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Article Excerpt
Introduction
Studies on trade unions, especially those of the political economy approach, reiterate the importance of trade unions in arresting the excesses of globalization, such as the threat to the environment and increasing global poverty. [1] They also underscore trade unions' pivotal role in the search for alternative development strategies. The ILO asserts unions role as an important tripartite workplace social partner in its efforts to ensure that globalization is fair to all. [2] Unions role in the solution for world development concerns come at a point in time when the positive benefits of globalization are being questioned in several sectors. The growing amount of literature on the social dimensions of future prospects of globalization shows that many are wary of the so-called benefits of globalization. [3]
Development theories, be they" ... conservative, modernisation ... or dependency theory ..., conceived development as national development" and the nation state constituted the prime focus of national decisions and actions. [4] Nation states set out their priorities for resource use on the basis of some set assumptions about how development should proceed. These priorities set the framework for resource use for production and consumption and citizens' mode for accessing needs. Present notions underlying neo-liberal economic development, as are being pushed through globalization, re-conceives development as national competitiveness within the global market place. [5] The object of production under globalization is primarily for international markets not for national consumption. This shifts the focus of development from the national to the global, while the State's space in production gets contracted to private enterprises. [6] Neo-liberal policies absolve the state of its traditional responsibility towards welfare provisioning. Re-conceptualization of development and the state's welfare and economic roles impact production and distribution decisions within countries in ways that challenge the existence of unions' ability to represent working people.
Improved technologies especially information and communication technologies that have been part of globalization, have caused considerable changes in production modes and relations. A characteristic feature of globalization is the ability of trans-national corporations (TNCs) to split production over several locations across the globe, giving rise to global production systems which allow companies to take advantage of variations in national economic incentives. The improvements in global production systems have been impressive; however they impact work and work relations, compromising the observance of core labor standards. [7] As nations compete amongst themselves to capture foreign direct investments of the TNCs, the content of their labor laws are watered down to the detriment of their workers and the movements that protect their rights.
The ILO's Director-General on the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, whilst acknowledging the benefits of globalization, expressed concern for its negative social impact on work and working people, deploring the existence of global economic imbalances as "ethically unacceptable and politically unsustainable." [8] It is the significance of work in the lives of women and men that direct the ILO's decent work agenda: a set of "policies which not only mitigate the adverse human consequences of economic change, but which also strengthen its positive outcomes for peoples' lives and their work." [9] Accordingly the ILO's 2004 report states that the quality of work is "the 'litmus test' for the success or failure of globalization [and] the source of dignity, stability, peace and credibility of governments and the economic system." [10] It is in this connection that the impact of globalization in undermining the standards of work and job security has implications for its sustainability.
Alterations in the direction and position of production within national development practice and discourse has impacted labor markets in ways that undermined fundamentally trade unionism in several parts of the world. Trade unions have faced a consistent onslaught from globalization policies that usurped labor's role in production. Employment welfare became antagonistic to the efficient functioning of corporations generating what Streeck and Hassel call a trilemma, where full employment, price stability and free collective bargaining become untenable, any two can be achieved at the cost of the third. [11] Governments and corporations chose to sacrifice collective bargaining under the guise that its benefits are available to a very small section of the working population. [12]
After recovering from the initial shock, unions set to devising strategies to counter the impact of globalization. Union strategies have been influenced by several factors, both internal and external to their national contexts. [13] Internal factors have been historical (unions political role in nation building) or contemporary (the prevailing industrial relations frameworks within which unions operate). [14] The Ghanaian state, since 1983, has been keenly integrating her economy into the global economy. National policy making therefore is geared towards liberalization, privatization, and deregulation justified as making production entities competitive on the global market.
In response to the systematic onslaught on workers' and trade union rights characteristic under the liberalizing economies, the Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) devised several strategies to respond to the challenges. [15] This paper discuses the implications of some of the major strategies devised by GTUC to respond to challenges posed by labor market reforms. The paper raises some of the critical questions of union governance and internal democracy that have to be resolved if such strategies should achieve their aim of strengthening unions existence and relevance to their members as it seeks to expand its space and operations within the informal economy. The paper begins by examining the position of labor within the globalized production system, the state relationship with labor generally, and specific forms it has taken in Ghana. Later sections of the paper, which outline the nature of challenges organized labor in Ghana has faced, sets the stage for examining some GTUC strategies and points to issues of union internal democracy. Union strategies hold important lessons for providing meaningful representation and engagement with globalized policies that confront workers in their daily striving for meaningful and sustainable livelihoods. The paper utilizes information from group and individual interviews of trade union leaders and members as well as existing documents such as research reports, historical accounts, and union documents.
Globalizing National Economies
Globalization is used to refer to the unrestrained movement of capital world-wide that has integrated national economies into a unified system of production and distribution. [16] Attitudes towards globalization and its impact are dependent on the claims to its utility, resistibility, inevitability, and novelty. [17] Underscoring the various positions are the convictions of how present liberal global production and production relations can improve the living conditions of the world's citizens, irrespective of their location, through sustainable use and equal distribution of the earth's resources. [18] Globalists or 'globaphiles' believe that the outcome of globalization is equally beneficial to all who take advantage of the prospects it offers. [19] Global skeptics or 'globaphobes' however, point to the existence of poverty, insecurity, environmental degradation, global resource depletion, and climate change as proof of the inherently exploitative nature of globalization and its threat to sustainable development. [20]
Other areas of contention are the presentation of globalization as a dominant, naturally evolving economic form which draws into its ambit all world production processes. Onder, Sutcliffe and Glyn, Gore, Rupert and Smith, Munck, and Buckman all contest this view, arguing that globalization is an imposed phenomenon fuelled by the ideological predisposition of the so-called Washington Consensus. [21] Globalization combines several strands, such as the consensus amongst global economic policy makers who favor market-based development strategies over state-managed ones, the control of G7 states over global market rules, and the concentration of market and financial power in the hands of transnational corporations (TNCs) and banks to facilitate its implementation. [22] Others are" ... public international financial institutions created to oversee management of economic globalization ... IMF, World Bank and WTO ... technology ... transport and communications." [23] The successful implementation of globalization was buttressed by the collapse of state sponsored socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
For developing countries located in the economic South, the imposition of globalization was fuelled by the 1980 debt crisis. World Bank/IMF Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) and WTO negotiations served as vehicles for integrating such ailing, inward looking economies into the global economy. [24] Munck explains that in the early 1980s, the World Bank pointed those nations who dealt with it for solutions to their economic problems to policies which entailed integration with the capitalist market. Their weakened economies forced them to accept SAP conditionalities as the basis for accessing badly needed IMF/World Bank loans. These conditions included state withdrawal from direct production, the privatization of existing state-owned enterprises, and the devaluation of national currencies. Public sector workers were laid off under the misleading name of labor rationalization in a bid to cut government expenditure. Other policy conditions included the withdrawal of state subsidies on social welfare like health, education, and support for agriculture. [25] At present, the IMF/World Bank maintain a strong grip on economic decision making in African countries south of the Sahara. SAPs have been abandoned since 1999 but the numerous programs of the World Bank and the IMF that have replaced it still bear all the hallmarks of SAP in terms of structure, form and processes. [26]
Labor Within Globalization
At the fall of the Berlin Wall not only did neo-liberalists celebrate the end of history, they also commemorated the death of work. Improvements in production and information technology had shortened spaces between countries almost rendering borders irrelevant. [27] The drivers of globalization, computers and information technology, demanded minimal labor requirements in the form of highly trained computer experts. With time this assertion has proven to be untrue and globalization's latest labor force, highly trained computer experts are yet to dominate production processes in developing countries like Ghana. [28] Labor remains central to globalization because the spread of capital is dictated by production and distribution of goods and services, artificial intelligence is yet to supply all the answers for human needs. [29] Globalization however has challenged the justification for labor to secure fair entitlements for its contribution to production.
Neo-liberal economic policy dictates that nation states relinquish their role in production to the more efficient private capital, calling for a re-definition of labor's position within the production process. Consumer satisfaction directs the goals of national production for global consumption. Under what is generally termed Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI), which characterized national development policies in the 1960s and 1970s, the focus of development was national. [30] Countries such as Ghana and Kenya pursued development through industrialization to feed domestic consumption. [31]...
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