Welcome to BASE21

May 1, 2002

Only five years after the devastating social and economic effects of the Asian financial crisis, workers in the region are once again facing a severe economic downturn. Indeed, many workers left impoverished, marginalized and unemployed in 1997-98, have remained so despite claims of a brief 'recovery' in the intervening years. Once again rising unemployment and falling real wages threaten the livelihood of working people, while the casualisation of work and the rapid expansion informal sector jobs deepens workers' growing sense of vulnerability.

Despite the incredible social costs imposed on workers and despite mass protests against the institutions of globalization, governments continue to impose the neo-liberal agenda of de-regulation, market liberalization and privatisation. This is reinforced by the institutions of globalization that are aggressively imposing global rules that secure the rights of corporations, while treating the rights of working people as 'barriers' that must be broken down to make way for the expansion of corporate profit. As the WTO Ministerial Declaration in Doha clearly demonstrates, the agenda of corporate globalization has been consolidated and we are faced with an urgent need to act.

In the face of these challenges we must renew our commitment to organise the unorganized and consolidate the organised at the local, national, regional and international levels. Only through the advancement of worker and trade union rights and strengthening workers' capacity to exercise their collective power can vulnerability and insecurity be overcome. This requires organised, sustained opposition to unemployment and poverty wages, forcing governments to abandon neo-liberal policies and instead create socially progressive policies for wealth redistribution, job creation and livelihood protection. Clearly this struggle to overcome economic vulnerability and insecurity by advancing worker and trade union rights must be undertaken as part of a broader fight for genuine democratic rights.

In pursuing a broader agenda to defend the rights and interests of working people it is necessary to strengthen cooperation between trade unions and NGOs. Alliances and coalitions of trade unions and NGOs play a critical role in workers' education and organising, while at the same time building a common agenda for change. For this to be effective regional and international solidarity is necessary - the kind of solidarity that we believe Global Network Asia can help to build. It is in the hope of realizing this solidarity and strengthening our ability to stand together to face of these challenges that the members of Global Network Asia and International Federation of Workers' Education Associations (IFWEA-Asia and Pacific) send greetings of solidarity to workers in the region and around the world.