06 Mar 1998 07:30:28 -0500 (EST)
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 07:30:09 -0500
From: Barbara Larcom <larcom@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us>
Subject: [Fwd: no more billions for IMF!]
Sender: owner-slac@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu
To: Bill Harvey <bharvey@smart.net>, Charles <charles@elhoyo.dataco41.com.ar>,
Charles <agclaras@elpis.satlink.net>,
Chris Chase-Dunn <chriscd@jhu.edu>, Chuck Johnson <Johnsonc@wou.edu>,
Dave Schott <dschott@igc.apc.org>,
Dick Ochs <rochs@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us>,
"Dr. Kai Lit Phua" <phuakl@sit.edu.my>,
Howard Ehrlich <HJEhrlich@aol.com>, Howdy Burns <hhb@erols.com>,
Howdy Burns <burnsesq@clark.net>,
Jim Lunday <jlunday@baltimorereads.org>,
Jim Lunday <jlunday@erols.com>, John Dickson <cnetjtd4@clark.net>,
Jon Kerr <editor@oldmanriver.com>,
Michael E Bardoff <abolition@juno.com>,
Nan McCurdy <Nan@nicarao.org.ni>, Peter Grimes <p34d3611@jhu.edu>,
SLAC <slac@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu>, Sue Hunt <movefree@juno.com>,
Sustainable Economics <listproc@csf.colorado.edu>,
Timmons Roberts <timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu>
Reply-to: slac@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--------------D41A5A103467C468032B172E
--------------D41A5A103467C468032B172E
Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:59:54 -0800 (PST)
Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:43:47 -0800 (PST)
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:43:47 -0800 (PST)
To: clr@igc.org
From: Campaign for Labor Rights <clr@igc.apc.org>
Subject: no more billions for IMF!
Labor Alerts: a service of Campaign for Labor Rights
To receive our email labor alerts, send a message to CLR@igc.apc.org
Phone: (541) 344-5410 Web site: http://www.compugraph.com/clr
Membership/newsletter. Send $35.00 to Campaign for Labor Rights, 1247 "E"
Street SE, Washington, DC 20003. Sample newsletter available on request.
NO MORE BILLIONS FOR THE IMF!
Why should our tax money finance poverty perpetuation and anti-labor
policies around the globe?
***********************************
See ACTION REQUESTS, at end of alert
***********************************
In January, we alerted you to the Clinton Administration's proposal for a
special $18 billion appropriation for the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
After a few weeks' lull, the battle is re-heating, and Clinton is lobbying
hard once again to get increased money for this institution which has done
so much to promote the global sweatshop.
EVIL TWINS: The World Bank and the IMF
WORLD BANK: Appointed bureaucrats secretly negotiate loans with leaders who
frequently are known dictators or crooks. In a typical World Bank-funded
project, thousands of people are forced off their land, without
compensation, for construction of a huge dam to provide power for cheap
resource extraction and sweatshop factories owned by foreign corporations.
The construction is done by U.S. and other northern corporations, using
equipment provided by northern corporations. Most of the money from these
"loans" never makes it to the supposed recipients, but is simply changed
from one New York bank account to another. Whatever money does make it to
the recipient countries ends up in the pockets of the military and the
national elites. Although World Bank projects routinely fail to meet that
institution's own guidelines, World Bank personnel continue to throw
billions at more such schemes, while living in luxury, insulated from the
poverty which their projects cause.
IMF: When governments (often not answerable to their own people) have
borrowed so much that they no longer can keep up even with the interest
payments on those loans, then the IMF steps in. The IMF offers to loan yet
more money - at interest - so that countries can "restructure" their loans
from the World Bank. To be eligible for such loans (the terms of which are
negotiated in secret), governments must agree to a set of policies called
Structural Adjustment Programs, which typically include:
* Drastic reductions in basic government services such as education and
health care.
* Slashing credit to farmers and small businesses, thus driving thousands
off the land and out of work, creating a desperate army of the unemployed.
* Establishing free trade zones, geared toward production for export,
where companies (usually foreign-owned) pay no taxes and are free to ignore
local labor laws and environmental regulations. Promotional literature for
such zones boasts that unions are not welcome.
* Freezing of wages and allowing the local currency to inflate, making
labor even cheaper for foreign sweatshop corporations.
* Privatizing state-owned companies (even those that are profitable),
selling them to foreign corporations and local elites at fire-sale prices
and busting public sector unions.
Some 90 countries - including a majority of nations in Africa, Latin
America, and South Asia - are under IMF structural adjustment. Governments
must adopt such programs as a result of going into debt. However, while
Structural Adjustment Programs are designed with a view to keeping countries
current on the interest payments on their debt, they provide no basis for
hope of ever escaping from that debt, which in fact continues to mount. The
result of these policies is a bonanza for creditors and for foreign
sweatshop investors. Such is the IMF idea of credit worthiness.
LEGISLATIVE STRATEGY
We understand that the Administration is now preparing to go for the $18
billion through two routes: a regular appropriations bill and a "budget
supplemental" which would sharply limit the debate on the expenditure, and
would link it to unrelated appropriations, such as for disaster relief in
California and Florida.
Clinton's people are now making deals with members of the House Banking
Committee, which is due to consider a bill introduced by its chair, Jim
Leach (R-Iowa), on Thursday, March 5. The danger is that the result will be
an appropriations bill giving the IMF everything it wants with extremely
weak conditions attached. Those IMF opponents who do not argue for outright
denial of the request (as we do) are arguing that the IMF meet strict
conditions with regard to human rights, labor standards and information
disclosure before any money is released. The bill likely to emerge would
merely "encourage" the IMF to implement such reforms. Congress has on many
occasions "encouraged" the IMF in this way without results. The only time
Congress achieved
any change in the institution was when it withheld money until changes were
made.
UAW STATEMENT ON THE IMF
United Auto Workers International Executive Board Resolution on U.S.
Contributions to the International Monetary Fund - February 18, 1998
International Monetary Fund (IMF) involvement in the recent financial crisis
in Asia and the 1994-95 crisis in Mexico, dramatizes the tremendous burden
that imposed austerity measures place on working people around the world.
The purpose of IMF involvement has been to bail out international banks and
investors whose pursuit of excessive profits led them to make questionable,
high-risk loans.
IMF-dictated austerity measures worsen U.S. trade deficits, leading to the
loss of solid family-supporting manufacturing jobs in auto and other
industries, while driving down the already abysmally low wages of workers
living in developing nations.
Governments in South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Mexico and other
developing nations are being told that an infusion of capital from the IMF
requires them to pay down foreign loans by lowering the living standard of
their citizens. The IMF's prescription calls for an increase in low-wage
exports from these countries. The dollars so raised are then used to pay
down loans owed to international banks and inventors. As a result, our trade
deficit is expected to climb by approximately $100 billion this year alone,
causing the loss of an estimated 1 million U.S. jobs.
To achieve this increase in exports, the IMF insists on austerity measures
that include slashing public spending, jacking up interest rates to
exorbitant levels, deregulating markets, devaluing currencies, and reducing
existing labor protections. The impact on workers and their families is
devastating. Workers face massive layoffs and wage cuts, while prices of
basics such as food, housing, energy and transportation skyrocket.
Many of the governments receiving IMF funds fail to respect internationally
recognized workers, rights, and the IMF has not required them to do
otherwise, despite the high price that workers are forced to pay. In
Indonesia, independent union leader Muchtar Pakpahan remains on trial for
his life for his union activity. Yet the IMF has made no effort to use of
its leverage to free him.
The UAW believes that the International Monetary Fund is fully aware of the
impact that its austerity measures have on working people. Yet the IMF has
failed to move toward reforms of its own policies that would ensure
equitable solutions to crises in financial markets. The UAW therefore
opposes providing the additional funding of $18 billion that the IMF has
requested from U.S. citizens. We believe that international organizations
can and must play necessary and useful roles in world affairs. Our vision of
their role, however, is one that places the interests of working people at
least equal to those of finance and capital.
*******************
ACTION REQUESTS
*******************
1) CONTACT CONGRESS
Phones: Senate (202) 224-3121 House (202) 225-3121
Postal addresses: U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510
To send an email to your Senator or Representative, visit the United Auto
Workers' (UAW) very informative web site at www.uaw.org and then click the
choice for "Congressional Action Center." Or go directly to the
Congressional Action Center at http://www.capweb.net/uaw With
easy-to-follow directions, you can find out the email addresses of your
Congressional delegation.
Sample letter:
Dear
I oppose the $18 billion appropriation currently sought by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF already has ample funds - far too much money -
at its disposal which it uses to promote bailouts for bankers and other
policies that end up making economic crises even worse. The conditions
attached to IMF loans impoverish workers, devastate the environment, place
enormous social and economic burdens on women and exclude citizens from
having a voice in determining their own economic future.
I urge you to vote NO on any U.S. taxpayer funding for the IMF.
Sincerely,
2) PROTEST THE IMF DURING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S WEEK (MARCH
7-14).
Focusing on cities that have Federal Reserve Banks but not limited to those,
the 50 Years Is Enough Network and the Democratic Socialists of America
already have half a dozen events in the making in Boston, Chicago,
Cleveland, Washington, DC, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.
To find out who is organizing events in those cities or for help in
organizing events elsewhere, contact the 50 Years Is Enough/U.S. Network for
Economic Justice: Phones: 202-463-2265 Email: wb50years@igc.org
Why we link the IMF and International Women's Week:
* When the IMF tells Korea, Thailand and Indonesia to slash their
workforce, WOMEN are fired first.
* When the IMF orders cutbacks in social services, WOMEN have to hold the
family together without adequate resources.
* When the IMF promotes export industries in anti-union free trade zones,
WOMEN end up working under sweatshop conditions.
* When the IMF designs these policies, MEN sit at the table.
The primary beneficiaries of the recent bailouts will be banks - European,
U.S. and Japanese banks that made bad loans in Asia - not working families
in those countries, who will be forced to accept harsh austerity. Women in
Asia will be hard hit. They, like women workers around the world, are the
lowest paid and are typically concentrated in domestic industries not
eligible for financial assistance. Their role as household managers will be
made difficult by increase food and fuel prices, decreased access to
government resources and drops in personal and family income due to layoffs.
--------------D41A5A103467C468032B172E--