At the Global Progressive forum, held at the European Parliament 2-3 April 2009, I managed to interview John Evans, Secretary – General of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the OECD.
John Evans, Secretary - General of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the OECD
They represent around 60 national trades unions to the 30 industrialised members of the OECD. Their main policy aim is to try to ensure that global markets are balanced by an effective social dimension. With this in mind, I started by asking for his views on the G20 Summit in London.
“I think we have to recognise that it is progress, certainly from only a few days ago when governments were squabbling around and from the type of language in the earlier communiques and it’s progress over what was said in Washington last November. One sign is that jobs and the need to defend them has moved to a more central position and that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has been asked to measure if these measures are sufficient.
Obviously, the Devil is in the details, certainly on the financial regulations there is progress but the responsibility for oversight has been given to this Financial Stability Board, formerly forum, which is one of the least transparent bodies around, made up of central bankers and others and not really open to getting broader stakeholder views and accountability. We can’t have the same people who designed and are responsible for this crisis now being responsible for designing the rules for the new system. To have confidence, we have to open the system up.”
When asked about the vast sums of money on the table, he stated that “The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was the big winner, getting the bulk of the $1.1 Trillion and we also have to change things there, where the old policy of cutting wages, cutting public expenditure etc has become one of the reasons why some countries won’t go to the IMF, we need to change these policies and that is a big challenge for the future.” Other reforms he was interested in, included Chancellor Merkel’s desire to try to unify different sets of regulations into a common benchmark for regulating the economy was “important”.
What would he be looking for in the coming months?
“I’m looking to the ILO conference in June and given the ILO’s new role, I think we can move ahead. In terms of the next G20, we need to get access to the table and find out who’s designing the new rules and we want to have a seat on the Financial Stability Board and a broader responsibility in that area. These things are crucial, but in the short term we have to look at the composition of some of the fiscal packages and keep people in their jobs because it is going to take some time before these measures kick in and the forecast on jobs is still absolutely appalling”.
Recently in the UK and elsewhere there have been demonstrations against migrant workers, sometimes with the backing of far-right groups, how is that affecting unions?
“I think that we need to get concrete responses to people’s concerns to avoid people turning against people who are essentially victims of the process. It’s also happening in Asia, where migrants are the first being sent home, that just transfers the problem somewhere else. In the UK it was also about undercutting wages, we need good wages regardless of who the contractor is and we need to come out of this crisis with reduced inequality.”
Are the progressives, the centre-left, feeling optimistic? Has their time come?
“Well, to some extent yes. What you’ve seen is a failure of the fundamentalist market view, that says markets somehow balance themselves. So I think the old paradigm saying the smaller the role of the state the better, has failed. Behind that, there’s the question of rising income equality the madness and greed that got in the system so, yes, as social democrats there’s not just the opportunity, there’s the need to define a new paradigm which balances up the benefits of a market systems but with very strong government supervision of where investment is allocated and how the fruits of growth are distributed.
That would have been unthinkable a year ago, just as the nationalisation of the banks would be unthinkable. If we carry on the same there will be an politically explosive populist reaction that we just don’t want”.
How will the Unions come out of this crisis?
“We’ve got a global position and we’re calling for common aims; action to protect jobs, action to prevent this crisis from happening again, action to deal with the crisis of distributive justice and action to solve climate change. To achieve this we need reforms in the whole system of governance and at the moment it’s the G20, which is in the process of replacing the G8.
The solutions include stronger rights for working people, including using collective bargaining to as a mechanism for putting floors in markets, spreading wealth more fairly, but that’s just not going to happen unless we fight for it.
There’s a great deal of anger within our membership and rightly so, but we’ve got to make sure we represent our members and get policies in place that create jobs in the short term.”
