UAW on IMF

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

United Auto Workers International Executive Board Resolution on U.S.
Contributions to the International Monetary Fund

February 18, 1998
						
International Monetary Fund (IMF) involvement in the recent financial crisis
in Asia. and the 1994-95 crisis in Mexico, dramatizes the tremendous burden
that Imposed austerity measures place on working people around the world.
The purpose of IMF involvement has been to bail out international banks and
Investors whose pursuit of excessive profits led them to make questionable,
high-risk loans.

IMF-dictated austerity measures worsen U.S. trade deficits, leading to the
loss of solid family-supporting manufacturing jobs in auto and other
industries, while driving down the already abysmally low wages of workers
living in developing nations.

Governments in South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Mexico and other
developing nations are being told that an infusion of capital from the IMF
requires them to pay down foreign loans by lowering the living standard of
their citizens. The IMF's prescription calls for an increase in low-wage
exports from these countries. The dollars so raised are then used to pay
down loans owed to international banks and inventors. As a result, our trade
deficit is expected to climb by approximately $100 billion this year alone,
causing the loss of an estimated 1 million U.S. jobs.

To achieve this increase in exports. the IMF insists on austerity measures
that include slashing public spending, Jacking up interest rates to
exorbitant lovely, deregulating markets, devaluing currencies, and reducing
existing labor protections. The impact on workers and their families is
devastating.  Workers face massive layoffs and wage cuts, while prices of
basics such as food, housing, energy and transportation skyrocket.

Many of the governments receiving IMF funds fail to respect Internationally
recognized workers, rights, and the IMF has not required them to  do
otherwise, despite the high price that workers are forced to pay. In
Indonesia, independent union leader Muchtar Pakpahan remains on trial for
his life for his union activity. Yet the IMF has made no effort to use of
its leverage to free him.

The UAW believes that the International Monetary Fund is fully aware of the
impact that its austerity measures have on working people. Yet the IMF has
failed to move toward reforms of its own policies that would ensure
equitable solutions to crises in financial markets. The UAW therefore
opposes providing the additional funding of $18 billion that the IMF has
requested from U.S. citizens. We believe that international organizations
can and must play necessary and useful roles in world affairs. Our vision of
their role, however, is one that places the interests of working people at
least equal to those of finance and capital.
The Development GAP
927 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
Ph: 202/898-1566
Fax: 202/898-1612