BY MELANIE SJOBERG
Rubbing shoulders with the 3200 corporate and political heavyweights at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, was one lone Australian trade union official: ACTU president Sharan Burrow. Maybe she thought it was a great opportunity to encourage those present to support the global strike against corporate globalisation on May 1.
Burrow attended the January 25-30 annual meeting with 12 other trade union officials from around the world, in an effort to convince the corporate profiteers to be nicer to their workers and more respectful of workers' rights. Burrow spoke on a panel entitled "Unions: down but not out", while her US colleague, John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO, spoke on another entitled "Addressing the backlash against globalisation".
Meanwhile, outside in the cold, protesters from across Europe demonstrated against the neo-liberal, pro-corporate policies advocated by those inside the WEF's annual meeting. They were subjected to the largest military and police operation in Switzerland since the second world war and several were beaten with batons, including the high-profile Indian ecofeminist Vandana Shiva and the president of the New Zealand Trade Union Federation, Maxine Gay.
Burrow also spent three days in September proselytising the global elite, when the World Economic Forum came to Melbourne. On that instance, too, thousands were outside blockading the conference venue in an attempt to prevent delegates getting in or out — and were getting beaten by police for their efforts.
A group of New Zealand activists, the APEC Monitoring Group, has circulated a cyberprotest demanding that trade union officials reject WEF offers to "eat, drink and parley with the international exploiting class". The protest letter calls upon those union officials attending the conference to instead reject cooperation with the WEF and join the more radical elements demanding change.
The APEC group pointed out that thousands of people around the world are participating in protests in order to isolate the corporate elite and its ideology. It charged the union officials attending the Davos meeting with breaking solidarity and playing into the hands of the exploiters.
Just what do Burrow and her colleagues think they'll get from such discussions with the corporate chieftains, especially given they had to cross picket lines in order to get inside?
They certainly didn't attend to impart a radical analysis of globalisation. In her paper, titled "Unions in Transition", Burrow suggested that the majority of Australian employers "are respectful of union and democratic rights". Tell that to all those workers who have lost entitlements when their companies have siphoned off their money before going bust, or all those employed, often for years, as casuals, or all those locked out by their employers when they ask for a better enterprise agreement.
Burrow saved her fire for the bad apples who were being "very short-sighted", such as the Commonwealth Bank which is trying to force 20,000 unionists into individual contracts. She promised to have meetings with "some very large institutional investors" to discuss the issue while in Europe.
Rather than delivering a militant message, the union officials who attended Davos 2001 entered into a "dialogue", in which they expressed their willingness to work with governments and employers to "bridge the divides", whatever that means.
In doing so they ignored even the most basic union training, which warns against holding meetings with bosses behind closed doors and without clear outcomes.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions' media release from Davos demonstrates why its attendance was so pointless. The ICFTU called for fairer access to world trade, fairer income distribution, an end to the irresponsibility of some multinationals, for inclusive decision-making, more dialogue between global unions and global corporations and greater input from trade unions.
Then it admitted that a social compact on worker and union rights was agreed to at the 1995 Copenhagen summit on world social development — and that none of the protocols have been adhered to by companies or governments. The ICFTU is stuck reminding companies of their moral imperatives — an act of utter futility.
WEF spokespeople go to great lengths to be seen to be listening to "other voices", but the operative words are "seen to be". Forum organisers, and the corporate leaders who attend, have no intention of actually carrying out the muted requests from those union leaders they invite inside. Their interest in "dialogue" is for public consumption only.
This also explains why they're so extremely particular about who they invite inside. They don't want anyone who's going to cause a scene — and certainly they had nothing to worry about on that score from the president of the ACTU.