IMF - The last twenty years

Organizing women and bringing them into leadership positions is central to the IMF Action Program. In 2005, the Congress voted to expand the Executive to 25 seats; six are reserved for women and are to be equally distributed among the regions. The plan also set a 20 percent target for women's participation in the Central Committee and Congress, and called for holding a Women's Conference in conjunction with the Congress. Regional structures such as the Latin American Gender Council, East Asian Women's Committee and the Macedonian Women's Section have been set up. In Brazil and the Dominican Republic, the increasing role of women is changing union cultures. The ILO recently recognized the Canadian Auto Workers' (CAW) historic struggle for gender equality. In some cases, progress is directly linked to the crucial task of organizing more women. Women are the predominant workers in EPZs the world over, and in Indonesia, the IMF affiliates' success in EPZ organizing are largely due to strong advances in bringing women into leadership positions.

Global labor at a turning point

Right now, the world is mired in the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. As the IMF repeatedly underlined, neo-liberalism was a disaster waiting to happen. Deregulation, privatization, weakening of social safety nets, neglect of public investment, and hostility to worker and human rights by many national governments, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), led to the stagnation of living standards for the popular classes and enormous riches for a few. The basic elements of the crisis were growing indebtedness and unregulated financial speculation in a now global financial market. The current crisis is a disaster for the world's poor and working people. Declining production, even when mergers and bankruptcies can be avoided, will bring unemployment and loss of incomes to billions of workers. Union membership is bound to decline in the short run and will have to be rebuilt.

Nevertheless, there is a bright side to the debacle. For decades, unions swam against the stream, but now the failure of neo-liberalism is obvious to all but those who will not learn. Leaders of banks and industries - the former cheer-leaders for neo-liberal "reforms" - now beg for government hand-outs. Deficit spending is advocated even by conservative experts and public ownership is on the rise.

This is a great opportunity for the IMF, international labor, and its progressive allies. Although the current crisis is economic, its roots are political. Discredited policies can be reversed by a new push for respect of core labor standards not only nationally but in world trade, by demanding the rebuilding of social safety nets, stricter environmental safeguards (including a switch to clean energies), re-regulation of finance and industries, and effective economic intervention by government that will counteract depression even as it improves infrastructures and promotes sustainable industries and services.

The future IMF must seize this opportunity and meet these challenges.