Examination of Witnesses (Questions 91-99)
TRADES UNION
CONGRESS
22 NOVEMBER 2005
Q91 Chairman: I think, despite the fact
a couple of our colleagues are out of the room, we will kick off.
Welcome, and thank you very much for coming this afternoon. Can
I begin by asking you to introduce yourselves?
Mr Tudor: I am Owen Tudor, I am
the Head of the European Union and International Relations Department
of the TUC, and my colleague, Sam Gurney, is International Officer
at the TUC and so has special responsibility for WTO issues and
he will be accompanying Brendon Barber, our General Secretary,
who will be part of the delegation at the Ministerial part of
the official government delegation. Unfortunately, Sam will not
be part of the official delegation. He will be making his own
way there.
Chairman: I am sure he will be carrying
a lot of weight.
Q92 Mr Bone: Thank you and welcome.
We have received an International Trade Union statement as evidence.
I was wondering if we could tease out from you what is the TUC's
own view of the prospects for Hong Kong also for the Doha Round
in general?
Mr Tudor: I should first explain
perhaps that although this is a submission which has been generated
through discussion at international level and is the formal position
of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, it has
also been adopted by the TUC General Council as the TUC's position
on these matters. We see ourselves in these cases as merely the
British arm of the global trade union movement and we share all
the views in it. I will hand over to Sam to say a few words about
the prospects that we see in terms of this Round.
Mr Gurney: The submission, as
Owen said, was a global submission but we were also very involved
in actually writing it. As you will see, I am not sure if this
proposal is dated. It was produced in July in time for the general
council meetings that were taking place then, so it took very
much an overview of the key issues that were coming up. Obviously
the situation since the July package has not progressed with the
speed that perhaps we would like to have seen. As I am sure you
have heard from other witnesses today, the modalities of the negotiations
are going extremely slowly. This week we are seeing the draft
text coming out in all the key areas and a worrying lack of progress,
I would say, in all those areas. I will not dwell on what the
CBI have just said, but I think we share their assessment of where
we have got to this week and the fact that we still want to see
a much more ambitious agenda in December, and it is not looking
very likely at the moment.
Q93 Chairman: I have to say one sentence
in the global trade union group memorandum did actually slightly
take my breath away. It is paragraph four: "Expansive promises
about the potential of trade liberalisation though the WTO have
failed to materialise in terms of more and better jobs and higher
growth either worldwide or in developing countries." I read
that as a sceptical statement about the value of free trade full
stop. I think there is room for debate on the impact of developing
counties, but are you saying there is no benefit either for developed
nations in free trade?
Mr Tudor: No, we are not saying
that there is no benefit at all, what we are saying is that those
promises have been rather overblown in terms of what actually
gets delivered. The TUC and the global trade union movement are
in favour of more trade because we think that more trade does
lead to more jobs, more wealth generally speaking, but we think
it is important not to overstate the results that will come from
these processes. Indeed, one of the key things that we have said
ought to be done at the WTO generally in terms of process is that
the WTO ought to be conducting impact assessments to see what
is likely to be the impact of any particular change in trade agreements.
In much the same way that we would assume now in Britain and Europe
that any legislation would be accompanied by an impact assessment,
we would like to see WTO agreements done on that basis as well
so that we can actually test what is really likely to happen as
a result—we recognise all the uncertainties involved—but
so that we are not just getting flights of rhetoric when it comes
to this Round will lead to nirvana, or something like that. We
would like to see a slightly more realistic assessment so we can
actually weigh what the positive outcomes will be compared with
the possible negative outcomes in terms of developing countries.
Mr Bone: That is a helpful clarification.
I can now read that sentence enlightened and I am grateful for
your clarification.
Q94 Mr Weir: In the statement you
call for greater WTO transparency and trade union participation
in negotiations. Do you feel that you had sufficient input into
the UK and EU negotiating position?
Mr Tudor: I think it is probably
true to say that certainly the UK government has been very open
with discussing with us what their negotiating position is and
taking our views and listening to them seriously. We have regular
meetings with officials at DTI. We have been having meetings with
the ministers at DTI, the DfID, and so on, to make these points;
and during the G8 process, for instance, we took a group of international
trade unionists from both G8 countries and also including African
trade unionists to see the Prime Minister prior to the Gleneagles
Summit to discuss these things. I know that at European level,
for instance, the European Trade Union Confederation has had similar
discussions with Mr Mandelson's office and with members of the
Commission as such, so there is clearly no unwillingness to listen,
no unwillingness to engage in Europe; although I have to say when
we talk to our colleagues around the globe, we have to say that
the position in Europe, and in Britain in particular, is way ahead
of a number of other countries around the world. I do not know
if Sam can add anything about situations in places like Brazil
and South Africa, which are key countries in terms of the G20,
but the problem we have had in Britain with the British government
is that most of the responses we get from the British government
about negotiating lines are conditioned by, "Of course, we
have to discuss this with our European partners and deal with
it at a European level", and we quite understand that, and
in terms of trading blocks it obviously makes sense to make such
arrangements at European level, but it does mean that we are a
bit arm's length from the process. Our main concern is that when
you get to the WTO itself, aside from negotiations with individual
governments and discussions with individual governments, it all
suddenly goes behind closed doors into late-night negotiating
sessions between government representatives. I think Sam was at
the UN summit in September as part of the UK delegation and came
back with some indications that those late night negotiating sessions
were not of the highest order of quality in terms of debate; so
we think there could be improvements there. We have gained a fair
amount in terms of transparency. I should say, Sam's experience
is as a trade union negotiator, so he knows lots about late night
negotiations and he can spot when they are going well and when
they are not going well. We therefore have transparency in terms
of our relationships with our government, and the presence of
Brendon Barber, as with Digby Jones on the official delegation
means that we expect that to continue through the process, but
I do not think it would be true of the WTO as a whole.
Q95 Mr Weir: Do you say that trades
unions should have direct input into the actual negotiations at
WTO, a representative, if you like, at the official negotiations
that you talked about? I am not quite sure how the negotiation
process between government and trade unions would work in that
circumstance?
Mr Tudor: I do not think we want
to give negotiating positions away. We would certainly accept
that this was a step by step process, and in many ways it is the
initial step which is the most important one as opposed to the
ultimate objective. What we have said is initially we would like
to see meetings of employment and trade ministers at WTO level
to meet with employers' organisations and trade unions to discuss
the trade agreements. We think that is the first step to engaging
them with both sides of industry in terms of the trade negotiations.
Where that ends up in the long run in terms of practical participation,
I do not know. International bodies vary on these matters. The
example is there in the International Labour Organisation which
deals specifically with economic matters and does that on a strictly
tripartite basis. Governments have a little bit of extra weighting
in the voting systems, but it is one where employers, unions and
governments sit down together and devise world legislation, global
legislation, and so it is not impossible to do trade on that basis,
but, as I say, what we are really keen to see is to get the first
steps under way.
Q96 Roger Berry: Could I turn to
core labour standards. I am well aware that the TUC argues, and,
indeed, your submission makes it clear, that in your view core
labour standards should be part of the whole discussion of WTO
agreements, not just in terms of praising the impact of changes
in trade regimes but the whole list of items you list under the
heading "Core labour standards" that you think need
to be satisfied. Developing countries, of course, resist beyond
a certain point the incorporation of an array of core labour standards
because they view them as simply being hidden protections, a new
trade barrier that targets them. Are they wrong?
Mr Tudor: There is some doubt
in my mind—I am sorry to do this in terms of answering the
question—about whether this is actually the case. The core
labour standards that we refer to are the eight core ILO conventions
covering child labour, forced labour, discrimination at work,
freedom of association and free collective bargaining, and regardless
of whether they have been ratified by individual governments,
adherence to those core labour conventions is a requirement of
ILO membership. As far as I can remember, all WTO member states
are members of the International Labour Organisation—there
are more ILO members than WTO members—and that means that
therefore they have all agreed those conventions; so I am uncertain
exactly in what sense they disagree with them because they have
all undertaken to uphold them. I am informed by various people
that they do consider these to be a restraint on trade, although
perhaps I am not aware we have been told that, and on a number
of occasions in the last few years we have heard from countries
which are supposed opponents of those conventions that they would
actually welcome putting more pressure on for those matters, for
instance, to deal with concerns about China and China's record.
The other thing is that we are not at all clear which core conventions
it is that those governments consider to be a restraint on free
trade. Is it forced labour or is it child labour? Which of these
things? This is the problem. I am sorry, I am not suggesting that
you do not know the answer to this, but I find it strange that
they are suggesting that prohibiting forced labour is a restraint
on their trading. I cannot quite understand the argument.
Q97 Roger Berry: To support your
argument, minimum wages, for example, have never been part of
core labour standards—I absolutely acknowledge that so that
there is no misunderstanding—and that is a pretty fundamental
issue. I know from experience in Bangladesh that the well-intentioned
desire not to have child labour is thought by many people, including
I might say some "enlightened aid donors", to be unhelpful
because child labour is better than the alternative which can
be pretty horrible in some countries; but, as you have rightly
confirmed, whatever the rights and wrongs, the fact is that developing
countries have been reluctant to bring trade labour conditionality
into this kind of discussion. You mentioned the ILO, and I will
be straying into Rob's point if I am not careful. Let me put it
this way. There are some who would argue that the WTO is about
trade barriers, that it is about, depending on your view about
these matters, working to eliminate trade barriers or to modify
the various restricted trade in some less comprehensive way, and
so on. Why do you think it is necessary that core labour standards
concerns should enter into that discussion?
Mr Tudor: A philosophical argument
would say that you cannot have free trade without having a level
playing field. The whole point about trade is that you have people
operating on the same . . . .
Q98 Roger Berry: We do not have level
playing fields?
Mr Tudor: No; exactly.
Q99 Roger Berry: And never will have,
even with your core labour standards, the playing fields will
still be very uneven?
Mr Tudor: You can have bumpy playing
fields, and we have all seen those pre-third round FA Cup matches
where the field slopes so far from one end to the other and you
can just let the ball dribble into whichever side's goal whichever
half you are in. There is a levelness of playing field that we
would want to achieve, and I think that that is one of the reasons
why we say it is the core labour standards: it is the fundamental
human rights, because remember these core labour conventions,
although advised by the ILO, are considered to be core human rights,
fundamental human rights, by the UN. If you abrogate those, if
you fall below those levels, I do not think you are actually trading
equitably, which I think is a critical element of the world trading
system.
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