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6 April, 2009The IMF has witnessed important growth and change over the last twenty years, and has shaped the course of international trade unionism in the developed and developing world alike. This work is critical to meet the economic and political challenges of today.
Text / Peter Unterweger
Photos / IMF archives
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A new era dawns
1989 was an eventful year. The participant list of the
IMF Congress in June of that year gave some clues to the events transforming the world. Trini Leung, who had been present at the Tiananmen Square demonstrations only
14 days earlier, addressed the Congress. Moses Mayekiso, General Secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), had recently been freed by the apartheid authorities after 3 years of detention and ultimate acquittal. Apartheid was tottering, and its rulers were turning to compromise.
Popular pressures inside the Soviet block were building. Years of Gorbachev's reforms had loosened the grip of the Communist elites on satellite states and the Soviet republics. In Poland, Solidarnosc successfully concluded talks with the Communist authorities in April 1989, and won the subsequent elections by a landslide. On August 23, the Hungarian government opened its border with Austria, and more than 13,000 East German "tourists" escaped to the West. Demonstrations began in East Germany, and by November 9th the East German government was forced to permit unrestricted visits to the West. Euphoric crowds scaled the Berlin Wall from both sides and began to dismantle it.
Aside from these momentous developments, there were still other trends changing the world. Dictatorships were on the decline, and by its long-time support for metalworkers in South Africa, Latin America, Poland, and Korea, the IMF had made important contributions. The elections of Thatcher and Reagan had signalled the start of a right-wing backlash against the welfare state and workers' gains that reverberated far beyond the United Kingdom and the USA. Under GATT, world trade liberalization continued. Eventually, even social democratic parties adopted parts
of the neo-liberal programme.
For the IMF, an important new chapter began in 1989. Since its founding in 1893, there had been only seven IMF Secretaries or General Secretaries, and in 1989 a new GS, Marcello Malentacchi, was unanimously elected. The challenges confronting the IMF and its new leadership were large:
- Millions of metalworkers in the former Soviet block needed assistance even as the struggle for democracy in South Africa, Korea, Latin America and a number of other countries still required support.
- Anti-social political and economic trends on the national and global levels had to be resisted.
- New ways of dealing with the growing power of trans-national corporations (TNCs) had to be found.
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