A Troubled Bridge Over the Social Divide

Mau-mau at the global powwow

In Seattle, labor and student activists hit the streets while business leaders and representatives from multilateral financial institutions deliberated behind closed doors. This week, representatives of these same players were gathered at the sixth annual State of the World Forum, where they continued to argue their points of view, but this time within earshot of each other.

The former prime minister of the Netherlands, Ruud Lubbers, who is a co-chair of the State of the World Forum, joined Angela Blackwell, president of Policy Link, a think tank dealing with civil society and community-based leadership, and others to discuss the social implications of globalization.

Lowell Bryan, director of the management consultancy McKinsey & Company, defended globalization, promising that "other institutions will follow once they adapt to the changes required by this world phenomenon."

But Huguette Labelle, former president of the Canadian International Development Agency, disagreed and urged the business community to think beyond market shares and shareholder prices. "We want you to make wealth, but also include social responsibility, a code of ethics and care for the environment" in your financial projections, she said.

There are a handful of codes of ethics being discussed in international venues today, each of which would impose a set of rules governing corporate behavior. These codes, being debated at the United Nations and other international organizations, include provisions establishing wide parameters for livable wages, healthy working conditions and freedom to organize unions.

Poverty in the midst of plenty is one of the central challenges in today's global economy and society, Labelle added. And while she didn't blame globalization for all the problems in the world, she suggested it was creating a huge social divide around the world, one manifestation of which being that the two dollars an American consumer spends for a cup of coffee is more than what three billion people around the world earn every day.


	Jay Mazur, head of UNITE

Jay Mazur, head of UNITE, the needletrades union of the AFL-CIO, said that for workers, globalization has only created problems, shifting jobs from the developed world to the underdeveloped world and making enemies out of workers in both. The corporations have enjoyed the removal of trade barriers around the world, and the deregulation of markets, but few companies support the right of workers to earn livable wages, he said. He pointed out that nation states are competing in terms of earnings with multinational corporations. "Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations, the others are nations." These self-contained economic universes, he said, are beyond the control of present world governance.

VIDEO EXCERPT FROM MAZUR


	Nat Colletta, Social Scientist and Post Conflict Manager at the World Bank

Nat Colletta, a social scientist and post conflict manager at the World Bank, is used to working in conflict zones around the world. He felt the meetings at the Forum were still locked in confrontation and posturing. "There is a need for people to stop mau-mauing," he said in an interview.

Colletta argued that the World Bank can assist civil society in refitting globalization. "People need to appreciate what is happening at the World Bank. We have changed our thinking. We have gone from social welfare to trying the empowerment mode," he said.

"We are no longer traveling to a few foreign countries and talking with only the ministers and writing a paper that we could have written without traveling there."

VIDEO EXCERPT FROM COLLETTA

His presentation, however, was derided by other participants who questioned why civil society should trust the multilateral organizations that contributed to the problems of globalization. "We should be deeply suspicious that the changes will come from those institutions. The change will come from the bottom of civil society," said Rebecca Adamson, founder and president of First Nations Development Institute, which works with Native American communities. The audience cheered.


	Maude Barlow, Chair,Council of Canadians

Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, an activist group, agreed with Adamson, adding that nobody would be at the Hilton today discussing the problems of globalization if it weren't for the young people who rebelled in Seattle. "It's the young people in the streets who have the vision about globalization, and we should hear from them," she said.

VIDEO EXCERPT FROM BARLOW

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