Not Yet Banking on the BRICS

March 28, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

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Congress of South African Trade Unions says a BRICS Development Bank must promote development and industrialisation and job creation in the country. Pictured here is Pal Mfunzana, a resident from the poverty-stricken township of Diepsloot, in Johannesburg. Credit: Chris Stein/IPS

John Fraser

JOHANNESBURG, Mar 28 (IPS) – Although leaders of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa group agreed to launch a new development funding institution, giving the club a major infrastructure boost, some here are sceptical about the potential impact of the new bank.“I don’t think it will have much impact in South Africa, where capital is not the problem, but policy is,” Frans Cronje, deputy chief executive officer of the South African Institute of Race Relations, told IPS. The fifth BRICS summit was held in Durban, South Africa from Mar. 26 to 27.

There are concerns that some of the key details still remain to be agreed upon and announced, and also because the operation of the new BRICS Development Bank will need to be closely monitored if it is to convince observers that it will have a real impact on funding development.

“This new bank will be way smaller than the World Bank or International Monetary Fund (IMF), so it will have a marginal impact compared to those institutions,” Cronje said.

It has been suggested that all BRICS nations will initially be paying 10 billion dollars towards the seed capital of the bank, and Cronje said that it is “odd” that South Africa should be paying its full share when it has just two percent of the GDP of the BRICS.

“Is this a vanity project for South Africa?” he questioned. “Is shifting the balance away from the World Bank and the IMF simply ideological romanticism

It is already clear that the bank will focus on infrastructure projects, but there is still uncertainty about several details, including the geographical footprint of the bank, its site and the currency or currencies in which it will operate.

“The first focus of the bank is on infrastructure, which is as it should be,” independent Johannesburg economist Mike Schussler told IPS.

“There will be discussion on where you put the money, as South Africa, Brazil, Russia and India all need infrastructure, and there will be a shortfall of funds.

“So the challenge will be on how to commit the initially inadequate resources.”

Memory Dube, a senior researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs, a non-governmental research institute, described the agreement to go ahead with the bank, which was taken by BRICS finance ministers in Durban on Tuesday Mar. 26, as “significant” in the evolution of the BRICS grouping into a solid and sustainable alliance.

“It provides an institutionalisation for the BRICS. Until now, it has been a loose grouping, but this new bank will glue the members together.

“This is an actual institution that belongs to the BRICS and will be run by the BRICS. There is now no doubt that the BRICS will exist 10 years from now, 20 years from now – there is something tangible,” she told IPS.

Spokesperson for the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Patrick Craven, was guarded about the new bank.

“It is too early to assess it,” he told IPS. “We want a lot more detail on how the bank will operate and who will be in charge of it.”

“We will insist its mandate is very different to that of the World Bank and the IMF – which are used to reinforce the domination of the North American and Western European economies and have had a very negative effect on developing countries, by imposing constraints on lending.

“A BRICS Development Bank must promote development and industrialisation and job creation.”

Entrepreneur Sandile Zungu is one of the five South African delegates who sit on the new BRICS Business Council, which was also launched at the Durban summit.

“Often infrastructure projects in South Africa and in the rest of Africa have the potential to benefit one or more of the BRICS countries,” he told IPS in a telephone interview from Durban.

“With the new BRICS Development Bank, these projects will have a better chance of getting funding than they would have done from the World Bank. There will be a wider pool of funding.”

Dube said she was keen to learn about the site of the new BRICS Development Bank, as this had not been announced at the time she spoke to IPS from the summit on Mar. 27. South Africa has been keen to host it, but China is also a strong candidate.

However, Zungu said that he believes South Africa is the strongest candidate among the BRICS nations to host the new institution.

“Arguably, South Africa has the best financial services system of all the BRICS countries, and the World Bank says we have the best.

“We are also closest to the area of greatest need for infrastructure development.”

Dube also expressed an interest in seeing a lot more detail on other issues concerning the new bank. “If they structure it right, it might make a real difference,” she suggested.

“But the devil will be in the detail.”

She said it would be important to see the funding structure of the new bank.

“We have heard each BRICS country will contribute 10 billion dollars,” she said. “But will that be enough? Will further funding be raised on the open market? I also want to see more detail on the BRICS Development Banks’ decision-making structure.

“We also need to see the regions in which it will operate – will it be for all developing nations, or for the BRICS members only?

“Then we need to look at spending priorities, and what currency it will operate in. Will it be the United States dollar, or will the BRICS nations decide it must operate in their own currencies?”

The political hurdle has been overcome with the decision in Durban to found the BRICS Bank.

However, the credibility of the bank itself and of the BRICS alliance now rests on the skill and efficiency with which it is brought to life and on the degree to which it can make a real difference to development in the BRICS nations and beyond.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Development, Finance, Lead Tagged With: , , ,

Murder of Landless Workers’ Leader Recalls Brazil’s Dictatorship

February 3, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 31 (IPS) – The execution-style killing of a leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement in a sugarcane plantation in the southeastern Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, where bodies of opponents of the dictatorship were incinerated in the 1970s, recalls one of the most tragic chapters in this country’s history.

In the book "Memórias de uma Guerra Suja" (Memoirs of a Dirty War), Cláudio Guerra, formerly an agent of the Departamento de Ordem Política e Social (DOPS), the 1964-1985 military regime’s political police, tells how the bodies of 10 leftwing activists were burned, in order to leave no trace, in the oven of the Usina Cambahyba sugarcane plant in Campos dos Goytacazes, a municipality in the north of the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Forty years later, the name of this agroindustrial complex of seven plantations with a total area of 3,500 hectares is again linked to the silencing of a bothersome voice, but this time under a full democracy.

Fifty-four-year-old Cícero Guedes was an outstanding leader in the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). He led the land occupation of the Usina Cambahyba plant which gave rise to the Luiz Maranhão encampment.

"He was a real symbol, and (his murder) sends a powerful message to the MST, which is organising the land claims of rural workers in the area," one of the MST national directors, Marcelo Durão, told IPS.

"We are in conflict with the forces of oppression in the region," he said, and he described Guedes as "a staunch activist, consistent and very focused on the struggle for land, as well as an authority on agroecological production."

Marcos Pedlowski, a professor at the State University of North Fluminense who has studied land reform issues there since 1998, said the murder "is clearly an attempt to break up the organisation, rather than a petty dispute." Guedes was "an icon of efforts in the struggle for land", he said.

guedes

The MST leader was cut down by at least 10 bullets in an ambush in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 26, near the sugarcane industrial complex. He was cycling home from a meeting to negotiate the legalisation of the situation of the 100 landless families in the encampment.

The dispute over land ownership with agribusiness owners in the region "has been exacerbated by the delay in legal procedures involving properties regarded as unproductive, and therefore subject to expropriation for agrarian reform purposes," said Maria do Rosário Nunes, the human rights secretary for the Brazilian Presidency. The Cambahyba case is an example, she said in a communiqué.

Legal authorisation for the expropriation, which effectively allows it to go ahead, was granted in August 2012, 14 years after the ruling by the Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA).

"The backdrop (to the murder) is the slowness of federal justice," Marcelo Freixo, a state legislator for the Socialism and Freedom Party and chair of the Human Rights Commission of the Rio de Janeiro state legislature, told IPS in an interview.

"The large plantations in the sugarcane processing region are bankrupt and are in debt to the state, in an area where there is a great concentration of poor and landless people. This is where INCRA really has to ensure land reform," he said.

The large estates belonged to the late Heli Ribeiro Gomes, a former deputy governor of Rio de Janeiro, and were passed on to his heirs.

In the book, Guerra says he took advantage of his friendship with Ribeiro Gomes to "disappear" the bodies of the leftwing activists, using the factory oven.

The story is "absurd", according to Ribeiro Gomes’s relatives, but other equally macabre tales have been borne out in reality, even in the present day, like the killing of Guedes and other rural activists whose deaths did not receive as much publicity.

"They say 10 activists were cremated. But we can well believe there were many more," said Durão. The area is notorious for its history of violence against rural workers on the part of the "sugar kings" and their hired killers.

Durão drew attention to the "brutality" of the killing, and its "premeditated nature", with four shots to the head and six to the left side of the chest.

Freixo said it was "a murder by several killers, an ambush… and nothing was taken. Clearly it was an execution."

The northern part of the Fluminense flats has not changed much – at least in terms of fundamental issues like land ownership, human exploitation and violence – since the dictatorship era, nor since previous centuries, when the first forms of slavery in Brazil were introduced on sugarcane plantations.

In 2009, a Labour Ministry report said Campos dos Goytacazes was the area with the highest number of workers labouring in slave-like conditions, a shocking situation in the 21st century, Freixo said. However, it is not surprising, since this region was the last in the country to abolish slavery.

Pedlowski, author of the book "Desconstruindo o Latifúndio – a Saga da Reforma Agrária no Norte Fluminense" (Dismantling the Large Estates – the Saga of Land Reform in North Fluminense), stressed the concentration of land ownership, linked to sugarcane monoculture and violence.

The Gini coefficient, which measures inequality on a rising scale from 0 to 1, is 0.8 for land ownership in Campos dos Goytacazes, the highest inequality coefficient in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

"The same families always rule the roost in Campos," a region that is "the traditional cradle of the extreme right, like Tradition, Family and Property (TFP, a traditional Catholic civic organisation, now-dissolved)," and a place where political corruption scandals have erupted in modern times, the book says.

Guedes fought tirelessly against the use of toxic pesticides in agriculture, in addition to fighting injustice. He was a sugarcane cutter in the northern state of Alagoas before joining MST in 1996 and obtaining a plot of land in the Zumbi dos Palmares settlement.

A father of five, Guedes ran an agroecological farm and was regularly to be found at organic produce markets, as well as participating in local coordination with the government food purchasing programme, which buys produce from family farms to provide school meals.

"He did not learn at the university. The rest of us learned from him," Pedlowski said.

"The MST was his life. He made great sacrifices to form marketing groups for producers…and he was not satisfied with having his own land. He led from the front at other land occupations. He was the animator," he said.

"The elimination of such a dynamic leader shows the degree of impunity and the state of paralysis of land reform, especially since (Brazilian President) Dilma (Rousseff) took office," he said.

According to the MST, the current administration not only has not solved the problem of 150,000 families camped by the roadside waiting for land, but has increased the concentration of land ownership, some of it in the hands of foreign companies.

An INCRA report says that in 2012 the agency invested 1.05 billion dollars and benefited 23,000 families in 117 settlements.

Last year, it says, the agency obtained declarations of public interest on 31 properties for the purposes of land reform.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Crime, Featured, Human Rights, Latin America, Politics, Social Justice Tagged With: , , , ,

Directing Your Call in Guatemala

November 21, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Nov 20 (IPS) – "I was surprised at how hard it was to learn more English. I had looked for work in a bank, but I would have earned only half what I make here, and I’d have had to work more hours," said Carlos de León from his cubicle in a call centre, part of a rapidly growing industry in Guatemala.De León, a 20-year-old university student, works for one of these call centres, which already employ between 16,000 and 18,000 people in this Central American country and are driving technology development, according to the Guatemalan Exporters Association (AGEXPORT).

Guatemala has 75 call centres, although only 15 of them are involved in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). They employ 10,000 young people who are bilingual in English and Spanish, and another 6,000 to 8,000 who speak only Spanish, according to AGEXPORT.

Germán López, of AGEXPORT’s call centre and BPO commission, told IPS that the industry injects some eight million dollars per month into the economy in the form of wages, which vary from 562 to 625 dollars a month on average.

"This goes towards paying for social security, value added tax, supermarket bills, housing, entertainment. And for each of these jobs, four more are created indirectly," he said.

According to AGEXPORT, call centre revenues amounted to 194.9 million dollars in 2011, 46 percent more than in 2010, while this year a 24 percent increase, to 242 million dollars, is expected.

López said the call centre industry has expanded in Guatemala since 2003, when it began to cater to the U.S. market.

"Our proximity, the competitive prices we can offer the United States, and the compatible time zone are features that make Guatemala an attractive country to the U.S. market," he said.

Call centres and other forms of BPO in Guatemala offer technical support and problem-solving in different areas, mainly telecommunications, electricity, banking and finance.

The buoyant growth of this industry here, which has attracted capital from India, Canada and the United States, where the largest centres are to be found, is also stimulating the growth of software technologies, web applications and digital development.

"Industries request ever increasing services. As a company, for instance, we have an agreement with another software development firm by which, if they have a client that wants programme development and a contact centre (which manage all client contact through different mediums such as telephone, fax, letter and e-mail), we can offer that," said López, a manager at the Allied Global call centre.

Furthermore, "as an exporters association, AGEXPORT is looking into the possibility of positioning the country as a provider of technology covering contact centres, software and digital services," he said.

This impoverished country of 15 million people has made strides towards closing the digital gap. Since 2010, for example, a Technological Campus has operated in the capital city, designed as "a physical space where innovation and technology can find a place to flourish at world-class levels of competitiveness."

The area, where 100 companies in the information technology sector operate, specialises mainly in the production of special effects for films, video games, and software for mobile phones and the internet.

This year a Guatemalan company, Surtidora de Alta Tecnología, created the CybeTech Pad CT8003, Guatemala’s first tablet computer, assembled in China, to compete with global brands.

Meanwhile, a South Korean company, Sollen-Guatemala, is about to commence operations here to make touch screens for iPad and iPhone with a view to distributing them throughout the Americas.

So call centres are just a part of the range of opportunities for technological development and bolstering competitiveness in Guatemala.

José Calderón, of the Language Learning Centre at the public San Carlos University of Guatemala, told IPS they were working on a project with AGEXPORT, the economy ministry, and other universities, to encourage young people to study English.

"The idea is for young people to learn English from the time they enter university, so that within five years we will have between 40,000 and 50,000 young people who know the language," he said.

As part of this effort, San Carlos University will have to make provisions for its over 150,000 students to study English. "This will allow them to work in a call centre, and to pay for their studies," Calderón said.

"The call centres are encouraging young people to learn English or perfect it, because they may know the language, but not at the level required for this type of work," Patricia Mendizábal of the Instituto Guatemalteco Americano, which offers private English courses, told IPS.

The future of the call centre industry looks rosy.

Roberto Mancilla of the mixed agency Invest Guatemala told IPS that this country, "because of its geographical location, similar time zone to the United States, and teaching of English with American pronunciation, has made a substantial leap forward towards competitiveness in this kind of outsourcing."

However, he admitted that proficiency in English continues to be a challenge.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Economy, Latin America, Report Tagged With: , ,

GREECE: Austerity Plan Breaches Last Line of Defence of Greek Workers

January 21, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Apostolis Fotiadis

ATHENS, Jan 20, 2012 (IPS) – As the Eurozone falls deeper into its sovereign debt crisis, the labour movement in Greece is being cudgelled to its knees by an austerity programme that has so far failed to bring any positive change for the crumbling Mediterranean country.

While the government slowly tightens a noose around public spending in what many economists have deemed a misguided effort to stem runaway debt, Greek workers are being stripped of their few remaining protections – a move experts see as signalling perennial deterioration of the economy.

The government now plans to cut private sector workers’ wages and deny the salary increases promised in the National Collective Contract for next summer in an effort to settle its 14.4 billion dollar debt with international donors by March 20.

Union leaders and renowned economists like Giannis Milios, a professor at the polytechnic school of Athens, have dubbed the move "evidence of big businesses’ desire to brutally deregulate" the labour market.

Meanwhile Greece is expected to complete a debt forgiveness and bond exchange negotiation (PSI) with private debt holders and implement measures agreed upon last year with the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission (otherwise known as the troika), before becoming eligible for further monetary assistance in 2012.

Without this ‘bailout’ money Greece will be unable to pay next March and likely become mired in a vicious cycle of debt default.

The first to come out in favour of rapid implementation of the reforms requested by the troika was Loukas Papadimos, a European Central Bank technocrat who took control of the coalition government last November and is now rushing ahead with wage cuts, despite the fact that numerous analysts, including experts from the International Organisation of Labour, have dissociated labour market reforms from the success of the structural adjustment plan.

Christina Kopsini, a working relations and labour market analyst, thinks Greece’s current deference to the free market is largely a political game, one that will lead to a compromise in the short term since "nobody is ready to risk crossing the Rubicon of default yet."

She told IPS that while the government and private sector jostle each other over the margin of debt forgiveness, Greek workers will bear the brunt of the crisis by being forced to concede more of their rights and meagre incomes.

"It is noteworthy that the only austerity measures implemented without delay over the last two years are those deregulating the labour market and abolishing basic legislation protecting workers," she observed.

Despite a massive public outcry against such a blatant violation of labour rights, Papadimos’ cabinet has admitted that it is prepared to bypass the parliament in order to enforce the wage cuts.

He also openly blackmailed unions and business associations alike by threatening to hold them accountable for Greece’s bankruptcy if they failed to comply with the wage cuts, which he claimed are "the only way to save the country."

Papadimos’ decision to remain loyal to corporate interests rather than standing by besieged workers has led to the accusation by leftist parliamentary parties, swathes of the general public and unionised workers that he is merely a pawn for organised capital, which sees the current moment of economic collapse as a lucrative opportunity to shift the balance of power further in its favour.

"After two years of austerity that has brought statistical unemployment up to 19 percent, it is becoming obvious that the strategic aim of the structural adjustment plan is not fiscal consolidation but the total deregulation of the labour market and a severe devaluation of labour force value," Savvas Robolis, a widely respected professor of social economics at the Panteion University of Athens and director of research at the Institute of Labour, told IPS.

"The current cuts are just another step towards gathering momentum for the complete abolition of the minimum wage in the country, the secret desire of big capitalists," he added.

"We have to remember that 2013 will be a year of constitutional reforms; I predict that during this year article 22 (containing legislation that protects the national collective contract) will be attacked severely," Robolis asserted.

Discussions on decimating the last line of defence for working people in Greece began in 2010 when the minister of labour, Louka Katseli, together with the troika, introduced legal changes regarding wage negotiations within private companies.

According to the Labour Inspectorate in Greece, 52 companies seized on those legal reforms to reduce wage expenses from 42-10 percent, affecting the income of 17,531 workers.

Katseli claimed she partook of the negotiations to avoid an even worse situation, which would have shredded the national collective contract and stripped workers’ associations of the ability to exercise even a minimum degree of bargaining power.

After being removed from government in June 2011, following a damaging publicity campaign launched against her by major media owned by Greek business interests, Katseli told a foreign journalist – in an interview that IPS attended – that she was marginalised because of her efforts to expose the actions of "international neoliberal ideologists and local business interests that are destroying labour relations and any negotiating power remaining in the hands of organised unions."

Deregulation advanced further after former Prime Minister George Papandreou voted in the ‘interim austerity package’ last June, fifteen days after Katseli was removed from office.

"The deconstruction of a structure that provides space for negotiation between social partners is a dangerous path. It inactivates the unions and leaves no valid collective interlocutor to represent workers. This model is leading society into a world where individuals will single-handedly have to take on super powerful business interests on a minimum income and without protection," Kopsini stressed.

Giorgos Xatzinikolaou, a worker in a major insurance company, told IPS that fears of rapid unemployment keeps much of the labour force silent.

"You feel you are alone, unions are untrustworthy and weak, and people at work keep their mouths shut," he said, adding that he recently accepted a 20 percent reduction in his salary via a new ‘contract.’

"If you know what’s going on out there (in the labour market) you shut your mouth and sign," he added.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Economic Crisis, Economy, Europe, Featured Tagged With: , , ,

Obama Dithering Between People and Corporate America

July 28, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Lee Sustar*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint    

Barack Obama, celebrated as a champion of all good causes three years ago, has thrown traditional Democratic constituencies overboard – not just to make a deal with Republicans, but to carry out the Corporate America’s agenda.

CHICAGO (IDN) – Can someone please remind us why the Democrats are so often called "the party of the people?"

There’s Social Security, of course – the cornerstone of the 1930s New Deal social programs created during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The popularity of Social Security is such that no Democrat would ever dream of offering it up to the Republican budget-slashers.

Except that Barack Obama has now done so.

Then there’s Medicare, a signal achievement of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society social programs. No Democrat could conceivably line up with the right to take aim at the widely supported health care program for the elderly.

Not until, that is, Barack Obama slashed Medicare in the name of health care "reform" – and then bowed to Republican demands for far greater cuts in the future.

What about support for organized labour? That’s a principle that clearly differentiates Democrats from Republicans, right? But Obama himself green-lighted the attack on public-sector workers, freezing federal workers’ pay for three years and pushing the Race to the Top education program to promote teacher-bashing state legislation – and he turned his back on private-sector unions after promising to support the Employee Free Choice Act to make organizing unions easier.

Surely, economic policy differentiates Democrats and Republicans? Where the Bush administration in 2008 rushed to provide $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, while leaving working people to suffer the brunt of the economic crash, the Obama administration continued the endless bailout of the bankers, and has done little more for the millions who face foreclosure or the almost 20 percent of the workforce that’s either jobless or underemployed.

The Democrats are on the record supporting women’s rights – in particular, the right to choose abortion. But as a growing number of state legislatures pass laws that further curb access to abortion, the Obama administration has done nothing to counter the trend. And when Obama’s own pro-choice views were the subject of controversy at a University of Notre Dame speech in 2009, the president failed to even state his position in favour of abortion rights.

What about civil liberties? Surely Obama has provided some relief from the Bush regime’s shredding of basic rights under the banner of the "war on terror."

Only he hasn’t. Instead, Obama has continued and even expanded virtually the whole of the Bush-Cheney approach to the war on civil liberties.

While George W. Bush offered a future of endless war in Arab and Muslim lands, the Obama administration no longer justifies U.S. military action in the name of a "global war on terror." But the wars continue anyway, with downsized but enduring occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a new war in Libya, launched with U.S. missiles and planes and supported by the U.S. through the NATO military alliance.

All this from the leader of what is supposed to be the mainstream party of the "left" in U.S. politics.

TRADITION AND EXPEDIENCY

Many people are justifiably upset at the Obama administration’s compromises, retreats and outright sellouts, and blame the president for being too weak in the face of the Republicans’ corporate-funded, Fox News-scripted backlash against even the most modest liberal measures.

But the reality is that Obama’s policies are perfectly consistent with the Democrats’ long tradition of making promises to their working-class base at election time, but delivering the policies demanded by the bankers, CEOs and Pentagon brass. Because while the Democrats depend on workers and the poor to turn out to vote, they’re just as much a pro-capitalist party as the Republicans.

To be sure, Obama has made concessions to the right that were unnecessary even from the narrow viewpoint of the most cynical Democratic political operative. By contrast, Franklin Roosevelt was willing to stand up to a business establishment that had been discredited by the Great Depression, declaring at one point during his re-election campaign that he "welcomed their hatred." Obama, on the other hand, bowed to business on every question – and then bowed some more.

But at the same time, Roosevelt rightly considered himself, as he also once said, "the best friend the profit system ever had." The pro-working class measures that Roosevelt is credited with introducing were the result of a labour rebellion that shook the U.S. in the 1930s and led to the unionization of much of U.S. industry in just a few years. Plus, Roosevelt was also prepared to turn his back on unions – for example, during the bitter 1937 strike for union recognition against so-called "Little Steel."

And it was Roosevelt who used the Second World War to advance the American empire, backed up by his successor Harry Truman, who ordered the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and later launched a war on the Korean Peninsula to ensure U.S. dominance of the Pacific. It was to maintain that control that John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson sent more than half a million U.S. troops to Vietnam in the 1960s to fight wars that led to the deaths of 4 million Southeast Asians.

The next Democrat to occupy the White House, Jimmy Carter, has since become known as an advocate for human rights. But in office, Carter didn’t try to repeat Johnson’s attempt to have "both guns and butter" – the effort to combine the pursuit of U.S. imperial aims with expansion of the social safety net to widen the Democrats’ electoral base. Instead, Carter cut the budget for social programs and ramped up military spending – a trend that would continue when Republican Ronald Reagan took over the Oval Office.

Carter’s right turn couldn’t be explained just by the fact that he came from the conservative Southern wing of the Democratic Party. That was true of Johnson as well. Instead, the party’s shift to the right beginning in the late 1970s was the political consequence of the end of the long economic postwar boom, during which living standards rose for most working-class people.

The Democrats’ move to the right as the ’80s and ’90s dragged on didn’t go unchallenged. The civil rights movement led to increased prominence for African American political leaders in the party – Black politicians won seats in Congress and control of City Hall in a number of important cities. Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 seemed to provide a vehicle for more liberal forces in the Democratic Party.

OVERALL TRAJECTORY

But the overall trajectory of the Democratic Party was in the other direction – with the party establishment working to marginalize liberals and make the Democrats more business-friendly. Enter the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) – a group formed in the mid-1980s by conservative Democrats as an internal pressure group to pull the party to the right.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was a founding member of the DLC. As president, Clinton earned the ire of the rich for raising their taxes – but soon enough, he fully embraced the Wall Street agenda of his adviser and later Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

Clinton’s plans for health care reform died in a Democratic Congress before even coming to a vote, and when the Republican Revolution of 1994 took back control of the House and Senate, Clinton moved even further right. Rather than expand the social safety net, he cut it dramatically, ending the federal welfare program and replacing it with state-run "workfare" programs that compelled recipients to work for low wages to get benefits that were no longer guaranteed by federal law.

Clinton hewed to this conservative line despite the promised "peace dividend" that was supposed to follow the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration undertook what former military officer and author Andrew Bacevich called "the unprecedented militarization of U.S. foreign policy" as the U.S. drove the expansion of NATO into the former Russian sphere of influence and twice intervened militarily in the Balkans.

"OBAMA, INC."

Barack Obama understood these new realities of U.S. politics well when he ran for president in 2008. The candidate who evoked social movements to excite volunteer campaign activists had already amassed crucial support among top party leaders and business interests, a combine that journalist Ken Silverstein called "Obama, Inc."

As president, faced with the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, Obama was willing to push through a $787 billion economic stimulus program that was big enough to prevent an outright depression, but not nearly substantial enough to stop the deterioration of living standards faced by tens of millions of workers who had voted for him.

In stark contrast to his campaign slogan of "Change we can believe in," Obama’s top priority was tending to the interests of business. Like so many party leaders before him, he assumed the Democratic base had nowhere else to go. In the resulting demoralization, millions of those voters stayed home in the 2010 election, giving a whipped-up Republican base the chance to retake the House and set the political agenda.

Obama has shown no hesitation in getting with the program since the Republican victory last November. While the Republicans’ proposals for cuts are savage and overwhelming, Obama poses as a responsible steward of the state, "protecting" Social Security and Medicare by backing cuts he portrays as more reasonable – even though they go further than what any Republican president has so far dared to propose.

Obama’s behaviour isn’t unique to national politics – just look at the policies of Democratic governors in California, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Connecticut, where social spending is being slashed and public-sector unions are under attack. In fact, political leaders around the world – whether from centre-left parties or traditional conservative ones – are embracing austerity under pressure from big business.

All this points to the need for independent working-class politics in the U.S. While the formation of a new political party isn’t on the agenda, what has to be tackled now is struggle against the austerity, whether pushed by hard-right Republicans like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and House Speaker John Boehner or Democrats like Obama or New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

*Lee Sustar of anti-globalization group the International Socialist Organization is the labour editor of Socialist Worker. This is a slightly abridged version of the article that first appeared as editorial on July 27, 2011 on http://socialistworker.org/2011/07/27/party-which-people.

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of IDN editors or editorial board. (IDN-InDepthNews/28.07.2011)

2011 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Budget, Economic Crisis, Economic Policy, Featured, Politics, Social Justice, United States Tagged With: , ,

JAPAN: Workers Bear Brunt of Nuke Clean-up

June 26, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jun 24, 2011 (IPS) – Twenty-eight-year-old Yushi Sato washes cars for a living, but they are no ordinary cars. Every day, Sato hoses down vehicles contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant that was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami that hit north-east Japan Mar 11.

Sato, who has worked at the Fukushima plant for the past five years, used to be a welder, but after the disaster struck he was assigned the job of washing the plant’s various vehicles. "We wash on average around 200 vehicles that show higher than normal radiation levels," he told IPS.

Wearing heavy protective gear and checked daily for radiation exposure, Sato says he worries about the effects of radiation on his health but is determined to keep working.

"The main workers are battling heavier risks than myself so I try not to think of the risks I face," he explained, pointing to colleagues working directly on the repair of the Fukushima reactors.

Radiation monitoring indicates Sato is exposed to around 20 microsieverts daily, roughly the same amount of radiation emitted by a single X-ray, and far less than the official danger limit of one millimetre which is equivalent to 100 microsieverts. But Sato acknowledges the threat posed by accumulated exposure to radiation.

Analysts say workers like Sato represent the commitment now shouldered by workers of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) at the Fukushima reactors as well as in the company’s other subsidiaries. These workers have committed to repairing the damaged plant and stopping radiation leaks.

"They face huge pressure mentally and physically," explained Professor Takeshi Tanigawa, an expert on social medicine at Ehime University who has been spearheading advocacy for better working conditions for TEPCO employees in Fukushima.

He told IPS that his recent surveys show workers grappling with high levels of stress as a result of tough working conditions that include long shifts and poor living standards. Other indicators point to simmering personal guilt for the radiation contamination the plant inflicted on residents of surrounding areas.

"The evidence I have collected has pressured TEPCO to ease some of the workers’ difficulties such as providing them with fresh vegetables and better bedding to help them have a good night’s rest. There is also a doctor on call to provide them with medical counselling," he said.

The plight of Japan’s nuclear workers has grabbed the public limelight this past month, and they have been portrayed as symbols of national resilience, on the one hand, and also evidence of the downside of the country’s post-war economic miracle, on the other.

This week, the Labour Ministry reported that 102 workers have been exposed to more radiation—over 250 millisieverts—than the limits stipulated by the government, leading to the recall of these men from the plant.

TEPCO is now reporting a shortage of workers in Fukushima; more than 2,000 employees currently work in the reactors. High radiation inside the buildings has severely hampered rehabilitation efforts with workers permitted to enter for stints of as short as 15 minutes.

Professor Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist from Kobe University, has long been an advocate against Japan’s nuclear power policy, which he describes as a "doctrine." Ishibashi said, "The alarming situation in Fukushima has finally revealed that all nuclear plants in Japan are built on fault lines and thus have the possibility of ending up with a major accident due to tsunami."

Other experts also point to root causes that brought about the policy, exposing a fundamentally flawed system based on the close collaboration among bureaucrats, power companies and politicians who have resisted opposition to the national nuclear policy. "Building nuclear power plants was considered a pillar of Japan’s post-war economic growth and was facilitated by powerful elites…who gained most from the policy. Everybody else just had to fall in line," said Shigeaki Koga, author of the bestselling book "The Collapse of Japan’s Central Administration".

In a press briefing this week, Koga noted that Fukushima is a rallying point for reforms and underscores the need for Japan to foster healthy, transparent competition among independent entities, if Japan is to develop as a safer and richer country.

Still, critics acknowledge that pursuing change is not easy in Japan where the disaster has caused a political stalemate. Prime Minister Naoto Kan is set to resign this summer amid increasing political bickering between parties, with the electorate divided between yearning for a strong leadership and calls for a major overhaul of the system.

In the meantime, volunteers are stepping up to help address the nuclear problem. A case in point is the growing popularity of the so-called "suicide corps" formed by retired engineer Yasuteru Yamada and composed of men over 60 years old who are willing to work in the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant.

More than 300 people have signed up, Yamada told IPS. His group, he said, "is ready to work in any job whether inside the contaminated plant, or clearing debris in the area. We need to help out the country at the moment," he said.

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Nascent Independent Unions Play Key Role in Arab Uprisings

May 26, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Isolda Agazzi

GENEVA, May 26, 2011 (IPS) – In the Arab world, most trade unions are affiliated to governments, but independent labour organisations are starting to emerge.

In Tunisia and Egypt they have been key in overthrowing corrupt regimes, while in Algeria and Bahrain they are trying to bring people to the street. For Arab unionists, the State must play its role to consolidate the economic transition, and privatisation is not the solution.

"In Tunisia, we say that reversible jackets are out of stock. Some UGTT unionists who were affiliated to the RCD (the party of ousted president Ben Ali) have reversed their jackets and are now fully in support of the revolution. But the process has reached its limit," Belgacem Afaya, secretary general of the General Federation of Health of Tunisia, a member of the UGTT, told IPS in an interview.

The UGTT, the umbrella organisation of unions in Tunisia, played a central role in January in mobilising mass protests against Ben Ali, together with the association of judges and lawyers, students and cyber activists.

Afaya and other unionists have come to Geneva for a meeting of Public Services International (PSI), the global confederation of public service trade unions. In the Arab region, the PSI has 36 affiliates in ten countries.

"Most of the unions in the Arab region are close to the government and only two national federations have supported the recent revolutions: the UGTT in Tunisia and the brand-new federation of Bahrain, currently repressed by the regime," Ghassan Slaiby, PSI sub-regional secretary for the Arab countries, told IPS.

In Egypt, two independent unions have recently been created, but they were illegal until the overthrow of former president Hosni Mubarak, in which they actively participated. Others are also emerging, but the old ones are still there and now serve the new government. "They know how to do it, they are used to it. In Egypt, reversible jackets are not out of stock," Slaiby says ironically.

Unions in the Arab world have a tough life. Even among PSI affiliates in the same country, positions differ greatly. In Yemen, one union is in support of the revolution, while the other two are on the government’s side. In Libya, they can neither be with long-time leader Muammar Qaddafi, nor with NATO, which is suspected of pursuing its own interests – "Why doesn’t (NATO) also act in Syria, Bahrain and Palestine?" wonders Afaya, echoing a common feeling among Arab public opinion.

As for Jordan, even though things are moving slowly, some unionists are in favour of a radical political change, but they are still very isolated.

But overthrowing the government is one thing, and ensuring a viable economic transition is another. "In Tunisia, unemployment and insufficient purchasing power have taken people to the street," Afaya said. "Today the situation is still tense, even though the government, denying persistent rumours, says it has enough money to pay salaries till July."

With foreign debt representing almost 40 percent of GDP, he believes that the government keeps making the same mistake – borrowing abroad. Instead, it should try to recuperate the money that was stolen by Ben Ali and his clan, improve social and fiscal justice and equity between the regions, support quality public services and promote the right to health care.

"Ben Ali created a two-speed health system," he said. "Hospitals have been neglected and people go to public clinics if they can afford it. Now we have to improve the system and one of our major recent successes is an agreement with the government to shift away from temporary and precarious jobs and forbid subcontracting in hospitals."

Algeria is in a different situation. Nassira Ghozlane, secretary general of the national union of public administration workers (SNAPAP), believes that, despite two harshly repressed rallies in February, people are not ready for a revolution.

"They don’t want to repeat the scenario of the 1990s, when 200,000 people were killed and 10,000 disappeared," she told IPS. "But we want to break down this wall of fear because we need a radical change. We don’t believe in the reforms that the government has just announced. The country is ruled by the military security and the entire system must change, not just president (Abdelaziz) Bouteflika. They must go. "

Massive privatisations have led to the closing down of thousands of public enterprises, while the selling of water, oil and gas to foreign companies continues.

"We are against these privatisations," she said. "Wages are the lowest in North Africa. Millions of Algerians are on a precarious contract and earn 25 euros a month. In the hospitals, emergency room doctors earn between 40 and 90 euros. The salary of a secondary school teacher is six times lower than that of a Tunisian and the salary of a university professor is four times less than that of his fellow Mauritanian."

After three decades of squeezing of the public sector, Slaiby says the point of view of PSI on privatisations has evolved: "At the beginning, we thought we had to negotiate with them. Then we were in favour of public – private partnerships. Today we are clearly against privatisations. We have experienced them and we cannot pretend any more that the private sector is more efficient or that it lowers costs. We want quality public services, but we need to reform them."

So how will the State finance quality public services? "With taxes, better distribution of income, and public spending, which has been rehabilitated by recent studies. The financial crisis has underlined the need for social justice again, because it could not have been overcome without the intervention of the State," he concluded.

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Hotel Maids Say Sexual Harassment Is Part of the Job

May 23, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Aline Cunico

NEW YORK, May 23, 2011 (IPS) – With the arrest of the once powerful head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, following allegations that he raped a maid in his 3,000-dollar-a-night penthouse suite at the Sofitel Hotel, a spotlight has been turned on the treatment of female cleaning staff, many of whom are immigrants who keep silent for fear of losing their jobs or being deported.

Interviews with hotel workers revealed numerous incidents of sexual comments, proposals and harassment, with management frequently turning a blind eye out of deference to their high-profile guests.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former female employee at the luxury Mercer Hotel in Soho told IPS, "It happens all the time. I think this case was a bit extreme, but yes, it is not uncommon for hotel maids to be harassed or even attacked. I would always hear disrespectful comments, or be asked to join male guests in exchange for money when I worked at the hotel."

"Most guys who stay at these establishments are high-class businessmen. They have the money and the power to do whatever they please and think they can get away with anything," she said, adding that cleaning staff is reluctant to complain because they are afraid that the hotels will not back them up under the theory "the customer is always right".

"If the employee is unsatisfied with the treatment received, they are more than welcome to find a new job," she said about the prevailing attitude.

But for many hotel maids, finding a new job is not an option. Some are undocumented, while others are in the United States on a work visa that ties them to a specific contract. Both situations make these workers vulnerable to long hours, low wages and in some cases, physical or sexual abuse.

"The control that employers often exert over their foreign national employees and the perception of ‘ownership’ that exists in such relationships creates a sense of fear carried by foreign workers in the United States of losing their employment or being removed," said Jeremy Richards, an attorney specialising in immigration law.

Strauss-Kahn has since resigned from the IMF to fight the charges against him stemming from the May 14 incident. The French national is under house arrest in New York on a million-dollar bail plus five- million-dollar bond ensuring his appearance in court.

Little is known about his accuser beyond media reports describing her as a 32-year-old West African immigrant and mother of a teenager, who had been working at the Sofitel for the past three years.

Since she came forward with her account, two other female employees say Strauss-Kahn made sexual advances to them during his stay.

"I believe the situation of most hotel maids is undoubtedly delicate not only because most of them are immigrants, but also because they are at the bottom of the hotel hierarchy," Janaina Santos, a front desk receptionist at a luxury Manhattan hotel, told IPS. "Hospitality is one of the largest industries in turnover and replacing the employee is not a difficult thing."

She said the incident could spark changes in hotel security policies, which prior to the Strauss-Kahn incident were mainly focused on the safety of guests.

"There was a concern about the employee’s behaviour with the guests, but I do not remember seeing anything, at least in my function, on how to react in the case of being abused by a guest. That is interesting, considering this is not a recent matter," Santos said.

In a statement released on May 16, Robert Gaymer-Jones, CEO of the Sofitel, stated that the hotel management would be available to assist in the police investigation of exactly what took place at the hotel. The statement reinforced the hotel’s priority to ensure the safety of its guests and staff.

"To protect both guests and staff, Sofitel New York has implemented strict procedures and a whistle-blower hotline to allow employees to report any specific situations. These procedures have been in place for more than a year," the statement said.

Jones also responded to accusations made by a member of the French parliament that the New York Sofitel’s management had covered up repeated acts of sexual aggression in the past.

"Management is not aware of any previous cases of attempted sexual aggression," he stated.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

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CUBA: Professionals Awaiting their Chance

May 3, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 3, 2011 (IPS) – Cuba’s opening to private enterprise still leaves out many professionals who have yet to find a way to use their skills and potential in non-state industries, although they have not lost hope that the rules of the game will change.

Self-employment is supposed to provide options for those who lose their jobs as part of the labour "restructuring" that the Raúl Castro government is carrying out to reduce inflated state payrolls and increase labour productivity. Over the next five years, the state is expected to reduce employment by more than one million jobs.

The 178 types of work authorised for self-employment, however, include only two or three specific activities for those who have completed post-secondary education, and even these have limitations.

The repasador, or tutor who gives private lessons, for example, cannot also hold a job as a teacher at a school, and booksellers, accountants and accounting assistants cannot be employed as such with any company.

"When I mentioned that I am a civil engineer, they looked at me disapprovingly…and one official recommended that I should sell snacks, that it was more profitable," said a person identified as S. Piña Basset in a letter to the official newspaper Granma, regarding inquiries he made at the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.

With 37 years of experience in his profession, Piña Basset wanted to use the opportunity to work as a private contractor, the only approved activity which seemed to fit his profession. He had previously investigated and found that a market existed, as did the possibility of joining together with several others to build homes and similar projects.

Dissatisfied with the response he received at the ministry, where he was told that university graduates could not exercise their professions as self-employed workers, he decided to "wait for the instructions and clarification that should be given to the entities" responsible for his case. It was not possible to contact him to learn the results of his wait.

However, responding to a question from IPS, Deputy Labour Minister Carlos Mateu confirmed that the only option in the construction field for professionals with similar backgrounds was to work as a private contractor, as long as state agencies or companies authorised for that type of activity are "interested" in such contracts, and he listed as examples the Havana City Historian’s Office and the Palco company.

"If there is no interest in having a contractor, the relationship is not established," Mateu said. For now, there is no plan to lengthen the list of jobs or trades for non-state self-employment, he noted.

"If a large number of people were to be interested in a given activity, the advisability of adding it or not would be evaluated," he said.

In his most recent report on the issue, Mateu said that 201,116 newly self-employed workers were registered as of Apr. 8. The total number of independent workers was 301,033, when adding those who were already employed in non-state jobs authorised by existing regulations prior to the October decree.

The jobs in highest demand continue to be food preparer and provider of transportation for freight and passengers. Many people also work as hired labour in some 80-plus activities for which individuals may employ others, such as renting rooms and operating small restaurants, known as "paladares" in Cuba since they first emerged in the 1990s.

"In general, all of the activities permitted are very basic and even poor. Personal enrichment is discouraged, but wealth is not created that way, either," architect Mario Coyula commented to IPS, noting that "the old prejudice against the self-employment of professionals seems to persist."

The development of private businesses, however, requires people with expertise in designing and building facilities, most of which are built spontaneously, without any oversight and with few resources. "The result is an impoverished image, which gives a distorted view of the city," Coyula said.

"The irony is that many architects, including retired ones, would be willing to design projects for these new facilities and charge reasonably. These types of projects are so simple that no state company would be interested," he added.

It is an "aberration that professionals with university degrees devote themselves to driving taxis or selling homemade sweets, and cannot work in their professions. Moreover, if the elimination of inflated payrolls is taken to its final consequences, there will also be many ‘available’ architects who will not be able to work independently in their profession," he noted.

Coyula said that "the independent employment of professionals will be a necessity, whether as individuals, in teams, or in cooperatives. In my opinion, the government should support all ways of creating jobs, in all fields, if the goal is to eliminate inflated payrolls. All of that urgently requires creating a legal foundation and above all, defining the scope of the concept of property."

According to official figures quoted by researchers, from 1996-2008 alone, 350,398 people graduated from university in Cuba. During that period the number of degree-holders increased 4.7 times more than GDP at 1997 prices. Meanwhile, the average current enrolment in higher education is half a million.

The authorised activities "are not knowledge-intensive and do not take advantage of the investment in education that the country has made for decades," warned economist Pável Vidal in a research paper to which IPS had access. Vidal said in his report that financial difficulties could hinder the credit policy approved for the emerging non-state sector.

More flexible regulations in this respect "also do not permit the creation of small and medium-size businesses that can be integrated into the large-scale national productive sector, or that can generate exportable funds," said Vidal, noting that the development of this type of business can play an important role in the country’s economic growth.

For now, many professionals have decided to wait and see what is in store for them in the laws, resolutions and regulations to be channelled and ordered by the changes and reforms passed by the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, held April 16-19, to update the economic model.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Economic Policy, Latin America, Politics, Report Tagged With: , ,

BOLIVIA: The Boomerang Effect for Morales

April 27, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Mario Osava

GUAYARAMERÍN, Bolivia, Apr 26, 2011 (IPS) – It wasn’t easy to get to the Bolivian city of Riberalta from Brazil. The adventurous journey included potholes on the Brazilian highway, a rickety boat that ferried us across the Mamoré – the border river – and an unnerving ride on a motorcycle taxi. But the biggest complication was the roadblocks.

On Apr. 14, a week-long strike by teachers and other government employees in Bolivia took a radical turn, when the strikers blocked streets in major cities and highways across the country, demanding a raise.

Leftwing President Evo Morales, who used to organise roadblocks as the head of the largest coca growers union, thus got a taste of his own medicine.

"Evo taught us to put up roadblocks," said Nacira Limpias, a rural schoolteacher who with dozens of her colleagues closed the road a few kilometres outside Guayaramerín in the northern department (province) of Beni, on the Bolivia-Brazil border.

We were planning to attend a workshop for journalists about the Cachuela Esperanza hydroelectric project, a meeting organised by the Centre for Applied Studies on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CEADESC) and the Bolivian Confederation of Press Worker Unions (CSTPB) which was scheduled to start at 7:30 PM local time in the Bolivian town of Riberalta.

According to the bus company, it would only be possible to drive to Riberalta after 6:00 PM, the time the Guayaramerín strikers had announced the roadblock would be lifted for the night.

The three of us hoping to participate in the workshop, who found ourselves trapped in Guayaramerín – this correspondent, lawmaker Juan Carlos Ojopi and engineer Walter Justiniano, who was to give one of the presentations – decided to hire a taxi, and leave just before 6:00 PM, to drive on to Riberalta as soon as the traffic blockade had been cleared away.

But the teachers in Riberalta, 93 kilometres west of Guayaramerín, decided to block traffic through the night, using their motorcycles and piled-up tree trunks. So although we made good time on the road from Guayaramerín, which was unpaved but in decent condition, our journey came to an abrupt halt at Riberalta.

We got around the problem by leaving our taxi, walking through the roadblock and taking another car, sent from Riberalta, on the other side. The saga was repeated in reverse the following day, when we had to return to Guayaramerín for the second part of the workshop. Although we started out early, before traffic had been blocked again in Riberalta, the way was barred again at Guayaramerín.

The teachers’ base salary of 1,200 bolivianos (170 dollars) a month "is not enough to eat on," Limpias complained.

(Since Morales first took office in 2006, the overall minimum salary has nearly doubled, from 62 to 114 dollars a month.)

After five days of roadblocks and protests, the government offered some categories of government employees a pay increase of 12 percent, agreed by negotiation with the Bolivian Workers’ Federation (COB). Teachers were demanding 15 percent, but agreed to suspend industrial action for the time being, while reserving the option of resuming it later on.

There are 120,000 teachers in Bolivia, the vast majority of whom are women. In Guayaramerín there are nearly 1,000, of whom 165 teach in rural schools, according to Castulia Solares, a member of the strike committee who has put her post as head teacher at risk by taking on the leadership of the local movement.

Climbing the teaching career ladder depends on passing "complex exams," but even if one succeeds in reaching the top of the scale, the pay is only double the entry level salary for novice teachers, Solares said. There is no recognition or reward for the effort teachers put into acquiring additional qualifications, such as earning a university degree, she complained.

Teachers at rural schools, who have their own trade union, earn a little more and get transport expenses, because "conditions in the countryside are such that one cannot live there," said Francisco Noza, who chose this profession because he "was aware of the needs of children in rural areas."

Inflation has decimated teachers’ pay, which is why roadblocks have become more frequent than at any time in the last 12 years, he said. Furthermore, teachers are angry at "President Evo’s false promises," such as to provide every teacher with a computer, and increase salaries.

In Noza’s view, women provide the majority of the workforce in education and in "many Bolivian institutions, because of the wars that took place in the past and migration abroad," both of which affect men to a greater extent.

Brazilian dam in Bolivia

The Cachuela Esperanza hydroelectric project on the Beni river, 44 kilometres from Guayaramerín, could be another instance of the boomerang effect felt by Morales in the roadblock campaign launched by the unions.

A study commissioned by the Bolivian government from TECSULT, a Canadian engineering consultancy, indicates that the most profitable course of action would be to export all the electricity produced at Cachuela to Brazil, and use the revenue to purchase diesel fuel for the thermoelectric power plants that currently supply the project’s area of influence, including the towns of Cobija, Guayaramerín and Riberalta.

Clearly, the dam will only be viable if virtually all the electricity produced is sold to the huge Brazilian market. Total domestic demand for electricity in Bolivia is only slightly higher than Cachuela Esperanza’s projected 990 megawatt capacity, and the three nearest municipalities consume less than 20 megawatts in total.

Other large markets for energy in Bolivia, like Trinidad, the capital of Beni, are at least 1,000 kilometres away, and the cost of building transmission lines would be prohibitive.

In effect, therefore, the hydroelectric project would be a Brazilian utility located on Bolivian soil. In all probability its execution and finance, as well as its consumer market, will be Brazilian.

This is tantamount to renouncing Bolivia’s "energy sovereignty," said Justiniano, an engineer working as an independent consultant with the Ministry of the Environment and Water.

This view could carry a great deal of weight in this country, where oil and gas were nationalised in 2006 with massive popular support. The nationalistic pride fostered by Morales at that time may backfire now against the plan to build a hydroelectric plant that will be largely controlled by a foreign power.

Organisations like the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Bolivia (CIDOB) have also protested the environmental impact that the dam will have.

Brazil, threat or opportunity

Along the border, Brazil’s overwhelming economic power is palpable everywhere, and can be seen as a threat or as an opportunity.

The real, Brazil’s monetary unit, is worth four bolivianos, the Bolivian currency, on the streets and in the shops, but the official exchange rate is 4.40 bolivianos to the real. By a 2008 law, teachers in Brazil won a salary floor equivalent – as it happens – to 4.4 times the remuneration of their Bolivian colleagues.

The economic disparity is boosting trade in Guayaramerín, where Brazilian buyers flock daily to the shops, even though the legal limit to cross-border purchases is 300 dollars a month.

José Rodrigues, a Brazilian, came with his wife to a Guayaramerín hospital for a free cataract operation, performed by Cuban doctors. He regrets not being able to buy a motorcycle in Bolivia to take home with him, because the cost is three times higher in Brazil.

But the clothing and other goods he is buying on the Bolivian side, to sell in his home town of Cerejeiras, will earn him enough to pay for his trip.

The fare on the ferry across the Mamoré river from the Brazilian side is double the fare from the Bolivian side, and the crossing also offers eye-opening social contrasts.

Motorcycles abound in the streets of Bolivia: whole families, including babes in arms, ride around freely with no helmets in evidence, whereas in Brazil, helmets are compulsory and failure to use them is penalised by a heavy fine.

However, the many motorbike accidents that are constantly and tragically increasing in number in Brazil, do not occur in Bolivia. According to Bolivians, the slow speed of local traffic explains the difference. They regard motorcycles as a cheap and practical form of transport, whereas Brazilians like to go fast and get ahead of the cars, in solid jams in the streets, by weaving dangerously in and out between them.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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