War on Want report: Millions face free trade axe

Millions of people will lose their jobs in developing countries and millions more in Europe under free trade plans to be promoted by British prime minister Gordon Brown next month at the G20 summit of the world’s leading economies.

This warning comes today from the charity War on Want in the first-ever report to calculate the numbers of jobs lost globally in the wake of trade liberalisation and to analyse the impact of free trade on employment.

It comes at a time when global unemployment is already rising fast, with the International Labour Organisation forecasting over 50 million more people worldwide could lose their jobs by the end of this year, and 200 million workers fall into extreme poverty. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says that by next year jobless numbers in rich nations could rise by eight million to 42 million. And last week British unemployment rose above two million for the first time since 1997.

Now Brown’s call to other G20 leaders to complete the Doha trade round puts 7.5 million workers at risk in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Tunisia and Uruguay, and millions more in other rich and poor countries, according to War on Want.

War on Want Executive Director John Hilary said: “Our report exposes how trade liberalisation has thrown millions of people into grim poverty and threatens to devastate many further lives. Gordon Brown’s free market fundamentalism will condemn millions to a bleak and jobless future. Instead of repeating the failed policies of the past, the prime minister and the other G20 leaders must put people first.”

Following two decades of free market policies, 50 million more Africans are now trapped in poverty than in 1997.

Three in four workers in sub-Saharan Africa now face insecure employment as a result of three decades of neoliberal economics, with only a quarter in waged and salaried posts, according to the study. Four in five Zambian workers struggle to survive as street traders, 95 per cent of them earning only two dollars a day, and over three quarters less than a dollar a day.

Zambian tailor Matthews Nkhoma says of big foreign exporters: “Instead of bringing raw materials, they bring finished goods at a cheaper price. We cannot compete and have really lost out.”

Malawi’s real wages in manufacturing plunged by 73 per cent between 1990 and 1995. Trade liberalisation in the 1980s and 1990s also brought huge job losses in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco and Zimbabwe.

During the free trade 1990s, the jobless in Latin America soared from 7.6 million to 18.1 million, with unemployment rises in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. Between the early 1990s and 2006, farming jobs in Mexico slumped from 8.1 million to around six million as a result of trade liberalisation. Now a third of all the region’s workers face insecure employment.

Trading Away Our Jobs: How free trade threatens employment around the world can be downloaded here

March 26th, 2009 BOND