Brussels, 29/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and other international trade unions such as the TUAC and the ITGLWF, which represents the textile and clothing workers, have just denounced the poor level of attention paid by the WTO negotiators meeting this week in Geneva to a certain number of issues such as the abolition of the WTO quota system on textiles for 1 January. These trade unions are calling for the urgent setting up of a textile and clothing forum under the auspices of the United Nations, with the participation of the WTO, the ILO and the OECD, which will seek to “limit somewhat the scale of the crises that could begin to develop as from January 2005”. They believe that when the quota system disappears, multinational companies will increasingly transfer production sources to China “where serious violations of workers' rights are the norm, which keeps production costs down”. In a press statement published on Wednesday, the ICFTU underlined that this situation could have substantial consequences on jobs in the textile sector in countries such as Bangladesh, which would appear less attractive to buyers once the quota system has been abolished, with all the accompanying social implications that this would imply.
ICFTU Secretary General, Guy Ryder said that while WTO negotiators are taken up with the details of their work programme to bring the Doha Agenda negotiations to an end, “the very basis of support for a multilateral trade system is disappearing from beneath their feet”. Governments have to see further ahead, he underlined, by dealing with fundamental issues involving the social arena and development, if they do not “they will fail to mobilise their own people to give the necessary support to complete, ratify and apply any trade agreement that could finally be concluded”. TUAC Secretary General John Evans pointed out that the World Commission of the Social Dimension of Globalisation had presented a complete series of recommendations to improve the social coherency of the multilateral system. He notes that although five months appears to have gone by, nothing in the WTO discussion programmes seems to be nearing a response to the solid proposals of the World Commission to establish links between the WTO and UN institutions specialised in social and environmental questions.
In connection with the textile and clothing sector, Secretary General of the ITGLWF, Neil Kearney, asked who was going to explain to the 40 million workers, for the most part women working in appalling conditions, that there was going to be a massive haemorrhage of jobs after the end of the agreement on textiles and clothing in 2005 and whether this was a good thing for these workers. John Evans said that the international community should create an emergency aid forum on clothing and textiles under the auspices of the United Nations, as recommended by the World Commission.
The ICFTU also draws attention to the threat involved in WTO negotiations to public services. The Secretary general deplored the fact that, “There is not sign in the draft agreement (for the completion of the Doha Round) for the introduction of an exemption to protect essential public services such as education, health and water from a blind liberalisation of trade”. The Confederation underlines the fact that the draft agreement is also very weak in the areas of special and differentiated treatment in developing countries. The ICFTU point out that the proposals on cotton are no where near the demands made by developing countries at Cancun. It also notes that the demands made to developing countries to open up their agricultural markets risked weakening their national producers and endangering food production for their populations and that tariff reduction, if requested at the discussions on non-agricultural market access, could also have as devastating an effect.
Mr Ryder concluded that taking into account that multilateral trade discussions through the WTO remain, in general, a better option than the others, it is hardly comforting to workers losing their jobs due to WTO shortcomings. Ryder added that at the WTO, governments had to meet their responsibilities and make world trade work for well-being of people and not for their impoverishment or to put them on the dole. Mr Ryder said that if they failed to do this, they would see a continued polarisation of public opinion against a world trade system that was incapable of protecting the fundamental rights of human beings.