WTO must assess employment impacts

GENEVA: As the December WTO Ministerial Conference approaches, the IMF joins the trade union movement in reiterating its demand that effects on development and employment must be assessed before further trade liberalisation occurs.

“Promises about the potential of trade liberalisation have failed to materialise in terms of more and better jobs for developing and industrialised countries,” writes IMF general secretary Marcello Malentacchi in his latest opinion column.

“A race to the bottom with cheaper labour and worsening working conditions is undermining decent work for the sake of maximising company profits,” he writes.

Concerns about the direction of the current Doha round of trade negotiations were reinforced by recently released World Bank projections on the gains of the new WTO round. The World Bank projections suggest:

• 70 per cent of the gains would go to developed countries;
• Developing country gains are likely to be less than a penny-a-day per capita; and
• Poverty impacts are very small, with projected reductions of less than one per cent in the number of people living in poverty.

In a recently issued statement on the market access negotiations a group of developing countries called for the continued right to manage adjustment of tariffs in sensitive sectors so as to minimise social disruption caused by job losses and closure of enterprises.

“We demand that any further negotiations on trade liberalisation be dependent on the outcome of an evaluation of their repercussions on sustainable development and employment, especially in developing and least developed countries,” Malentacchi writes.

This demand is also included in the Summary of Trade Union Proposals to WTO trade negotiations, which was prepared by the Global Unions Group and is available at the following web address: http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991223003&Language=EN

The more comprehensive Trade Union Statement on the WTO negotiations, prepared earlier in the year by the same group, is available at the following web address: http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991221675&Language=EN

A copy of Malentacchi’s opinion column is published on the IMF website.