Re: Some responses

[Karen May <kmay@igc.org>]

Vic and trans-ients: 
just to clarify, I am proposing that COG promote its policies as the
alternative to WB/IMF imposed structural readjustment as the condition
for debt relief or further borrowing -- a very specific response to
their practice.  While we on this list may agree in the underlying
thesis of "broadened ownership as alternative to destructive
globalization" on general principal, I am proposing a very narrow,
constructive approach to disseminating our message, to engaging the
dialogue without "turning off" those inside the halls of power.  

If we are about making an impact, I would argue that we are past the
point of fighting globalization per se, and have to fight for the
minutia of how it's done.  We can back our arguments up with solid
economic theory and evidence that promoting broadened ownership is good
for domestic economies on the macro level, and good for people on the
micro-level (notwithstanding the issue over actual corporate control,
which is indeed important).  Furthermore, it is a BETTER strategy than
structural adjustment, which suppresses wages and increases poverty,
defeating the purpose of debt relief in the first place. The World Bank
now acknowledges debt relief as a necessity, but they get around any
meaningful poverty-relief reforms by arguing that "if we relieve this
debt now unconditionally, these poor countries will just squander it,
and they'll be in the same position in 5 years anyway, so we HAVE to
impose belt tightening measures--its really for their own good."  I
think we need to fight that patronizing message with something concrete,
simple, and positive, like  "Forgive the debt conditional upon
strengthening economies with shared ownership."  This is still pretty
threatening, and we will have to work hard to ensure that we are talking
about measures to ADD owners, versus an almost revolutionary implication
of taking the all-mighty property away from existing owners.  Again,
crafting the message is critical, taking into consideration who are
target is, and what we want them to do.  Then it becomes a question of
access--who has access to the decision-makers, how can we get that
access, and what are the points of leverage.  I definitely sense a
window of opportunity here--let's go after it!

Karen May



Vic Thorpe wrote:
> 
> Dear Steve and eotrans Friends,
> 
> I've been following the discussion over recent days and have a few comments
> I'd like to share:
> 
> 1.  I thought the discussion on multinational company share distribution
> schemes was a leg-pull until I saw that it was being taken deadly serious by
> several respondents.  But when we got to the idea that Wal-Mart is a likely
> candidate for conversion to worker ownership I could contain myself no
> longer.  It's true that, as the USA's biggest private-sector employer, with
> nearly 1.5 million employees (O.K. let's call them 'associates' - or
> 'colleagues' as the Brits do in ASDA - just to keep up the treacly-sweet
> imagery) or nearly 1% of the entire civilian workforce, it would be great
> news if that retail empire were planning to hand over control to its workers
> in any foreseeable future scenario.
> 
> But, somehow, I don't think so.
> 
> I scanned the www.wal-mart.com  pages using searches for 'labor union',
> 'trade union', 'worker representative', 'worker representation' - even
> 'associate representation' - all without result.  As a long-time union man
> that made me wonder about the organisation's real commitment to worker
> rights.  Broader enquiry among friends involved in organising the sector
> also suggested that Wal-Mart is not an easy employer to organise.  Then I
> discoverd the Wal-Mart Employee Abuse Forum
> http:/members.aol.com/walmopboy/abuse/index.html and later on the
> www.walmartsucks.com.  (You can even find some others that have allegedly
> been chased around the web by the FBI - but maybe that's just paranoia!)
> Now there aren't many of even the world's biggest companies that engender
> that kind of unsolicited anti-testimonial from disgruntled employees.  When
> I encountered an article from 'Time' magazine 2 November 1998, entitled
> 'Slaves of New York', describing illegal immigrant sweatshops producing
> goods under appalling conditions, 40 per cent of which allegedly ended up in
> Wal-Mart stores, my cup overflowed.
> 
> Frankly, I've never encountered this company before, but it does look all of
> a piece with what I thought about employee share distributions all along.
> They are not a means (even to the most optimistic believer in gradualism) of
> opening up the process of company control to the workforce.  They are rather
> a way to institutionalise paternalism in its 21st century form and keep the
> pressure on actual wages.  Company executives read the reports on employee
> motivation too.  They also know that linking a portion of wage distribution
> to profitability makes motivational and business sense (why would it not?).
> When objective market conditions are good, you can afford to be generous;
> when they turn bad (and they have been slowing a bit just recently at
> Wal-Mart) - "Hey, Sorry folks! But you just didn't work hard enough!"
> 
> Surely we have to keep our eye on the ball - 'ownership' of the firm, I
> believe.  Then we can make our own decision on when to congratulate
> ourselves on a job well done and when to tighten our belts.  It's good to
> get a share in the economic wealth created by our labor, sure, but it's
> necessary not to be sidelined by pursuing the economic grail - that has been
> exactly the problem of labor unions over the years and why they now have to
> compete in the social marketplace with a myriad NGO pressure groups.  We
> should be careful not to confuse the central aim of control with the latest
> motivational device of modern management.  By the way, while Wal-Mart/ASDA
> was 'giving away' £3.5 million to its 'colleagues' in the UK, Wal-Mart USA
> was buying back $3 BILLION of its own shares off the market to distribute an
> altogether better class of rewards to its regular shareholders and
> directors.
> 
> 2.  All that's not to say that I don't agree that the multinationals will
> inevitably need to be transformed from solely profit-minded corporations
> into more socially oriented organisations.  I do so believe.  And I think
> it's happening.  The expansion of ethical codes of conduct, social and
> environmental auditing and the shift in self-image from 'corporation' to
> 'organisation' (see 'Disney Organisation', for example), is all evidence of
> the shift in collective corporate consciousness that is taking place.  If
> the corporations have inherited the earth they now have to decide what they
> want to do with it.  Only the very short-sighted would decide to continue to
> rip it off as has been the case in the past.  "Sustainability" is the name
> of the game for corporations too.
> 
> 3.  So, by that rather long-winded route, I come to an accord with Karen
> May.  We have to be prepared to promote worker ownership as THE alternative
> to destructive globalisation of competition, under which the poorest and
> most exploited can labor in hope of inheriting the dirtiest, least paid and
> least protected jobs.  We can also persuade the corporation that it needs to
> ensure its dynasty for the ages to come through a new kind of 'open door
> policy'.  Not one that leads onto the street for those that do not share the
> company culture ("Are YOU a Wal-Mart Person?"); but one that leads from the
> workplace to the boardroom - AND back again!  The corporation must become a
> community owned economic AND socio-cultural organisation, or it will have to
> buck the trend for as long as it can hold out.  There's a real job there for
> the few of us who think we see where it should be headed.
> 
> 4.  As to micro-finance, I strongly agree that there are opportunities there
> to encourage growth of exemplary organisations.  But the past efforts of the
> IMF and World Bank do not suggest that they are well equipped to act as the
> agencies of that kind of transformation without root and branch reform.
> Their record is in preparing the ground for multinational capital to run
> riot in the Third World and for that they've done a remarkable job.
> 
> There's a crossroads at the entry to Ahmedabad in middle India with five
> water standpipes, around which are encamped some 200 families, living in
> various kinds of shelter - from cardboard and tin, up to hardened mud and
> the odd brick or two.  The standpipes were courtesy of an external NGO aid
> program some years back.  Aid too supplied the money with which each of the
> 200 or so shacks equipped itself with a little furnace and anvil.  The
> kids - and there are many - are fully occupied finding fuel for the furnace
> for which they must venture ever further afield, of course.  Mum typically
> oversees the fuel collection and operates the bellows at the fire.  Dad
> squats from dawn to dusk at the anvil hammering small pieces of iron into
> specially twisted shapes as fast as he can.  Twice a day an overseer comes
> round with a large handcart (its probably motorised by now for efficiency -
> this was all four years ago).  He inspects the twisted pieces of metal and
> rejects a depressingly large number.  He takes the rest and marks the number
> off on a control sheet.  He drops off some more flat pieces of metal and
> moves on.  The pieces of twisted metal find their way to a large local parts
> supplier to the motor industry.
> 
> That's the bottom end (and I do mean that in every sense of the word) of
> globalisation and the 'aid chain'.
> 
> On the other hand, there is also in Ahmedabad a wonderful organisation
> called the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA).  Formed of the Ghandian
> tradition, it is founded on the principles of cooperativism and self-help,
> but is not above receiving a bit of aid from the outside world when it comes
> without strings.  Under the watchful eye and inspiring leadership of Sister
> Ela Bhatt, the group has organised people such as the paper pickers (those
> who pick up paper from the streets, sort it and sell it on to a scrap
> merchant), bidi rollers, rag pickers, water carriers, hod carriers and
> others into a cohesive social force that now boasts its own public market,
> housing cooperative, credit bank, day-care service and so on.  The group has
> changed also the working lives of its members by arranging collection of
> office waste paper direct from source, negotiating rates with big growers of
> tobacco for the bidi rollers, taking care of the kids while Mum and Gran get
> on with earning money for the family...  The group is run on democratic
> lines and members decide what should be prioritised next and what should
> happen to any funds received or earned.  Previous 'untouchables' have
> emerged as powerful spokeswomen for their group.  Kids without hope of a
> future have been educated.  A whole community has been given dignity in the
> face of despair.
> 
> There's a world of difference between these two kinds of aid.  Let's just be
> sure we keep our reality spectacles on when we view the works of the
> multinational and multilateral givers of aid.
> 
> As I said above - a real job to be done out there.  Let's get to it!
> 
> Vic Thorpe
> Just Solutions
> Belgium
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