The New Union Movement in Myanmar

Ross Wilson

The past year has seen the birth of a new union movement in Myanmar, after 50 years of brutal suppression of labour rights. More than 670 labour organisations have now been registered under the Labour Organisation Law, mostly small unions at enterprise level and concentrated in the agricultural, manufacturing and transport sectors, and with an estimated total membership of close to 200,000 workers. 

Given the history of oppression and the continuing hostility from many employers, this is a remarkable achievement, and reflects the determination of workers to exercise their new rights to associate, organise and negotiate. Many of them are young factory workers struggling to improve their wages and conditions of employment which, for many, are at exploitative levels.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) quickly developed a programme to promote and support the new freedom of association rights which includes an awareness raising campaign with education and advice for workers, government officials and employers. However, the core of the programme has been bi-partite training workshops for the leaders of the new unions and their employers.

The new union leaders have taken up the opportunity to learn with enthusiasm, from the first major workshop in July last year attended by almost 300 people. To date more than 2,000 people have attended ILO workshops, with the two key leaders from each union being provided with the opportunity to attend the two-day basic training workshop.

Trade Unions in Western Europe: Hard Times, Hard Choices

Rebecca Gumbrell-
McCormick

Richard Hyman

The Challenges Facing European Trade Unions
For several decades, trade unions in Europe – long among the most powerful in the world – have been on the defensive. They have lost membership, sometimes drastically. Their collective bargaining power has declined, as has their influence on government and, in some countries, their public respect. Unions in Western Europe achieved their greatest socio-economic status half a century ago, in the context of large-scale industrial production (‘Fordism’) and the rise of the Keynesian welfare state. Leading employers were ‘national champions’, and national governments self-evidently shaped social and economic policy; it seemed obvious unions were crucial actors in a triangular relationship.

Today the landscape has changed irrevocably. Governments profess their inability to resist the dictates of global economic forces; major companies are almost universally transnational in their ownership and production strategies; trade unions are often disoriented. Many show obvious uncertainty as to their role in the 21st century, giving rise to internal conflicts. Some observers ask whether unions remain relevant socio-economic actors. But hard times can stimulate new thinking and hence provide new opportunities; the challenge is to review unions’ purposes and priorities and to devise new ways of achieving these. This can involve hard choices: not all objectives can receive the same priority, particularly when resources are scarcer.

Challenges facing the Argentinean labour movement in the 21st Century

Luis Campos

Being the “best student”: the legacy of neoliberalism in Argentina
Argentina faced a huge crisis at the end of the ’90s. After years of being the “best student” of international economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, its economy went into a recession in 1998 that led the country to a political and social crisis that reached a boiling point in 2001. During this crisis thousands of people protested daily against the government. Some of the protests were organized by unions, some by other civil society organizations and others were spontaneous.

The last chapter of this story is well known. The government repressed the protests, allegedly killing more than 30 people in December of 2001. However, the president was forced to resign and Argentina experienced a period of political and economic instability, which included five different presidents in a few weeks, and the declaration to default on its external debt.

For the workers and the unions the outcome of this process was devastating. Its origins lay in the military government that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983, setting ground for the implementation of neoliberal policies during the following decades. The average real wage in 2001 was 43% less than the 1975 real wage and after the devaluation of the currency in 2002 the unemployment rate reached almost 25% (against an average rate of 5%-6% during the ’80s) and the non-registered workers by that time were 49%[1]. At the same time, the Argentinean economy suffered a huge transformation, with an increase in the importance of finance, and the virtual extinction of “big industry”.

What counts as a Job?

Grant Belchamber

Sylvain Schetagne

When key labour market indicators barely move while millions suffer from the deepest economic crisis in decades, it is time to revise them.

Poor indicators make for poor public policy. The global crisis highlights the compelling need to set clear and relevant international standards to collect labour statistics and measure labour market trends.

This job falls to the International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS), which is convened by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) every five years in Geneva. In October this year the 19th ICLS will re-consider and re-set the guidelines for measurement of Work and the Labour Force.

Different times, different needs
Today’s standards date from the 13th ICLS in 1982[1]. Thirty years ago the main objective of statistics on employment was to measure labour inputs in production, to calculate GDP and measure economic growth, and the lens for measuring employment and unemployment was constructed to meet the needs of producing the National Accounts.