The March to protect Worker Rights and the Middle Class

Cathy Feingold

Thousands are marching in the streets of Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. In March 2011, sparked by protestors in Madison, Wisconsin, workers and union members across the United States have rallied in front of statehouses in support of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers. Demonstrators are speaking out against attacks by their Republican governors to eliminate collective bargaining rights and blame public employees and their unions for widespread budget crises.
 

The protestors are the young, joining the old. Some of them remember Madison as the centre of anti-war protests in the 1960s. For others, this is their first protest. As young activists organise teach-ins and rallies across college campuses and town halls, a new generation redefines its relationship to unions. This new generation recognises that unions provide one of the few ways that regular workers, including public employees, can fight back against the increasingly powerful networks of corporate executives and the politicians who do their bidding.
 

Global Wage Trends: The great Convergence?

Patrick Belser

Average wages

The financial and economic crisis has cut global wage growth by roughly half in 2008 and 2009. Based on a sample that covers a large chunk of the world’s 1.4 billion wage-earners, the Global Wage Report 2010/11(i) finds that the global growth in real monthly wages slowed from 2.7 and 2.8 per cent in the two years before the crisis (2006 and 2007) to 1.5 and 1.6 per cent in 2008 and 2009.If China – where data coverage is limited to fast growing “urban units” – is excluded from the sample, the average wage growth drops from 2.1 and 2.2 per cent before the crisis to 0.8 and 0.7 per cent in 2008 and 2009. In 2010, preliminary results suggest that wages have started to recover, but not as fast as profits and not yet to pre-crisis levels. Generally, wages have taken a bigger hit in developed than in developing countries.

The 2008 Crisis in Turkey and the Unions’ Response

Yasemin Özgün

Özgür Müftüoğlu

The insertion of the Turkish economy into global capitalism has mostly occurred during times of economic crisis. During the present crisis as in the crises of 1979, 1994 and 2001, the Turkish government took many steps according to the policy frameworks determined by global actors to integrate further into global capitalism. Such steps did yield some positive results for those sections of capital that could adjust to the rules of global competition and integrate with global capital. Nevertheless, Turkey’s survival strategy, which rested on cheap labour, has caused increased pressure on workers as well as high unemployment, poverty and job insecurity. Unfortunately, due to the prohibitions on union activities following the 1980 coup, combined with new work regulations deriving from changing production systems, the working class and unions did not have sufficient strength to resist this process.

Change or lose Europe

Frank Hoffer

Friederike Spiecker

When asked what he thought of Western civilisation, Mahatma Gandhi replied: “I think it would be a good idea.”

After an agonising depression and another devastating war, Europe finally followed Gandhi’s advice and moved from centuries of antagonism, war and “beggar thy neighbour” policies to a world of cooperation and integration. Reintegrating post-nazi Germany, bringing the former Portuguese, Spanish and Greek dictatorships into a democratic Europe and opening up to Eastern Europe are milestones in this complex integration process based on political will, cooperation and regulated markets. But it was only after the ideological shift in the 1980s and 90s that mainstream thinking changed and concluded that the best form of cooperation was fierce competition and radical market liberalisation. However, deregulation, the common market and single currency did not create the promised land of prosperity, but resulted in declining wage shares and greater inequality.