Newsletter No. 27
APRIL / MAY 2005
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Record working poor as West wallows in waste The number of workers earning less than two dollars a day and living in abject poverty is a record 1.4 billion, half the world’s employed workforce of 2.8 billion people. Another 185 million are unemployed, of whom half are young people (15-24 years), who are also a quarter of the 550 million earning less than one dollar a day (World Employment Report 2004 & Global Employment Trends for Youth 2004). The International Labor Organisation — composed of employers, governments and unions — calls for a boost to enterprise productivity as it will lower costs and boost profits, and ‘overall’ create more jobs, higher earnings for workers and reduced working time. The ILO does concede, however, that the more immediate effect seems to be job loss and decline in earnings, and workers are ‘the first victims of major shifts in job opportunities’. The ILO proposes workers get more training, to better handle changing labour markets and to ‘considerably’ accelerate global economic growth to create new jobs. Unfortunately for this theory, the first things poor countries toss to attract investment are labour rights, because ‘footloose’ capital demands a ‘liberal economic policy’ in its constant search for ‘cheaper & more docile labour’. This is often code for young women, denied their rights to join a union, working in virtual slavery (www.icftu.org/www/PDF/EPZreportE.pdf). Capital imposes this ‘drive to the bottom’ because it desperately needs to extract every last ounce of surplus from labour. It seeks out those areas where elementary conditions for development exist, but capital is scarce, labour and other costs are low and profits can be higher than in more developed economies. (see ‘Imperialism, Highest Stage of Capitalism’ V. Lenin). At the other end is the mindless affluence enjoyed, for the moment at least, in rich western countries such as Australia. Wasteful consumption — spending on goods and services not used — costs Australian society ‘at least $10.5 billion a year and contributes to a mounting crisis in waste management’. This is 13 times the amount households give to overseas aid in a year. The wasters tend to be ‘young, rich or both’. Many feel guilty about the waste, but ‘40% are not particularly worried, or even (think) about it’ (‘Wasting away: a gluttonous nation’ SMH 19.3.05). Seventy one per cent of Australians say they worry about global warming, but we live materialistic, wasteful lives, seemingly without thought about environmental impact, or at whose cost our lifestyles come. Australia’s people must face up to the enormous, unsustainable global disparities of wealth and work that exist and act towards a more equitable sharing of work time and resources among working humanity. Setting global labour standards — pivotally, hours worked for a living wage — is a key condition in achieving this. |