Global Policy Network

Organizing Global Responses to Globalization:
The Fourth "International Progressive Policy Conference"
March 2 - 5, 2000, Hamburg, Germany

Findings
From Prof. Dr. Jürgen Hoffmann, Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Politik (Hamburg School of Economics and Politics), Germany

I.
What responses can trade unions, political parties and other movements on the political left offer to the phenomenon of globalization?

And what assistance can scientific analyses provide in formulating these responses?

More than 40 representatives of scientific institutes, trade unions and politicians from over 20 countries from around the globe, met from 2 to 5 March, 2000 in Hamburg’s Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Politik to discuss analyses of and political alternatives to the process of economic globalization at the fourth "International Progressive Policy Conference" (IPPC).

The conference was organized and financially supported by the European Trade Union Institute, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) (Washington, USA), the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bristol Business School (GB) and the Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Politik (HWP) Hamburg. Traditionally, and from the outset, IPPC events have set out to find – in a concern dear to the trade union movement – international economic and trade union policy alternatives to the predominance of "neo-liberal" economic concepts in worldwide politics.

Global challenges – and this became particularly clear at the Hamburg Conference – call for global answers, not least from trade unions, who have always inscribed international solidarity on their banners, and who feel themselves increasingly cornered by internationally ever more mobile capital into national labor markets, where they are in danger of being reduced to irrelevance. The conference had as its specific topic "Globalization and the social contract". In other words, it was not just another conference among many currently addressing the topic of "Globalization". Rather, it focused on the consequences of globalization – both risks and opportunities – for trade union movements [1]. Almost all participants were concerned to move beyond the analysis stage and to point to political alternatives.

However, these alternatives proved – a situation which possibly also distinguishes the conference from similar conferences of the 70s and 80s – as heterogeneous as the cragged economic and social landscapes left behind by the process of economic globalization. All of which makes it all the more difficult for the rapporteur to single out the results. But possibly precisely this would be to draw the wrong conclusion from the analysis of global restructurings: we are no longer looking to find "standardized" solutions, but to analyze multi-facetted, differentiated global and regional processes, which are calling for a policy of regulation of multiplicity, without losing sight of the goal of global solidarity. But what do we mean by global solidarity, when workers in the USA are defending themselves against cheap imports, which are destroying their jobs, but which at the same time are creating new jobs in third world countries? What do we mean when human rights groups rightly seek to ban child labor, when it is precisely this child labor that makes these products competitive against the protectionism of industrialized countries? Concepts too such as solidarity and justice have still to be tested against a global view – and the conference, bringing together representatives of the First and Third Worlds [2], was only a beginning here.

II.
The conference was divided into two "tracks" (working groups) following the plenary session, in which short reports were presented from the countries taking part. The connection to the location of the event was provided in an address by a Hamburg colleague, in a lecture which sketched out the relationship between a region and economic globalization taking as its example the economy of Hamburg. Like almost all other contributions, it distanced itself, with reason, from an excessively strong "globalization thesis" by pointing to the meaning of the region, of its "endogenous potential" and of networks in the globalization process. The latter, it should be pointed out, was also a blind spot in most conference contributions, which in Track A ("Economic Policy") limited themselves to macroeconomic questions. But given that one specific feature of globalization processes is their highly heterogeneous impact on regional structures, this was a problem, the more so this could have helped create a bridge to Track B ("Industrial Relations and the Future of Trade Unions").

On the other hand, the contributions to this first working group also showed clearly that the "traditional" discourse of the 1960s and 70s – which, based on the assumption of under-consumption, called for the expansion of state expenditure and increasing purchasing power as a crisis-solving measure – has lost much of its relevance. On the other hand, the structural changes in the world economy were commented on, the predominating monetary policy was criticized and demands were made, for the international regulation of financial flows and the development of new instruments to control financial instability. This included suggestions for such instruments.

For example an AFL-CIO representative presented a model, similar to the Tobin tax, of minimum reserves on assets, aimed at coming to grips with the root cause of financial instability. Consideration was also given – as in an Australian contribution – to the restructuring the welfare state along "post-etatistic" lines. Corporatism, "social tolerability" and competitiveness were understood not as opposites, but as mutually determining within the framework of modern production concepts, providing one can move away from the present predominating, short-term "shareholder value" perspective.

A successful foundation for this approach – both theoretical and empirical – was provided by the Finnish participant and by the representatives of the ETUC/ETUI and the OECD’s Trade Union Advisory Committee. While contributions homed in on structural changes at both the economic and social levels and the derived proposals for political action, other positions were expressed, which located the present day problems primarily at the ideological level ("hegemony of neo-liberalism") with a desire to return to the good old days of Keynes and/or a defense of the classical social democratic welfare state.

An important – and controversy-raising – subtopic, was the question of the preconditions for the success of an employment policy, which was placed center stage by representatives from both the southern hemisphere (Brazil, South Africa but also Australia) and the northern hemisphere and Japan. One thing, however, became abundantly clear – not least through the analyses presented by the representatives of the Economic Policy Institute (USA): making labor market inflexibility / flexibility responsible for the plague of unemployment in Europe and for apparent full employment in the USA, is not only theoretically questionable, but also empirically untenable.

III.
Working group (Track) B discussed the consequences of globalization on industrial relations and the future of trade unions. At times it was difficult to achieve a sharp distinction between economic modernization ("post-Fordism"), the effects of the development of macro-regional markets (e.g. the European internal market) and globalization. This was inevitable: as the processes of globalization are themselves the outcome of economic modernization (e.g. outsourcing strategies) and regional liberalization, which then rebound to affect economic and social life. In conjunction with economic modernization strategies, globalization processes lead, in particular in countries extremely dependent on world markets, to new splits within the working population. Whole groups of workers of both sexes, that until now had secure workplaces, are being excluded and marginalized, along with the trade unions representing them (e.g. Mexico, but also India), while labor productivity is being ratcheted up in assembly plants which are dependent on world markets. Indeed many participants from industrial countries were astonished at the extent of propagation of modern production concepts in these countries – one indicator of the impact of globalized markets.

On the other hand it became clear in a positive way for the EU countries, how far cooperation and pay policy coordination have developed in recent years – albeit forced by the market – and even if special national conditions still weigh heavy in the balance, if a common pay policy is still in its infancy, and if national and local pay policies continue to dominate, even in conjunction with European Works Councils – as research by a representative of the IRES (France) shows.

The contributions also demonstrated clearly that concepts of participation have by no means lost their interest in an age of globalization. Rather the opposite: the Italian example speaks for a growth in the importance of such concepts, whilst research in US enterprises shows that participative workplace systems ("High Performance Workplace Systems") also pay in terms of high profitability – but at the same time (as is also shown by research of colleagues of the SOFI-Institute in Germany) are under pressure from and are in danger of being brought to nought by a shareholder value culture. The fact that cooperative models were capable, within the capitalistic structures of the past, of a higher economic performance than the decentralized, pure market variants (that is, if we add back in the "economic performance" and the social welfare component) was demonstrated again in the summary of an extensive empirical study presented by Belgian colleagues. Reports on the situation of trade unions in central and eastern Europe, on the successes and difficulties of pushing through working time policies in Australia, and discussions and conflicts around the privatization of public services, completed the range of contributions.

IV.
The result of the conference cannot – as was already made clear above – be summarized in a single, new political concept, with which we can march out to grapple with the problems of globalization. What the conference sought first of all was to achieve a common language about the topics and problems, to make new contacts, to define the need for international research – this was one of the concrete results – and to establish a global network for the future. With the help of the Internet, the intention is to enable this network to develop a more intensive global scientific discussion, that recognizes the challenges and risks of globalization for trade unions and which throws up policies to counter this, but that at the same time seizes the opportunities that globalization has to offer.

To build on the conference and to plan future cooperation, a steering committee was appointed composed of representatives of DIESSE, Brazil; EPI, USA; ETUI, NALEDI, South Africa; and RIALS, Japan. The organization was subsequently renamed "The Global Policy Network", and a website has been established by EPI as a vehicle for cooperation (gpn.org). The ETUI is coordinating publication of the conference papers.

Endnotes
1. A thematic concentration which for reasons of work organization meant that ecological and gender-specific questions and topics related to the globalization discussion had to be excluded - which does not mean that these questions might not be examined in subsequent meetings. [RETURN TO TEXT]

2. One failure in the composition of the participants was that (once again) the gender relationship worked to the disadvantage of the women (or as one participant expressed it: "… the gender bias is dreadful"). There was also an absence of representatives of central and eastern European "non-socialist" countries. For this reason the representative of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung took it upon himself to report - in Track B - on the development of trade union movements in these countries. [RETURN TO TEXT]

Jürgen Hoffmann
Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Politik
(Hamburg School of Economics and Politics – University)
Hamburg

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