Globalisation

Speech to the Compass Conference

Saturday 9 June 2007

Frances O'Grady, TUC Deputy General Secretary

The key message I want to get across today is that we can and must build a global alliance of progressive governments, trade unions and social movements, committed to globalisation with a social justice dimension.

An arc of justice to lift people out of poverty, to create better working lives and to enhance equality.

An alliance that, as Gordon Brown wrote this week, puts the concerns, struggles and rising aspirations of working people at its heart.

And one that aims to revitalise and deepen democracy by giving working people and their unions a real voice at work - creating a new economic citizenship.

To do that we need to understand what's happening to working people worldwide, what we want and what we can do to get there together.

If you talk to workers, in both the North and South, their views of globalisation are likely to be, at best, ambivalent.

In developed countries like Britain, people like the cheap goods, we like the choice of more international food, films and music - and we enjoy our holidays abroad.

But many people are deeply anxious about the way the economy is changing.

Especially if the downside of globalisation - off shoring, long hours and insecure employment contracts which are no longer just blue collar worries - has affected them or their family.

Workers may well agree that globalisation is good in the long run, but as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, 'in the long run, we're all dead'.

In developing countries, despite the differences, there are common threads.

On the one hand globalisation can be a route out of poverty, whether that's through migration, trade or development aid.

On the other, it can lead to greater pressure and personal risk.

Especially when aid and trade are made conditional on opening up precious natural resources and public services to privatisation.

Marketisation masquerading as choice.

The ultimate con trick - reducing universal citizenship entitlements to an individual test of consumer clout.

It is true that globalisation is generating much greater wealth and can lift living standards.

But today it is also a driver for greater inequality, both between and within countries.

So promising prosperity is not enough.

For workers and unions, who gets what share of that prosperity counts too.

And the political class still hasn't figured out how to give globalisation worker or people appeal.

On the contrary, we are told that global competition means we need to accept that top directors will be paid ever-higher rewards.

And in the same breath, we are told that global competition means workers must tighten their belts and accept less pay.

All while private equity chiefs get away with contributing proportionately less tax than a firefighter or a nurse.

In the US - workers' average pay is worth less today in real terms than it was 30 years ago, while the super rich have multiplied.

The more unequal the society, the less chance of social mobility.

And as the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, if you're poor and black then you better hope your job pays health insurance.

This is not a model we should admire.

This is not the way to win workers' support.

Unless governments commit to a social dimension to globalisation;

Unless they offer new ways to secure a just and managed transition; and

Unless there is positive protection for working people - there will be more and more pressure for protectionism.

Whether the debate is about US steel jobs or the EU Constitution, people's anxiety is real and cannot be ignored.

We have to start challenging head on the neo-liberal consensus that the City and Business has a divine right to rule the economy and that the role of elected governments is to get out of the way.

The TUC and unions don't want closed markets but we do think markets should be managed.

We are not against more trade; we are for trade justice.

And unlike those EU governments, including our own, who sought to restrict the free movement of people from Bulgaria and Romania (incidentally, and as we predicted, serving only to fuel bogus self-employment), the TUC and unions argued that migration isn't the problem - exploitation is.

Workers are voters too, and globalisation needs to be shaped in a way that takes account of our aspirations.

So how do we give globalisation a human face?

First, we need action to provide stronger minimum rights, enforcement and trade union organisation - Government embracing unions as partners in a crack down on Britain's worst employers and a drive to build safer, fairer and more cohesive workplace communities.

While thankfully polls show most Britons are positive about living in a multi-racial society and believe community cohesion is a good thing, there is no room for complacency about the BNP's efforts to fuel racism and prejudice.

And it's becoming clearer that, at the sharp end, some employers are using migrant labour - especially through agency contracts - to hold down wages, avoid training and fuel competition between low-paid workers.

The TUC's Commission on Vulnerable Employment aims to come up with some answers.

But it's clear that any Government genuinely committed to social justice can't run away from regulation.

And a good start would be to guarantee equal pay and treatment for agency workers.

Secondly, as the scale and pace of change speeds up, with more mergers, more takeovers, constant reform and restructuring, we need to give people more security and more satisfaction in the jobs they do.

That doesn't have to mean a job for life, but it does mean lifelong employment.

It also means more learning and skills opportunities - and removing the employer veto that stops one in three workers from getting them.

And with a new look workforce - more mothers in full-time work, more older people in the workforce and more workers with disabilities or mental health problems wanting the chance of a decent job - the back-up workers get needs modernising too.

One of this Government's best initiatives is the Surestart network of children's centres.

This should be seen as an essential pillar of a modern welfare system.

But there is too little funding, too few affordable places and too high a staff turnover - not least because, in terms of pay, the skill of a nursery nurse caring for children is valued at around half that of a mechanic gets for repairing cars.

So there just might be some scope for improvement in action to close the equal pay gap too.

Thirdly, let's aim to give workers back some control over their working lives by demanding more corporate transparency, including from what John Monks has called the new capitalists and what I call the Pirates of the Caribbean: hedge funds, vulture funds, private equity - it's time to emerge from the shadows.

And let's give workers and their unions a greater say over the decisions that matter to them like training, pensions, working time, and restructuring.

Unions can play a bigger role too in addressing the challenges ahead that we all have a stake in.

Not least, the challenge of creating a low carbon economy, which means that more businesses will either clean up or ship out.

We want to maximise green job gains and minimise the losses.

Empowering our new breed of workplace environmental reps can help organisations make the transition to greater energy efficiency.

And introducing new imaginative measures to create greener ways to work, for example by introducing a stronger universal right to flexible working that can help cut congestion and carbon emissions.

As capital becomes more global and more mobile, so must we.

From the recent campaign to secure justice for Group 4 workers in Indonesia, sacked while they were on strike, supported by unions here in the UK, in the US and in South Africa.

To the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, involving NGOs, faith groups, environmental groups and anti-poverty campaigners.

The TUC represents 6.5 million workers including over 200,000 elected workplace reps, learning reps, equality reps, day in day out helping to make working lives better.

And for the first time in our history our membership is fifty -fifty, men and women.

We are part of the ETUC that brings together 60 million members in 36 countries and champions the European social model.

And we belong to the ITUC which represents 166 million workers black and white, in 156 countries, North and South.

Trade unionism is a vital vehicle for progressive values, democratic organisation and collective action, in the UK and globally.

By working together, with stronger alliances based around common causes and shared collective values, real progress towards social and economic justice is possible.