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Summary of Session 3

Study Circle PER1 (Juan Carlos Vargas)

The Strategies of TNCs

Regards friends around the world. We appreciate all your opinions. We had some problems to use reports from internet, We could work only with three reports, from Estonia and South Africa and Bulgarian. We need to be on time next week. Many people is waiting our summaries.

We were 17 in this meeting. The 18th was out of Lima. All the group feel very motivated. We produced many information and opinions about TNCīs. We hope It can be useful for you.

Activities

1. The role and impact of TNCs

Facilitator made a summary of main opinions from other study circles. We discussed about what differences and similarities there are with our own experience. The main conclusions are the following :

SIMILARITIES

• The bigger TNCīs respect basic labour rights in our countries. TNCīs adapted to the local context.
• There are diversity of TNCīs. Then there are a diversity of strategies and conducts about labour issues.
• There is a preoccupation about TNCīs conduct and the environment.
• All of us share the same TNCīs. It is very interesting and useful if we want build links between trade unions.

DIFFERENCES

• Level of organisation and strength of our trade unions
• Different contexts. Kind of labour reforms, level of flexibility of labour relations, etc.
• Number of TNCīs and time of operations in our countries

After this discussion we decided to suggest to other study circle If they can send us a summary with information about Labour reforms, basic labour rights, level of salaries, political context., environmental protection laws, main trade unions, affiliates, etc. WE will prepare a summary too.

2. Why do TNCs roam the world?

What are looking for TNCīs in our different countries when they are deciding to invest? We made a list of the factors which our country ( government) offers to TNCs :

• Free mobility of capitals
• Liberal Labour Reform
• Special taxes regiment
• Temporal Closed markets for TNCīs involved in the privatization of public companies.
• Use of titles of debt to buy public companies.
• Insure for investments
• Modify classification of occupational diseases, modifying some parameters. This mean that workers that before were diagnosed with a occupational disease , now with new parameters, appear as a healthy. This attitude hide the negative impact of TNCīs activities for example in the mining.
• There are special zones for TNCīs export
• TNCīs that have the control of public services (water, energy and telephone), can modify prices and fares.
• Low protection standards of environment an health.
• Political support of the government
• Plenty of raw materials. Mining, Petroleum, Fishing, Agriculture.
• Low salaries
• Young population and abundance of people offering to work.
• Infrastructure
• 24 million population. A big market.
• Frame of stability political and social.

About the question if TNCs help or hinder the economic development of our country and its people, we asked of this way :

HELP IF

• There is a effective transference of technology
• Promote a real competition in he market
• Transfer a useful organisational models
• Rise a consumers and producer standards
• Increase international capital flows to our country
• Let develop links with among workers around the world
• Let Global struggle of workers

HINDER IF

• Have a negative impact on national industry
• Let a low additional value to production
• Increase a global consume of products, without link with our reality of production.
• Modify traditional values of our native culture

We can add a suggestion. We should to clarify what means for us " to be competitive"

3. What can we do about TNCs?

How are people and our organisations responding to the challenges of TNCs now?

a) Government

• Supporting TNCīs presence
• Promoting Foreign Investment
• Being a allied of TNCīs
• Subsidies of TNCīs activities

(b) Trade unions

• Economic weakness
• Individual efforts
• Big ignorancde about TNCīs strategies
• Without capacity to react
• Without experiences about TNCīs bargain
• There is work group of workers from Telefonica in Latin America.

(c) Communities

• Creation of consumers associations.
• NGOīs begin to develop this issue too
• Communities facing TNCīs in energy sector. They are against kind of electricity installations.
• Mass media, TV, News Papers, etc, offer a space to receive opinons about public services, now in hands of TNCīs.
• Environmental NGOs and associations are increasing.
• Local governments (municipalities) are very important today.
• Church is very important in rural zones. They have support a campaigns in favor of environmental isues.

NEW ALTERNATIVES AT LOCAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LEVEL

We did one list of our suggestions and dreams. The grouip want to be involve in develop this alternatives :

• More information and knowledge about TNCīs
• Code of conduct for TNCīs in Peru.
• Support some campaigns against TNCīs
• Develop links between trade unions and consumer associations.
• Work table of Trade Unions about TNCīs
• Build a opinion about international issues as a Social Clause, Social Dumping, APEC, ALCA, NAFTA, ec.
• Links among local trade unions with trade unions in the north.
• Establish a relation with International Professional Secretaries
• Reproduce this Study Circle
• Share our knowledge about TNCīs
• Use International Cooperation to develop project to support trade union actions.
• Learn use of computers and internet
• Learn other languages too
• Establish relations with other international institutions (ILO ;WTO :APEC)

4. Evaluation session 3

We hadnīt enough time again. We did a fast evaluation. The main conclusions are :

• We need more time for this session
• The issues were very plenty
• Readings were very interesting and provided us of much information
• Many local Products
• All should be on time

Links Conserning this summary

• ILO (International Labor Organization)
• WTO (World Trade Organization)
• APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation)
• NAFTA

Study Circles other summaries

[Session 1]/ [Session 2]/ [Session 3]/ [Session 4]
[Session 5]/ [Session 6]/ [Session 7]/ [Session 8]

Summaries of session 3

• BAR1 (Ulric Sealy)
• BUL1 (Plamen Dimitrov)
• EST1 (Tiia Kask)
• PER1 (Juan Carlos Vargas)
• RSA1 (Martin Jansen)
• SPA1 (José Luis Ferrándiz)
• SWE1 (Ola Niclason)

• Alana's Comments

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