Estonia 1 (Tiia Kask)
	Report: Session 3

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Dear friends,

We started the third session with the presentation of the reports of other study circles. It seemed so interesting for us that we continued our discussion rised by your’s reports all meeting time, more than three hours, and we didn’t have any time for the discussion about the session materials. Hopefully you don’t blame us for that.

There was one reason of big interest to the reports - we had the first time to get to know all study circles through reports of preparatory meeting and session 1& 2.

All reports were translated into Estonian and each one of our group had to read aloud one of the reports of certain country. (Unfortunately, in this meeting we faced a lot of problems - copymachine didn’t start to work, access to Internet wasn’t possible, because of certain reasons and s.o.).

Anyway, we had a nice time together and we are glad to share our ideas and positions with you.

At first, we made a short summary of the previous seminars using the main trends of globalisation as keypoints of discussion. Hereby we stressed the following points:

• What is the role of a government and a state? The state and government have to be the balance force in supporting the citizens, the ordinary people in a big struggle with IMF and World Bank strategy, are they ? - We are not sure.
• Employees and Employers are not equal in competition in the process of globalisation. The Employers are more active part in this competition. They have a good , strong own structure and mobility. They can make a decision immediately, they are ready to change their own strategy according of the need of the market. The Employees are "a passive part" in this competition. Whereas the TU have as a lot of number members therefore, the decisionmaking and the action takes a time. The TU is one step behind of Employers. Our task, the task of trade unionists is to catch the Employers and stand as equals and side by side with them.

Now some comments about your reports:

All reports were interesting and all together made a good, adequate picture about globalisation process in a whole world. Each study circle has its "own face" and we welcome that fact. The study circle members from GB showed the situation, how TNCs held the negotiation. Only TNCs can do it that way. Our opinion about the attraction of TNC by the state described by Belgian reports is of following: of cause, the state can attract investors, but at the same time the state (government) must fix the certain conditions and requirements to the TNCs.

After reading the rep from Kenia all members of our group shouted: "Exactly! The same situation is in our country!" We are glad that the group from Kenia can see the impact of globalisation not only in economy, but they pointed out the burning problems of the society, concerning the families and ordinary people.

To the question of French group we would like to say that at the moment in Estonia there is the tendence to close the local cinemas because of lack of money. In country-side there are no cinemas, even in Tallinn (in capital city) there are only 4 cinemas. More and more people are sitting at home (esp. middle-age and retired people) and watching the so called soap-opera from America and Australia. The protection of local national culture by state is the question of priorities of the acting government. Now the priority is to increase the budget of the defence of the Estonia and there are less and less financial support to national culture and education.

The reply to the Swedish group: In Estonia there are officialy 2 central trade unions: TALO- Union of Cultural and Education Workers, has 35 thousand members; EAKL - Estonian Association of Trade Unions, has 75 thousand members. There are 10 thousand trade unionists who are not joined to the central unions.

The average wage of workers is about 4 thousand Estonian crounds (1 DEM= 8 EEK); minimum wage in Estonia is 1100.- EEK. The average wage of businessmen is between 8 thousand and 45 thousand Estonian crounds. Big difference?!

EAKL is a member of the Nordic Trade Union Confederation and therefore the co-operation with trade unions from Nordic countries is active and succesful. EAKL is the observer member of ITUC.

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