From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics

Thomas L Palley

Marshall McLuhan, the famed philosopher of media, wrote “We shape our tools and they in turn shape us”. His insight also applies to the economy which is shaped by economic policy derived from economic ideas, and it is the theme of my recent book which argues the global economic crisis is the product of flawed policies derived from flawed ideas.

Broadly speaking, there exist three different perspectives on the crisis. Perspective 1 is the hard-core neoliberal position, which can be labelled the “government failure hypothesis”. In the U.S. it is identified with the Republican Party and the Chicago school of economics.

The King and Us - Why Thailand’s lèse majesté law matters to unions and the world

Ian Graham 

Somyot Prueksakasemsuk

“Union rights are human rights.” That has been said loud and often. But it bears repeating. Labour rights are specialised extensions of the principles set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests,” the declaration insists. Nobody reading this column is likely to disagree (except, perhaps, with the “his”). Philosophically, core human rights such as freedom of association have always underpinned core labour rights.

Lack of Rain in the Rainforest

Nora Rathzel

From work or nature to work and nature: another kind of unionism

On a one-week tour organised by João Paulo Cândia Veiga from the University of São Paulo and Manoel Edivaldo Santos Matos from the Union of Rural workers (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores y Trabalhadoras Rurais de Santarém, STTR) in Pará, a region of the Brazilian Amazonas, we visited eight communities along the Rivers Arapiuns, Maró and Amazonas. These are small communities of between 90 and 300 people. They are of mixed indigenous and Portuguese origin, some groups defining themselves as indigenous.

Trade Unions, Class Struggle and Development

Ben Selwyn

How do class relations contribute to processes of capitalist development? Can workers’ struggles generate more progressive forms of human development, in the form of improved working and non-working conditions, rising pay and active social movements that bring workers’ concerns to the fore? Within much thinking about development the principal debate over the past 30 years or so has been between advocates of state-led and market-led development. For these advocates either state allocation and generation of resources or market-efficiency generates a growing pot of social wealth which trickles down, at some indeterminate point in the future, to the labouring population.

Renaissance of Pay Clauses in German Public Procurement and the Future of the ILO Convention 94 in Europe

Thorsten Schulten

Public procurement is of high economic importance. In many countries it covers up to one fifth of the annual national GDP. Public authorities have always used their market power as a contracting entity to promote certain social and labour standards. The ILO had even adopted a separate Convention on Labour Clauses in Public Contracts (Convention 94 from 1949). In order to promote fair competition and to avoid downward pressure on wage and working conditions in the tendering process, the ILO Convention 94 wants to ensure that workers hired in contracting companies do not receive less favourable conditions than those laid down in the appropriate collective agreements.