Neo-liberal globalization in the 21st Century; problems and prospects for the trade union movement
NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION IN THE 21st CENTURY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS FOR THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
Being a paper presented at the December 20 – 22, 2006, Public Services International Workshop on “The future of Public Sector Unions in Nigeria” Kaduna – Nigeria by Baba Aye, National Auditor, LP
INTRODUCTION
We wish to start by commending the apt theme of this workshop: “Workers in the changing world of work”.
We have however, taken the liberty to re-phrase this paper’s title. This is for the following reasons. “Trade union survival” really is very important, considering the onslaught of neo-liberal globalisation’s “for-profit’ crusade which is rolling back both the state and rights won through two hundred years of struggle by workers and their trade unions. Job losses are reflected in dwindling unions’ memberships. “Doctrinaire free-market ideologies” are setting new bench-marks of values, institutional relevance and power balances not exactly favourable to the union movement in the “world of work” and society; the world, regions and countries. We are strongly of the view though that, a teleological approach based on a grasp of the world of work and the centrality of this world to social life itself would better equip us in strategizing. A “coping”, “survivalist” approach to defining the role of trade unions and the working class could be more “tailist” or “reactionist” than pro-active and transformative.
The “globalizing era” is presented by apostles of capital as “neutral”, “objectively technology-driven” and probably the pathway to a “post-industrial society”, that is “classless” in the sense of a Marcusean “one-dimensional man’s.
We have defined globalization by its driving ideology which is neo-liberalism. It could be more apt as Madunagu (2006) does to further define this for us not to be in doubt about who benefits from the forces changing the world of work, that we are here talking of neo-liberal capitalism, and the globalization of capital.
We have defined this “era” quite clearly as the 21st Century because as Adrian White, (2006) put it “the world outlook in the first years of the 21st century is already dramatically changed from the optimistic years of 1970s”. This could better help us situate the problems and prospects, challenges and possible strategic approaches that confront us and that are open to us.
Finally we have made the trade union movement and not just the trade unions our subject. This would entail an outlook that integrates the challenges and prospects that the era presents to trade unions, national trade union centres/federations and the Global Unions/international trade union movement. We must point out here that this cannot but involve to some extent the relationship between the trade union movement and the broader labour movement.
We shall now look at the “world of work” and how it is changing. We shall look at the forces that in contention are driving these changes in what is generally called globalization and the globalism behind it. We shall try to identify the key problems this changes present to the trade union movement and understand the prospects the movement has. On the basis of these we shall posit alternatives and possible strategies for the trade union movement and the working class which it represents to survive and indeed transcend the present era by bringing to birth ‘a new world’ which “is possible” and “not for sale”.
WORK AND THE WORLD OF WORK
The place to start this paper from might be seeking to understand what ‘the world of work’ is. It is on the basis of this that we can grapple with the changing of this world and how it changes the ‘whole wide world’ in the social evolution of humankind or what we might call, history.
Thus as Otobo (2000) put it, we cannot but ask “what is work in the modern context?”. As he further points out, “one goes to work, to an office, to a factory, an activity that is at once detached from and yet critical to the life of the wage-earner in modern society”.
Otobo copiously quoting from Braverman (1974) shows the difference of the “conscious and purposive” activities of human beings which is work from the instinctive “work of other animals”. We are further made to realize that the distinctness of this “conscious and purposive” work of human lies in the fact that “the unity of conception and execution may be dissolved”. This is at the root of division of labour such that the labour process could be so organized socially as to ensure that some other persons not necessarily involved in the execution of work could appropriate the wealth created by the labour of (many) other people. Labour creates not only wealth, it is at the heart and soul of social-human life itself. As Braverman put it “Labour that transcends mere instinctual activity is thus the force which created humankind and the force by which humankind created the world as we know it”.
Human labour acts upon nature, transforming it and in that process transforms itself. This constitutes the object of labour. In more primitive societies, this object(s) could be direct nature itself. As labour transforms itself and the continuum of nature it acts on, over centuries and millennia, the objects become semi processed or processed such as micro-chips, processors, nuclear materials, optic fibres, etc.
Labour acts on objects using implements. The historical process of humankind’s development involves these implements or tools getting more sophisticated.
These; objects of labour, the implements of labour and labour (which is work), constitute the productive forces of society in their dynamic interaction which is spurred and maintained by the only living attribute in these, which is labour.
It is also important to point out here that human labour or work is always social. This characteristic which is a critical enabling and necessary condition for the division of labour is as well the basis of economic relations. The social organization of work is thus constructed as a reflection of subsisting class relations, while actually being where these classes-formation spring from.
The world of work is the space and inherent dynamics-in-it of the social organization of labour or what we could call the labour process. In modern industrial society it could be said to be the industrial relations system (IRS here is distinguished from IRS that we would consider as an ideological construct to further the control or the working class in the name of pluralism/social dialogue and such similar nursery tales).
“The arena of work” involves organizational systems with persons carrying out tasks towards fulfilling the organisation’s goals.
This view which sees organizations as “human living systems” (Diek van Groen, 2006) might mask the reality of antagonisms which mark the world of work. The world of work is where the conflicts between capital and labour are seemingly united for the purpose of social production, distribution and exchange of goods and services.
It must be said on a final note that social organisation of labour is broader than the formal organizations of modern industrial society. The peasant – farmer tilling his little piece of land is part and parcel of the world of work as is the computer science trainee in say Microsoft for example. The world of work could thus be said to be the work of the world being the engine room of humankind’s socio-economic reproduction of itself.
THE WORKING CLASS, WORKING PEOPLE AND TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
To understand what the working class is, we cannot but ask; “what are classes?”
According to Lenin
We call classes large groups of people that are distinctive by the place they occupy in a definite historically established system of social production; by their relations towards the means of production in the majority of cases (not always) fixed and formulated in law; by their role in the social system of labour; and consequently, by their method of obtaining the share of national wealth which they dispose of, and by the size of that share. Classes are such groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the difference in their position in a given system of social economy.
The existence of classes thus reflects division of labour that allows the dominant class to exploit and oppress the dominated class. Ake (1978) further shows that classes can on this basis be understood as the two sides of a coin. This is to say that there are basically two classes in any dominant economic system in a social-economic formation.
Otobo (2005) points out that “the economic system” is a description of: ownership of the goods and services; how the quality (and quality)of the goods to be produced is determined; how the goods are to be distributed.
The modern industrial system is based on the capitalist mode of production and economic system. Ownership of goods and services is vested in the capitalists sometimes subtly referred to as the entrepreneurs. The working class is that segment of the working people, the toilers in modern industrial society who are subordinated to capital and through this have the product of their labour, and the social wealth alienated from them.
The working class structure has changed with the development of capitalism from its mercantilist to its industrial, to its finance and presently information-driven characteristics. Several studies have however shown the belief propagated by some bourgeois theorists that the working class is becoming a thing of the past and capitalism is becoming a post-industrial society to be based on false premises.
The working class is the creation of capital and it alone can bury capital and capitalism, due to the logic of its role in capital‘s necessary reproduction.
The working people is a broader category which includes the working class and all other strata, classes aid segments of classes that genuinely work as toilers and that are in several degrees subordinated to and dominated by capital.
The working people include the working class as its most organized expression, the poor peasants, urban poor artisans, lower level professionals and the intelligentsia.
The trade union movement is the primary organized expression of the working class.
Trade unions were formed in the late eighteenth to early nineteent century by workers “to defined themselves” as White put it in the face of “appalling conditions” of work and the deprivations wrought by capitalism, in the wake of the industrial revolution.
The early trade unions were hounded. Laws such as the anti-combination laws of 1800 were used in attempts to chain the growing solidarity and power of the working class which trade unions were building. In the 1830s, “workers who dared to form a union – the “Tolpuddle martyrs- were packed off an a convict ship to Australia”.
The bourgeoisie however could not stop the growing might of trade unions and by the 1830s, the earliest trade union federations emerged in Britain through the efforts of organizers like Robert Owen.
Capitalism being an international system, the working class which it created was internationalist too. And so “from the earliest days, unions were also looking beyond national borders to protect their members.”
The International Workingmen’s Association otherwise known as the First International was formed in London in 1864. Karl Marx was one of its leaders and without any doubt, its greatest thinker. “Its First Congress was held in 1866 in Geneva”.
The International championed the 8-hour work day which would still take the spilling of the blood of the Haymarket martyrs two decades after, before it would be granted by the capitalists.
The First International collapsed amidst intrigues spurred by anarchists in the wake of the 1871 Paris Commune.
The second international which had one of its founding resolutions as the call to workers of the world to celebrate May 1 annually as International Day of Workers Solidarity was formed on July, 14,1889, the Centennial anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, in Paris. Interestingly there were actually two simultaneous founding congresses in Paris. We shall not go into this due to space and time, here.
1889 also witnessed the establishment of the first “international industry federations” with the formation of the International Federation of Boot and shoe operatives and the international Typographical Secretariat. Subsequently the miners in 1890, clothing workers in 1893, metal workers, in 1893, textile workers in 1874, lithographers and transport workers in 1896 and hatters in 1900 formed their international federations. The P.S.I was formed later in 1907.
These international Federations were known as International Trade Secretariats till they re-organised, themselves in 2002 into ten Global Union Federations that meet at least twice annually.
Trade unions saw the need to organize internationally beyond sectoral boundaries and in 1903 the international secretariat of National Trade Union centres was formed “This was purely a European organization.” The name was changed to the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) in 1913, three years after the AFL-CIO accepted to join the international trade union centre.
An important development in the world of work took place in 1919 with the establishment of the International Labour Organization, in the wake of the Versailles peace treaty that marked the end of WWI. Trade unions and labour partisans played a key role in lobbying for its establishment. The ILO held its first international Labour conference in October 1919 in Washington D.C. Forty countries were in attendance each with two representatives of government and one each of workers and employees organizations. The first convention adopted by this conference was the ‘eight-hour day convention’
The ILO was the only organization of the league of Nations that survived WWII. The IFTU however did not. In 1945 nation trade union centres established the world Federation of Trade Unions. By 1949 however “most western national trade union centres” disaffiliated and formed the international confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU). The trade union movement thus becomes the first casualty of the five decade cold war.
The effects of this reverberated in Nigeria with splits along ideological lines from 1955 up till 1975/76. Iyayi (2006) has argued on the desirability of separate trade union centres based on differences in ideology. It however, cannot be disputed that unity is essential and indeed, is the essence of trade union solidarity as Arije (2000) shows. It could be further argued though that, such unity does not necessarily entail uniformity in organization.
In 1968, the World Confederation of Labour was also formed. Adrian White called it “the secular successor of the Christian international trade union federation”. It however “remained small and largely ineffectual” and little separated it ideologically form the ICFTU. These two bodies merged on November 1,2006 at Vienna, Austria to form the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) which “represents 168 million workers through its 306 affiliated organizations within 154 countries and territories” (PSI,2006).
Several authors including; Oluwide, Otobo, Ananaba, Fasoyin Iyayi and Arije have captured the origins and development of the trade union movement in Nigeria. We might have to avoid an historical excursion on this due to space and time here. We however would point out that the ninety four years of the trade union movement in Nigeria has witnessed its ups and downs. These were marked by ideological contention and efforts at forging unity despite such differences in worldview . The 1st NLC National Leadership Retreat of April 2005 noted that the abeyance of ideological tendencies have not helped the trade union movement’s development. Ejiofoh further noted at the 2006 NLC Harmattan School that with the benefit of hindsight, it might have been a mistake to fold up ideological debates as other forms of debates have taken the place of this.
This takes us to the need to summarily explain the difference and relationship between the trade union movement and the labour movement which many of us mistakenly see as synonymous.
Esker Toyo at the MHWUN Education and Training strategy Review and planning conference at Calabar in April 2006 opined that the labour movement includes the trade union movement, the socialist movement the peasantry where this is organized as a movement and the co-operative movement where this exists. Iyayi (2005) views the labour movement and the working class movement as synonymous. We would wish to defer form this seeing the working class movement (which the trade unions are a part of ) as a part of the labour movement.
Tom Bottomore noted that “the historical connection between socialism and the working class – however complex and divers 1ts forms – is quite obvious”. He further pointed out that “working class movements produced socialist ideas, and when more systematic socialist theories (in particular, Marxism) were elaborated, they found their most responsive public among workers”.
One of the problems of the working class movement in today’s world is that while capitalism sharpens the fangs of its most representative ideology, the working class, partly as a result of concerted efforts of imperialism at de-ideologising it, stops just shy of resting on the depth of its ideological top root. A younger generation of trade union activists not scarred by the parody of Stalinism as socialism buoyed by the rising anti-capitalist movement of resistance to corporate globalization is asking questions that will lead us forward to where we started from, when the red flag floated on roof tops in 1871 Paris.
NEO-LIBERALISM, GLOBALISM AND GLOBALISATION
PSI in its “alternative strategy” points out that “over the last 25 years there was a resurgence of conservative thinking and influence – partly as a reaction to the earlier dominance of socialist – oriented thinking, and partly in order to exploit the riches available from the new global economy”. In describing these conservative thinkers and their ideologies it further says; “they are described by many words: the New Right, monetarists, Friedmanites, Thatcherites, Reaganites, free marketeers, economic liberals, neo-liberals, conservatives, libertarians, economic rationalists, etc”.
These ideologies better summed up as neo-liberalism enthrone the market as the guide and guardian of social and economic life. It “promotes individualism (not the same as individuality) over collectivism. They see unions as an impediment to the supposed efficiency of the free market”.
We have had cause to address the roots and characteristics of globalization and its ideology which is neo-liberalism on several plat forms including the PSI in Nigeria (see, “corporate globalization and working class internationalism” (2004), “working class perspectives on globalization and public service reforms (2005)). For our discourse here what we have to graps is captured by Pam Sha (2006) “that globalization has affected work patterns, labour markets and unions on the slop floor and at national levels in Africa and in many centres of global capitalism”.
This is because globalization in its political, social and economic “aspects” amounts to a restructuring of the world in the interest of capitalism for enhanced profits. As Mittleman puts it “in short, globalization is a market – induced, not a policy-led, process”.
Be that as it may it masks a policy-driven process in itself. This brings us to globalism, while the terms globalization and globalism are often used interchangeably they are two different but intertwined processes. While globalisation is “a world-wide phenomenon” characterized by “a coalescence of varied transnational processes and domestic structures, allowing the economy, politics, culture and ideology of one country to penetrate another”, globalism is that conscious policy of a country or group of country’s ruling elites to mould the world in their own image. This entails strengthening their hegemony over other countries and reinforcing the dependency of the countries they thus dominate. Globalism is thus what globalization engenders and which drives globalization. Neo – liberal globalization could in this light be said to be driven by “Reaganite”, “Thatcherite” globalism of the U.S, E.U and Japan triad.
The importance of this for our discourse here lies in seeing the views and actions of Reaganism and Thatcherism on trade unionism. These are views of disdain and actions of repression, even within seemingly democratic structures of state.
CHALLENGES CONFRONTING THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
Neo-liberal globalization presents severe challenges for the working class and trade unions locally, nationally, regionally and internationally.
These include “reduction in formal employment” due to “capital restructuring” (Pam Sha, 2006). Work and work organization are also changing resulting in external numerical flexibility, externalization, internal numerical flexibility, functional flexibility and wage flexibility “These are also known as casualization of work and outsourcing and they include lay-offs, privatisation of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and public service reforms and result in massive job losses.
A major consequence of this is declining union membership and with it depletion of the financial base of unions.
Feminisation of poverty also goes hand in hand with feminization of labour or what is called female labour force participation (FLP) which is on the increase. This however is in a manner that furthers the disempowerment of women despite the seeming commitment of representatives of capital in the political sphere to mainstreaming gender. As Chris Bonner, Research officer of the International Transport Workers Federation put it “women workers are found most commonly in non standard forms of employment, such as part time and temporary work”
A major reason for this with other consequences for the trade unions is the rapid expansion of work in the informal economy which FNV Mondiaal describes as “work with a minimum of security, a maximum of stress and no guarantee that it will bring in sufficient money to live on. No regulations, such as a minimum wage or protection against heavy and unhealthy work”.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (2002) identified key factors for the expansion of this sector of the economy which boil down to consequences of “neo-liberal orthodoxy”.
The rising informalization and casualisation of work is making trade union organizing more strenuous, challenging traditional limits and forms of organizing by the unions.
Neo-liberal orthodoxy against state interventionism is definitely rolling back the developmentalist state and inspiring cut-backs on public services. Labour laws that seek to undermine the capacities of unions are being tied to loans by the international finance institutions
The challenges globalization confronts the trade unions with are also on the ideological realm. Neo-behaviouralists seek to tie the happiness of the workers to the enhanced productivity of a “lean and mean” production system. Class-analysis is replaced with pluralist sing-song, stake-holders language replaces that of class antagonism and the class struggle is dismissed with tons of materials to “justify” exploiter and exploited as partners. The end of this could not but have been seen by the likes of Fukuyama that could not see beyond it, as the end of history.
HIV and AIDS does in a different way pose a challenge to the trade union. ILO in its HIV/AIDS and Work: Global Estimates, Impact and Response first published in 2004, noted that the HIV/AIDS pandemic presents “three major areas of implications for the world of work”. These comprise “macro economic fallouts of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the labour force”, it also has impact “on the workplace-on the private sector and the public sector, on agriculture and on the informal economy” and “on the household, on women’s productive activities, and on child labour”
“The global estimates of 26 million labour force participants and 36.5 million productively engaged adults being HIV- positive” amongst the 38 million persons living positively puts in perspective the depth of the ailment. Lives of workers and their family members are lost. With these skilled human resource get gravely depleted. These include members and organizers of unions. Stigma and discrimination still remains rife in most countries posing a problem to solidarity at some levels.
The HIV and AIDS pandemic might not have been caused by globalization. Its spread though could not but have been spurred by the greater rate of physical interactions through the astronomical rates of land sea and air travels that globalization has opened up or deepened. It poses a serious challenge to trade unions in the 21st century. Trade unions have to be at the fore of the advocacy for HIV vaccines and microbicides.
RESPONSES AND PROSPECTS
Trade unions have engaged rampaging globalization and its neo-liberalism as unions and as port of a broader alter-globalisation movement in different shades.
The greatest source of strength for unions in their responses has been solidarity.
According to Pam Sha “the major strategy of the labour movements across Africa has been the capturing of the informal sector as one method of building and strengthening the trade unions.” Unfortunately trade unions in Nigeria have not adequately taken up this task.
“Another strategy employed by the labour movements… is the intensification of trade union education directed at improving working class consciousness in the face of ravaging globalization”. Jenny Luck, further shows how solidarity and cooperation between “unions in some developed countries supporting capacity building for unions in countries that experience poverty and oppression” is a major prospect for the trade union movement in challenging “the hegemonic dominance of neo-liberalism and the consequent increase in violence, exploitation of labour, HIV/AIDS, movements of capital and labour and repression of trade union and human rights”.
Trade unions have also had to diversify their sources of revenue to counteract the depletion of amounts generated from membership subscription as a consequence of declining membership. Several unions including MHWUN in Nigeria now have economic investments which include businesses owned by the unions. This strategy must however be utilised in such a manner as will not turn it into a double-edged sword
Emphasis on the mobilization of women by unions has acquired greater importance with the increasing feminization of work. The extent of mainstreaming gender in leadership structures still however requires greater commitment.
Stuart Howard of ITF noting that “global production now operates using global distribution systems” stressed the crucial place of “organizing globally”. This is specially so for unions organizing workers in transnational corporations.
The PSI alternative strategy underscores the need for unions to mobilize for workplace reforms that promote workers participation and enthrone “industrial democracy“. This should be promoted by unions as a critical aspect of the democratization process.
An encouraging dimension is that documented by the ICFTU in its fighting for Alternatives: cases of successful Trade Union Resistance to the Policies of the IMF and world Bank. These case studies include the use of referendum by Uruguayan workers on October 31,2004 to checkmate the attempted privatization of the energy sector. This entailed mobilizing other elements of critical civil society in a National Commission for the Defence of Water and life.
This brings us to the strategic place of building alliances and coalitions with progressive civil society groups. LASCO is an attempt in this direction in Nigeria. It however does not have roots in the states being a National leadership Lagos based thing that even the majority of National leaders of unions are not familiar with. It is as well a cause for concern that unions have been very prominent by their absence in the three episodes of the Nigeria Social Forum held since 2004.
Trade unions need to also be more involved in the “World campaign for in-depth reform of the system of international institutions” which was signalled by the April 1, 2004 London declaration. Strategies must be designed and operationalized for building a new UN that can adequately defend working people and underdeveloped countries against the unipolar globalism of the United States of North America and its allies. Unions must also mobilize “to take the IMF off life support” as Soren Ambrose and Walden Bello put it. In fact the international finance institutions and multilateral economic institutions must be engaged with a vision of transcending them in building another world, which is not only possible, but beckons to us in the 21st Century.
Trade unions also have a prospect for engaging neo-liberalism’s violations of international labour standards and workers freedom of association in the ILO supervisory mechanisms. Most union leaders in Nigeria for example, however, are unfortunately not conversant with these.
The democratization of most countries that hitherto were burdened by leviathan one-party systems or military juntas is a prospect that unions need to stretch by utilizing any and every available space open for policy-engagement. Unions in this light need to tie extra-parliamentary mass mobilization with parliamentary lobbying and presentation of will researched and well articulated memoranda to parliamentary public heaving.
Information and communication technology provides a veritable vehicle for trade union work in the 21st century. In advanced capitalist countries, membership is even recruited on-line and information digitally accessed and disseminated, most unions in Nigeria though, are yet to tap into this information high way.
Newspapers, magazines and other periodicals mass-circulated in the public domain could be a major source of power for workers by playing a role in shaping public opinion which could be gotten through press conferences and statements. COSATU for example now has both a daily newspaper and a weekly periodical. What stops NLC too from having something similar?
International action according to Kim Moody is one area “that today’s leaders” of trade unions “do not do enough of”. This is very more so in Nigeria. The Nigeria trade union movement has been an the sidelines even as unions across the world took to the streets together as unions and with other civil society groups as in the “stop the war” campaign.
Otive Igbuzor and Hussaini Abdu highlighted some strategies for unions “in pursuing the struggle for social transformation”. These include;
Building, nurturing and promoting radical change agents in the trade unions
Increase political education of members
Attack all barriers which prevent or obstruct poor people’s participation and development
Building structures for change
Engaging in actions- campaigns, advocacy, protests, boycotts, etc
Speaking to power, challenging power and altering power relations
Building a movement for social transformation,
CONCLUSION
We have sought to put in perspective the world of work, and trade unions’ roles as representative organizations of the working class in this (and the -to a limited extent - the broader) world.
We analysed globalization as being driven by neo-liberal globalism and tried to identify key problems this poses to trade unions.
We then looked at responses, prospects and strategies that trade unions have adopted, are adopting or could adopt in defending and indeed advancing the interests of labour against capital in its neo-liberal 21st Century face.
We wish on a final note to state categorically that we align with Kim Moody that “the vision appropriate to the era of globalization is social-movement unionism”. This we very much belief as do Otive Igbuzor and Hussaini Abdu would entail trade unions having the goal of social transformation.
Neo-liberalism might be adumbrated here and there, now and then by reforms of some sort. Capitalism especially its most virulent strain which is neo-liberalism, however, cannot be lastingly reformed. Modern industrial society must be transformed by breaking its capitalist fetters. The working class will be at the vanguard of this process of social transformation, by winning its own emancipation.
Trade unions need to identify and project this interest of the class they represent.
Trade unions, especially in Nigeria also need to build their research capacity because as Pam Sha put it “knowledge has become the decisive productive force”. This knowledge must be for the articulation and popularization of working class alternatives to capitalism.
In Nigeria the PSI needs to operationalize its “Campaign for Quality Public Services and Job Creation” agreed upon by the August Ilorin NCC meeting. The Nigerian trade union movement must also posit revolutionary alternatives to NEEDS and SEEDS, mobilize around this and insist that NEEDS II be put forward as a referendum.
We must critically engage neoliberalism, indeed capitalism in the 21st Century. We must have no illusions of any redemptive essence in it. Our engagement must be with the focus of transcendence in a process geared at social transformation through mass action
Another world is possible, another Africa is possible, and another Nigeria is possible. The climb might today seem steep, but: OUR DAY SHALL COME!
Viva Public Services International!
Viva Nigeria Labour Congress!
Forward to Social Transformation!
Another World will be born!
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Being a paper presented at the December 20 – 22, 2006, Public Services International Workshop on “The future of Public Sector Unions in Nigeria” Kaduna – Nigeria by Baba Aye, National Auditor, LP
INTRODUCTION
We wish to start by commending the apt theme of this workshop: “Workers in the changing world of work”.
We have however, taken the liberty to re-phrase this paper’s title. This is for the following reasons. “Trade union survival” really is very important, considering the onslaught of neo-liberal globalisation’s “for-profit’ crusade which is rolling back both the state and rights won through two hundred years of struggle by workers and their trade unions. Job losses are reflected in dwindling unions’ memberships. “Doctrinaire free-market ideologies” are setting new bench-marks of values, institutional relevance and power balances not exactly favourable to the union movement in the “world of work” and society; the world, regions and countries. We are strongly of the view though that, a teleological approach based on a grasp of the world of work and the centrality of this world to social life itself would better equip us in strategizing. A “coping”, “survivalist” approach to defining the role of trade unions and the working class could be more “tailist” or “reactionist” than pro-active and transformative.
The “globalizing era” is presented by apostles of capital as “neutral”, “objectively technology-driven” and probably the pathway to a “post-industrial society”, that is “classless” in the sense of a Marcusean “one-dimensional man’s.
We have defined globalization by its driving ideology which is neo-liberalism. It could be more apt as Madunagu (2006) does to further define this for us not to be in doubt about who benefits from the forces changing the world of work, that we are here talking of neo-liberal capitalism, and the globalization of capital.
We have defined this “era” quite clearly as the 21st Century because as Adrian White, (2006) put it “the world outlook in the first years of the 21st century is already dramatically changed from the optimistic years of 1970s”. This could better help us situate the problems and prospects, challenges and possible strategic approaches that confront us and that are open to us.
Finally we have made the trade union movement and not just the trade unions our subject. This would entail an outlook that integrates the challenges and prospects that the era presents to trade unions, national trade union centres/federations and the Global Unions/international trade union movement. We must point out here that this cannot but involve to some extent the relationship between the trade union movement and the broader labour movement.
We shall now look at the “world of work” and how it is changing. We shall look at the forces that in contention are driving these changes in what is generally called globalization and the globalism behind it. We shall try to identify the key problems this changes present to the trade union movement and understand the prospects the movement has. On the basis of these we shall posit alternatives and possible strategies for the trade union movement and the working class which it represents to survive and indeed transcend the present era by bringing to birth ‘a new world’ which “is possible” and “not for sale”.
WORK AND THE WORLD OF WORK
The place to start this paper from might be seeking to understand what ‘the world of work’ is. It is on the basis of this that we can grapple with the changing of this world and how it changes the ‘whole wide world’ in the social evolution of humankind or what we might call, history.
Thus as Otobo (2000) put it, we cannot but ask “what is work in the modern context?”. As he further points out, “one goes to work, to an office, to a factory, an activity that is at once detached from and yet critical to the life of the wage-earner in modern society”.
Otobo copiously quoting from Braverman (1974) shows the difference of the “conscious and purposive” activities of human beings which is work from the instinctive “work of other animals”. We are further made to realize that the distinctness of this “conscious and purposive” work of human lies in the fact that “the unity of conception and execution may be dissolved”. This is at the root of division of labour such that the labour process could be so organized socially as to ensure that some other persons not necessarily involved in the execution of work could appropriate the wealth created by the labour of (many) other people. Labour creates not only wealth, it is at the heart and soul of social-human life itself. As Braverman put it “Labour that transcends mere instinctual activity is thus the force which created humankind and the force by which humankind created the world as we know it”.
Human labour acts upon nature, transforming it and in that process transforms itself. This constitutes the object of labour. In more primitive societies, this object(s) could be direct nature itself. As labour transforms itself and the continuum of nature it acts on, over centuries and millennia, the objects become semi processed or processed such as micro-chips, processors, nuclear materials, optic fibres, etc.
Labour acts on objects using implements. The historical process of humankind’s development involves these implements or tools getting more sophisticated.
These; objects of labour, the implements of labour and labour (which is work), constitute the productive forces of society in their dynamic interaction which is spurred and maintained by the only living attribute in these, which is labour.
It is also important to point out here that human labour or work is always social. This characteristic which is a critical enabling and necessary condition for the division of labour is as well the basis of economic relations. The social organization of work is thus constructed as a reflection of subsisting class relations, while actually being where these classes-formation spring from.
The world of work is the space and inherent dynamics-in-it of the social organization of labour or what we could call the labour process. In modern industrial society it could be said to be the industrial relations system (IRS here is distinguished from IRS that we would consider as an ideological construct to further the control or the working class in the name of pluralism/social dialogue and such similar nursery tales).
“The arena of work” involves organizational systems with persons carrying out tasks towards fulfilling the organisation’s goals.
This view which sees organizations as “human living systems” (Diek van Groen, 2006) might mask the reality of antagonisms which mark the world of work. The world of work is where the conflicts between capital and labour are seemingly united for the purpose of social production, distribution and exchange of goods and services.
It must be said on a final note that social organisation of labour is broader than the formal organizations of modern industrial society. The peasant – farmer tilling his little piece of land is part and parcel of the world of work as is the computer science trainee in say Microsoft for example. The world of work could thus be said to be the work of the world being the engine room of humankind’s socio-economic reproduction of itself.
THE WORKING CLASS, WORKING PEOPLE AND TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
To understand what the working class is, we cannot but ask; “what are classes?”
According to Lenin
We call classes large groups of people that are distinctive by the place they occupy in a definite historically established system of social production; by their relations towards the means of production in the majority of cases (not always) fixed and formulated in law; by their role in the social system of labour; and consequently, by their method of obtaining the share of national wealth which they dispose of, and by the size of that share. Classes are such groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the difference in their position in a given system of social economy.
The existence of classes thus reflects division of labour that allows the dominant class to exploit and oppress the dominated class. Ake (1978) further shows that classes can on this basis be understood as the two sides of a coin. This is to say that there are basically two classes in any dominant economic system in a social-economic formation.
Otobo (2005) points out that “the economic system” is a description of: ownership of the goods and services; how the quality (and quality)of the goods to be produced is determined; how the goods are to be distributed.
The modern industrial system is based on the capitalist mode of production and economic system. Ownership of goods and services is vested in the capitalists sometimes subtly referred to as the entrepreneurs. The working class is that segment of the working people, the toilers in modern industrial society who are subordinated to capital and through this have the product of their labour, and the social wealth alienated from them.
The working class structure has changed with the development of capitalism from its mercantilist to its industrial, to its finance and presently information-driven characteristics. Several studies have however shown the belief propagated by some bourgeois theorists that the working class is becoming a thing of the past and capitalism is becoming a post-industrial society to be based on false premises.
The working class is the creation of capital and it alone can bury capital and capitalism, due to the logic of its role in capital‘s necessary reproduction.
The working people is a broader category which includes the working class and all other strata, classes aid segments of classes that genuinely work as toilers and that are in several degrees subordinated to and dominated by capital.
The working people include the working class as its most organized expression, the poor peasants, urban poor artisans, lower level professionals and the intelligentsia.
The trade union movement is the primary organized expression of the working class.
Trade unions were formed in the late eighteenth to early nineteent century by workers “to defined themselves” as White put it in the face of “appalling conditions” of work and the deprivations wrought by capitalism, in the wake of the industrial revolution.
The early trade unions were hounded. Laws such as the anti-combination laws of 1800 were used in attempts to chain the growing solidarity and power of the working class which trade unions were building. In the 1830s, “workers who dared to form a union – the “Tolpuddle martyrs- were packed off an a convict ship to Australia”.
The bourgeoisie however could not stop the growing might of trade unions and by the 1830s, the earliest trade union federations emerged in Britain through the efforts of organizers like Robert Owen.
Capitalism being an international system, the working class which it created was internationalist too. And so “from the earliest days, unions were also looking beyond national borders to protect their members.”
The International Workingmen’s Association otherwise known as the First International was formed in London in 1864. Karl Marx was one of its leaders and without any doubt, its greatest thinker. “Its First Congress was held in 1866 in Geneva”.
The International championed the 8-hour work day which would still take the spilling of the blood of the Haymarket martyrs two decades after, before it would be granted by the capitalists.
The First International collapsed amidst intrigues spurred by anarchists in the wake of the 1871 Paris Commune.
The second international which had one of its founding resolutions as the call to workers of the world to celebrate May 1 annually as International Day of Workers Solidarity was formed on July, 14,1889, the Centennial anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, in Paris. Interestingly there were actually two simultaneous founding congresses in Paris. We shall not go into this due to space and time, here.
1889 also witnessed the establishment of the first “international industry federations” with the formation of the International Federation of Boot and shoe operatives and the international Typographical Secretariat. Subsequently the miners in 1890, clothing workers in 1893, metal workers, in 1893, textile workers in 1874, lithographers and transport workers in 1896 and hatters in 1900 formed their international federations. The P.S.I was formed later in 1907.
These international Federations were known as International Trade Secretariats till they re-organised, themselves in 2002 into ten Global Union Federations that meet at least twice annually.
Trade unions saw the need to organize internationally beyond sectoral boundaries and in 1903 the international secretariat of National Trade Union centres was formed “This was purely a European organization.” The name was changed to the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) in 1913, three years after the AFL-CIO accepted to join the international trade union centre.
An important development in the world of work took place in 1919 with the establishment of the International Labour Organization, in the wake of the Versailles peace treaty that marked the end of WWI. Trade unions and labour partisans played a key role in lobbying for its establishment. The ILO held its first international Labour conference in October 1919 in Washington D.C. Forty countries were in attendance each with two representatives of government and one each of workers and employees organizations. The first convention adopted by this conference was the ‘eight-hour day convention’
The ILO was the only organization of the league of Nations that survived WWII. The IFTU however did not. In 1945 nation trade union centres established the world Federation of Trade Unions. By 1949 however “most western national trade union centres” disaffiliated and formed the international confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU). The trade union movement thus becomes the first casualty of the five decade cold war.
The effects of this reverberated in Nigeria with splits along ideological lines from 1955 up till 1975/76. Iyayi (2006) has argued on the desirability of separate trade union centres based on differences in ideology. It however, cannot be disputed that unity is essential and indeed, is the essence of trade union solidarity as Arije (2000) shows. It could be further argued though that, such unity does not necessarily entail uniformity in organization.
In 1968, the World Confederation of Labour was also formed. Adrian White called it “the secular successor of the Christian international trade union federation”. It however “remained small and largely ineffectual” and little separated it ideologically form the ICFTU. These two bodies merged on November 1,2006 at Vienna, Austria to form the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) which “represents 168 million workers through its 306 affiliated organizations within 154 countries and territories” (PSI,2006).
Several authors including; Oluwide, Otobo, Ananaba, Fasoyin Iyayi and Arije have captured the origins and development of the trade union movement in Nigeria. We might have to avoid an historical excursion on this due to space and time here. We however would point out that the ninety four years of the trade union movement in Nigeria has witnessed its ups and downs. These were marked by ideological contention and efforts at forging unity despite such differences in worldview . The 1st NLC National Leadership Retreat of April 2005 noted that the abeyance of ideological tendencies have not helped the trade union movement’s development. Ejiofoh further noted at the 2006 NLC Harmattan School that with the benefit of hindsight, it might have been a mistake to fold up ideological debates as other forms of debates have taken the place of this.
This takes us to the need to summarily explain the difference and relationship between the trade union movement and the labour movement which many of us mistakenly see as synonymous.
Esker Toyo at the MHWUN Education and Training strategy Review and planning conference at Calabar in April 2006 opined that the labour movement includes the trade union movement, the socialist movement the peasantry where this is organized as a movement and the co-operative movement where this exists. Iyayi (2005) views the labour movement and the working class movement as synonymous. We would wish to defer form this seeing the working class movement (which the trade unions are a part of ) as a part of the labour movement.
Tom Bottomore noted that “the historical connection between socialism and the working class – however complex and divers 1ts forms – is quite obvious”. He further pointed out that “working class movements produced socialist ideas, and when more systematic socialist theories (in particular, Marxism) were elaborated, they found their most responsive public among workers”.
One of the problems of the working class movement in today’s world is that while capitalism sharpens the fangs of its most representative ideology, the working class, partly as a result of concerted efforts of imperialism at de-ideologising it, stops just shy of resting on the depth of its ideological top root. A younger generation of trade union activists not scarred by the parody of Stalinism as socialism buoyed by the rising anti-capitalist movement of resistance to corporate globalization is asking questions that will lead us forward to where we started from, when the red flag floated on roof tops in 1871 Paris.
NEO-LIBERALISM, GLOBALISM AND GLOBALISATION
PSI in its “alternative strategy” points out that “over the last 25 years there was a resurgence of conservative thinking and influence – partly as a reaction to the earlier dominance of socialist – oriented thinking, and partly in order to exploit the riches available from the new global economy”. In describing these conservative thinkers and their ideologies it further says; “they are described by many words: the New Right, monetarists, Friedmanites, Thatcherites, Reaganites, free marketeers, economic liberals, neo-liberals, conservatives, libertarians, economic rationalists, etc”.
These ideologies better summed up as neo-liberalism enthrone the market as the guide and guardian of social and economic life. It “promotes individualism (not the same as individuality) over collectivism. They see unions as an impediment to the supposed efficiency of the free market”.
We have had cause to address the roots and characteristics of globalization and its ideology which is neo-liberalism on several plat forms including the PSI in Nigeria (see, “corporate globalization and working class internationalism” (2004), “working class perspectives on globalization and public service reforms (2005)). For our discourse here what we have to graps is captured by Pam Sha (2006) “that globalization has affected work patterns, labour markets and unions on the slop floor and at national levels in Africa and in many centres of global capitalism”.
This is because globalization in its political, social and economic “aspects” amounts to a restructuring of the world in the interest of capitalism for enhanced profits. As Mittleman puts it “in short, globalization is a market – induced, not a policy-led, process”.
Be that as it may it masks a policy-driven process in itself. This brings us to globalism, while the terms globalization and globalism are often used interchangeably they are two different but intertwined processes. While globalisation is “a world-wide phenomenon” characterized by “a coalescence of varied transnational processes and domestic structures, allowing the economy, politics, culture and ideology of one country to penetrate another”, globalism is that conscious policy of a country or group of country’s ruling elites to mould the world in their own image. This entails strengthening their hegemony over other countries and reinforcing the dependency of the countries they thus dominate. Globalism is thus what globalization engenders and which drives globalization. Neo – liberal globalization could in this light be said to be driven by “Reaganite”, “Thatcherite” globalism of the U.S, E.U and Japan triad.
The importance of this for our discourse here lies in seeing the views and actions of Reaganism and Thatcherism on trade unionism. These are views of disdain and actions of repression, even within seemingly democratic structures of state.
CHALLENGES CONFRONTING THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
Neo-liberal globalization presents severe challenges for the working class and trade unions locally, nationally, regionally and internationally.
These include “reduction in formal employment” due to “capital restructuring” (Pam Sha, 2006). Work and work organization are also changing resulting in external numerical flexibility, externalization, internal numerical flexibility, functional flexibility and wage flexibility “These are also known as casualization of work and outsourcing and they include lay-offs, privatisation of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and public service reforms and result in massive job losses.
A major consequence of this is declining union membership and with it depletion of the financial base of unions.
Feminisation of poverty also goes hand in hand with feminization of labour or what is called female labour force participation (FLP) which is on the increase. This however is in a manner that furthers the disempowerment of women despite the seeming commitment of representatives of capital in the political sphere to mainstreaming gender. As Chris Bonner, Research officer of the International Transport Workers Federation put it “women workers are found most commonly in non standard forms of employment, such as part time and temporary work”
A major reason for this with other consequences for the trade unions is the rapid expansion of work in the informal economy which FNV Mondiaal describes as “work with a minimum of security, a maximum of stress and no guarantee that it will bring in sufficient money to live on. No regulations, such as a minimum wage or protection against heavy and unhealthy work”.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (2002) identified key factors for the expansion of this sector of the economy which boil down to consequences of “neo-liberal orthodoxy”.
The rising informalization and casualisation of work is making trade union organizing more strenuous, challenging traditional limits and forms of organizing by the unions.
Neo-liberal orthodoxy against state interventionism is definitely rolling back the developmentalist state and inspiring cut-backs on public services. Labour laws that seek to undermine the capacities of unions are being tied to loans by the international finance institutions
The challenges globalization confronts the trade unions with are also on the ideological realm. Neo-behaviouralists seek to tie the happiness of the workers to the enhanced productivity of a “lean and mean” production system. Class-analysis is replaced with pluralist sing-song, stake-holders language replaces that of class antagonism and the class struggle is dismissed with tons of materials to “justify” exploiter and exploited as partners. The end of this could not but have been seen by the likes of Fukuyama that could not see beyond it, as the end of history.
HIV and AIDS does in a different way pose a challenge to the trade union. ILO in its HIV/AIDS and Work: Global Estimates, Impact and Response first published in 2004, noted that the HIV/AIDS pandemic presents “three major areas of implications for the world of work”. These comprise “macro economic fallouts of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the labour force”, it also has impact “on the workplace-on the private sector and the public sector, on agriculture and on the informal economy” and “on the household, on women’s productive activities, and on child labour”
“The global estimates of 26 million labour force participants and 36.5 million productively engaged adults being HIV- positive” amongst the 38 million persons living positively puts in perspective the depth of the ailment. Lives of workers and their family members are lost. With these skilled human resource get gravely depleted. These include members and organizers of unions. Stigma and discrimination still remains rife in most countries posing a problem to solidarity at some levels.
The HIV and AIDS pandemic might not have been caused by globalization. Its spread though could not but have been spurred by the greater rate of physical interactions through the astronomical rates of land sea and air travels that globalization has opened up or deepened. It poses a serious challenge to trade unions in the 21st century. Trade unions have to be at the fore of the advocacy for HIV vaccines and microbicides.
RESPONSES AND PROSPECTS
Trade unions have engaged rampaging globalization and its neo-liberalism as unions and as port of a broader alter-globalisation movement in different shades.
The greatest source of strength for unions in their responses has been solidarity.
According to Pam Sha “the major strategy of the labour movements across Africa has been the capturing of the informal sector as one method of building and strengthening the trade unions.” Unfortunately trade unions in Nigeria have not adequately taken up this task.
“Another strategy employed by the labour movements… is the intensification of trade union education directed at improving working class consciousness in the face of ravaging globalization”. Jenny Luck, further shows how solidarity and cooperation between “unions in some developed countries supporting capacity building for unions in countries that experience poverty and oppression” is a major prospect for the trade union movement in challenging “the hegemonic dominance of neo-liberalism and the consequent increase in violence, exploitation of labour, HIV/AIDS, movements of capital and labour and repression of trade union and human rights”.
Trade unions have also had to diversify their sources of revenue to counteract the depletion of amounts generated from membership subscription as a consequence of declining membership. Several unions including MHWUN in Nigeria now have economic investments which include businesses owned by the unions. This strategy must however be utilised in such a manner as will not turn it into a double-edged sword
Emphasis on the mobilization of women by unions has acquired greater importance with the increasing feminization of work. The extent of mainstreaming gender in leadership structures still however requires greater commitment.
Stuart Howard of ITF noting that “global production now operates using global distribution systems” stressed the crucial place of “organizing globally”. This is specially so for unions organizing workers in transnational corporations.
The PSI alternative strategy underscores the need for unions to mobilize for workplace reforms that promote workers participation and enthrone “industrial democracy“. This should be promoted by unions as a critical aspect of the democratization process.
An encouraging dimension is that documented by the ICFTU in its fighting for Alternatives: cases of successful Trade Union Resistance to the Policies of the IMF and world Bank. These case studies include the use of referendum by Uruguayan workers on October 31,2004 to checkmate the attempted privatization of the energy sector. This entailed mobilizing other elements of critical civil society in a National Commission for the Defence of Water and life.
This brings us to the strategic place of building alliances and coalitions with progressive civil society groups. LASCO is an attempt in this direction in Nigeria. It however does not have roots in the states being a National leadership Lagos based thing that even the majority of National leaders of unions are not familiar with. It is as well a cause for concern that unions have been very prominent by their absence in the three episodes of the Nigeria Social Forum held since 2004.
Trade unions need to also be more involved in the “World campaign for in-depth reform of the system of international institutions” which was signalled by the April 1, 2004 London declaration. Strategies must be designed and operationalized for building a new UN that can adequately defend working people and underdeveloped countries against the unipolar globalism of the United States of North America and its allies. Unions must also mobilize “to take the IMF off life support” as Soren Ambrose and Walden Bello put it. In fact the international finance institutions and multilateral economic institutions must be engaged with a vision of transcending them in building another world, which is not only possible, but beckons to us in the 21st Century.
Trade unions also have a prospect for engaging neo-liberalism’s violations of international labour standards and workers freedom of association in the ILO supervisory mechanisms. Most union leaders in Nigeria for example, however, are unfortunately not conversant with these.
The democratization of most countries that hitherto were burdened by leviathan one-party systems or military juntas is a prospect that unions need to stretch by utilizing any and every available space open for policy-engagement. Unions in this light need to tie extra-parliamentary mass mobilization with parliamentary lobbying and presentation of will researched and well articulated memoranda to parliamentary public heaving.
Information and communication technology provides a veritable vehicle for trade union work in the 21st century. In advanced capitalist countries, membership is even recruited on-line and information digitally accessed and disseminated, most unions in Nigeria though, are yet to tap into this information high way.
Newspapers, magazines and other periodicals mass-circulated in the public domain could be a major source of power for workers by playing a role in shaping public opinion which could be gotten through press conferences and statements. COSATU for example now has both a daily newspaper and a weekly periodical. What stops NLC too from having something similar?
International action according to Kim Moody is one area “that today’s leaders” of trade unions “do not do enough of”. This is very more so in Nigeria. The Nigeria trade union movement has been an the sidelines even as unions across the world took to the streets together as unions and with other civil society groups as in the “stop the war” campaign.
Otive Igbuzor and Hussaini Abdu highlighted some strategies for unions “in pursuing the struggle for social transformation”. These include;
Building, nurturing and promoting radical change agents in the trade unions
Increase political education of members
Attack all barriers which prevent or obstruct poor people’s participation and development
Building structures for change
Engaging in actions- campaigns, advocacy, protests, boycotts, etc
Speaking to power, challenging power and altering power relations
Building a movement for social transformation,
CONCLUSION
We have sought to put in perspective the world of work, and trade unions’ roles as representative organizations of the working class in this (and the -to a limited extent - the broader) world.
We analysed globalization as being driven by neo-liberal globalism and tried to identify key problems this poses to trade unions.
We then looked at responses, prospects and strategies that trade unions have adopted, are adopting or could adopt in defending and indeed advancing the interests of labour against capital in its neo-liberal 21st Century face.
We wish on a final note to state categorically that we align with Kim Moody that “the vision appropriate to the era of globalization is social-movement unionism”. This we very much belief as do Otive Igbuzor and Hussaini Abdu would entail trade unions having the goal of social transformation.
Neo-liberalism might be adumbrated here and there, now and then by reforms of some sort. Capitalism especially its most virulent strain which is neo-liberalism, however, cannot be lastingly reformed. Modern industrial society must be transformed by breaking its capitalist fetters. The working class will be at the vanguard of this process of social transformation, by winning its own emancipation.
Trade unions need to identify and project this interest of the class they represent.
Trade unions, especially in Nigeria also need to build their research capacity because as Pam Sha put it “knowledge has become the decisive productive force”. This knowledge must be for the articulation and popularization of working class alternatives to capitalism.
In Nigeria the PSI needs to operationalize its “Campaign for Quality Public Services and Job Creation” agreed upon by the August Ilorin NCC meeting. The Nigerian trade union movement must also posit revolutionary alternatives to NEEDS and SEEDS, mobilize around this and insist that NEEDS II be put forward as a referendum.
We must critically engage neoliberalism, indeed capitalism in the 21st Century. We must have no illusions of any redemptive essence in it. Our engagement must be with the focus of transcendence in a process geared at social transformation through mass action
Another world is possible, another Africa is possible, and another Nigeria is possible. The climb might today seem steep, but: OUR DAY SHALL COME!
Viva Public Services International!
Viva Nigeria Labour Congress!
Forward to Social Transformation!
Another World will be born!
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