Leaders within both the US labor movement and internationally aim to use their new partnership to promote workers' rights and leverage their partnership in addressing other national campaigns across the globe.

In the face of globalization, the US labor movement is striving to reinvent--and reinvigorate--itself by establishing closer ties with the world’s network of international unions.
As reported by Ipsnews.net, the AFL-CIO, the US’s largest federation of unions, embraced a new level of internationalism last week in hosting a conference in Washington sponsored by the Council of Global Unions (GCU), a governing body composed of representatives from numerous international labor federations, including the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 168 million workers in 153 countries.
Leaders from these groups highlighted the fact that as a result of globalization, national unions have seen their bargaining power diminish in the face of multinational corporations, yet have also managed to win victories through the support of international unions.
“What we have now is a very clear recognition that we cannot, as an international labor movement, respond to international phenomena and international operations of capital with purely national responses,“ said Guy Ryder, ITUC chief executive and general secretary. “We need to move from the episodic and the haphazard to the permanent and the systematic in terms of international organizing.“
Titled, “Going Global: Organizing, Recognition, and Union Rights,“ the conference brought together over 200 trade union leaders from 64 countries, and culminated in a press conference and congressional forum at the US Capitol last week.
In a wide-reaching display of international solidarity, US and foreign labor leaders from Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, and Latin America urged lawmakers at the congressional forum to support the “Employee Free Choice Act“--legislation that would streamline the process for workers seeking to establish unions.
Indeed, US workers seeking to form unions have faced increased difficulty in recent years due to the George W. Bush-appointed majority directing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which has overturned longstanding legal precedents and eroded the rights of workers in the past six years, analysts say.
In October 2007, frustrated by the NLRB’s “sustained assault on workers’ rights in the United States“, the AFL-CIO filed a formal complaint with the Geneva-based International Labor Organization--a move usually undertaken by labor leaders in countries where organizing efforts result in physical threats and violence.
In the midst of this clash, the US workforce’s participation in organized labor has been declining, according to conference presenters.
Currently, only 12 percent of US workers retain collective bargaining rights, as compared with 32 percent of Canadian workers, 35 percent of British workers, and 50 percent of Australian workers.
“The reason for that is not because employees in the United States do not want unions and do not want to engage in collective bargaining--clearly they do,“ said John Logan of the London School of Economics, who prepared a paper on “The Global Crisis in Union Collective Bargaining“ for the conference.
“The problem is that the law provides very weak protection for the right to form unions and the right to collective bargaining, and the employer opposition is much more intense, much more aggressive, and often illegal in the United States,“ Logan said.
Labor leaders and advocates hope that the Employee Free Choice Act will help close what many referred to as the “representation gap“ among US workers--the discrepancy between the population of workers who have union membership, and the population of those who seek it, which the AFL-CIO president cited as 60 million.
The US workforce involvement in organized labor is now lower than several developing and newly-developed countries. Among newly developed countries, union workers in both Indonesia and South Africa maintain collective bargaining rights at 20 percent and 42 percent, respectively.
Leaders within both the US labor movement and internationally aim to use their new partnership to promote workers’ rights through the Employee Free Choice Act in the US, but also to leverage their partnership in addressing other national campaigns across the globe.

There are 476 unmanned roadblocks in the West Bank, consisting of concrete cubes, earthen embankments and other barricades blocking roads and exits from villages and towns.

The World Bank has warned that even if the donor countries meet all of the Palestinian Authority’s demands for financial aid, the Palestinian economy will continue to deteriorate if Israel does not alter mobility and trade restrictions in the West Bank.
According to Arabnews.com, the dire message comes ahead of the Pledging Conference to the Palestinian Authority (PA) this Monday in Paris. The Palestinian economy has deteriorated due to seven years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as internal Palestinian strife of Fatah and Hamas movements and Israeli restrictions on travel and trade.
About 56 percent of families in the West Bank and three-quarters of families in Gaza live in poverty. The World Bank stated in a report that if the PA implements all of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s reforms, and if the donor countries transfer all the money to pay for these, the economic deterioration will be slowed, but not reversed.
“In order to reverse this downward cycle, the bank recommends parallel actions by the Palestinian Authority, Israel and the donors,“ the report said.
However, the report contends that if Israel cancels its policy of restricting mobility and trade in the West Bank and lifts the siege on the Gaza Strip, the PA “has the potential to yield double-digit growth rates.“ In any event, in the short term the Palestinian economy will continue to rely on outside aid.
The PA is asking for $1.9 billion in annual aid for the next three years. Of this, $1.644 billion will go for development and the remainder to pay salaries. According to recent statistics of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian territories (OCHA), the number of roadblocks in the West Bank has now reached 572.
OCHA said that there are 476 unmanned roadblocks in the West Bank, consisting of concrete cubes, earthen embankments and other barricades blocking roads and exits from villages and towns.
The UN organization found that there are 96 roadblocks manned by Israeli soldiers round the clock, but some are manned only a few hours a day. With regard to Gaza Strip, Israel declared the area, homeland for around 1.4 million Palestinians, a “hostile entity“ last September following a barrage of Qassam rockets that knocked the Israeli military base of Zikim leaving over 60 Israeli soldiers wounded in the attack.
In accordance with its announcement, Israel closed its border crossing with Gaza Strip and those between Gaza and Egypt. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Dec. 10 that the Palestinians, Israel and the donors would have to cooperate closely.
The IMF said going forward poses some risks for all three, but that failure to do so would push the Palestinian economy into a further downward spiral.

At the nation’s Central Economic Work Conference held last week, the Chinese authorities decided to change the “prudent“ monetary policy, enforced for nearly a decade, to a “tighter“ one, indicating a major change in policy next year.
Starting from 2003, bank loans were on a steep rise, especially this year. The commercial banks lent 1.42 trillion yuan ($1.86 billion) in new loans in the first three months of this year. The new loans totaled 2.5 trillion yuan by the end of June and 3.36 trillion yuan by the end of September, reported Chinaview.cn.
The banks granted 3.58 trillion yuan in new loans in the first 11 months of this year, compared with 3.18 trillion yuan for all of 2006. Many commercial banks have exceeded the anticipated loans target for the whole year in the first nine months despite the central bank raising the reserve requirement ratio for commercial banks 10 times and lifting interest rates five times this year.
The bank loans have created high liquidity in the capital market, pushing up the prices of securities and property. In the third quarter, average property prices in 70 big and middle-sized cities across the country rose by 8.2 percent over the same period last year. Prices were up by 13.5 percent in Beijing and by 17.6 percent in Shenzhen.
Excessive liquidity has also played a major role in the price hikes of consumer goods this year. The consumer price index (CPI) jumped by 6.9 percent year on year in November, the highest level in 11 years, putting pressure on the authorities to curb inflation expectation in 2008.
And as prices for various commodities on the international market keep on increasing, it makes more difficult to bring down domestic prices. Because of the CPI’s continuous rise, the actual interest rate, or the inflation-adjusted interest rate, has been kept negative. It was 2.82 percent under zero in October after several rounds of interest rate hikes.
The negative actual interest rate distorts the pricing scheme in the financial market, destroys the fair distribution of social wealth and changes the anticipation of market players, all of which could affect the soundness of the economy.
The combination of all the above factors could lead to a more aggressive monetary policy next year. ÊIt is expected that the central government will try to tighten the policy through market-orientated means instead of administrative ones.
When the monetary policy is tightened, the property market will feel its impact.
As a capital-intensive sector, the property market relies heavily on bank loans and its increased activity is a direct result of the financial support from the banks. Property investors will also feel the impact of the tightening policy for most of them also need bank loans as leverage to gain profits.
The property market could see a change after the money supply from banks is reduced. There could be weaker demand for property, a reduction in prices, a shrinkage in industries related to the property sector, a decrease in fixed asset investments, and less inflation pressure.
Thus, the tightened monetary policy might serve as a new way to further develop China’s economy and maintain sustainability.

Central bankers are supposed to be boring and predictable. But on December 12th the rich world’s monetary authorities stunned financial markets with a dramatic, joint plan to ease the liquidity squeeze in global money markets.
According to Economist.com, America’s Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of Canada and the Swiss National Bank all pitched in. The central banks of Sweden and Japan said they, too, were watching developments and would act as necessary. All told, it was an impressive show of central-bank co-ordination.
The central banks have pinched each others’ best ideas for how best to ensure that liquidity gets where it is needed. And they have also, in effect, acknowledged the international nature of the liquidity squeeze, by promising to provide reciprocal currency-swap lines.
The Fed made the most dramatic changes. It introduced a “term-auction facility“ through which all banks eligible to borrow from the discount window could bid for one-month money. The first two auctions are to be held on December 17th and 20th, with $20 billion to be sold at each. Two more are to follow in January.
The Fed also announced temporary swap lines with the ECB and the Swiss National Bank, worth $24 billion, allowing those central banks to lend dollars to banks pledging euros or other currencies.
The Bank of England promised to inject more money into the markets, increasing its two forthcoming term auctions, on December 18th and January 15th, from £2.85 billion ($5.8 billion) to £11.35 billion each time. In all, £20 billion will be supplied at three-month maturities, where strains have once again become particularly acute. And unlike its previous emergency auctions, in late September and October, the price of these funds will be determined by market demand at the auction, not set at the penalty rate that deterred any bank from bidding for the money.
The hope is that by extending the maturity of central-bank money, broadening the range of collateral against which banks can borrow and shifting from direct lending to an auction, the central bankers will bring down spreads in the one- and three-month money markets.
There will be no net addition of liquidity. What the central bankers add at longer-term maturities, they will take out in the overnight market.
In some ways, the announcement is a triumph for the ECB. Both the Fed and the Bank of England have shifted away from the familiar tools of a lender of last resort--providing funds freely to institutions at a penalty rate. They have moved closer to the ECB’s approach of auctioning funds to a broader set of actors against a wider range of collateral--in effect becoming a market of last resort.
The shift makes sense: in both Britain and America it was increasingly clear that the stigma associated with approaching the central bank directly was deterring deserving borrowers. Walter Bagehot’s dictum needed updating when the crisis of confidence affected entire markets rather than single banks.
But there are risks. The first is that, for all the fanfare, the central banks’ plan will make little difference. After all, it does nothing to remove the fundamental reason why investors are worried about lending to banks.
Furthermore, central banks will now be more intricately involved in the unwinding of the credit mess. Since eligible banks have similar access to the liquidity auction, the central banks are implicitly subsidizing weaker banks relative to stronger ones.
By broadening the range of acceptable collateral, the central banks are taking more risks onto their balance sheets.