BY PIP HINMAN
SYDNEY — On September 5 some 250 trade unionists, students and campaigners were treated to a radical-sounding speech from Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Doug Cameron, the most prominent of the ALP's "fair trade" exponents.
The panel of speakers included author and academic Frank Stilwell and NSW magistrate Pat O'Shane, but the majority of people had come to hear Cameron, and it was to him that subsequent questions and comments were directed.
Stilwell spoke first, describing in general terms the main features of the so-called "globalisation steamroller": the increasing globalisation of finance capital under the control of a very few; the growth of international trade; the growth of speculative capital and governments' rationale for deregulation and other neo-liberal economic policies.
He listed three main contradictions associated with corporate globalisation: the lack of balance between global production and consumption; the fiscal crisis it creates for national governments that go all out trying to attract mobile capital; and the anti-ecological aspect of the drive for profits.
Stilwell then got to the crux of his argument. He said that there were two possible responses to the "globalisation steamroller": "There's the nationalist-protectionist response and the progressive internationalist one". He said the latter included solidarity with overseas workers and the insertion of labour clauses into international trade agreements. In Stilwell's opinion, the second response was not in contradiction with the first.
The scene having been set, Cameron delivered a speech that was long on rhetoric but short on detail. Nevertheless, he put a nationalist-protectionist line clearly enough.
Cameron began by defending people's right to protest at S11, and in particular young people's right to be a part of this movement.
"Politicians, trade union leaders and others have forgotten what it was like to be young", he said, collecting a round of applause. He likened the World Economic Forum to "a closed shop of the very worst kind" and criticised the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for their "disproportionate influence on governments and communities".
"We are part of progressive internationalism", Cameron continued. "The AMWU supports international trade, something many of our members rely on for their livelihoods. But we don't support free trade and its accompanying inequalities such as child labour, crony capitalism and destruction of the environment."
Fair trade, he said, "would guarantee trade union rights around the world". It would involve a "social dialogue between partners in the labour movement". Then Cameron got to the crux of his argument — and became a lot more specific.
Cameron cited responses from an AMWU marginal seat poll on job security (which, unsurprisingly, found workers were worried about losing their jobs) to back up his argument that maintaining tariffs protects jobs from low wage competition. He also said the AMWU was in favour of the WTO incorporating labour standards into trade agreements and supported the idea of governments imposing a Tobin tax (on financial speculation) on big business.
Participants in discussion supported Cameron's assessment that globalisation had not delivered for the majority and agreed with his call for large protests outside the WEF meeting in Melbourne. However, many questioned his strategy, which, as one woman remarked, "sounded fine in principle, but in practice would penalise workers in the Third World".
"Globalisation means that we should be making alliances with workers all around the world, and Doug's [Cameron] line that the best way of protecting jobs here is siding with our bosses and local industry against overseas workers will not work", she said.
"Rather than protecting tariffs — which haven't helped protect jobs in manufacturing over the last couple of decades — we should be fighting for shorter hours and decent wages. And despite their threats, bosses can't easily move their firms to the Third World. The threats are used largely as a device to keep workers quiet", added Maritime Union of Australia and Democratic Socialist Party member Tom Flanagan. These comments were well received by the audience.
Cameron dismissed concerns about giving the WTO extra powers to arbitrate over trade and, in a remarkable sleight of hand, equated the global campaign against apartheid in South Africa, motivated by COSATU, with social clauses. He said that the union movement had to be ready to support workers' rights all over the globe, but did admit that unions in Cambodia and India had firmly rejected the idea of social clauses.
The meeting, organised by the S11 Alliance, which in Sydney is run from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union offices, did what it set out to do: give Cameron a platform for his nationalist-protectionist fair trade line and ensure the Labor Party wasn't entirely isolated from the S11 movement.