.
Evans represented TUAC, the International Trade Union Confederation ([4] ITUC) and the [5] Global Union Federations at the summit.
On climate change, the G-8 countries for the first time committed to the objective of limiting the rise of the global temperature. But they failed to offer steps toward moving to a low-carbon economy in a manner that is fair to workers and communities dependent on producing carbon-based fuels.
With only five months to go before the United Nations climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, G-8 countries still have not stepped up and provided the necessary support to convince developing countries to reach an agreement. Read more about the role of global unions in climate change negotiations [6] here, [7] here, [8] here and [9] here.
Reaching a climate change agreement is crucial, global union leaders say, because developing nations say developed nations have all the “historic responsibility” for acting on climate change and they have none. Yet many of the developing countries, especially China, are some of the world’s top contributors to global warming.
In a speech June 23 to the OECD’s annual forum in Paris, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said failure by the world’s leaders to take strong action on the global economy could prolong the recession worldwide.
The truth is that we are still in uncharted water, and no one knows when the bottom of this recession will be found nor how vigorous the recovery will be. The depth and duration of the recession will be determined by how urgently governments can act together to promote recovery and build the foundation for a more sustainable, more fair and more environmentally responsible basis for global growth.
You can read Sweeney’s speech [10] here.
The world’s workers are looking now to the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in September to push their proposals for global economic recovery and to ensure that workers’ views are represented in any final decisions. Sweeney adds:
Trade unions and the workers we represent have no confidence that this time governments and bankers alone will get it right. We are asking for a seat at the table.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/07/13/global-unions-g-8-didnt-do-enough-to-address-economic-crises/
Burma’s rural economy on verge of collapse: economist
http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/2107-burmas-rural-economy-on-verge-of-collapse-economist.html
by Mungpi
Monday, 11 May 2009 22:48
New Delhi (Mizzima) - Unless Burma’s military rulers inject cash into the rural credit system, the country’s rural economy will likely collapse as farmers in rural areas face a “chronic shortage of credit”, an economist told Mizzima.
Sean Turnell, an Economics Professor at Macquarie University in Australia, said that because of a lack of a proper economic policy to uplift Burma’s rural economy, the rural credit system is “completely dried up” and in desperate need of cash assistance.
“I am getting report after report that there is a chronic shortage of credit in cash,” said Turnell, adding the rural economy is suffering despite the ruling junta having significant foreign reserves derived from the sale of natural gas.
Turnell said the estimate of the junta’s foreign reserves from the sale of natural gas during fiscal year of 2007-08 is about US $5 billion. However, these reserves are not spent on developing the rural economy, which is on the verge of collapsing with the credit system “completely drying up”.
Meanwhile, a report by the Financial Times, citing a new International Monetary Fund report on Burma, said natural gas exports have swollen the country’s foreign exchange reserves to a record high of US $3.6 billion – despite investment into social welfare remaining minimal.
The as of yet unpublished IMF report, which the Financial Times cited, said unless the Burmese government makes improvements in its business climate, the future of the country is “bleak”.
The IMF argued Burma's economy was hit hard by the global economic slowdown and the devastating cyclone of May 2008, which killed 140,000 people and caused the growth in gross domestic product to slow to about 4.5 percent last year, down from 5.5 percent a year earlier.
The country’s ruling military generals, however, do not include all of its gas revenue in the annual public account, instead reporting only a portion of the foreign revenues, which are calculated at the 30-year-old official exchange rate of six kyat to a dollar, according to the report. Currently, a US dollar on the black market fetches approximately 1,050 kyat.
Turnell, agreeing with the report’s calculation, said the Burmese junta’s practice of accounting for foreign exchange revenue at the old and obsolete exchange rate in effect captures less than one per cent of the total budget revenue from the sale of gas for fiscal year 2007-08, as opposed to the 57 percent it would account for if valued at the market rate.
He estimates that Burma’s generals will earn between US $3-3.5 billion from the sale of gas for fiscal year 2008-09.
But, at the same time, farmers are facing an acute shortage of investment funds, he said. Many farmers are forced to sell their products immediately after harvest and to buy the same food that they are selling for consumption.
Turnell, who has closely followed Burma’s economy for several years, said the global economic slowdown has indirectly impacted Burma’s agriculture sector, which largely depends on exports to neighboring countries.
With the declining price of rice, farmers, particularly in the Cyclone Nargis-hit Irrawaddy delta, will find it extremely difficult to plant paddy in the upcoming monsoon, as they are heavily indebted and will try to reduce cost, he maintained.
In the absence of a rural credit system being implemented by the government, farmers will again be dependent on local money lenders, who usually demand high interest rates, up to 20 percent, leaving farmers with an insurmountable debt obligation.
Turnell said that to come out of this crisis, in the short term the Burmese government could inject some of its gas revenue into a rural credit system through the Myanmar Agriculture Development Bank (MADB) or another existing institution.
Alternatively, he said the junta could simply remove restrictions that forbid commercial banks from lending to farmers.
“It’s so bizarre. I can never understand this particular law, which actually outlaws the commercial banks from lending to the farmers,” he added.
He also warned that unless the government comes in to help the farmers in the rural areas, “food shortages could be on the card in later the year.”
One Nation Under Materialism
http://www.jbs.org/index.php/news-feed-archive/4842
Written by Donald Hank
Thursday, 07 May 2009 01:51
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Whenever I meet someone who identifies himself as a “liberal” or left-winger, I immediately ask them, “What caused the banks to crash?” The answer: “lack of regulation.” When I ask them to elaborate, they say, parroting Tim Geithner, that the problem is “very complex,” implying “you aren’t smart enough to understand.”
But the ultimate implication is that free market principles killed the banks.
But the free market has an alibi. It left the country years ago. Some say it started to decline with the creation of the Fed and income tax in 1913. Others trace the decline to the 30s and FDR’s Keynesian policies.
At any rate, the Western economy has long been an unsavory mixture of government and business, which some call corporatism and others call fascism. Indeed, it is essentially the economic system introduced by Mussolini, with the difference that Mussolini did not use it to harm banks or businesses.
Big business certainly fits this description of a public-private partnership. In the financial service industry, toxic government policies force banks to make bad loans but tacitly guarantee these loans under the aegis of Fanny and Freddy. Gone are the days of mortgages guaranteed by sound financial practices such as credit checks and 20 percent down payments. Common sense and self preservation have been left out of the equation.
Manufacturers like the auto industry have always been manipulated by big government using the levers of labor unions (and, more recently, green policies), to the extent that labor prices average in the $70s per hour per (unskilled) worker. Obviously, the industry is no longer viable, but never fear, the government will prop it up at all costs – to you.
Green policies force manufacturers to hold to unrealistic clean air and water standards that drive prices even higher. Cap and trade will be a new tax more onerous than any government interference heretofore, making CO2 emitters pay fines for emissions that easily pass muster, for example, in China.
And when we buy from the heavily polluting, labor-exploiting Chinese, at prices that make our over-regulated industries incapable of competition, government cynically calls this “free trade.”
Imagine sending an American boxer into the ring with pillows tied to his hands and with hands and feet bound, to fight an unfettered foreign opponent armed with brass knuckles, and calling this a fair fight!
Most would say that labor unions represent the intrusive government side since without government support, in a truly free economy, the law of supply and demand would not tolerate such overpriced labor even for a day. Likewise, most would say that executives represent the "private" side of industry. Yet, in a truly free economy, these high-ranking leeches would also not be tolerated for a day.
The problem is that if big government intervenes on behalf of labor to grant them exorbitant salaries, then, out of "fairness," it is obliged, in any democratic system, to allow management to gouge likewise. We get two evils for the price of one.
Now conservatives have traditionally defended management's right to excessive remuneration, perceiving themselves as defenders of the “private sector” and the CEOs as their protégés, while the left sees itself as the defender of labor.
But both sides are wrong, in two ways – neither side fully understands that big business has long been a State-private partnership, heavy on State, with the free market being shackled. And neither side understands that the malaise is largely cultural, not political, nor economic.
In a healthy culture of honorable people with common sense (like the Japanese, for example), no labor union would be capable of negotiating terms that would make their business unprofitable to the point of destroying their jobs. Yet union after union has done just that in America, with workers blithely accepting the demise of their jobs, dutifully blaming management and now, in the Obama Age the free market itself, ignoring that free market capitalism has been extinct for years.
No decent CEO would demand an exorbitant salary knowing that in so doing he or she was destroying the business that sustains himself, his family and his workers. They would see the danger to themselves if nothing else. But seeing themselves as defenders of the illusory “free market,” they guiltlessly accept the exorbitant unearned fruits of others' labor and watch passively as their unprofitable industries fail – as though they had no say in the matter.
Nor, in a hypothetical sound and honorable culture based on common sense, would the media neglect to warn the public of the imminent loss of thousands of jobs as a result of reckless labor negotiations. But the media, staffed by far too many eager left-leaning polemicists, would not think of double crossing their comrades in the labor unions.
Further, education and academe would cultivate common sense and honor in workers, journalists, business managers, politicians and future educators, all of whom would join forces to keep America sound. But no such thing has happened in the United States for many, many years.
Japan comes closest to an honor-based, less egocentric culture, with workers at Toyota, for example, all showing up for work in their new Toyotas and management politely declining excessive raises. Accordingly, unemployment there has been running at half (a little over 4 percent) the Western rate (over 8 percent in the United States and EU both).
A half-century of relentless globalist-leftist activism in education, journalism, labor, management, media, education, religion and government has brainwashed Americans into accepting as inevitable – and moral – that more and more jobs go to the Third World and illegal immigrants, knowing that it is a death blow to the economy of their own nation and people, who grimly march unaware of their own destruction, fueled by political slogans disconnected from reality or science. Millions of Americans have succumbed to the spiritual and psychological onslaught.
If there is a unifying idea in the West, it is materialism, with both left and right shot through with its common threads — Engels’ notion on the left and materialist consumerism on the right.
The unifying philosophy of our forefathers has been almost completely surrendered to this self-destructive ideology.
Donald Hank is a former language teacher, currently operating a technical translation agency in Wrightsville, PA. A former language teacher, he holds an undergraduate degree in French and German from Millersville State University (PA), a Master’s degree in Russian language and literature from Kutztown State College (also in PA), has studied Chinese for 3 years in Taiwan at the Mandarin Training Center, and is self-taught in other languages, having logged a total of 8 years abroad in total immersion situations. He is also the founder of Lancaster-York Non-Custodial Parents, a volunteer organization that provides Christian counseling for non-custodial parents.
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Unions press G20 leaders to end 'casino capitalism'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/01/g20-trade-unions
Richard Wachman
The Guardian,
Wednesday 1 April 2009
Article
history
Union bosses representing 170 million workers around the world have called for an end to the "unleashed casino capitalism" that they say is to blame for 50m job losses since the credit crunch erupted in 2007.
Representatives of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), including Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, met Gordon Brown last night to warn him against "a return to wheeler-dealer financial markets" when the economic crisis subsides.
Barber said: "Laissez-faire, unfettered market capitalism has been found wanting and we cannot simply go back to the old ways when, and if, the situation eases."
International trade union officials have been lobbying politicians ahead of the G20 summit in London tomorrow to secure more government intervention to safeguard employment and to ensure tighter regulation of global capital markets.
They want a new international fund established by richer nations to protect and create jobs, particularly in developing countries. Ebrahim Patel, head of the South African Clothing and Textile Workers' Union, said: "Poorer countries are being devastated by the slump, with people's lives ruined as unemployment goes from bad to worse. That is why it's essential that we get a united global response from G20."
The unions have held discussions with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy; Spain's prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the German finance minister, Peer Steinbrück.
Barber urged European countries to boost spending to create jobs in "green industries" and match the federal funds that Barack Obama has set aside for growth in the US. "We need an [economic] stimulus to get us back to growth. When I look around Britain, you still see the ravages of the recession of 30 years ago; we don't want to make the same mistakes again."
Aso orders new stimulus, extra budget
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nb20090401a1.html
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Timing of general election could hinge on DPJ's reaction to move
By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer
Prime Minister Taro Aso ordered the government Tuesday to come up with a new set of economic measures, including the drafting of an extra budget, aimed at digging the economy out of recession.
Aso added that he may call an election before the enactment of the extra budget for fiscal 2009, depending on how the Democratic Party of Japan responds.
If the DPJ "refuses to approve the extra budget, I will make a decision depending on the situation at that time on whether to wait 60 days and make sure it is enacted or end the discussion and call for an election by presenting the extra budget as our proposal," Aso said.
The Lower House, where the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito bloc enjoys a majority, can override an Upper House rejection of the budget after 60 days.
Speaking at a news conference, Aso said that further economic steps are necessary to prevent the economy from hitting new lows, to secure employment to ease public anxiety and to invest in new fields so the economy can grow.
"I believe that people are demanding the mobilization of finances from the government," Aso said. "I will not be a slave to past circumstances and will do my best using bold ideas."
The package to come includes supporting the use of technology to increase solar power generation and production of environmentally friendly cars as well as promoting the country's strengths in "soft power" areas, such as animation, fashion and J-pop, to boost international business.
Aso added that it is necessary to look into cutting the inheritance and gift taxes to encourage the elderly to pass their assets on to their children before they die and stimulate consumption.
The scale of the package has not been decided yet, Aso said, but some in the ruling bloc have said more than ¥10 trillion will be necessary.
Aso's call for additional economic measures came just before his departure for the two-day Group of 20 financial summit this week in London. There, he is expected to introduce Japan's latest economic measures as well as stepsto aid developing countries, hoping to demonstrate tothe international community that Japan is taking action to overcome the recession.
The added steps are also an attempt to attract public support for the Aso Cabinet, which until recently has steadily been losing popularity since its inauguration last September.
Political analysts, however, called the added economic measures, including the drafting of an extra budget, only a "life-support system" keeping Aso in power.
Some political insiders expect Aso to wait at least until the extra budget passes the Diet before dissolving the Lower House. Many in the LDP have begun urging Aso to dissolve the Lower House and call a snap election once the extra budget is enacted.
"As I have repeatedly said, I am prioritizing economic measures over politics," Aso stressed. "I will decide when to dissolve the Lower House at an appropriate time."
Only last week the support rate for Aso and his Cabinet showed signs of recovery thanks to the political funding scandal that resulted in the arrest and indictment of DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa's chief secretary.
But critics speculate that the improvement is only temporary and that the support rate will drop again when the commotion over Ozawa and the DPJ fades.
The government is expected to submit the extra budget for fiscal 2009 with the economic measures before the end of the month for enactment by the close of the current ordinary Diet session on June 3.
Japan’s Jobless Rate Jumps to Three-Year High of 4.4%
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=acW.yLh.Xl5U&refer=home
(Update1)
By Toru Fujioka
March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Japan’s recession deepened as the unemployment rate surged to a three-year high, wages fell and job openings plunged at the fastest pace in three decades.
The jobless rate rose to 4.4 percent last month from 4.1 percent in January, the statistics bureau said today in Tokyo. The ratio of jobs available to each applicant tumbled to 0.59 from 0.67, the biggest drop since 1974, the Labor Ministry said.
Companies from Toyota Motor Corp. to NEC Corp. are firing thousands of workers, increasing pressure on the government to give more assistance to the nation’s jobless, most of whom don’t receive benefits. Prime Minister Taro Aso said the government plans to unveil a stimulus package in mid-April that will include aid for households.
“We don’t think this is the ceiling for the unemployment rate,” said Kyohei Morita, chief economist at Barclays Capital in Tokyo, who expects it to reach a record 5.7 percent this year. “Manufacturers are going to keep cutting costs by suppressing employment.”
Wages slid 2.7 percent as a record slump in exports forced manufacturers to slash production and overtime. Household spending fell 3.5 percent, a 12th monthly decline, indicating domestic demand is unlikely to make up for the collapse in exports. Purchases by consumers account for more than half of the economy.
The yen fell to 98.27 per dollar at 5:57 p.m. in Tokyo from 97.36 before the reports, and is heading for its biggest quarterly loss in seven years. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell 1.5 percent.
Sentiment Tumbles
Sentiment among the nation’s largest manufacturers probably tumbled to its lowest level in more than 30 years, the Bank of Japan’s Tankan survey is expected to show tomorrow. Exports fell an unprecedented 49.4 percent in February from a year earlier. Factory output slid 9.4 percent from January, when it declined a record 10.2 percent, a report showed yesterday.
Suzuki Motor Corp., Japan’s fourth-largest automaker, said yesterday it will shut some domestic factories for up to seven days next month to get rid of inventories.
Overtime compensation dropped an unprecedented 18.5 percent last month as manufacturers cut extra working hours by a record 47.7 percent, today’s Labor Ministry report showed.
Aso, speaking to reporters before heading to the Group of 20 summit in London, said compiling his newest stimulus package is his highest priority and the government needs to take measures to prevent the economy from “falling apart.” Since he took office in September, Aso has announced stimulus measures in two plans totaling 10 trillion yen ($102 billion).
Debt Burden
The government’s ability to spend may be limited as the nation’s debt burden is set to rise to 197.3 percent of gross domestic product next year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report today. The ratio is the highest among OECD-member countries and almost double that of the U.S., where the ratio is projected to rise to 100 percent, OECD data show.
Some 77 percent of jobless people aren’t getting unemployment benefits, the highest figure among Group of Seven nations except Italy, whose data weren’t available, the International Labour Organization said in a report last week.
“The policy response has been pretty slow in creating a safety net for unemployment, which is putting downward pressure on the whole economy,” said Noriaki Matsuoka, an economist at Daiwa Asset Management Co. in Tokyo.
The jobless rate will reach a postwar high of 5.5 percent in the first quarter of next year, according to the median estimate of 14 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Oki Electric Industry Co., a maker of communications equipment, said it will cut administrative workers after weakening demand forced it to widen its loss forecast this month.
Harder to Find
New jobs are also becoming harder to find as companies try to contain costs. A total of 1,845 graduates had their job offers rescinded as of March 23, up 17 percent from February, the Labor Ministry said.
Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, this month said it will almost halve recruitment of graduates in Japan to the lowest in 14 years after forecasting its first loss in almost six decades. NEC, Japan’s largest personal computer maker, said it plans to cut new hires by almost 90 percent to 100 people.
NEC said in January that it will eliminate 20,000 jobs worldwide and Toyota plans to trim its workforce by at least 3,000.
“Japan’s labor market will keep deteriorating,” said Yoshiki Shinke, a senior economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo. “The question is how much consumer spending will become a drag on the economy as wages and employment conditions worsen.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Toru Fujioka in Tokyo at tfujioka1@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: March 31, 2009 05:14 EDT
Japan's management approaches offer lessons for U.S. corporations
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008936833_opinb29jacoby.html
While Japan has been used as a cautionary tale in the U.S. economic downturn, guest columnists Sanford M. Jacoby and Sally Kohn argue that management approaches common in Japan offer lessons for U.S. companies as they recover.
By Sanford M. Jacoby and Sally Kohn
RECENTLY, auditors for General Motors raised substantial doubt about whether the automaker will survive. But while Japanese automaker Toyota is also taking a hit as global auto sales slump, analysts expect Toyota to ultimately prevail. It's not just the Prius. Another type of hybrid built into Japan's economic model blends corporate interest with the common good. Japan's cooperative capitalism is the key to Toyota's future — and ideally America's, too.
Promoting his stimulus package, President Obama said, "If you delay acting on an economy of this severity, [it potentially] becomes much more difficult for us to get out of. We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they suffered what was called the 'lost decade.' "
Yet while Japan has been used as a cautionary tale, in many ways even at the peak of its recession Japan remained better off than the United States today. Japan did not see its middle class disappear into swelling rates of poverty and unemployment. And Japan was not plagued by growing class resentment. Its inequality remained modest and its large corporations did not have bloated CEO salaries, including at those firms receiving government aid.
Why? Despite some changes in recent years, most large Japanese corporations still practice a form of capitalism in which different groups with a stake in the enterprise — owners, employees, managers, suppliers, creditors — work together to create value. Cooperation is possible because the various stakeholders have made long-term commitments to the firm. The result is a more holistic corporation, balancing short-term opportunities with long-term needs.
A large company in Japan is less likely to lay off thousands of employees simply to help its share price or to gut pension benefits to pay out higher dividends. In other words, Japanese corporations contribute to the common good rather than compete with it.
American corporations (including banks), under pressure from speculative investors, prioritize driving up short-term stock prices and dividends. Executives are "aligned" with shareholder interests through stock-based compensation. But this creates an incentive for executives to boost their own compensation by taking excessive risks and by manipulating share prices. Ultimately this harms the long-term health of companies and thus the long-term health of America's economy.
Toyota, for instance, refused to line investors' pockets and instead reinvested profits in capital improvements and in research and development, which led to the hybrid. By contrast, through the late 1990s, GM funneled billions of its profits to shareholders — as dividends and share buybacks — a fact often overlooked in discussions of what went wrong in Detroit.
In stakeholder capitalism, employees participate in corporate decision-making. While unions in both Japan and the United States have declined in recent years, the level of unionization in the United States today is about half that in Japan. And in nonunion Japanese corporations, human capital still is valued more deeply. Senior human-resource executives are far more influential than in comparable American companies, where it is chief financial officers who rule the roost.
And when corporations function as teams, fairness becomes an instinctive priority. In the United States in 2006, the average CEO earned more than 364 times the average U.S. worker — a huge increase from, say, 1980, when the differential was just 40 times more. Japan, on the other hand, has one of the lowest CEO pay gaps in the world, with chief executives earning on average 10 times more than the average worker.
Measurements of economic inequality find that wealth, too, is less unequally distributed in Japan. The United States ranks among the worst nations in terms of wealth inequality, at the end of the scale with South Africa and Iran.
Of course, Japan is not an economic paradise. About a third of the population works in "atypical" jobs that carry no promise of employment security. These workers, mainly women and young people, don't receive the same benefits the Japanese business model provides others. Just as women and African-American and Latino men face disproportionate discrimination in the U.S. labor market, Japan's inequities, while lower overall, still exist.
Nevertheless, lessons from Japan could strengthen the U.S. economy for generations to come. We can cut the gap between CEO and worker pay by giving shareholders a say in executive compensation, an idea that ideally will be ratified now that the SEC is under new management.
But we need to go further. For example, we need to revamp corporate charter laws to mandate stakeholder governance and corporate accountability, to adopt laws like the Employee Free Choice Act to strengthen employee representation and to tax unearned income at the same rates applied to wages and salaries.
Toyota, like Japan, is not a perfect example. The days of Japan as No. 1 are over. But it's worth noting that the first plank in the Toyota Way is: "Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term goals." That's a good place to start as we rethink the American corporation.
Sanford M. Jacoby is professor of management and public policy in the UCLA Anderson School. He is author of "The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance & Employment Relations in Japan and the United States." Sally Kohn is senior campaign strategist for the Center for Community Change and a blogger for the Huffington Post.
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
Vietnam becomes platform for Japanese companies
http://www.vnbusinessnews.com/2009/03/vietnam-becomes-platform-for-japanese.html
Mar 26, 2009
VNBusinessNews.com - Viet Nam is becoming a platform for Japanese companies’ activities just like Thailand, affirmed Chairman and CEO of the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) Yasuo Hayashi.
Speaking to Viet Nam News Agency correspondent to Tokyo during the JETRO’s regular quarterly press conference on March 25, Hayashi said earlier this month, his organisation and the Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren) jointly organised a visit to Vietnam for 88 Japanese businessmen to help them explore business opportunities and seek deals with partners in the Southeast Asian country.
“At first, we arranged the visit for only 40 businessmen, but eventually, the number of registered businessmen reached 88. This was the largest business delegation from Japan to Viet Nam so far,” Hayashi said, adding that the delegation, including 39 businessmen from small- and medium-sized enterprises, had visited Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
Regarding to the business performance of Japanese investors in Viet Nam, Chairman Hayashi said that Japanese companies have currently experienced hard time in Viet Nam, but he was still optimistic about the country’s business environment.
The JETRO leader said his organisation is considering concrete measures towards helping Viet Nam develop supporting industries, including inviting Vietnamese people to Japan to have capacity-building training courses. (VNA)
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
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.
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
Global Labor's Forgotten Plan to Fight the Great Depression
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20913
March 19, 2009 By Jeremy Brecher
and Brendan Smith
and Tim Costello
Jeremy Brecher's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
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."
[Tim Costello, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith are the co-founders of Global Labor Strategies, a resource center providing research and analysis on globalization, trade and labor issues. GLS staff have published many previous reports on a variety of labor- related issues, including Outsource This! American Workers, the Jobs Deficit, and the Fair Globalization Solution, Contingent Workers Fight For Fairness, and Fight Where You Stand!: Why Globalization Matters in Your Community and Workplace. They have also written and produced the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary Global Village or Global Pillage? GLS has offices in New York, Boston, and Montevideo, Uruguay. For more on GLS visit: www.laborstrategies.blogs.com or email smithb28@gmail.com.]
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Over 2 million workers anticipated to be laid off in Thailand
http://www.shanland.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2503:over-2-million-workers-anticipated-to-be-laid-off-in-thailand&catid=87:human-rights&Itemid=285
Monday, 09 March 2009 18:19 Hseng Khio Fah Human Rights
According to the Social Security of Thailand, over 2 million workers would be laid off in 2009; most of them migrant workers, said Wilaiwan Sae Tia, Chairwoman of the Thai Labor Solidarity Committee, when she was invited to the 8th Annual Women’s Exchange Get-Together which was held at an undisclosed location on the Thai-Burma border from 5-9 of March 2009.
Wilaiwan Sae Tia
According to the Social Security of Thailand, over 2 million workers would be laid off in 2009; most of them migrant workers, said Wilaiwan Sae Tia, Chairwoman of the Thai Labor Solidarity Committee, when she was invited to the 8th Annual Women’s Exchange Get-Together which was held at an undisclosed location on the Thai-Burma border from 5-9 of March 2009.
Among those workers to be laid off would be workers from electronics, shoe and furniture factories, transportation, and tourism including graduated people.
Most of them would be migrant workers because they don’t have work permits, she said. “Currently, more migrant workers have been laid off than Thai workers.”
Last week, there were over 40 migrant workers from Chiangmai returning to their homeland due to lack of work, difficulty to survive and fear of police arrest.
Many migrant factory workers from Burma are feeling the effects of Thailand’s economic slowdown, Independent Mon News Agency (IMNA) reported yesterday.
In 2008, 93,275 workers had been laid off and this early year, 66, 776 more had been laid off.
However, Thai labor could be impacted as well if Thailand’s economy gets worse because some business owners could move their factories or their businesses to border towns like Maesod and Maesai in order to get cheap labor, she added.
“Most business owners don’t want to hire Thai labor because they are entitled to ask compensation under the law. They will only hire migrant labor so they don’t’ need to pay compensation.”
There are at least 2 million legal and illegal migrant workers in Thailand. But there is no law to protect those migrant workers.
In May, 2008, the Thai Labor Solidarity Committee sent a letter to the Thai government to pass a law for all migrants to have equal rights, to be safe in workplace and to allow them freedom of assembly.
Debbie Stothard from Altsean (Alternative Asean) also commented that if Thailand’s economy is to recover, they will need workers immediately, especially cheap labor.
“If the Thai government deports all migrant workers back to Burma, they may try to go to other countries because they have to survive,” said Jackie Pollock, Coordinator of the Migrant Assistance Program (MAP) “Deportation will only make it difficult for Thailand to get workers.”
Recession hits women in developing countries
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/598496
The most shattering moment of Bushara's life arrived without warning: "One year ago when I went out to buy breakfast, I saw something written on the wall of our house," she said. "The graffiti told Shiites in the neighbourhood to get out."
Bushara, an Iraqi mother who lived near Abu Ghraib prison, knew there was no time to waste. The death squads were on the march. In bare feet, she fled with her husband and young daughters as the winter winds propelled them from their home. Her story, told to Oxfam International, is typical for Iraqi women, who have suffered loss and destitution since the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Nor has the reported lessening of violence since 2007 improved their lives.
According to an Oxfam survey released last week, "despite fragile security gains and a decline in indiscriminate and sectarian violence over the past months, the day-to-day lives of many women in Iraq remain dire." Questioning 1,700 women in five provinces, Oxfam found:
• More than 40 per cent said their security situation was worse than last year; 22 per cent said it was about the same.
• 55 per cent said they had become victims of violence since the invasion.
• More than 30 per cent had family members who died violently.
• About 69 per cent said access to water was worse; 25 per cent had no daily access to drinking water.
• Two-thirds had electricity less than six hours a day, and one-third less than three hours a day.
• 40 per cent said that their children were not attending school.
– Olivia Ward
Raising their placards for equality
In tough economic times, fear about layoffs, bankruptcies and companies shutting their doors threaten to push other issues off the public agenda.Mar 08, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (6)
Olivia Ward
FOREIGN AFFAIRS REPORTER
In Nepal, destitute parents sell their daughters to traffickers. In Pakistan, marrying off underage daughters relieves a family's financial burden. In parts of Asia and Africa, mothers are forced to choose which of their children they will feed, and which will starve.
Today, International Women's Day, women celebrate the gains made in achieving equal rights and highlight the widespread wrongs that damage the lives of the 3.3 billion females around the world.
But the issue foremost in women's minds is the global recession, which has hit the most vulnerable half of humanity with exceptional force.
Seventy per cent of the poorest people on the planet are women and girls, and even in a wealthy country like Canada they are the majority of the poor.
Although the global downturn began in the financial sector, dominated by men, it is now bearing down on women, most often found in low-wage and part-time jobs.
The recession has plunged from wealthy to developing countries, where women lack safety nets to help them survive.
"As the economy slows, the disaster in the financial institutions is affecting the real economy," says Sylvia Borren, co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, a coalition of groups in 100 countries.
"What happens is the informal sector suffers first – the cleaning women, gardeners and people who do the household jobs. They are mostly women."
As worldwide consumer confidence fades, says the International Labour Organization, traditionally female service jobs in cafes and retail stores are also disappearing. It predicts that 22 million of an estimated 51 million to lose their jobs this year will be women.
Adding to the problem is a global food crisis that has caused a spike in the price of dietary staples like rice, narrowing the line between malnutrition and starvation.
"The increase in hunger and economic stress is accelerating fast, and that affects women in a number of different ways," says Borren.
Because women earn less than men even in good times – a 16 per cent global pay gap, according to the International Trade Union Confederation – they have less to fall back on when times turn bad.
But those at the bottom are also caught in a vicious circle of poverty and abuse. Women who held normal jobs are forced into the "shadow" economy of prostitution, drug smuggling and other criminal activity. Or they are drawn into the nets of vicious international traffickers.
They're also more at risk of domestic violence, when unemployed husbands and fathers take out their frustration at home.
At the same time, cuts in humanitarian aid budgets mean less money to spend on education, the key factor in lifting women out of poverty. Health care suffers, with devastating effects on pregnant women, HIV/AIDs victims, and those in conflict zones where women are targeted for sexual attack.
Some of the worst affected women are migrants, whose numbers grow as life gets harder in their original countries.
"Women and girls are disproportionately affected by the risks of migration because of their vulnerability to exploitation and violence," says Ndioro Ndiaye of the International Organization for Migration. And, he adds, lack of access to health care can have long-term effects for women and their children.
But as the economic storm clouds gather, the horizon is not entirely dark for women, says Borren.
"If you go to local solutions, you see room for hope," she says.
"To help in the food crisis, there's organizing and investing in microcredit so women can have plots of land. Unions are trying to solve the problem of lack of qualified teachers with fast-track training. Small water and electricity projects can work at the household level."
Along with increased risk there is great opportunity for women in the current crisis, Borren says. "We're concentrating on top-down solutions, which have proved unsustainable, and often stupid. Now it's time to put women at the centre, and work from the bottom up."
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Japanese workers demand pay rise amid recession
TOKYO (AFP) — Thousands of workers rallied at a Tokyo park on Saturday, demanding companies keep jobs and increase salaries to stimulate recovery from a deepening recession.
"Secure regular pay rises! Have serious talks with management about rises in consumer prices," Tsuyoshi Takagi, president of the Japan Trade Union Confederation, said in an address to kick-start the rally.
"If we accept their argument that there are no rises in prices, our work conditions will face big trouble ahead," he said.
Labour unions have argued salaries should be increased in accordance with price rises, on top of seniority-based annual pay rises.
Takagi said it was "nothing but outrageous" that some big companies were now considering skipping annual pay rises based on the length of service.
The confederation, better known as Rengo, is an umbrella organisation grouping trade unions across the nation with a membership of more than six million.
The workers who got together at the park in central Tokyo then marched in the capital with banners reading "Pay rise is the strongest economic stimulus" and "Never let workers get fired!".
Labour unions are in the middle of negotiations with management over salary scales for the fiscal year starting on April 1.
Japanese companies are struggling amid the worst recession in more than three decades and there is little hope that Rengo's demands will be met.
Firms have announced massive job cuts, shattering Japan's job-for-life myth.
Sanctions Are Not to Blame for Burma’s Economic Woes
http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=15229&page=1
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By MOE ZAW OO Tuesday, March 3, 2009
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Recently, some critics of the National League for Democracy (NLD) have taken the party’s leadership to task for continuing to call for sanctions on Burma.
It is not enough to blame sanctions for the prolonged poverty in Burma while urging the NLD to confess policy mistakes. We need to identify and implement a workable strategy that exploits the junta’s weaknesses—not just place blame and point fingers.
Isolation has been the policy of Burma’s military ever since it stole power from the country’s civilian government in 1962. The current junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), has proved intransigent and has refused to concede any aspect of its policy as a result of sanctions or engagement. Champions of both policies realize this.
The underlying question is this: What will influence the junta to peacefully solve the current crises facing Burma? If sanctions, targeted or total, could be made to work more effectively, policymakers who advocate this approach would be applauded.
Similarly, pro-engagement policymakers would be praised if their strategy actually succeeded in changing the regime.
On October 4, 2007, under extreme pressure from the international community following its brutal crackdown on the peaceful monk-led Saffron Revolution, the SPDC issued Statement 1/2007. This statement called on NLD General-Secretary Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to renounce “confrontation, utter devastation, and demanding all types of sanctions, including economic sanctions,” as a precondition for meeting with junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe.
The word “confrontation” entered Burma’s political lexicon in 1989, when the junta accused the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi of confrontational activities during her organizational trips across Burma. For the junta, any activity that threatens their hold on power is an act of confrontation.
Aung San Suu Kyi introduced the phrase “utter devastation” during a press conference in Burma on July 11, 1995, the day after she was released from her first period of house arrest. “We must choose between dialogue and utter devastation,” she said at the time.
The junta’s call for the elimination of “all types of sanctions, including economic sanctions,” has a long history. However, the sanctions debate is not about the impact of the sanctions on political change in Burma or the international community’s options for imposing pressure on the Burmese junta. Instead, the debate is about whether sanctions negatively impact the people of Burma. Sanctions should not be used as a scapegoat for the economic problems in Burma. The cause of the crisis in Burma is the junta, not the sanctions.
For years, international ministers and diplomats have discussed policy toward Burma and the junta’s disregard of international and public opinion.
Recently, at a news conference in Indonesia on February 18, 2009, Hillary Clinton, the new US Secretary of State, stated that her government was “looking at possible ideas” to try to promote positive change in Burma. “Clearly the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn’t influenced the Burmese junta, [but] reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them, either,” she said.
In an interview in 2003, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who was the primary person responsible for admitting Burma into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) during the 1997 Asean Summit in Kuala Lumpur, warned that Burma might be expelled from the regional grouping if its military rulers continued to defy world pressure to release Aung San Suu Kyi. “I fought hard for Myanmar [Burma] to be admitted into Asean. I think the leaders of Myanmar should consider public opinion,” he said.
When the UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari visited Burma recently, the SPDC’s Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein told him that “the UN should make an effort to lift economic sanctions imposed on Myanmar, if the organization wants to see a prosperous Myanmar with political stability.”
Thein Sein seemed to suggest that lifting economic sanctions would guarantee Burma’s future prosperity and political stability. Obviously, that would not happen. The special envoy reported to the Security Council after his recent visit that he had achieved “no tangible results” in his efforts to move Burma closer to democracy.
As Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding prime minister, explained during an interview with a columnist from the University of California’s Los Angeles Media Center, “These are rather dumb generals when it comes to the economy. How can they so mismanage the economy and reach this stage when the country has so many natural resources?”
Lee also asserted that he could not understand how the generals could expect Burma to remain so isolated, adding that even medicine had to be smuggled into the country from Thailand.
The junta manipulates the international community, and the SPDC’s contempt for international opinion is obvious. Neither a confession from the NLD nor blaming sanctions will result in tangible outcomes for democracy in Burma. Therefore, instead of focusing on confession and blame games, we must identify the most effective ways, both internationally and within Burma, to penetrate the junta’s impervious shield.
The author is a former political prisoner and currently member of the foreign affairs section of the National League for Democracy (Liberated Area).
51 million jobs could disappear worldwide
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2009/febrero/mier25/desempleo.html
The International Labour Organization (ILO) said that approximately 51 million jobs around the world could disappear by the end of the year. This means that 230 million people globally could be unemployed by 2010.
Unemployment brings with it an infinite number of social problems, principally a deterioration of the quality of life and the subsequent consequences. For example, when income is lowered many families face losing their homes.
Facing the rise of this uncontrollable disaster, the ILO proposes the creation of rescue plans for low-income families, many of whom will be obliged to live on less than one dollar a day.
Unemployment and necessity in homes forces many children to leave school to work and support their families, deteriorating, in certain ways, their future prostpects.
The phenomena experienced today, which has caused millions to fall into deep despair, is not only affecting poor or “third world” countries. According to the World Bank (WB), more people are falling into poverty in developing countries. In other words, the employment crisis is global and those who are feeling the worst of it are those who have always felt like the “masters of the world.”
In this respect, IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, pointed out that the principal economies are in a deep depression and maintained that the worst is still to come.
One fact to keep in mind is that as the crisis becomes worse, many countries will start to close their doors to immigrants who, as usually occurs, are seeking to escape from the poverty in their own countries to work in others. (Taken from Rebelión)
Translated by Granma International
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