Charity warning on free trade plans
The Press Association | 25 March 2009
Charity warning on free trade plans
Millions of people in developing countries will lose their jobs under free trade plans which will be promoted by the Gordon Brown at next week’s G20 summit, a leading charity has warned.
War on Want said trade liberalisation threatened to "devastate" lives, claiming that jobs had already been "destroyed".
The group said in a new report, Trading Away Our Jobs, that Brown’s call to other G20 leaders to complete the Doha trade round put 7.5 million workers at risk in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Tunisia and Uruguay, and millions more in other rich and poor countries.
War on Want executive director John Hilary said: "Our report exposes how trade liberalisation has thrown millions of people into grim poverty and threatens to devastate many further lives.
"Gordon Brown’s free market fundamentalism will condemn millions to a bleak and jobless future. Instead of repeating the failed policies of the past, the Prime Minister and the other G20 leaders must put people first."
The report said that following two decades of free market policies, 50 million more Africans were now trapped in poverty than in 1997.
"Three in four workers in sub-Saharan Africa face insecure employment as a result of three decades of neoliberal economics, with only a quarter in waged and salaried posts," the report said.
