Freer trade fails to bring better jobs in poor nations: study

Source: Reuters

12 Oct 2009, 1612 hrs IST, REUTERS

GENEVA: Freer trade has failed to create better working conditions in the developing world, a joint study by the World Trade Organisation and UN labour agency said Monday.

Instead it has produced new jobs mainly in the less-secure informal economy, the report found.

"Strong growth in the global economy has not, so far, led to a corresponding improvement in working conditions and living standards for many," it said.

According to the WTO and International Labour Organisation report, informal labour in developing economies accounts for 30 percent to 90 percent of the workforce.

"Trade has contributed to growth and development worldwide. But this has not automatically translated in an improvement in the quality of employment," said Pascal Lamy, director-general of the WTO.


Read more: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/Freer-trade-fails-to-bring-better-jobs-in-poor-nations-study/articleshow/5115925.cms

---

No shit.

it is what makes them wealthy.

We export our jobs and get poisoned food and drywall in exchange.






But I hear the have-mores are adding to their loot, so all must be well.

the answer is that "freer trade" isn't free enough. That is, the failures of "freer" trade can be blamed upon the evils of whatever government interference might still be going on.


Yeah. Libertarians are nutty.

about fair trade...... Then you will bring out the real nuts...

It was to improve the profit margins of the wealthy who were out of ideas as how to increase their profits with product and inovation.. so they cut pay and jobs in developed nations and farmed it out to countries that had no labor/ environmental standards..

by corporate interests -- which is how you get poor women putting together bras for Victoria's Secret in Mexico for .12 a piece.

I'm still astounded that Americans fell for that globalism bullcrap. The idea that the jobs were going to help the overseas poor was nothing but a lie to make us feel a little better about watching our jobs disappear.

be done for less, the main theme was that this was going to be a win fall for attorneys. Reason being the standard that we use to enjoy was no lead in our children's toys, no poising in our food....etc.....,was exchanged for how low a company could go in finding the cheapest work force.... All that talk about competing blah blah talk about jobs being lost didn't matter because new ones would replace them.....better ones..... Today we talk about a jobless recovery.... blah blah blah....

I see this error in a lot of places and just drove me nuts enough today to comment on it. It's "windfall" not "win fall".
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/windfall

Who in the world would think that any international business person would take his/her operation to another country to benefit the locals??

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Every day I get the feeling that we humorroids, I mean humanoids are beyond help. Too obtuse, too myopic, too self-absorbed, too easily distracted to undo the devastation we are piling on the planet and its inhabitants as each hour of our lives go on.

This happy message has been brought to you by cinnamon-flavored sugar with a lot of caffeine mixed in.

Recommend.

:eyes:

I can attest to this. Bangalore is a city of contrasts. There's poverty and shanty towns every where along with luxury hotels and corporate office parks for IT execs. Of all of that money going over there, little of it is actually going to the people there.

No wonder Latin America has rejected neoliberal economic policies, and the US military hegemony that is behind it.

For some reason, that question was never answered when the jobs were sent away, and now some people are acting all surprised when they learn that the answer is actually "THEY CAN'T."

and people are saying the shops in NYC were packed. So, that proves it the 2nd Republicon Great Depression is done, finished, ended.

Just because no new jobs have been added to the American economy in the last year and we are still losing a quarter of a million jobs a month doesn't mean the rich have stopped getting richer and Wall Street has stopped gambling with our tax dollars.

So, maybe the uber wealthy top 1% will be able to carry the load of our once gigantic American consumer market or NOT.

http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres09_e/pr574_e.htm

"Trade has contributed to growth and development worldwide. But this has not automatically translated into an improvement in the quality of employment. Trade opening needs proper domestic policies to create good jobs."

"“The study confirms what we know from experience, that by promoting complementarity between decent work objectives and trade, financial and labour market policies, developing countries are much better placed to benefit from trade opening, advance the social dimension of globalization, and to cope with the current crisis” said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia."

"Integration into world markets and tackling informal employment through decent work policies should be considered complementary. Facilitating formality of firms and jobs helps a country to benefit fully from trade openness, improves living standards and gives workers access to decent working conditions. Social protection is also crucial for supporting transitions and realising the gains from open trade. Greater attention should be devoted to social protection policies as well as to the design of trade reforms.

The study suggests that trade reforms should be designed and implemented in an employment-friendly way, making the reallocation of jobs more conducive to formal employment growth. "

The study seems to be intended as policy advice to developing countries. It recommends that they adopt work policies that make their labor force less informal and social protection policies spread the "gains realized from open trade". The study concludes that countries that maintain largely informal work forces like in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa benefit less from open trade than countries with more a more formal workforce as in East Asia.

One of the fallacies of neoliberalism is that economic growth of the companies brings with it a better distribution of wealth and a growth in employment. But this is not so. In the same way as the growth of political power of a king does not bring as a consequence a growth of political power of the subjects (to the contrary), the absolute power of financial capital does not better the distribution of wealth nor does it create major employment for society. Poverty, unemployment and instability of labor are its structural consequences.

The imposition of the laws of the market all over the world, the global market, have done nothing but destroy small and medium-size businesses. Upon the disappearance of local and regional markets, the small and medium-size producers see themselves without protection and without any possibility of competing against gigantic transnationals.

The results: massive bankruptcy of companies.
The consequence; millions of unemployed workers.

The absurdity of neoliberalism repeats itself: growth in production does not generate employment, on the contrary, it destroys it. The UN calls this stage "Growth without employment."

Economic globalization "made necessary a decline in real salaries at the international level, which together with the reduction of social costs (health, education, housing and food) and an anti-union climate, came to constitute the fundamental part of the new neoliberal politics of capitalist reactivation. (Ocampo F. and Flores M. Op. Cit.).

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/1997/jigsaw.html

This is the most informative and "prophetic" piece I have ever read concerning globalization and the effect it has on people and the world.

Who could have seen this coming?

it's not leading to a high paying job there? That's not making sense.