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CALL TO ACTION:

GATS ACT NOW

Please send attached letter to your trade minister





Dear colleagues,



This is a UNI circular to keep you informed about developments in the WTO’s GATS negotiations and to ask you to take early action.



The GATS negotiations are the negotiations on international trade in services that are currently taking place in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) within the framework of the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The purpose of all such GATS negotiations is to achieve “a progressively higher level of liberalisation” of services. These services include postal services, telecom, financial services, commerce, media – in short all of UNI's sectors.



The GATS agreement was signed in 1994 at the end of the Uruguay round of trade negotiations. In November 2001, trade ministers agreed to launch a new round of trade negotiations, called the Doha Development Round. These include negotiation in the services sector as well as in the agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA); i.e. industrial goods sectors. These negotiations had in fact begun earlier in 2000. The mandate of these negotiations varied following the various trade ministerial meetings and General Council meetings that have taken place since in: Cancun, 2003; Geneva, 2004 and Hong Kong, 2005.



None of these ministerial meetings have lead to an agreed conclusion of the Doha Round, thanks to public scrutiny, the challenges posed by developing countries that stuck together, and also disagreements amongst the major negotiating Member States, namely the EU and the USA.



In July 2006, the General Council of the WTO decided to suspend the negotiations since Member States seemed to have reached a dead-end in negotiations. They have since resumed and are now on a fast track. Draft agreement texts on agriculture, NAMA and services were out at the end of May 2008 and horizontal negotiations between agriculture and NAMA sectors (trade-offs between these sectors) will probably start mid-July. A mini-ministerial meeting will be taking place from 21 July.



Are we approaching the conclusion of a deal? There are mixed feelings in Geneva about this mini-ministerial conference. These negotiations have been going for years and some negotiators really want a deal. On the other hand, there are still many disagreements to bridge before anything can be agreed upon. What might occur though, as it has happened in 2004, is that there might be an agreement amongst WTO members, not to conclude the round of negotiations but on ways forward to reach an agreement by the end of the year maybe.



Regarding negotiations in services, there is a new urgency. Indeed a draft text on services was out on 27 May, which raises concerns about the mandatory tone in which it is written. Secondly, a “signalling conference” for services will be taking place during the mini-ministerial meeting, in which ministers are expected to signal if they are prepared to make revised services offers. This implies going further in liberalising services.



In this context, I am again reminding you that it is imperative for your union to ensure that it is being consulted by the trade authorities - at all relevant levels and in a meaningful way, as well as to send the attached letter to your trade minister. Meaningful consultation means that the government also provides an impact assessment of the offers it proposes to make.



The fevered atmosphere that surrounds WTO meetings, the enormous pressure being exerted on national trade representatives often leads to decisions being made under duress. The talks resemble old fashioned horse trading at its worst with negotiators haggling over which sector to put in play and demanding concessions elsewhere. It is a pretty rotten way of making policy yet it has enormous ramifications on the structure of the services sector. The multinational company lobby machine is also in force to prey on the weak and push their case.



In your consultations with governments, you may wish to take the following four points into account. They are based on UNI resolutions, and take account of the nature of the WTO, where there is no democratic control, where social concerns, including core labour standards, are disregarded as a fundamental point of policy, and where unions have no consultation rights.



1. Affiliates should not allow domestic decision-making procedures to be circumvented. That is to say, governments must respect the parliamentary and consultation procedures that would apply to domestically initiated liberalisation and re-regulation proposals. Say NO to backdoor liberalisation!



2. Affiliates should encourage their governments to make as few market-opening commitments as possible, regardless of the services concerned. That does not mean that affiliates will always oppose liberalisation proposals or foreign investment in domestic services. But it does mean that they should resist liberalisation under GATS, because GATS makes liberalisation virtually irreversible and links liberalisation to the WTO’s sanctions-based dispute settlement (enforcement) procedures. Business and governments will argue that GATS commitments increase economic predictability, and thus encourage investment. In the longer term, however, productive investment is stimulated by a country's general stability, which is eroded if democracy is weakened and political systems thereby made less adaptable.



3. Affiliates are advised to oppose any proposals by their governments to offer market-opening in the field of public services and other services of general interest. Policies on these issues are at the heart of democratic debate and decision-making, which should not be pre-empted by negotiations and deals made at the WTO. Moreover, the functioning of such services is closely linked to the fulfilment of key international human rights covenants, which should take precedence over GATS and other WTO texts. GATS-related measures must be compatible with measures to defend and promote human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights.



4. Where it is not possible to prevent a government from making market-opening offers under GATS, two conditions should be fulfilled:

1. such offers should not go beyond the degree of liberalisation that already exists within a country (or the EU). In other words, the existing level of liberalisation would be locked in and made WTO-enforceable, but no additional liberalisation would be imposed by the WTO;
2. such offers should be accompanied by social preconditions. In other words, if a government proposes to open a service to foreign suppliers, unions must ensure that it also secures the observance, in the service concerned, of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, 1998, on its own territory as well as in the country requesting market access. Moreover, if market-opening could take the form of allowing multinational companies to establish subsidiaries in a service (commercial presence) governments should include the observance by such companies of the OECD and ILO codes for multinational companies as a condition in their GATS schedule of specific commitments. If market-opening could take the form of an inflow of workers (mobility of persons), the government should take measures to avoid the undercutting of national terms and conditions of work. That includes the conclusion of bilateral agreements and other measures to protect migrant workers and promote their equal treatment, as defined in the ILO’s Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975 (No. 143) and the UN’s International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, 1990.

Yours sincerely,





Philip Jennings

UNI General Secretary

______________________________________________

Draft letter to country trade ministers



Dear Minister,



We are writing to you in the light of the mini-ministerial meeting that will be taking place in Geneva on July 21 in attempt to push through the conclusions of the WTO’s Doha Round.



We are most concerned about the turn that the negotiations in "Service" are taking. Indeed, the draft negotiating text on services issued May 27^th by the Chair of the WTO Council for Trade in Services is problematic in the sense that, if adopted, it would establish new mandatory procedures for service negotiations that contradict many of the modalities already agreed upon for the GATS negotiations. The mandatory tone in which it is written is also of concern. For these reasons we urge you to reject the draft text, especially paragraph 4.



Furthermore, in light of the “signaling conference” that will be taking place during the mini-ministerial meeting, we urge you not to make any further commitments in the offers that have already been made. Indeed, offers should not go beyond the degree of liberalization that already exists within our country. We would also like to bring to your attention that such offers should be accompanied by social preconditions, such as the observance in the sector concerned of the international human and labour right conventions our government has ratified.



We would appreciate an opportunity to meet with you to discuss this crucial matter before you leave for the mini-ministerial meeting next week, or alternatively upon your return from Geneva,





Yours sincerely,