KMU to parallel migrant forum: Fight labor export policy
10/29/2008 | 05:50 AM
MANILA, Philippines - Workers' movements worldwide must resist a labor export policy in coping with the global financial crisis, a militant labor leader told an alternate international labor workshop Tuesday.
Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) chairman Elmer Labog stressed the need for such action as the present global financial crisis bared the extreme dependence on backward countries on labor export.
"Now, more than ever, the workers' movements worldwide have to reflect on the impact of labor outmigration on their ranks. The current global financial crisis has laid bare the extreme dependence of backward countries on labor-export for their economic survival, and the utter ruthlessness of monopoly capitalist institutions in manipulating global labor markets, tiding them over their periodic economic crises," Labog said in his keynote address at the Labor and Migration workshop at the International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees.
He added that the working class is the most affected in the global meltdown.
Excerpts of Labog's speech were posted on the KMU website Wednesday.
In his address, Labog said the number of unemployed people in the globe has now reached a record-high of more than 200 million, compared to 150 million 12 years ago.
Underemployment, meanwhile, now reaches more than 1.5 billion even as the global crisis threatens to slash more livelihood from both labor-exporting and labor-importing countries.
"The current financial meltdown is projected to have an adverse effect on the migrants all over the globe. In 2005, there is already an estimated 185-192 million migrants worldwide representing 2.9 per cent of the global population. For the same year also, there were already 13 million documented refugees in the world, with 7 million coming from Asia, 3 million from Africa, and almost 3 million from developed countries," he said.
Yet, Labog said, migrant workers suffer much while the capitalists and the governments that trade them enjoy profits.
He cited a recent report by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) placing total OFW remittances for 2006 at $14.6 billion.
The IFAD-IDB report titled "Sending money home: Worldwide remittances to developing countries" ranked the Philippines as the fourth biggest recipient of migrant remittances worldwide.
India was at first place with $24.5 billion, followed by Mexico with
$24.2 billion and China, $21 billion.
"As governments scamper to survive the current crisis, labor export policy will be intensified resulting to an intensified movement of persons. Faced with the incapability of providing jobs in home countries, governments will be hell-bent on commodifying labor and sending workers abroad in exchange for the much-needed remittances to keep the economy afloat," he said.
He said the Philippine government for one has announced 200,000 job opportunities in Australia and Canada, "in an obvious effort to exert the crisis out of the country."
This would mean pushing them into more “3D jobs" - dirty, difficult and dangerous, with low wages and with rights not even recognized, much more respected, he said.
"While the GFMD and successive reports by the ADB, World Bank and the IMF have paid lip service to and cried crocodile tears over supposed deleterious side-effects of the labor-export policy, they have also laid stress on its ability to soften the impact of economic downturns on the world capitalist system at large," he said.
Labog said an estimated 150 million migrants worldwide sent some $300 billion to their families in developing countries in 2006, typically $100, $200 or $300 at a time, through more than 1.5 billion separate financial transactions.
"With the onset of the current financial crisis and impending global recession, underdeveloped and developed economies alike will most certainly make use of this available 'lifeline' to save their sinking economies. What this entails for "globalized" labor in terms of further suffering, oppression and exploitation will be enormous, aggravating their legitimized and institutionalized slavery a hundredfold. And so, the unwanted and undesirable task of propping up the tottering world capitalist system will be borne substantially by migrant labor," he said.
Labog also said statements from imperialist institutions that superficially criticize certain flaws in the labor export policy (LEP)-led "development model" actually serve to gloss over bigger, more basic issues behind this phenomenon. These are:
* Whether promoted locally or globally, labor-export policy (LEP) as a prescription for economic development has only furthered the underdevelopment of already backward economies.
* Labor as a productive force is being destroyed on an unprecedented scale and in a more profound way than ever before.
* On the basis of rampant promotion of LEP, new and distinct forms of imperialist plunder have evolved out of traditional ones.
Labog said it is fairly obvious that imperialism is at the very heart of the problem.
"By previously creating conditions of backwardness in the sending countries through neocolonial trade, preserving local feudalism, preventing national industrialization and fostering clientelist relationships with their governments, the stage was set long ago for labor outmigration. Exported labor force is utilized as a global reserve army of labor, which can then be ruthlessly exploited and simultaneously made to serve as a battering ram against their relatively entrenched and unionized brothers in capitalist centers,"
he said.
He said it is extremely important for trade unions in industrialized countries to support the anti-imperialist and people's democratic struggles in backward countries.
"Only a labor movement forged as a politically-conscious class and united around a consistently anti-imperialist program and a viable alternative to capitalism as a system can be capable of such a leading role. Only a labor movement that upholds the continuing relevance of socialism as that alternative can be certain of ending the LEP by striking deep at its roots," he said. - GMANews.TV
Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) chairman Elmer Labog stressed the need for such action as the present global financial crisis bared the extreme dependence on backward countries on labor export.
"Now, more than ever, the workers' movements worldwide have to reflect on the impact of labor outmigration on their ranks. The current global financial crisis has laid bare the extreme dependence of backward countries on labor-export for their economic survival, and the utter ruthlessness of monopoly capitalist institutions in manipulating global labor markets, tiding them over their periodic economic crises," Labog said in his keynote address at the Labor and Migration workshop at the International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees.
He added that the working class is the most affected in the global meltdown.
Excerpts of Labog's speech were posted on the KMU website Wednesday.
In his address, Labog said the number of unemployed people in the globe has now reached a record-high of more than 200 million, compared to 150 million 12 years ago.
Underemployment, meanwhile, now reaches more than 1.5 billion even as the global crisis threatens to slash more livelihood from both labor-exporting and labor-importing countries.
"The current financial meltdown is projected to have an adverse effect on the migrants all over the globe. In 2005, there is already an estimated 185-192 million migrants worldwide representing 2.9 per cent of the global population. For the same year also, there were already 13 million documented refugees in the world, with 7 million coming from Asia, 3 million from Africa, and almost 3 million from developed countries," he said.
Yet, Labog said, migrant workers suffer much while the capitalists and the governments that trade them enjoy profits.
He cited a recent report by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) placing total OFW remittances for 2006 at $14.6 billion.
The IFAD-IDB report titled "Sending money home: Worldwide remittances to developing countries" ranked the Philippines as the fourth biggest recipient of migrant remittances worldwide.
India was at first place with $24.5 billion, followed by Mexico with
$24.2 billion and China, $21 billion.
"As governments scamper to survive the current crisis, labor export policy will be intensified resulting to an intensified movement of persons. Faced with the incapability of providing jobs in home countries, governments will be hell-bent on commodifying labor and sending workers abroad in exchange for the much-needed remittances to keep the economy afloat," he said.
He said the Philippine government for one has announced 200,000 job opportunities in Australia and Canada, "in an obvious effort to exert the crisis out of the country."
This would mean pushing them into more “3D jobs" - dirty, difficult and dangerous, with low wages and with rights not even recognized, much more respected, he said.
"While the GFMD and successive reports by the ADB, World Bank and the IMF have paid lip service to and cried crocodile tears over supposed deleterious side-effects of the labor-export policy, they have also laid stress on its ability to soften the impact of economic downturns on the world capitalist system at large," he said.
Labog said an estimated 150 million migrants worldwide sent some $300 billion to their families in developing countries in 2006, typically $100, $200 or $300 at a time, through more than 1.5 billion separate financial transactions.
"With the onset of the current financial crisis and impending global recession, underdeveloped and developed economies alike will most certainly make use of this available 'lifeline' to save their sinking economies. What this entails for "globalized" labor in terms of further suffering, oppression and exploitation will be enormous, aggravating their legitimized and institutionalized slavery a hundredfold. And so, the unwanted and undesirable task of propping up the tottering world capitalist system will be borne substantially by migrant labor," he said.
Labog also said statements from imperialist institutions that superficially criticize certain flaws in the labor export policy (LEP)-led "development model" actually serve to gloss over bigger, more basic issues behind this phenomenon. These are:
* Whether promoted locally or globally, labor-export policy (LEP) as a prescription for economic development has only furthered the underdevelopment of already backward economies.
* Labor as a productive force is being destroyed on an unprecedented scale and in a more profound way than ever before.
* On the basis of rampant promotion of LEP, new and distinct forms of imperialist plunder have evolved out of traditional ones.
Labog said it is fairly obvious that imperialism is at the very heart of the problem.
"By previously creating conditions of backwardness in the sending countries through neocolonial trade, preserving local feudalism, preventing national industrialization and fostering clientelist relationships with their governments, the stage was set long ago for labor outmigration. Exported labor force is utilized as a global reserve army of labor, which can then be ruthlessly exploited and simultaneously made to serve as a battering ram against their relatively entrenched and unionized brothers in capitalist centers,"
he said.
He said it is extremely important for trade unions in industrialized countries to support the anti-imperialist and people's democratic struggles in backward countries.
"Only a labor movement forged as a politically-conscious class and united around a consistently anti-imperialist program and a viable alternative to capitalism as a system can be capable of such a leading role. Only a labor movement that upholds the continuing relevance of socialism as that alternative can be certain of ending the LEP by striking deep at its roots," he said. - GMANews.TV
