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.

The Microfinance Delusion

Milford Bateman

The optimistic beginning

Thirty years ago, it was widely thought that the perfect solution to unemployment and poverty in developing countries had been found in the shape of microfinance, the provision of tiny microloans used by the poor to establish an income-generating activity. Microfinance is most closely associated with the US trained Bangladeshi economist and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Dr Muhammad Yunus. By celebrating self-help and individual entrepreneurship, and by implicitly discrediting all forms of collective effort, such as trade unions, social movements, cooperatives, public spending, a pro-poor ‘developmental state’ and – most of all – collective moves to ensure a more equitable redistribution of wealth and power, neoliberal policy-makers in the international development

International Framework Agreements: Possibilities for a new Instrument

Siglinde Hessler

A new instrument of international labour regulation

International Framework Agreements (IFA) are important in international labour regulation. As the globalization of production and markets is increasing, an international regulation of labour is strongly needed. Existing instruments such as the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy and the great number of ILO conventions among others have set important marks in the debate, but still lack recognizable success as they lack the power of sanctions. Furthermore, the growing number of voluntary and unilateral declarations on social standards, which are part of the Corporate Social Responsibility strategy of companies, have not attained concrete results as they lack binding force.