PSAC DISCUSSION PAPER: Globalization

The term ‘globalization’ captures a number of corporate and governmental activities that are designed to provide corporations with the right to operate internationally under common rules. By definition, these rules decrease the power of governments to enforce their own rules and laws, and lead to a loss of control over domestic resources and economic development.

Given the far-reaching nature of globalization and its ability to undermine the role and accountability of governments, considerable care should be taken to ensure that globalization benefits all people, and not just the corporate sector.

Globalization has specifically been shaped in Canada in three ways:

• By the growth of transnational organizations and corporate networks that cross country and continental barriers;

• by agreements between governments at the ‘regional’ and international levels

• and by international financial institutions and their power to influence our country’s domestic policies.

Given that globalization has come about at least in part as a result of the expansion and consolidation of corporations, it may well prove to be inevitable and unreversible. That being the case, the question becomes: how can a globalized corporate sector be used to advance the economic, political and social interests of citizens around the globe.

The only way that corporations can operate globally in the interest of all people is under a set of rules designed not only to facilitate trade, but to ensure that people are protected.

The rules of trade are embodied through a complex web of international and regional trade agreements. In Canada, these include the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the General Agreement of Trade and Tariffs. Attempts have also been made to negotiate a Multinational Agreement on Investment (the MAI). In addition, efforts are under way to negotiate the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), which covers North and South America, and the General Agreement on Trades and Services (GATS), which essentially broadens the GATT to include services.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) plays a key role in the globalization – including enforcing the GATT and facilitating the negotiation of the GATS.

Trade agreements have been negotiated to facilitate trade, and all other related questions have been secondary. As a result, little if any attention has been paid to workers’ rights, protecting the environment, gender and racial quality, and ensuring that developing countries are treated fairly.

Trade agreements in effect today undermine national sovereignty, promote the privatization of government services and their delivery, and allow corporations the right to undermine the legislative and regulatory power of government. But it goes further yet. Under NAFTA, for example, corporations like Ethyl Corporations… can sue the Canadian governments and agencies for financial compensation when they consider that government regulations and laws interfere with their ability to make a profit. As a result, government policy in a number of areas, including issues as important as environmental and natural resource protection, are now routinely vetted by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade!

PSAC’s first substantive involvement in globalization was during the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement in the late 1980s. Along with the labour movement, the Action Canada Network and other coalition partners, the PSAC produced popular information on the detrimental impact of the FTA on Canadian workers, their families and communities. Subsequently, we played a supporting role in Canadian opposition that ultimately defeated the MAI.

More recently, the PSAC has decided to re-enter the globalization debate. Why? We have a direct responsibility to represent our members and negotiate good collective agreements, and our fight against globalization defends the employment and employment security of a great many PSAC members. We also have a social responsibility to fight for a better society in which we can all live. Our fight against corporate globalization protects and defends public services for all Canadians, including PSAC members.

Since the fall of 2000, the PSAC and our members in a number of locations have demonstrated against the GATS, the FTAA and the organizations that champion them in Seattle, Québec City, Vancouver, and Ottawa. We have also co-sponsored a cross-country Caravan designed to bring information on the impact of trade agreements and globalization to communities across the country. These actions were debated and officially endorsed by the National Board of Directors in January 2001.

In addition, the Alliance Executive Committee has made defending public services-globalization one of three political action priorities for 2001. In addition to the activities named above, the PSAC has, under this theme, supported the actions of our social partners, including the Common Front on the WTO and Common Frontiers. We’ve also initiated research projects on the scope and influence of corporate power in health care and other public services, participated in the 2000 women’s march which focused attention on the impact of globalization. We are also participating in the development of an international public education and mobilization project on the impact of corporate globalization and how to fight back.

As a union involved in the fight against corporate globalization, we have the following objectives:

• The protection of public services

• The mobilization of our members in opposition to trade agreements that undermine Canadian public services and Canadian sovereignty

• To hold corporations and governments to account for their treatment of workers in Canada and around the world;

In conjunction with the Canadian and international labour movements, we are calling for trade ministers and their governments to ensure that the following principles are respected in any trade agreement:

• The protection of basic workers’ rights from world trade exploitation

• The reform the world trading system to benefit the poor in developing countries

• Quality universal public education and health services, free from WTO rules;

• Cheap and affordable medicines to fight diseases like HIV-AIDS

• Opening of the WTO system to consultation with trade unions and other democratic representatives of civil society.

The PSAC has started a process to focus its next Convention on political issues that are a priority for the union and its membership. Globalization has been identified by the National Board of Directors as one issue that should be on our agenda.

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