AMRC CONFERENCE: Organising for Change: Lessons and Strategies from Below

 

http://sites.google.com/a/amrc.org.hk/organising-for-change--lessons-and-strategies-from-below/Home

Organising for Change: Lessons and Strategies From Below

9-11 March 2009, Bangkok, Thailand

 

Introduction

The world totters into the new year with greater economic uncertainty and a deepening crisis that is showing no signs of ending. Reports of mass lay-offs and and shutting down of factories are pouring in from all over the world. In this intense period, when the economic model driving development is in tatters, inequalities are only exacerbated and put hundreds of millions at risk, with loss of employment and livelihoods. While the logic of neo-liberal capitalist model promoted informalisation and casualisation, the crisis, as it unfolds, brings forth new challenges as well as opportunities.

 

The vagaries of the neo-liberal system has the most profound impact on the lives of people who have been driven to accept a developmental model that not exposes them to a system over which they have little control, but to bear the brunt of its negative fallouts while having little of its fruits. It is now beyond debate that the trickle-down effect of market-led growth has not been forthcoming, and instead has only served to exacerbate inequities.

 

The struggle for a redefinition the market, not for the benefit merely of capital accumulation, but towards equity and justice, is not new. They have been taking place in different sectors of society, like the indigenous people fighting to keep their rights to ancestral land, fishermen fighting corporate fishing fleets, farmers fighting acquisition of land for industries. These struggles have often pitted one exploited section against another, the indigenous against farmers, the farmers against factory workers, local labour against migrant labour—divisions which contribute toward the fragmentation of unified struggle, while capital has been fairly homogeneous in its onslaught. The current crisis however puts us at crossroads.

 

The immediate struggle for the labour movement is the preservation of employment. However, the challenge for labour is not only to brace for the fallout of the crisis, to strengthen its resilience and consolidate its efforts to organise, but to take this fight a step further. While organising against informalisation and casualisation is not new, the current challenges should lead us to define better and more effective forms of organising that not only help to survive in the crisis, but also lead to a redefinition of industrial relations on the short term, and of the market as a whole on the long term. In other words: is the time ripe to move from a defensive strategy to a more pro-active strategy? And how would such a strategy look like? What are the steps to take? What have we learned so far?

 

Cross-border solidarity remains a condition sine qua non. There exist some instances of labour solidarity across national boundaries that have been successful in stopping some transnationals from getting away. The E-land case is perhaps a good example, where solidarity actions from unions and activists in Hong Kong prevented the listing of the Korean company from raising capital in Hong Kong while it denied its workers a decent wage in Korea. It was a message to the company that they may run but cannot hide, and that workers solidarity will force them to treat their labour force with dignity. What more is there to learn?

 

The overwhelming majority of workers are in the informal sector in Asia. Comprising the most vulnerable workers and layers in society, they have for a long time been ignored by the labour movement. Yet, there are many different experiences in organising workers in this sector, as well as redefining notions of who is a worker. Innovative approaches have helped bring together different actors and organise them into a united force. More over, this sector could have the potential to push for genuine alternatives to the free market logic. What has this sector to contribute to the labour movement?

 

And lastly, what can the labour movement learn from struggles in other sectors in society? Rural workers, farmer organisations, women’s movement, … Isn’t it time to forge linkages outside the traditional labour movement? The impacts of a collapse are impacting all sectors exposing the common strands the unite struggles among working peoples. It is these commonalities that we need to weave together to build together, first by sharing among each other the unique ways of confronting the common struggle, and seeing where experiences of organising can help build alliances that contribute to change that is defined by people and not by technocrats and held hostage to capital.

 

The opportunity that the crisis provides is, perhaps, that of a unique time when the economic paradigm that has dominated the world for nearly three decades is now at its most vulnerable. We are now in a period when countries and states, hitherto wedded to policies dictated by the paradigm, are susceptible to change.

 

AMRC wants to seize this opportunity and therefore calls for a conference, bringing together representatives from the labour movement at large, to look carefully at the challenges outlined above. Organisations representing formal workers, informal workers, women workers and rural workers from countries all over Asia, will sit together and learn, ask the right questions, start to formulate options for the near future, and consolidate concrete solidarity for the years to come.

 

The Conference

AMRC proposes to have an Asian labour movement conference which will have the following aims:

 

1. to analyse the factors and the impacts of the financial crisis, globally and regionally, as a backdrop to each organisation’s organising/campaigning/advocacy efforts. This will be done in the input session on the first day.

2. to learn together from various experiences and strategies against the informalisation and casualisation within the formal sector, and erosion of trade union membership: how and why are these strategies effective?

3. to learn together from various experiences and strategies of organising in the informal sector, which in Asia includes the majority of workers. How they were able to constitute power? Against who? How do they challenge the existing paradigm?

4. Based on the previous exercise: to better understand what the new shapes and forms of collective bargaining (action?) in the new forms of organising are, and how all workers are working or can work inside the factory and outside together to bargain with global capital

 

The latter three will be addressed in succeeding interactive sessions. The emphasis will be on innovative strategies that can be of inspiration and use to other worker organisations.

 

These interactive sessions will then feed into strategy sessions which should bring forth directions and alliances that can be concretely taken forward.

 

Date/Venue

The conference will be held on 9-11 March 2009 at [Baan Siri Rama Hotel] in Bangkok, Thailand.

 

Participants

30-40 individuals from unions and other labour/social movement organisations in Asia, including countries from East, Southeast and South Asia are being invited. We are also having an Argentinian activist sharing experiences from the Argentine financial crisis in 2001 and the workers’ responses, in particular the movement of factories occupied and recovered under worker management.

 

 

 

Proposed Agenda:

Day 1:

• Introduction

• The financial crisis: Challenges and opportunities for organising

• Global – regional and country specific impacts, and responses

• Discussion of cross sectoral connections/ strands

 

Day 2:

Thematic Workshops: (simultaneous)

• Informalisation and casualisation in the formal sector challenges to organising

• Experiences in organising in the informal sector (grouped by region)

• Consolidation

 

Day 3:

Strategies to move forward:

• Regional initiatives / campaigns / alliances

• National initiatives / campaigns / alliances

• International initiatives /campaigns / alliance

• Follow-up plans, point persons, etc.

 

We would like to invite you, or someone to represent your organisation, to be part of this three-day conference.

 

Kindly respond with your reply to Anoop Sukumaran, at Anoop@amrc.org.hk, or Doris Doris@amrc.org.hk or Wulan wulan@amrc.org.hk