Unions united against privatization
YAY! I WOULD
LIKE TO PERSONALLY
The Third All Workers Conference held in Mauritius on
21st November united the trade union movement in a
HEY! DIEGO GARCIA iS MY KiNDA PLACE!
Mauritius
*
SAY! WHERE ARE
THE PEOPLE OF
THANK THE PEOPLE stand against privatization.
OF DIEGO GARCIA FOR
THEIR QUIET SUPPORTIN
Lindsey Collen
DEFENSE OF THE PEOPLE
OF KURDiSTAN!
A majority of the 700 delegates, representing trade unions from most of the country's 300 traditionally disunited unions adopted a 40-page "White Paper" document that had been prepared with input from about 30 unions in sectors faced with privatization.
The Government had promised in the
Budget speech in May that it would bring out a White Paper on privatization, but it has still to come up with one. Now, the united trade union movement has brought out its own "White Paper", which is a profound onslaught against privatization, from both a
NICE AND QUIET!
-© SturBell 1996 - 325-13-3.%
DiEGO GARCiA?
SHHHHH!
philosophical and down-to-earth point of Britain severed the Chagos and Diego Garcia Islands from Mauritius territory before allowing view. In effect, a national campaign against independence. Now Britain rents the islands to the US Armed Forces, which has used Diego privatisation has been launched.
In a population of 1.2 million, the response to the three successive All Workers Conferences has been suprising.
The first All Workers Conference, held in April, was on the impact of IMF, World Bank, WTO and government policies on working people. It attracted 1,200 delegates. The second, in June, was on the Government Budget. Once the delegates start to become active, as they have since about March this year during preparation for the first Conference that was attended by 1,200 delegates, this involvement then, in turn, works towards further unity of the trade union movement. Delicious Mautitius?
The Republic of Mauritius, already portrayed for some tifteen years by the international media and by tourist advertisements as a multi-island paradise state, has for the past five or six years got a new identity. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have decided to call Mauritius a "model" for other African and Asian states. "The Mauritian miracle" they call it. And proceed to tell how Mauritius was a country that was submerged in problems like over-population and unemployment, and has been transformed by the Washington-based money-lenders into a modern wonder of full employment, high average wages and fairly steady economic
True, until recently there was full employment in Mauritius. Why? For the simple mason that protectionist measures (the very aposite of the IMF and World Bank philo-
Garcia to launch bombing raids on Iraq. sophy kept the sugar industry and the free zone textile factories in business.
Wages, it should be mentioned, are not high in paradise: in free zone factories are SUS 100 per month for machinists and less for unskilled workers. For hotel workers, the wages are similar, and for agricultural labourers around $120-150 per month. Conditions are not good either: overtime is compulsory, and there is a generalized, if illegal practice whereby bosses make new recruits sign forms that they will not join a union. In addition, all strikes are illegal.
Average wages are as high as $300 per month partly because of social inequality. It recently became known that a restaurant manager who took an industrial dispute against her boss to a Court had been earning US$6,000 per month, for example.
Mauritian workers have consistently opposed and rejected the IMF and World Bank conditions. Until today, for example, flour and rice are subsidised. The government removed these food subsidies in 1992 under pressure from the IMF and World Bank, lost a by-election, and had to reinstate the subsidies. Health and medicines are still universal and free. Education up to university level is still free. The Government has not had room to manoevre.
This resistance to the destructive conditions and dictates of the IMF and World Bank seems to be what has kept Mauritian society going relatively well.
Nevertheless, there is a great deal of poverty. Successive Governments have, as a result of their own politics and the pressures in the same direction from the IMF and World Bank, gone ahead and closed down the social housing programme set up in 1 even be dependence. And the new profit-making housing programme means that monthly rentals are higher than peoples whole monthly incomes, as defined by government legislation.
One in five head of household is a woman, and women's wages are often less than $100 US per month. Prices are as high as any capital city in Europe. This means that more than half of the country's people live below the poverty datum line, a minimum to stay alive, calculated by a church
The full employment depended on exceptional protectionist measures, like those introduced by other countries that split at the time of gaining independence Such protectionist measures, whatever their historical reason are measures that the WTO will not tolerate.
And so, it is very important that the trade union movement in Mauritius has started to mobilize its entire working class base, to build up a national challenge to the conditions of the Washington based institutions and to the supposed logic of the WTO and its politics of "free trade" and "markets" and "economic growth". * The author is a member of the Lalit revolutionary socialist group, and a supporter of the workers education organization Ledikasyon pu Iravayers.
January 1997#284 7