Labour: Imagine Living on $53 a Month

allafrica.com OPINION May 5, 2003 Posted to the web May 13, 2003 Muthoni L. Wanyeki Nairobi

Over the past few years, Labour Day celebrations in the developed north have been marked by massive demonstrations by the so-called "anti-globalisation" protesters.

The description does the protestors a disservice. Yes, they include the anarchist organisations that the mainstream media so loves to capture and denigrate.

But the protestors also include representatives from the growing anti-racism movement, from the labour and women's movements and from the wide range of left-of-centre political parties.

What they protest is the state of the human condition across the world. Their analysis of the world as created by bilateral and multilateral financing as well as by international trade and investment is far from simplistic.

Their anger has helped shape public opinion and create pressure. They have thus made the work of advocates who lobby international financial institutions that much easier.

The results are there for all of us to see. We now have programmes for debt relief for the most highly indebted states. The International Monetary Fund is developing an international bankruptcy and insolvency mechanism for states.

International financing is increasingly targeted at poverty alleviation. More interestingly, late last month, we had the first national bill in support of the so-called Tobin Tax, in Venezuela.

The Tobin Tax refers to the proposal to develop an international mechanism for the taxing of international currency transactions. It is aimed at decreasing speculation in and reducing the volatility of international financial markets and is viewed as a potentially new source of financing for development.

It is a proposal that has been avidly adopted and promoted by the wide range of so-called "anti-globalisation" protestors. Now, the Venezuelan Ministry of Economic Development has presented a bill for adoption by its parliament containing its own version of the Tobin Tax.

The Bill proposes a two-tier currency transaction tax (CTT) - a small tax on currency transactions linked to international trade and a higher tax on currency transactions motivated by international financial markets.

What is remarkable about the proposed CTT in Venezuela is that it comes from the government of an indebted (although oil-rich) underdeveloped state. A state in political and economic crisis following last year's attempted coup d'etat by the right.

A state that needs foreign direct investment just as much as the rest of the underdeveloped south. Venezuela's experience with the CTT will thus be instructive to us all.

These changes, internationally and nationally, are what protestors like those who clashed with the police in Germany over Labour Day can bring about and have brought about.

I watched those clashes thinking about what protestors have achieved - painfully slowly as innovations they propose find their way into the arena of national and international policy. I watched those clashes thinking, too, about our own Labour Day celebrations.

Here, Labour Day celebrations were a sober and unquestionably state affair, despite the recent (and threatened) industrial unrest. It was a time for workers to sit back to hear what the state had decided to concede. For the state knew what it was expected to respond to, as came through in the president's speech.

But the minimum wage just announced is unacceptable. I cannot imagine trying to live on Ksh4,000 ($53) a month (and I am sure our president, who made the announcement, cannot either). I also know that the delay in resolving the teachers' salaries is equally unacceptable.

It is high time that debate on those salaries shifted from "what is achievable" to "how to make it achievable."

The long-term and systematic gains that collaborative efforts by all of civil society, including the labour movement, can achieve are obvious. Especially in view of the fact that the urgent bread and butter issues that still preoccupy labour here are intrinsically, if not obviously, linked to the issues raised above.

Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the African Women's Development and Communication Network (Femnet)