Unionist says basic rights must be linked to trade

By Ati Nurbaiti

MANILA (JP): Trade unionists in developed countries only want three social fundamentals linked to trade, the Deputy Chairman of the Confederation of German Trade Unions said yesterday.

Chairman Ursula Engelen-Kefer, a member of the Committee on the Freedom of Association under the International Labor Organization, said that freedom of association, eradication of forced labor and reduction of child labor should be included in every trade issue.

She said the realization of the vast differences in culture and economic stages of development among countries was why the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions had no intention of imposing its standards, such as similar wages and working hours to governments of developing countries.

Engelen-Kefer was one of the speakers on the final day of a two-day conference on human rights, democracy and development.

The talks were held by the German-based non-government organization, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

She was referring to the recent meeting of ministers of labor and manpower of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in May in Bangkok which rejected linking trade to "social clauses."

Trade unionists in developing countries agree with the right to development, one of the main reasons for rejecting social clauses in trade, she said.

The demand for the three social clauses, she said, "is not intended to impair the developing countries' comparative cost advantages; the aim was simply to forestall serious violations of elementary basic rights in working environments, by strengthening those rights at an international level."

She said it was time "to get out of dishonestly using moral reasons to push self interests" in the trade-labor linkage discourse; used either in the interests of protectionism or because of an unwillingness to recognize freedom of association.

Trade sanctions which may be proposed by unions in the confederation, "would only be a last resort" compared to incentives, she said without elaboration.

Another participant, K. Goval, the Vice President of the Malaysian Trade Union Congress, said the only social clause which should be linked to trade is the freedom of association.

Although Engelen-Kefer stressed that one of the clauses should be the reduction, but not the elimination of child labor, in view of the complexity of the problem, Goval said such demands would still be "negative" and would hamper the struggle of workers.

Simon SC Tay, a legal expert at the National University of Singapore, stressed that dialog was still needed on human rights before sanctions could be imposed.

Meanwhile Syed Husein Alatas of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, said that while there have been "worse violations" of basic human rights, sanctions have proved to be inconsistent and discriminative.

The Executive Director of Legal Rights and Natural Resource Center of the Philippines, Marvic M.V.F. Leonen, closed the talks which debated the universality and particularity of human rights.

He noted that the speakers from the academia, non-governmental organizations and governments had agreed that human rights "is still a far cry" from ideal, although no consensus had been reached on the degree of its violations.