"Labour rights. A theme for archaeology?"

Every week more than ninety million customers come to the stores of Wal-Mart. More than nine hundred thousand employees in theses stores are not allowed to affiliate with any kind of trade unions. If any one of them starts thinking about unionising, he will find him or herself as an unemployed. This successful enterprise negates blatantly one of the human rights proclaimed by the United Nations: The right of Freedom of assembly and association. In 1992 Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, was awarded the Liberty Medal, one of the highest decorations available in the United States.

One out of four adults in the United States and nine out of ten Children eat the plastic food at McDonald's and get overweight from it. The workers at McDonald's are as disposable as the food they are serving: they are treated like machines. Nevertheless they have the right to join a trade union.

In Malaysia, where trade unions are still existent and working, the following enterprises try to get rid of this pain: Intel, Motorola, Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard. The government of Malaysia declared the electronics industry as "union free".

Nine hundred workers died in 1993 in a blaze of the shed where they produced the puppets of Sesame Street, Bart Simpson and The Muppets, because it was locked from outside. They also had no chance to associate in any way.

In the election campaign of last year Bush and Gore agreed both in the necessity to spread the US model of labour relations all over the world. They called it "Our style of working". This marks another step of the globalisation, which marches in giant steps to the remotest corners of our planet.

Today's technology which overcame the distances makes it all possible: A worker at Nike's in Indonesia will have to work hundred thousand years to earn the same salary as an executive of Nike in the United States. A worker at an IBM plant in the Philippines producing computers will never be able to buy one for himself.

This is the continuation of the colonial times on a scale never seen before. The poor people of the world continue to fulfil their traditional functions: Cheep labour and cheep food stuff in former times provided cacao, rice, coffee, sugar and other unlucky export products and today they provide puppets, sports shoes, computers and high tech products for the global market.

Since 1919 183 international conventions have been signed to regulate the labour relations in the world. According to the International Labour Organisation from these 183 agreements France has ratified 115 of them, Norway 106, Germany 76and the USA... 14. The country spearheading the globalisation obeys only its own regulations. Thus granting freedom from sanctions to the great corporations, in their
hunt for cheep labour. They conquer the territories, where their dirty production plants contaminate the environment as they like it.

It is paradox that the country does not recognize anymore the laws that set the labour laws under the law. Today it claims remedies like "social issues" and "environmental protection" have no place in agreements on free trade. What will happen, if the reality is not unmasked by publicity?

These rules are simply taxes, which the vicious pays to virtue under the pretext of public relations. Just to mention labour rights makes the advocates of McJobs, endless working hours, hire and fire raise hell. Since Ernesto Zedillo took presidency over Mexico he got included in the directories of the Union Pacific Corp. and the Procter & Gamble consortium, which operate in 140 countries. He also headed a UN commission and spread his ideas through Forbes magazine.

In the "technocrat" speak there is an indignation against "the imposition of comparable labour standards in the new commercial agreements". Translated into common language this means: Throw out the dustbin once and for all with all the international legislation, which protects the workers. The former president even predicts slavery. But
the central executive officer of General Electric puts it much clearer: "To compete, we have to squeeze the lemons". Facts are facts. Confronted with all the protests the companies wash their hands and claim: We are innocent. In the post-modern industries, the work force is decentralized. This is true everywhere not only in small private enterprises. Subcontractors produce three quarters of the parts for Toyota cars. Only one out of five workers at Volkswagen do Brazil are employees of the enterprise. Out of the 81 workers of Petrobrás who died in labour accidents in the last three years 66 of them were employed by subcontractor, which did not comply with the safety
standards. Among the 300 subcontractors China produced half of the Barbie dolls for the children all over the world. In China there are trade unions but they are under the rule of the government. In the name of socialism it is occupied with discipline among the work force: "We fight against labour unrest and the social instability, to maintain a favourable climate for investors", explained recently Bo
Xilai, the secretary general of the communist party in one of the biggest harbours of the country.

The economic power has been monopolised more than ever, but the countries and the people compete as much as they can: To look good, they offer more in exchange for less, and to work double in exchange for half the wage. On the side of the road lay the remnants of the achievements of two hundred years of fighting for labour rights. The sweatshops of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, create a much
more accelerated beat than the associated industry. Eight out of ten newly employed workers in Argentina are "black", without any legal protection. Nine out of ten new employed workers all over Latin America belong to the "informal sector". This is a euphemism and it means in reality the workers are left to the mercy of god. Stable labour relations and all other labour rights; will they soon be a
subject for archaeologists? Who will remember this extinct species?

In a world upside down, liberty will be oppressed: The liberty of the money rules over the workers locked up in a prison of fear, a prison worse than any other. The god of the market threatens and punishes and he knows every worker in every place. The fear of unemployment helps to reduce the cost of the work force and helps multiply the productivity and it is day by day a source of a universal fear.

What can be done against the panic of being thrown out to the end of the long queue waiting for a job? Who is not afraid of being converted into an "internal obstacle", to speak with the words of the president of Coca-Cola? One and a half years ago he explained the firing of thousands of workers with the remark, "we have eliminated the internal
obstacles". The last in a line of questions is, before the money is global, will the world be divided in those who tame and those who have been tamed, can we make the fight for the dignity of labour an international issue? A small challenge!

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)