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Cape Town - The trade union movement is catching up with the globalisation of business, proving that unions are a bulwark for democracy and, in the process, demolishing the argument of free marketeers that protective labour laws should be scrapped.
So says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap following the four-day world congress of the UNI Global Union.
Bell notes that the congress highlighted the fact that “business as usual” in a globalised world would no longer be tolerated. He points out that the globalising of business has contributed to what the labour movement has referred to as “the race to the bottom”.
Leading clothing brand names such as Adidas, for example, do not own factories. They merely move around the world seeking the cheapest tenders to produce their products.
This is the basis for what the race to the bottom means and it was summed up by the horrific factory collapse at the Rana Plaza in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, in April last year. There, a shoddily built eight-storey building, housing some 3 500 workers, collapsed. The final death toll was 1 134, with more than 2 000 injured.
This massive tragedy saw global unions and human rights groups rally to support the victims and to press for the world’s first legally binding agreement with leading brands to support a building and fire safety accord that includes compensation for the families of the dead and injured.
However, problems remain and, Bell says, they are huge. But the prospect now exists that change can come, especially courtesy of modern communications technology that can link workers across continents. He plans to make the focus of this week’s Inside Labour column, the lessons that should be learned from Rana Plaza.
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* Add your voice to the big labour debate or simply ask Terry a labour question.
- Terry Bell is a political, economic and labour analyst. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on twitter @telbelsa.
