Peaceful rally targets WTO talks in Sydney

AUSTRALIA: The IMF-affiliated Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union joined in a peaceful protest rally on November 14 in Sydney, where the Australian government was hosting an informal meeting of World Trade Organisation trade ministers from 25 countries. Speaking to several thousand participants attending the rally, the union's general secretary, Doug Cameron, said that the international trade regime based on the WTO was in disrepute, with a collapse of public confidence in the WTO. He said that what his country needed was "fair trade not free trade." Politicians needed to put their communities before the ideological nonsense of free trade. Addressing a forum prior to the start of the Sydney WTO meeting, the AMWU president, Julius Roe, said that the WTO "is about the interests of the transnational corporations." Australia was one of the developed countries whose economy was totally dominated by the global corporations. The WTO agenda, including privatisation, contracting out, temporary work and deregulation of working hours, had had devastating effects. There was no international regulation of labour standards, and trading regulation through the WTO, World Bank and International Monetary Fund actually encouraged the undermining of labour standards. "This is why," insisted Roe, "the international trade union movement wants enforceable labour standards." Just this time a year ago, during the IMF's World Congress in Sydney, thousands of members of Australian trade unions were joined by 800 IMF Congress delegates for a rally to protest against the negative effects of corporate globalisation.