1999 Internationalization of Capital and Unemployment Conference

Preface

Today, at the end of the 20th century, the monopoly capital from the United States, European countries and Japan are controlling the economies of nations all over the world. The monopoly capitalist backed by the imperialist powers have used international organizations, such as the WTO, the IMF and the APEC as tools to force globalization, liberalization and privatization upon nations in order to open up borders for trade and investment with the sole purpose of sucking dry the fruits of labor from working people of the world. Since the latest crisis of the international capitalist system that began in Asia in 1997, many more people in Asia have suffered unemployment, lost their homes, and have seen their lives devastated.

In the process of internationalization of capital, Taiwanese capitalists, though still in the minor league, have behaved just like any big capitalists elsewhere. Their mission is to serve the interests of capital by maximizing profit. They have done this by, on the one hand, investing in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam to take advantage of their lower wages. On the other hand, they got the government in Taiwan to import migrant workers for them. Both of these schemes are two parts of the same strategy, which is to suppress workers' wages and benefits here. We need to understand that migrant workers who had to leave home in order to earn a living suffer from the same root cause as the unemployed workers here. Both are the victims of the internationalization of capital and the liberalization and privatization that go with it. When the bosses pay migrant workers lower wages and no benefits, they are able to push down the wages and benefits of local workers. Therefore, the struggle to improve the working conditions for the migrant workers and for local workers is really the same struggle. The bosses want the domestic workers to compete with the migrant workers, so they can divide and rule. When the local workers understand that unless the migrant workers can win higher wages and better working conditions, their wages and benefits go down too. This understanding will unite local workers and migrant workers in their common struggle.

Common Understanding of the Conference

Through the two-day conference, we, from different groups, even some divisions happened during the two-day conference, still have the common understanding as following:

1. Tendencies of the reality nowadays

The internationalization promoted by the internationalization of capital is deepening the capitalist exploitation of labor in all sectors. Capitalism treats labor power as commodity, and migrant workers are its extreme presentation of The governments of these import/ export countries and the capitalists who hire migrants benefit from the transnational movement of laboring force; and as we have mainly discussed about Filipino workers, migrants are forced to work overseas because international capitals have promoted liberalization, deregulation and privatization and made the lives more difficult for them.

2. Main problems

In the importing countries, migrants have got no rights. They don't have any legal nor political rights as citizens, and as workers their deserved protections and rights are not equal to local ones. The present migrant worker’s policy of Taiwan government are unreasonable in many aspects; the process when making policies is not transparent and there is no worker’s participation; One of the most important problem is that migrants are not equal with locals in work, payment and rights.

3. What is to be done ?

The common enemy of local and migrant workers are transnational and local capitalists; They on one hand search for exploitation of labor as deep as possible, on the other hand try to disunite local and migrant workers to weaken the power if they unite together. Local workers should not discriminate migrants and should put it as an important demand that local and migrant workers share the same work, payment and rights. What we have to do first is to investigate the present situation, especially on the conditions of migrants and their roles in Taiwan economy and society; all groups with different opinions should continue to have dialogue, to promote labor movement. Any of the labor movements of local or migrant workers get strengthened would do much good to the other.