(Sources: “Trade Unions in the Global Economy”, 118EB/8(a), ICFTU November 2002; “A Trade Union Guide to Globalisation”. ICFTU/Global Unions, December 2001; ICFTU Submission to the ILO World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalisation, March 2002)

This Discussion Sheet is based mainly on the major document on the global economy presented to the ICFTU Executive Board at its 118^th meeting (November 2002). The document addresses the major policy choices facing the union movement under three broad headings: world trade; sustainable development and finance; and multinational companies. Evidently all these areas are intimately inter-related and trade union actions in any one sphere need to be undertaken as complementary global strategies to influence the global economy, inter alia by ensuring a greater public awareness and support for the arguments behind the trade union position. An integral part of this Discussion Sheet are the two attached papers which the PSI produced for this Conference: on privatisation and on the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services), two aspects of globalisation which are having a tremendous impact on women.

The components of globalisation

Globalisation is the result of several developments and processes which are generally linked together. These include:

• The growth and relative importance of foreign direct investment, which provides a greater role for multinational enterprises;
• The internationalization of financial markets;
• The development and diffusion of communication and transport technology;
• Deregulation and liberalization;
• Privatisation of the public sector

Source: A Trade Union Guide to Globalisation

Update on the global economy

The prospect is, at best, a slow growth in the global economy, epitomised by the continuing difficulties for Japan to find a path back towards economic recovery after ten years of relative stagnation. The US faces the ongoing risk of a stock market collapse which could lead to outright economic recession worldwide, while the EU alone is failing to act as a locomotive for the global economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank appear to have no palatable, practicable suggestions to rescue the Argentinean economy from its state of free-fall, threatening a contagious effect on Argentina’s neighbouring countries in particular. Little seems to have been learned from the Asian financial crisis. Large parts of Africa, Asia and the transition economies have little prospect of higher growth.

All these developments are having serious effects on poverty and living standards, particularly for vulnerable groups like women. In this context, it will be difficult to achieve international consensus on effective measures to tackle urgent environmental problems, as highlighted by the divergences at the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD).

Some facts and figures

• The ratio of average incomes in the world’s twenty richest countries to those of the world’s poorest has risen from a ratio of twenty to one in 1960 to about forty to one nowadays. As the UNDP noted recently, some 66 countries ranging across every corner of the globe are poorer now than a decade ago.
• Such inequity leads to appalling contrasts. For example, in Europe $50 billion are spent on cigarettes annually. According to United Nations figures, providing all developing countries, for one year, with basic health and education as well as water, sanitation and nutrition, would cost much less than that.
• More than 10 million children in developing countries still die every year from preventable diseases that their industrialised country counterparts rarely face.
• A World Bank study has shown that inequality between people within countries rose for most of the second half of the twentieth century, particularly in the years after 1987.
• The period of increasing globalisation has been associated with seriously adverse effects of trade liberalisation on women. In many developing countries, traditional agricultural products mainly produced by women have been unable to compete with imported goods when trade barriers have been reduced. This has resulted also in decreased food security.
• The speed of liberalisation and privatisation had become an end in itself, and as a result the proceeds very often went to the wrong hands. As one indication of this, in Russia poverty has risen from 2% ten years ago to nearly 50% today.
• The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) produced a study in mid-2001 which stated that liberalisation of financial markets had tended to increase poverty and inequality in Latin America. Countries experiencing positive economic growth like Mexico, Peru and Venezuela still saw increases in poverty rates.

Despite slow growth, it is highly likely that globalisation, including in the form of the increasing size and number of investments by multinational companies, will continue to become more important. On the other hand, it is also true that the collapse of Enron and other large corporations, together with the evident failure of simplistic free market prescriptions in the case of Argentina, are demonstrating the fallibility of laissez-faire capitalism as promoted by institutions like the IMF and World Bank during the last two decades. Such developments are showing the need for a new impetus to achieve more effective global governance, and should provide new possibilities to advance union views on providing higher priority to social policy and regulation in the world economy.

The role of the IMF and the World Bank in poverty exacerbation

The IMF and the World Bank have been the subject of criticism from civil society, including the trade union movement, for many years. The evidence is now clear-cut that the uniform model of structural adjustment imposed on developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s destroyed far more economies than it assisted. Severe reductions in spending on health and education were socially destabilising and economically detrimental by reducing countries’ long-term human resource potential. All that was achieved was the preservation of a veneer of debt repayment that benefited a handful of the world’s most profitable commercial banks. While the international financial institutions (IFIs) have made a rhetorical commitment to important goals such as poverty reduction and the promotion of core labour standards, and have provided partial debt relief for two dozen countries, there are yet to be any significant changes in lending conditions or country-level policy advice.

The experience of trade unions around the world has been that all too often, the IFIs’ country-level policy recommendations constitute de facto recommendations to deny the respect of core labour standards. Despite the fact that IMF economists are rarely specialists on labour matters, the Fund's policy prescriptions almost always include recommendations to reduce wages, reduce protection of workers and otherwise make labour markets more "flexible". Similar complaints can be made regarding the World Bank's intervention in labour matters in various countries that result in denial of rights to collective bargaining. In Central and Eastern Europe, for example, the World Bank has been advising several countries to carry out revisions to national labour codes which would restrict collective bargaining rights.

World Bank resources to social protection have often been provided on condition that governments accept to scale back existing public programmes. The IMF has frequently counselled governments to reduce public spending for social protection or to refrain from establishing new public programmes. The World Bank’s social protection sector strategy, entitled From Safety Net to Springboard, explicitly recommends against publicly-owned and administered programmes such as comprehensive old-age pensions, unemployment insurance and vocational training.

In the light of these troubling policy recommendations, it is clear that the degree of change in the IMF and World Bank is minimal up to the present time. The coherence of these anti-social policy prescriptions with the poverty-reducing mandate of the ILO and the United Nations system in general is virtually non-existent. Once again, it is clear that urgent steps are required to try to restore some sort of legitimacy to the functioning of the world’s multilateral decision-making institutions

Trade union strategies and actions

The key points in the Report of the ICFTU Millennium Review Reference Group on the Global Economy are as follows:

• The debate on globalisation has become a central political issue in many parts of the world, which can assist us to translate public concern into concrete achievements for our agenda;
• There is a need to combine the argument of our force (e.g. through mobilising our membership and mass public support) with the force of our arguments, achieving maximum synchronisation between engagement of affiliates in broader action and effective pressure on national governments and international institutions; and
• Pressure on the international economic institutions, and against their domination by business-friendly or “neo-liberal” interests, is not an end in itself but a means for opening up “space” for trade unions to organise and negotiate successfully at different levels.

Porto Alegre <> Davos

One element of action in this area consists of trade union strategies towards the World Social Forum (WSF, “Porto Alegre”) and World Economic Forum (WEF, “Davos”). In January 2002, for the first time, the global union movement sought to achieve maximum advantage from its involvement in both events. In both cases, the union movement, using the same Global Unions’ message, engaged in an effort to change the prevailing global market “ideology” and build understanding of the unique role of trade unions. It sought to further trade union policies and build coalitions as well as carrying out useful dialogue. That approach would be maintained in January 2003, when unions will be seeking to achieve more prominent participation at both the WSF and the WEF.

NEPAD and the trade union response

New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) was conceived at the Summit of African Heads of State and of Government in Lusaka in July 2001. The plan, which is seen as the most ambitious one ever produced on the continent, covers all kinds of policy areas, with particular emphasis being given to agriculture, education, health, the infrastructure and information technology. NEPAD has set itself the target of reducing the number of poor people by half by the year 2015, providing schooling to all African children and lowering the infant and women rate of mortality in line with the targets set by the UN Millennium Summit of September 2000.

NEPAD also provides for an African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) which encapsulates the commitment of African leaders to implement codes and standards in the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance.

The ICFTU/AFRO supports the convictions of the African Heads of State and of Government as expressed in the NEPAD document as much as the goals it sets out to achieve. However, ICFTU/AFRO has pointed out that the African people have not been involved in the conception and development of NEPAD. As a result ICFTU/AFRO has stated that core labour standards and the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work should underpin the new partnership. ICFTU/AFRO also called on NEPAD to make room for women to play an appropriate role in all NEPAD initiatives.

In response to calls by ICFTU/AFRO, NEPAD leaders have accommodated requests for tripartite meetings and meaningful social dialogue as well as the participation of workers’ representatives in all future relevant NEPAD institutions.

The World Trade Organisation: blind to workers’ rights

The outcome of the 4th WTO Ministerial Conference (Doha, 9-14 November 2001), which launched the Doha Round of trade negotiations, was seriously flawed by its lack of attention to fundamental workers’ rights, and was ambiguous or negative in many other areas of concern such as the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services – See Appendix II) negotiations, development issues, WTO transparency and procedures, and investment and competition policy. Only in the areas of the relationship between trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) and public health, and concerning the environment, was some progress made towards our objectives.

At the same time, in many regions there is increasing attention to bilateral and regional trade negotiations and co-operation agreements, including the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).

In trade union meetings such as the Global Unions Task Force on Trade, Investment and Labour Standards (TILS) in February 2002, there has been general agreement that it is essential to maintain the Global Unions demand for effective measures to be taken to ensure the respect of fundamental workers’ rights in the international trading system. Also, despite the lack of progress at the WTO itself, increasing the pressure for workers’ rights at the WTO can still give us additional leverage in other forums ranging from the ILO to the IMF and World Bank and to bilateral trade.

Imbalances in International Trade

• Some 63,000 transnational companies with 800,000 affiliates account for about two-thirds of all world trade (World Investment Report of 2001)
• Nearly 50% of current world trade takes place between affiliates of multinational enterprises (WTO 2002)
• The European Union, United States and Japan dominate the inward flows (71%) and outward flows (82%) of foreign direct investment (FDI).
• FDI flows to developing countries are concentrated mainly in China (both in Hong Kong and in the mainland) while much of Southeast Asia and South Asia, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa, witnessed a slump in FDI flows (UNCTAD 2001)

There is a consensus among ICFTU affiliates in support of increased market access for developing countries, especially the least developed (including in areas like agriculture and textiles). Some unions have argued for more radical policies to be adopted to interrupt the current processes of globalisation under the supervision of the WTO, but it has to be emphasised that there is virtually no support among governments, nor from political parties close to the union movement, for taking strong measures against the WTO, so such a position would not seem to have sufficient support to be viable. However, there is certainly a need for more discussion in the union movement, particularly since many new union leaders at national level are not familiar with the arguments for a positive link between workers’ rights and trade, and sometimes hear more from their governments than from the international trade union movement on these issues.

Global Unions need to intensify efforts to increase public and governmental support at national and regional levels; to make maximum use of parallel opportunities to advance workers’ rights in trade, like the new European Union GSP scheme; and to continue to form alliances with NGOs where useful. However, we must also be aware that issues like agriculture and investment can be expected to dominate governments’ negotiating priorities at the Cancún 5^th WTO Ministerial Conference next September, making it difficult to secure a major advance on workers’ rights.

On another major WTO issue where Global Unions have taken a detailed position – the GATS services negotiations – there are few signs of readiness by any governments to support our views on the need for strong measures to protect public services from WTO negotiations. At the same time, initial statements by the new WTO Director-General, Supachai Panitchpakdi, provide some cause for speculation that progress could be made on one issue in particular, namely that of improving consultative arrangements for NGOs (which, as defined by the WTO, includes trade unions). Other possibilities for progress, such as our arguments for consideration of social issues in WTO trade policy reviews including core labour standards and the impact of trade on women, should not be overlooked. Revising Article XX of the WTO (which enables countries to take trade measures on moral grounds and in cases such as prison labour) could be another avenue to explore. In general, there is much scope for building long-term public support for trade union criticisms of the current WTO system.

ICFTU reports on core labour standards

The ICFTU reports on respect for the internationally recognised core labour standards in individual countries are published to coincide with the WTO's schedule of Trade Policy Reviews, and have been since 1997. Two of the relevant eight core conventions concern discrimination, and the ICFTU reports document the situation in countries as regards discrimination on grounds of gender, race, religion, national origin and disability. Equal remuneration between men and women, sexual harassment, legal and social treatment of migrant workers, and forced prostitution are also topics of particular interest, given the situation from country to country (all reports can be consulted at the ICFTU website: www.icftu.org).

Global companies in the global economy: global action by Global Unions

Globalisation has become a major influence on national policy and has had to be taken into account in developing that policy. It has also influenced national environments for organising and bargaining. As companies have increasingly become global companies or dependent on the global economy, they tend to look at their competitiveness beyond the national level. In many industries, they may be less interested, for example, in sectoral agreements at national level in order to protect themselves from being undercut by national competitors but, instead, look more to enterprise bargaining. In many cases, comparisons of costs and other factors have become primarily international rather than national. That means that trade union strategies must also take into account the international dimension in terms of industrial relations. Bargaining is also affected by the fundamental changes in the organisation of work, at home and abroad. The bargaining context is influenced by development of supply chains as well as growing precariousness of work, a phenomenon that has a particularly severe effect on women, as well as the marginalisation of millions of workers in all parts of the world trapped in unprotected work.

Global actions, whether in relation to international institutions or national governments, in the form of campaigns, the use of workers’ capital and other leverage on enterprises to respect rights, or in the form of global social dialogue assume greater relative importance than in the past. The capacity to effectively deal with a company at global level, at the level that it is making priorities and making decisions, is becoming an indispensable element of effective national trade union strategies. As company planning, strategy, and operations become more and more international, one has to be able to deal effectively at that level, in order to support national trade union actions and agreements. One important way to reinforce the position of national unions is through social dialogue involving companies and sectors with Global Union Federations. A visible sign of the growth of global social dialogue is the increase of the number of framework agreements, from two to twenty in six years (see Discussion Sheet 1.10).

NAFTA and the Maquiladoras

In May 1997, Human Rights Watch, the International Labour Rights Fund and the Mexican National Association of Democratic Lawyers, which had been alerted by trade unions and women’s associations, filed a complaint with the National Administrative Office of the US Department of Labour. The grounds for the complaint were infringement of the rules of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) because of violations of Mexican labour legislation and sexual discrimination in the maquiladoras. In June 1997, the ICFTU alerted its members about the multinational firms implicated in the violations and asked them to send letters of protest to the management.

Global trade union agreements and the effective use of the OECD Guidelines for MNEs both develop an important grey area between strictly voluntary and binding rules, that can help develop global governance and can become the seeds for democratic global governance. Similarly, the IFI’s, if they can begin to focus on employment and the improvement rather than undermining of public services, could return to their historic mission and have a positive, if not strictly speaking binding, influence. The UN Global Compact is one of many means to accelerate global dialogue on important issues as well as opening up opportunities for greater and better social dialogue.

The central idea that must unify global trade union action in relation to international institutions and actors is democracy. It is the difference between governance of markets and governance by markets. It is the difference between CSR (corporate social responsibility) in the form of top-down paternalism and sound industrial relations. Part of building and defending democracy will depend on developing global leverage to give a chance to workers struggling to form and run their own unions.

The trade union movement also needs, on both political and industrial issues, a greater rapprochement between national and international lobbying and mobilisation. It must be able to take advantage of the linkages that exist between international bodies and between national and international levels if it is to recognise and seize the opportunities that are available.

The challenges facing trade unions in the era of globalization:

• Ensure that structural change and adaptation are achieved without compromising the goals of full employment and social justice.
• Convince governments that it is essential to increase and spread more evenly world economic growth
• Ensure that workers’ rights (including non-discrimination) are integrated into any agreements related to economic integration, whether at regional or at world level.

Privatisation and Quality Public Services

Privatisation is part and parcel of globalisation. But the shape of globalisation is not inevitable. It is now formed by the economic and political policies of those driving the process. There is agreement between decision-makers in many developed countries and multi-national enterprises (MNEs) on the terms of globalisation. It is an agenda of corporate globalisation where the interests of profits outweigh the interests of people. The policies include privatisation, liberalisation, deregulation, and reduced public sector expenditure. The negative impact on services is everywhere: education, health, water supply and waste removal. Corporate globalisation has resulted in a widening wealth gap between countries and within countries.

Facts

• One in five people of the world live on less than $1 per day;
• Inequality within countries has been increasing throughout the world,
• MNEs now make up almost half of the world’s 100 biggest economies.
• There are more staff employed in the marketing department of the Swiss pharmaceutical multi-national, Pfizer, than in the entire World Health Organisation;
• Developing countries pay $1 billion a day in debt servicing. They spend thirteen times more on debt servicing to rich countries than they receive in grants.

International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are used by the advocates of corporate globalisation to support their policies. They have forced policies, such as privatisation, on poorer countries in exchange for financial assistance. Many poor countries have no choice. They are crippled by debt and must accept these policies in return for financial assistance. Local elites often also benefit. There is ample evidence of state assets sold below their real value that encourage a climate of corruption.

Privatisation is one of the most visible effects of corporate globalisation. Technically, privatisation means the transfer of a service from the public sector to the private sector. However, privatisation rarely occurs in isolation. Generally it is placed together with cuts in funding, contracting out, reduced services, the introduction of user-fees and cheaper, less-skilled staff.

Quality public services rely on the quality of the staff. This means trained staff working under good working conditions. Governments regularly attack the conditions and rights of public sector workers before privatisation occurs. They starve public services of funds until the quality of service is so bad that public support for public services is shaken. They undermine union campaigns against privatisation. Members of the community often then see privatisation as their only chance for better service delivery.

How does privatisation affect women?

The policies that go with privatisation shift wealth and resources. Access to public services becomes a question of ability to pay. The wealthy get the services they want and the poor are left with little or nothing. For women it means:

1. More unpaid work. Most caring and household maintenance work falls to women. When these public services are cut it means more unpaid work for women and formal employment becomes even more difficult.

2. Loss of jobs and working conditions. Women form the majority of workers in many areas of public services e.g. health and education. When public services are privatised or budgets cut, women either lose their jobs or get worse employment conditions e.g. lower wages, fewer benefits or longer hours.

3. More poverty and hardship. Women make up the majority of the world’s poor. The policies of corporate globalisation lead to greater income inequity. The poor get poorer. These policies directly increase women’s poverty and hardship.

The gender gap is increasing as a result of privatisation and the policies of corporate globalisation. However not all women are the same. Exclusion is a factor of class, race and gender. It is felt most where these three factors intersect.

A union response

After two decades of deregulation, cutbacks and privatisation, unions must help revitalise or develop dynamic, quality public services that are well funded, accountable to the community, and in which trained workers have quality conditions. In many countries opinion polls favour public over privatised services. People have seen failures, such as the Californian energy crisis, UK rail disasters and the privatisation of the Argentinean pension system, which helped triggered that country’s current crisis.

PSI’s Quality Public Services Campaign

The Public Services International (PSI) launched a global Quality Public Services Campaign at its 2002 World Congress.

The campaign is participatory and pro-active. Rather than just campaigning against privatisation and reduced services, PSI will take the initiative in building momentum around a positive campaign for better public services as the key to social justice including poverty eradication.

A feature of the campaign will be working with community representatives and NGOs. PSI intends to build understanding and support around a positive approach to help communities recognise the importance of public services and why they should be defended and extended.

PSI will emphasise the link with pay equity, poverty reduction and gender equity in all aspects of the campaign including producing material specifically designed for women.

For more information see PSI’s website at www.world-psi.org.

Everyone is affected by privatisation. Therefore quality public services are an issue for all unions. Ideas for action include:

• Support Public Services International’s Quality Public Service Campaign and Education International’s Education for All Campaign, including in the media;
• Support debt cancellation in poor countries.
• Regularly inform members of the importance of public services and the negative consequences of privatisation in other countries;
• Support public sector unions fighting privatisation ;
• Ask members to lobby politicians to support public ownership of basic services;
• Put privatisation on the agenda of your women’s committee or coalition;
• Ensure public sector issues and representatives are included in all economic submissions and delegations from the national centre.
• Join coalitions opposing the negative affects of globalisation.
• © Public Services International 2003

GATS - What it means for women workers

GATS-What is it?

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was established to liberalise and set binding rules for international trade It administers several agreements, including the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). GATS is the newcomer and is about trade in services. It was effected in 1994 and is in its early stages of implementation. GATS has the potential to change forever national sovereignty and government accountability. Despite this, the GATS negotiations have occurred in secrecy with little public discussion. GATS should not be confused with GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which is the precursor of the WTO.

How GATS operates

The key concept is commitment. When a country signs up it is put under immense pressure to progressively liberalise trade in its services. At first countries make commitments to open up particular parts of their economies to trade under GATS. For example commitments may be made to open health insurance, or dental services to foreign firms. Once a country makes a commitment it is extremely difficult to back out of it. In this way GATS has the effect of ratcheting up a country’s involvement.

Three Key principles of GATS

Under GATS, there are key principles, which must be upheld:

• Market access – this is the negotiated commitments to open up trade under GATS by each member in specified sectors.
• Most Favoured Nation (MFN) - each member must treat the import of services from all other members no less favourably than for any other member. That is, if services are imported under favourable conditions from one other member country, all other member countries have the right to the same deal.
• National treatment – each member must treat foreign service suppliers no less favourably than its own service suppliers. That is, a country may not discriminate against foreign suppliers. This applies only where commitments have been made.

Because GATS is administered by the WTO, a member country can make a complaint against another member. Disputes can be arbitrated by the WTO. Significant financial penalties can be enforced against members found to have breached the rules.

Growth in services

In both industrialised and developing countries, non-government services account for 50 to 60% of GDP. However they only account for a quarter of all global trade. More and more multi-national enterprises (MNEs) are moving into services industries. As a result, international trade in services has much greater potential for growth than the trade in goods. Services are very important for women’s employment. Nearly half of all economically active women work in the services sector.

GATS and government services

GATS includes exemptions for some government services. But these exemptions are written so that they can be eroded. Any service potentially open to commercialisation or privatisation is at risk. Public services are therefore at best in an uncertain position. If governments are forced to privatise their services, then they could be taken over by multinationals regardless of the views of the community.

So what’s wrong with GATS?

• Lack of public scrutiny: Commitments under GATS have powerful consequences on the lives of a country’s people. Yet due to the technical nature of negotiations and the attitude of the WTO, the deals are in secret, without public scrutiny. Debates about how much and which sectors to open up are rare. Debates on the environmental and social effects of trade globalisation are even fewer.
• Unforeseen consequences: The overriding issue is that the web of international agreements centring on GATS, commits national governments to measures and policies that may have unforeseen consequences. The agreement signed up to by South Africa and Thailand on intellectual property rights cost thousands of lives to maintain the profits of multinational pharmaceutical companies.
• Government services are vulnerable: The scope of privatisation already includes prison systems, hospitals, health care, health insurance, tertiary education, and parts of social welfare. All of these public services could be pressured to open up to international trade under GATS. Profit then determines service.
• Trade dominates all other issues: Under GATS, and the WTO more generally, it is trade that ultimately overrides considerations such as social benefit, health and safety. Considerations of profit override other concerns.
• Services for the rich: Encroaching privatisation linked with GATS and foreign involvement in health services brings with it the targeting of particular parts of markets in order to maximise profits. This is to the detriment of universal access and puts further cost burdens on the public system.

Implications of GATS for women

Women as workers: GATS provides a framework which can be used to promote privatisation and contracting out. A service covered by GATS must allow local and foreign companies the right to trade even if government or local authorities currently provide it unless a government has been very careful about its GATS commitments. This often results in contracting out and privatisation in developing countries under World Bank and IMF constraints. It is often harder to organise workers in the contracted and privatised services. Experience shows that it results in job losses, casualisation, the eroding of conditions and lose of social security cover. With so many women’s jobs in the service sector, women have the most to lose from GATS.

Women as service users: Women are directly affected by the erosion of services, particularly public services. When trade and profit become the driving forces, service provision suffers, particularly for poorer people. It is associated services cuts, fees and erosion of universal access. When services are cut, the load often falls to women resulting in increased unpaid work. This in turn reduces their options in paid employment, further increasing their poverty.

Ideas for union action

GATS is constantly re-negotiated. It is important that unions take an active role. Public Services International (PSI) and Education International (EI) have produced detailed publications on GATS. PSI has led a campaign to ensure governments disclose GATS commitments and that there is public debate about the implications. Exposing the secrecy of GATS is our best weapon. Some ideas for union action are:

• Produce a GATS fact sheet, including the impact on women, for members;
• Run a GATS public seminar and get involvement from community leaders;
• Establish a union, local government and community task force on GATS
• Demand that the government agrees to public consultation on proposed GATS commitments and negotiations. Emphasise democracy and national sovereignty;
• Form a national GATS coalition to run a GATS campaign. Link up and educate others concerned about the WTO and globalisation

© Public Services International 2003