JAPAN: The nationwide annual “Shunto”, or spring collective bargaining offensive, was concluded on March 13. Due to the country’s prolonged economic slump and a record high unemployment rate of 5 per cent, most members of the IMF’s 2.5 million-strong affiliate, the Japan Council of Metalworkers’ Unions (IMF-JC) — a major pacesetter for wage negotiations in Japan — placed job security and maintaining current wage levels as the major priorities for this year’s negotiations. Except for one company in the auto sector – Nissan Motor Co. – there were no basic wage increases throughout the metal industry. Nissan, which is expected to announce a full recovery by this spring, offered its workers a 1,000 yen (US$7.60) monthly base pay increase.

BULGARIA: The metalworkers’ union “Metalicy”, an IMF affiliate, is organising along with other trade unions a nationwide protest throughout Bulgaria on Friday, March 22, to demand improved protection of workers’ rights to decent jobs and wages. The annual march is taking place this year against a backdrop of high and growing unemployment, increasing poverty, corruption and crime. Although the union supports in general the process to change the country’s political and economic system, it says that the model chosen by the Bulgarian government has caused too much difficulty for the workers. According to “Metalicy”, social dialogue is non-existent. Tripartite partnership mechanisms are not functioning, and social partners are not being consulted on important decisions such as the case now with price increases for electricity, heating, transportation and communication services. In addition to high unemployment, there is the widespread presence of a shadow economy, a low level of living standards and a shrinking internal market. Also, significant credit restrictions, numerous bureaucratic obstacles and major increases in patent taxes are causing particularly serious problems for small and medium-size companies. The IMF wishes to express its solidarity with “Metalicy” and the nationwide trade union protest and with the justified demands of the Bulgarian trade unions. Over 22,000 participants are expected to join the march.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Prior to the IMF’s Southern African sub-regional meeting on March 5-6 in Richards Bay, a planning meeting of women from the sub-region was conducted by Jenny Holdcroft, IMF equal rights officer, on March 4 to enable participants to share experiences and develop strategies for increasing women’s participation in IMF and affiliate unions. Discussions focussed on identifying the most useful strategies for unions to adopt in order to improve the situation of women. Recommendations which resulted from the meeting, and were subsequently adopted by unions at the sub-regional meeting, were:

• Each union must have a designated position responsible for maintaining a women’s caucus and coordinating women’s activities.
• Unions should develop projects to elect women into shop steward positions.
• Unions should provide training to organisers on how to recruit and organise women workers.
• Unions’ budgets should include a component for gender activities.
• Unions should collect information on women’s status in the union and report regularly on it.
• Women must be present at all activities of the union, i.e. training, committees, conferences.

Countries represented were Swaziland, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mauritius, Mozambique, Angola and Namibia.

BY JESPER NILSSON The world’s largest trade union body resides on two floors in an austere steel and glass building in Brussels’ business district. It has a staff of 70, plus a further 60 throughout the world, extensive policy and research activities, many publications and newsletters in a variety of languages. Guy Ryder, 46 and British, is the general secretary. Taking up his position one month ago, he has barely settled into his large but brownish-dull office facing a courtyard in the very core of the building. Liverpool-born, Ryder, who was never a worker but has an impressive track record of trade union work at national and international levels, is an eloquent speaker. In clear, well-formulated, barely-accented English, he lays out his vision about the ICFTU, this strange animal that so many know so little about. Originally shaped in 1949 as a reaction to the communist-dominated WFTU, today it affiliates national trade union centres from all over the world. Q: The ICFTU is a huge organisation, nominally representing 157 million trade union members in 148 countries. Is this just a play with large figures, or is there power and impact behind it? A: The ICFTU does have influence, it does have impact, and we are able to make a difference in many national trade union situations. But also at the international level, trying to make a difference in the international policy environment. So my answer is “yes”. These aren’t figures in the air; they matter. If we didn’t have that membership base, then we would not be listened to. And we would not deserve to be listened to. What we have to do is to translate that force of numbers into a force of argument and into impact. And I think, over the years, the ICFTU has performed pretty well in doing that. But we have to look at the new circumstances, circumstances particularly on globalisation, and assess how we could do that even better. One of the things we have to try to do is to bring the national and international dimensions of trade union work closer together. I think those of us who have worked in Europe see that the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has, in a sense, succeeded in bringing the national and European levels at least into contact – to a much greater extent I think than we’ve seen elsewhere in international work. Q: The ICFTU in 2005, how will it differ from the ICFTU of today? A: What we can say with some confidence is that we will have advanced along the process of the “Millennium Review”, and the “Global Unions’ project” which is connected with that. What we have to try to do is to ensure that we in the international trade union movement – widely defined – are using our resources to the maximum effect, to advance the interests of working people. Q: Can you briefly explain what the Millennium Review is? A: The mandate for the Millennium Review, launched at our last World Congress in 2000, is quite far-reaching. It really encompasses the future of the international trade union movement: the activities we think shall be undertaken, the manner in which we undertake our work and the structures we use. We have already achieved a wide range of recommendations. In the first place, this encompasses the Global Unions’ initiative, which I mentioned. It also gives us a mandate to go further and discuss future relations with the Christian World Confederation of Labour and look for the best possible action with the European Trade Union Confederation, ETUC. We are examining ways in which we might be able to interact most effectively, and in very concrete ways, in terms of sharing facilities and making common use of resources. Moreover, we have to identify our role in trade unions’ organisational efforts, in campaign work, in the field of youth, in the field of women. Another area is that of communications. I regard communications as perhaps the key element in bringing together the national and the international in the trade union world. Those are some of the areas. I think that it’s very difficult today to predict how far forward it will go. I think it has good momentum behind it; I think we’ve achieved quite a lot, and I think of it very much as an ongoing work. Q: The Global Unions’ project is a sort of “virtual” organisation, encompassing the ICFTU and its affiliates, the trade union secretariats (like the IMF) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC). What is this concept good for? A: We are using the Global Unions’ project to do two things. One is to underline and to reflect what is already happening. The ICFTU is working more and more closely, more and more systematically with its partners who share our values. So the Global Union group actually gives substance to this cooperation. And secondly, it gives visibility. It’s something that we can communicate very easily. If we say ‘Global Unions’ I think it strikes a chord – with the public, with the government, with workers. So what we are doing is in fact trying to create a vehicle which is going to take our cooperation forward, enabling us to provide a better service and to better achieve our goals today than we have done in the past. Q: You dwell on organisational issues and forms of cooperation. But what about the substance, the service to be provided by the ICFTU? A: I think if you go to any trade union at any level and ask them what their major problem is, they are certain to tell you: “organising workers”. All over the world, trade unions will tell you: “Well, we have a problem attracting young people.” “We have the challenge of organising women workers.” “We have difficulties because of the fragmentation of the labour market,” etc. etc. So the imperative to organise is common to the whole trade union movement. Now, you cannot be farther away from the point of organisation, yet still be in the trade union movement, than the ICFTU is. So the conclusion that I draw is that the ICFTU has to create conditions which will enable and facilitate organisation – an international enabling environment for trade unionism! Q: What does that mean, in concrete terms? A: It means defending the right to organise where that right is threatened. It means intervening along with our Global Unions’ Federation partners on multinational enterprises, to make them more open to organising efforts. It means looking at the informal economy – the unprotected and vulnerable workers – to see how they can be brought into contact with trade unions and be organised. So, in effect, you pick up the national imperatives of organisation and you translate them into the international arena. And it is up to us to pick them up, in each of their forms. Women workers, informal economy, trade union rights, intervening with the international institutions to have them facilitate the right type of environment. So it’s multifaceted. Q: You mentioned multinational enterprises. But many Global Union Federations (trade union secretariats) consider work with transnational companies as their domain. And they are not very keen in having other partners in that field. A: I think you’re right. In many ways, dealing with individual multinational employers is properly and quite rightly the domain of one of the Global Union Federations, depending on the sector. But we have ourselves a fairly extensive role to play. It could be the policy background to these individual company contacts, for example the whole field of corporate social responsibility with Codes of Conduct, the ILO Declaration and the OECD Guidelines on Multinationals. These all form part of the environment which can help contacts with individual unions to be undertaken via Global Union Federation colleagues in optimal conditions. We think that the ICFTU, in fact, is servicing Global Union Federations in their proper contacts with multinationals. And I think this is part of the partnership. We each define our role and we work in a complementary fashion to get the results. Q: Back to the ETUC, with whom you share affiliates, but not structure. Trade unionists on a European level may consider the Millennium Review sort of an ambition of the ICFTU to make the ETUC part of its structure. And they don’t like this idea. A: I don’t see it in those terms. I don’t see it as a structural debate. What we have today is a global trade union international, the ICFTU, and a regional trade union body, the ETUC. And they are not organically linked in any constitutional relationship. What I want to do with our friends in the ETUC is to ensure that the work that we do, and the work that the ETUC does, is absolutely as complementary as possible – that we don’t duplicate each other’s work, that we don’t in any way cross wires in the work we do. So that if we do one piece of work, and the ETUC does one piece of work, the sum totals two, not zero. And frankly, I don’t think this is either controversial or difficult. Q: If you look at this question from another angle, what are the weaknesses of the ICFTU today? A: I see a number of challenges. One thing is communications internally within the ICFTU and its different structures. I want to see the ICFTU in Brussels working very effectively with its own regional organisations. We had a policy of decentralisation in 1996; what I want to see is a Global Trade Union Agenda, articulated regionally. Such an agenda would of course take on certain characteristics according to the region in which it is applied. But it is the same agenda. Q: Shall we interpret this as the ICFTU decentralisation of 1996 has gone too far? A: No. I think the decentralisation of 1996 basically addressed our project work, operational activities. We were administering quite a lot of that work out of Brussels, and the 1996 Congress felt that the proper thing would be for that type of work to be done on a regional level. I think they were right. The problem we have does not come from that, but I’ve detected, after a month here, the need for us to work in a much tighter network. It’s about information, it’s about bouncing ideas off each other in a much more fluent and open way. I want to see more of that. And inside this building I want to see much more cross-fertilising of ideas and information. And, by extension, it’s exactly the same thing with our colleagues in the Global Union Federations, ETUC, TUAC and others. I think really we have a lot to do just to make sure that we are informing, consulting and working together. Q: Once again, what are today’s weaknesses… A: I’m not sure it is a weakness today, but it’s an area we can always improve upon: We have to work out the proper relationship between on the one hand lobbying – our contact with international organisations, and what might be called mobilisation and campaigning on the other. I think we have to reconcile the different parts of our work and link them together much better; it’s an integration of what we do with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, WTO, ILO on the one hand, and our capacity to really relate and to inject all of these issues at national level with all our affiliates. And mobilise them when we can. We have the example of the November 9 day of action, which coincided with the first day of the Doha ministerial meeting of the WTO. I think we need to look at that and see what we can learn from it. I think the general feeling is that it was a pretty good first attempt, but we can do better. I see us operating at these different levels. Yes, we lobby. Yes, we are an influence group in international organisation, but at the same time we shouldn’t have that existing apart from the national level trade union mobilisation that we can achieve. So, not as weaknesses, but areas that can be developed. Q: The higher up you get in the trade union structure – for example confederation level in a country – the more talk there is about very large projects and visions. Perhaps this “big” perspective is fairly easy to air, because you can do a lot of talking before you must act. And it is much harder to do anything here and now, on a concrete basis… A: Yes, I think that risk is real. If you step up the rhetoric too loud, and in fact it gets beyond what in realistic terms you can deliver, then you run the risk of what I’ve referred to as overreaching and underachieving. What I think we have to do is to make a fairly hard-headed assessment of what we really can change, what we really can affect in the world. The level of our ambitions and objectives has to be in touch with our real possibilities. I don’t say that we should lack ambition, but I agree, there is a danger that the rhetoric of what we are saying about globalisation, about the world of work, is not in the same ballpark as our real capacities to change things. If so, we run the risk of not being credible. And I think we should be very careful about our credibility. Q: This assessment of ICFTU possibilities, when will it be finished? A: There are a number of time horizons which I’m working towards now. The first is our Steering Committee in June. We then have our Executive Board meeting in November, and the third and final time horizon is our next World Congress, which is in 2004. I’ll be looking already at the Steering Committee to set out some framework of ideas about the direction I believe the organisation should be moving in, and hopefully be able to get some firm decisions on whatever proposals I then have at the Executive Board. But I think we are really looking to our next World Congress as a real review and strategic building period. Q: Quite an ambitious timetable… A: Some people think it looks a long way away, but given the size of the issues we have to deal with, it’s about right.

BY TONI FERIGO Now that the application by the Algerian Metalworkers’ Federation has been accepted, all the major unions representing the metalworkers of the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) are IMF affiliates. This is very important, particularly at present. International solidarity also means mutual understanding, and contact between different cultures. Leaving behind any easy stereotypes, exploring the cultural and political history of Arab societies in all their complexities, and even — why not? — acknowledging the mistakes and responsibilities of each actor, such efforts are the foundation upon which dialogue can be developed and common objectives can be identified. Arab nations are going through a very difficult time in their history. Most of the hopes fostered by the decolonisation process have been shattered, giving way to frustration, the stifling of civil society, and a bitter sense of resentment, often bursting out into violent extremism. The crucial role of civic organisations in these societies is testified by the history of the labour movement in Tunisia, which has always had a dialectical relationship — and at times a conflict — with the economic and political authorities of the country. To many observers, the Arab Muslim world seems almost self-entrenched, incapable of any serious modernisation, and torn apart by conflicting trends, either towards secularisation or towards radical fundamentalism. In this part of the world, globalisation seems to have been met only by identity-based resistance, all too hastily labelled as anti-modern. Furthermore, while the success of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre has been hailed by many as a sign of hope, the Arab world was not present at the Forum. At first sight, one would comment that this part of the world has hardly contributed at all to the struggle against neo-liberalism. Such views are one-sided and thwarted, but they are very widespread in the West, and we should wonder why. A clash of civilisations? After September 11th, I have had the opportunity to attend a great many debates on the relationship between the West and Islam, and I have met many Arab intellectuals and human rights activists, and many Muslim trade unionists. A question keeps coming up, again and again: “Why is the relationship between the West and Islam so often loaded with mutual mistrust, lack of communication, and widespread stereotyping? Are we really faced with the process described by a scientist as ‘a clash of civilisations’ “? There can be different answers to these questions, but all are focused around some common issues: let us briefly examine them, using the Maghreb as a frame of reference. Is there one Islam, or many? The trend in the West is to have a uniform, nearly monolithic image of Islam. Such an image is also fostered by the myths which have travelled across the Muslim world: pan-Arabism, the Great Arab Nation, the Community (umma) of Believers — notions which are now coming back under new guises, such as the Islamic International, and so forth. In fact, this is not the way things stand. First of all, the religious history of Muslim countries has experienced many controversies (often leading to confrontation) between different schools of thought, for one the major split between Sunnis and Shiites. In this context, one can identify a wide range of religious approaches which are not very different from their Christian equivalents — from the “mysticism” of Sufi tradition to theological rationalism, from calls to the original spirit of Islam to strict formalistic interpretations of the law… And, more than that, the political history of these nations has indeed experienced many conflicts and tensions. The history of the Maghreb is indeed the clearest example of this. Solidarity among Maghrebi nationalists during the independence war was followed by growing tension between the various states, which took diverging positions in the international scenario of the Cold War. Therefore, it took the fall of the Berlin Wall before the nations of the Maghreb began discussing among themselves a serious process of regional convergence and cooperation, and they still have a long way to go. Ideological, political and military conflicts (particularly the dispute between Algeria and Morocco over the Sahara) have led to an almost complete lack of economic relations among them. In the late ’80s, commercial relations among the countries of the Maghreb were virtually non-existent, and accounted for less than 11 per cent of the foreign trade of each country. The clearest example of this is given by Algerian hydrocarbon products, all exported to Europe. Something has been changing, however. In 1989, a historical meeting was held in Marrakech, leading to the establishment of the Union of the Arab Maghreb (UAM). So far, however, results have not been very brilliant. As written by a Tunisian economist, “The peoples of the Maghreb ignore one another, while their societies are affected by the same processes of deep social change (urbanisation, lower birth rates, more secular and individualistic behaviour…). Such lack of cooperation can mainly be ascribed to two factors: the dispute over the Sahara and the civil war in Algeria, which have heavily undermined the relations between Algeria and the rest of the region. But widespread Western ignorance concerns something more than the ability to discern different schools of thought, or historical conflicts such as that between Sunnis and Shiites. A gross example of such ignorance is the widespread tendency to equate Islam and the Arab world. Yet, not only the country with the largest Muslim population in the world is Indonesia, but the majority of peoples whose religion is Islam are not at all Arabs. History has produced an Indian Islam, a Persian Islam, a Balkan Islam, and nowadays… a Western European Islam. Social and political Islamist movements, too, are characterised by a wide range of diverse views and include not only Arab theoreticians, but also Pakistani, Malay and of course Persian thinkers. A lot of emphasis has been placed on the “Holy War”, on Arab militias in Afghanistan, on the Islamic International as the International of Terror, but anyone even minimally acquainted with Middle East societies would be aware of the tensions between Arabs and Persians-Iranians, and of how basically alien are Central Asians to them. Nor should we forget that one of the bloodiest wars in the second half of the 20th century was the conflict between Iran and Iraq. And yet, for political reasons, a uniform and stereotyped image of Islam is still what the West prefers to see. In the eyes of Western public opinion (and in Russia and Eastern Europe as well), Islam is often equated with intolerance, and Islamism with violence and terror. Of course, such an image has been nurtured by specific, concrete events; it is not merely the fruit of manipulation and propaganda. But why has it become such a reductionist stereotype? What lies behind the stereotype Many Muslim intellectuals believe that this lopsided view of Islam is basically the result of three factors: 1) The first dates way back before modern times in European history, in the Middle Ages, when Islam was perceived as an expansionist religion. Indeed, the battle of Lepanto is still celebrated today, and we all know the myths which were developed in the Balkans around the 1389 battle of Kosovo. In the mental landscape of Europeans, Saracens are imagined as violent conquerors. In the Arab world, of course, roles are reversed: it is the Crusaders who are remembered as bloody predators, while the men perceived by Europe as dictators and torturers — such as Saladdin or Suleiman — are remembered as noble heroes, great princes and leaders. Hence, it stands to reason that Bin Laden intends to fight against the Crusaders, while President Bush intends to launch a new Crusade! 2) The second factor is the legacy of colonialism, when anyone resisting against French or British rule was treated as a “terrorist”. Nothing new. For Milosevic, all Kosovo Albanians were terrorists, and — as a young Tunisian once said to me laughingly — “for Sharon all Palestinian nationalists are terrorists (forgetting the experience of Zionist terrorism), and so are all Chechens, according to Mr Putin.” A French intellectual, and a real expert in Maghrebi affairs, once summed up this kind of attitude towards Islam with the following words: “The association between Islam and terrorism is strongly linked to an ideological construct. In France, there is something more than that, rooted in our colonialist past, and more specifically to the Algerian experience. Remember the comments by certain sectors of the press, who wrote about ‘those butchers’ of the National Liberation Front. This kind of colonialist past still has some influence.” 3) The third factor emerged after decolonisation, which in many countries was followed by the rise of heavily centralised and authoritarian regimes. Liberation wars led to the “militarisation” of politics and the repression of any dissent. These harsh regimes, and the failure of their projects of modernisation from above, are among the causes of the rise of violent Islamist groups. Nasser’s jails in Egypt, or the prisons of the Baath state in Syria, have fostered the growth of some of the most extreme and violent Islamist factions. Reading the biographies of the theoreticians of Islamist radicalism, one can see that repression, imprisonment, torture played a key role in the violent course chosen by such fringe groups, and one can also see how they were instrumental to those authoritarian governments, who actually made use of them to consolidate their rule. Finally, the Cold War irrevocably marked the end of a myth: pan-Arabism. Entrenchment of identity There is one further hurdle, the so-called “entrenchment of identity”. Indeed, one of the effects of globalisation has been the emergence of identity-based movements. An American academic, Professor B. Barber, in his book, “Jihad versus McWorld”, has developed an interesting theory. In his view, the expansion of the McWorld, symbol of cultural homogenising all over the world, breeds a parallel and proportional mechanism of self-defence in the local populations, who feel their culture threatened by internationalisation. It is a global phenomenon, affecting each and every continent. In Europe, we have even witnessed the birth of xenophobic organisations (such as the Northern League in Italy, Haider’s movement in Austria, or xenophobic right-wing extremists in Flanders) based on self-fabricated identities, and on the idea that all Others, those who are different from Us, are the enemy. In many countries religion is a strong component of people’s identity. This is true not only in the Muslim world, where religion has a primary role in society, but also in highly secularised societies, such as former Yugoslavia or the former Soviet Union. One could not say, however, that religion is at the root of conflicts which are in fact caused by economic, social and political factors, though they are clothed as religious and identity-based. Of course, religion can play an important role in what British historian Hobsbawm has defined as “the construction of national identity”. Nationalism is the product of a policy; the educational system, the army, the intellectuals, all jointly concur to its construction. This is true particularly for those states whose frontiers were established by the great Powers after the fall of vast inter-ethnic empires such as the Ottoman Empire. Even today, North Africa is still thick with border disputes. So religion can be used as a strong element of national identity, as well as for political purposes. As recalled by Tarik Ramadan, an Egyptian intellectual living in Geneva: “We should refrain from jumping to conclusions: it is not religions that have a problem with power, or with violence, it is simply human beings. And Muslim intellectuals should be very clear about the use of violence.” Undoubtedly, however, religion does carry an enormous weight in Muslim societies. That is why some social scientists have developed obsolete notions such as “the pious middle classes”, or have assimilated some of the notions used by Islamist radicals to the language of Western political vocabulary. Such a relevance of religious experience makes Muslim societies difficult to understand for a Westerner. Furthermore, some references and concepts can easily be instrumentalised, a typical example being the notion of Jihad, inaccurately translated as Holy War. Following the advice of Arab friends, I read the publications of some Sufi brotherhoods (the mystical trend within Islam), heavily criticised by fundamentalists. Well, for them, Jihad meant spiritual quest, striving for self-improvement, against the negative forces which inhabit every one of us, and taking action to achieve social justice. It is commonly believed in the West that Muslim societies should become more secularised, and that the mingling between religion and politics is the prime cause of all their problems. There are many different views about this issue. Some acknowledge that the greatest challenge is to establish the independence of politics from religion, while others count on Islamic values as the best way to bring about an open and pluralistic society. “Secularism — they say — is not a universal model. Even in Europe, different notions of secularism are found in the various countries, according to their history, and to their philosophical and religious traditions. In the Muslim world, secularism has been used by some countries — such as Syria, and particularly Iraq — as the foundation of their repressive policies. The only universal criteria are universal values, and not models of society, which can indeed vary. Secularism cannot be forced upon a society by order of law, whereas policies inspired by the values of justice and freedom, which are at the heart of Islam, can and should be pursued. Justice matters more than a spirit of belonging, and the meeting point among all of us should be the respect for fundamental human rights.” A shared challenge On the basis of such shared values, we should then search for a common route to follow in the maze of globalisation, in a spirit of respect towards each and every different culture. The perspective of a united Maghreb associated to the European Union not only through trade and economics, but also politically and socially, is the only valid perspective for the region. It requires the existence of open, pluralistic societies, where civil society, and first and foremost labour and employers’ organisations, play an active role. In this perspective, the battle for the respect of democratic freedoms and labour rights, and against any form of fundamentalism, is a common front involving both shores of the Mediterranean. Before the summer, the IMF will organise a sub-regional conference for its affiliates in North Africa, to discuss regional objectives and action plans. The first objective is to promote educational and training initiatives at regional level, in cooperation with European trade unions. The second objective is to develop dialogue, to foster better mutual understanding, to set aside, as I said above, any stereotype or schematic perception. To this end, a major contribution can be made by the many trade union activists from the Maghreb who are actively engaged in the French and Spanish unions. On the “Western” side, on the other hand, growing efforts are needed to look at the complex reality of the Arab world with different eyes, leaving behind those Euro-centric attitudes which to some extent are found in the trade unions as well, with a view to building the alliance between North and South which is needed for a new world order to come about. The fundamentalist danger can be defeated mostly through such means.

BY MOGENS HAVNSØE PETERSEN Ding Tei Bing and his family live in the port city of Qinhuangdao — just under 300 kilometers east of China’s capital, Beijing. The city has 2.5 million inhabitants. Its name — Qinhuangdao — means, in a free translation, “the city of the first emperor”. Bing and his wife, Mao Li Lau, both work at the huge government port at Qinhuangdao. The harbour is one of China’s biggest shipping ports for coal. The coal is transported more than one thousand kilometers on a special railway track from the Chinese province of Jiangxi in southeast China. The government-owned docks occupy more than 18,000 people. 520 of them work with Bing and Lau at the large machine factory on the docks. The assignments at the machine factory are production and maintenance of the kilometer-long conveyor belt that carries the coal around between the ships and the 250-square kilometer large storage site. SOCIAL NETWORK
Traditionally, a government-owned Chinese company is not just a workplace — it is the entire social network of the people who work there. The government port of Qinhuangdao has its own hospital, kindergarten and resthome, all operated in a cooperation between the company and the trade union at the company. The port of Qinhuangdao is facing a new era. The entire company is to be privatised. The country’s economic system is changing rapidly. A market economy is being introduced instead of a planned economy. This process involves some fundamental changes. The biggest change has to do with the turn from a peasant society to that of a modern industrial country. China has always been a nation of farmers, with more than 80 per cent of the population living in the rural areas. China still has 990,000 villages. However, over the last 10-20 years, the traditional divide between city and countryside has changed more than ever before in China’s history. NEW STRATEGY
The changes started in 1977, when Deng Xiaoping took power in China. As secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping represented a different policy than Mao Zedong. Following the years of Mao’s very ideologically conditioned, but economically disastrous ideas, it was now realised that China had to find a solution to some fundamental problems. The biggest problems were: a stagnant economy, the shortage of food in the cities, inefficiency of the state-run factories and a surplus of labour in the rural areas. Deng Xiaoping thought these problems could be solved by reforming the economic system and allowing a transition to a market economy. Deng Xiaoping succeeded in getting the process started, and to critics who accused him of introducing capitalism, he said the now famous words: “I don’t care what colour the cat is, as long as it catches mice.” Liberalisation of the Chinese economy started in the early 1980s. Today, some 20 years later, the change that started then inspires optimism and faith in the future in Ding Tei Bing and Mao Li Lau. Or, as Ding Tei Bing formulates it himself: “I had never imagined that I would see the progress which I and my family have experienced over the last ten years. It is incredible.” CONTINUED GROWTH
Measured by its gross domestic product, China is today the world’s seventh-biggest economy. Since the start of the economic reform policy in 1978, the Chinese economy has grown seven-fold. One of the 20th century’s biggest economic achievements is the fact that one-fifth of the Earth’s population has been able to markedly improve its living conditions in less than 20 years. Despite the major changes in Chinese society and the major social changes in China’s many regions during its vehement economic development, economic stability has characterised the development. In 2001, China became a full member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Additional liberalisation of China’s economy and foreign trade is thus expected in the coming years. In 2010, China is expected to be one of the world’s biggest economies. Many foreign companies have already chosen to establish a presence in the form of their own company in China. More will follow in order to get a bite of the huge Chinese market, which is expected to continue to grow rapidly. BING
Back to Ding Tei Bing. Bing (35) has worked since 1988 as a machine operator at a machine factory associated with the port. He is married to Mao Li Lau (35), who works at the same plant. They have a boy, Ding Yi (10), and live in a 2-room apartment purchased from the state-owned port. At the plant, the workroom is big, grey and not very well lit. The large windows in the side walls are not too transparent. The room has a natural division in the form of two of the bearing concrete pillars. On the one side are mainly small lathes. On the other side are a number of larger machines. In the middle, Ding Tei Bing stands at a huge lathe and is processing a big workpiece. The end wall is covered by the ever-present slogans in giant Chinese characters. Translated into English, it says: “We must strive for good quality standards.” Bing (in China the first name is written at the end) is the epitome of this slogan. Several times he has won internal, technical competitions at the plant, which — in addition to the honour — has also resulted in a cash reward. When you see him work, you notice the calm, targeted movements of his hands — movements that are characteristic of hands that know what they have to do. The tolerances for his work are 1/100 of a millimeter. He is a very smiling person, with strong eyes in a pronounced face where the slightly protruding cheekbones radiate strength. “I became a metalworker because I see a little of it during my four years in the army. I served in a service unit, but actual training I have not received until I was employed here. Today I am able to operate all machines in the workshop,” he says. The job with the factory was something his father helped him with. He knew someone who knew someone. Personal contacts are a necessity and deeply rooted in Chinese culture. Without contacts you are nothing, and that is why some of the power structures in Chinese society are often quite impossible to understand for us as – in this context – more rule-bound Westerners. You may have the fanciest of titles, but if you do not have the right personal relations, your title is worth nothing. However, it has become more normal for a job to be advertised. Around half the positions are now filled in this way. DOING WELL
However, Bing has found his position in the world’s most populous country, which adds 15 million inhabitants every year and where some 1.26 billion (1,260,000,000) Chinese reside at the moment. “Ten years ago, I would not have dreamt that my family and I would be doing so well. The last ten years have been one long period of progress, when we have become better off all the time. I remember what it was like before and in my childhood. There was poverty and we lived under poor conditions with very little to eat,” he says. No doubt that Bing’s own skills have helped get him the good conditions he has today, but there is no doubt either that if the course had not been laid by Deng Xiaoping, China’s undisputed leader from Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 until his own in 1997, China would still have been stuck with a planned economy characterised by inefficiency and closedness. True enough, the plant where Bing works is state-owned, but here, too, the market economy is knocking on the door. There is talk of rationalisations which could lead to dismissals. The plant is only one of more which subcontract to the giant port. Bing’s plant is covered by a joint ownership structure for the whole port, which employs over 18,000 workers. All in all, 26 different plants are associated with the state-owned docks. HEAVY ITEMS
Bing’s plant and its 520 employees — 300 of whom are metalworkers — carry out some of the bigger repair works on the coal shipment installations, and since coal is heavy, mainly heavy-duty items are processed. Bing has quite a lot of work with the rollers and bearings required by the many kilometers of conveyor belt on the docks. Consequently, the workpieces to be placed in the lathe are not easy to lift up to the lathe. On each side of the workshop hall is a manned crane that carries the heavy, raw — and subsequently processed — spare parts. “Manned” is not the right word, by the way, for in each of the cranes sits a woman, just as 26 of the workshop’s 68 employees are women. One of these women is Bing’s wife, Mao Li Lau, who operates the machine just adjacent to his lathe. Bing and Lau quickly took an interest in each other when they were employed in 1988 and in that same year they married. The wedding? “We got married and then we bought two tickets to Beijing and went on a short honeymoon,” says Lau with a mischievous smile. Bing calls it pure luck that they met that way, and he sees no problem in being so close to his wife all day — on the contrary. Their day begins at 6 a.m. when they get up and get ready, then make breakfast for their 10-year-old son Yi and prepare him for school, where he starts class at 8:10. All meals in China are hot. Dinner is often purchased as a readymade meal from one of the numerous food stalls which are close to their home. LONG LUNCH BREAK
They, themselves, start at 8 a.m. and work until noon, when there is a lunch break — 3 hours during the summer and 2 hours during the winter. They don’t always go home for the lunch break. Often they stay at the plant, where they can heat the lunch they have brought with them. Work finishes at 5 p.m. in the winter and at 6 p.m. in the summer. The long lunch break is there for a good reason during the summer, when the moist heat does not further productivity — especially not in the middle of the day. There is a lot of overtime worked — it is organised and has statutory maximum limits, but exports of coal are not allowed to grind to a halt because a conveyor belt breaks down. Overtime pays 50 per cent extra from Monday to Friday, double on Saturday, and three times the hourly pay on Sunday and national holidays — such as May 1. Bing says that his and his wife’s income varies a lot. Including overtime and bonuses, they total 2,500-3,000 yuan (US$302-362) a month. Being employees of a state-owned enterprise, they do not pay tax, but at any rate the state tax is very low. Bing and his wife pay no trade union subscriptions either. On the other hand, state-owned enterprises pay 2 per cent of their turnover to the trade union which is organised in the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). This union has a serious organisational problem in that the trade unions have members primarily in state-run enterprises, while there is only a weak organisational basis in the steadily increasing number of private companies. In a few years’ time, membership in the ACFTU fell from 135 million to “only” 80 million members. OPTIMIST
Sitting in his apartment with his wife and son, Bing is happy and optimistic: “We purchased our apartment for 25,000 yuan (US$3,000) which we had saved. We have a regular job in a good factory, and through the trade union we will get a secured old age,” he says. The local metalworkers’ union is active and strong and organises leisure activities for Yi and the other children of workers at the plant. Bing does not doubt the necessity of the trade unions: “The trade union protects the workers’ living conditions, e.g. in relation to overtime work but also when we welcome new colleagues,” he says. Bing and Lau are very happy about their boy, but they stress that his choice of a future occupation is entirely his own. Yi’s dream is to enter university and become a scientist. The field of research he also knows already. Astronomy is his strong interest and he has a pair of binoculars to study the stars. Just like most other boys on this Earth, he loves to play football. His room is a kind of living room also, with an office desk, an old television and a computer. The wall decorations are modest — an alphabet poster and an oversized dollar note with his face copied into it. He had that made during a family trip to Beijing, which is about 300 kilometers away. This is the kind of thing the family can now afford to do when they go away for the 15 days’ holiday to which they are entitled every year. KAREOKI
The whole apartment is clean and neat. Their wealth by Chinese standards can be seen from a rather advanced TV system in the master bedroom/living room, where a DVD player — so popular in the East — is also featured, allowing you to sing kareoki to popular tunes. What is seen from the street that looks like a closed balcony is in fact a kitchen attached to the apartment. In Bing and Lau’s case, it even features an almost new cooker hood above the bottled gas stove. All in all, the apartment is 58 square meters. Once you enter the apartment, it makes you wonder why there is talk of a special Chinese construction style for dwellings — that seems exaggerated. There are square concrete boxes everywhere, the only variation being height, and with everything looking a bit worn-down and old-fashioned. External appearances are not focused on — which can be seen from some external pipe systems at the height of the first floor. Bing repeats that ten years ago he would not have believed that they would have reached the standard of living they have now. “Compared with that time, we have a comfortable life. I am an optimist.” To the question of whether he believes progress will continue, he says: “In our factory, it depends on how well we each perform. If we do not introduce changes, we will not survive.”

GLOBAL: The IMF’s Steering Group on BHP-Billiton met on March 7 in South Africa to discuss the abuse of workers’ and trade union rights at the giant metals and mining group. This has involved, amongst others, significant difficulties for collective bargaining at the company’s Pilbara operations in Western Australia, its Cerro Matoso nickel mine operations in Colombia, and its aluminium producer Mozal, in Mozambique. The Steering Group, made up of representatives from the IMF and affiliates in Australia, South Africa, Mozambique, Canada and Colombia, discussed at length the extremely serious and on-going situation at Mozal, where 40 workers – all members of the IMF-affiliated SINTIME trade union – were fired last October when they resorted to strike action over collective bargaining demands. The company had previously coerced workers into accepting a no-strike clause in their collective agreement, in contravention of ILO core conventions, and which the government of Mozambique has ratified. The IMF Steering Group on BHP-Billiton will be contacting the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM), which also has affiliates representing workers at BHP-Billiton, with a view to active cooperation between the two global union federations concerning the mining and metals transnational company.

GERMANY: Volkswagen has started hiring for its job creation project called “5,000 times 5,000”. The company reached an agreement last summer with the German government and with the German metalworkers’ union IG Metall to employ and train as many as 5,000 jobless workers — 3,500 for the carmaker’s operations in Wolfsburg and 1,500 for Hanover.
Although VW had initially proposed creating the 5,000 new jobs at an average monthly pay rate of 5,000 German marks, IG Metall demanded an adjustment to the original project so that existing standards for the 35-hour week and wages in the regional agreement for the metal industry be met. (In Germany, automakers such as DaimlerChrysler, BMW, Ford and Opel are covered by regional agreements for the metal industry, whereas VW has an enterprise collective agreement for Volkswagen AG, excluding Audi and VW Saxonia.)
With a jobless rate of four million people, or over 10 per cent of Germany’s workforce out of work, as many as 70,000 job seekers are expected to apply for the 3,500 jobs in Wolfsburg, where VW’s new mini-van model is being built. The applicants must either be out of work or faced with layoff.

USA: The IMF-affiliated International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) reports that a new 5-year collective agreement was ratified on March 5, 2002, by its mechanic and related employees at United Airlines, and thus brings to an end the 27-month-old contract dispute at the USA’s No. 2 airlines.
The IAM says that the settlement, which is retroactive to July 12, 2000, will make the union’s 13,000 mechanics and related employees at United Airlines the highest paid in the airline industry.
The agreement was ratified by 59 per cent of the voting membership.
Separate negotiations are still being held to resolve a two-year contract impasse at United for 30,000 IAM employees in ramp services, stores, public contact, food services and security officers.

COLOMBIA: After experiencing considerable difficulty in their negotiations to finalise a new collective agreement, the metalworkers’ and miners’ trade union Utrammicol reports that a deal has been agreed between the union and management at the Cerro Matoso nickel mine, in northern Colombia. When the union and the 600 workers at the BHP Billiton-owned mine threatened strike action over their demands for better working conditions, the company, which is financially viable, finally decided to change its position.
The two-year contract contains important improvements with regard to wages, health, education and job security.
On January 30, the IMF had informed its affiliates about the difficult situation at the nickel mine, and requested solidarity support with the workers and their trade union.
Cerro Matoso workers and Utrammicol have expressed their appreciation to the IMF and its affiliates for their interventions.