Some responses

["Vic Thorpe" <just.solutions@pandora.be>]

Dear Steve and eotrans Friends,

I've been following the discussion over recent days and have a few comments
I'd like to share:

1.  I thought the discussion on multinational company share distribution
schemes was a leg-pull until I saw that it was being taken deadly serious by
several respondents.  But when we got to the idea that Wal-Mart is a likely
candidate for conversion to worker ownership I could contain myself no
longer.  It's true that, as the USA's biggest private-sector employer, with
nearly 1.5 million employees (O.K. let's call them 'associates' - or
'colleagues' as the Brits do in ASDA - just to keep up the treacly-sweet
imagery) or nearly 1% of the entire civilian workforce, it would be great
news if that retail empire were planning to hand over control to its workers
in any foreseeable future scenario.

But, somehow, I don't think so.

I scanned the www.wal-mart.com  pages using searches for 'labor union',
'trade union', 'worker representative', 'worker representation' - even
'associate representation' - all without result.  As a long-time union man
that made me wonder about the organisation's real commitment to worker
rights.  Broader enquiry among friends involved in organising the sector
also suggested that Wal-Mart is not an easy employer to organise.  Then I
discoverd the Wal-Mart Employee Abuse Forum
http:/members.aol.com/walmopboy/abuse/index.html and later on the
www.walmartsucks.com.  (You can even find some others that have allegedly
been chased around the web by the FBI - but maybe that's just paranoia!)
Now there aren't many of even the world's biggest companies that engender
that kind of unsolicited anti-testimonial from disgruntled employees.  When
I encountered an article from 'Time' magazine 2 November 1998, entitled
'Slaves of New York', describing illegal immigrant sweatshops producing
goods under appalling conditions, 40 per cent of which allegedly ended up in
Wal-Mart stores, my cup overflowed.

Frankly, I've never encountered this company before, but it does look all of
a piece with what I thought about employee share distributions all along.
They are not a means (even to the most optimistic believer in gradualism) of
opening up the process of company control to the workforce.  They are rather
a way to institutionalise paternalism in its 21st century form and keep the
pressure on actual wages.  Company executives read the reports on employee
motivation too.  They also know that linking a portion of wage distribution
to profitability makes motivational and business sense (why would it not?).
When objective market conditions are good, you can afford to be generous;
when they turn bad (and they have been slowing a bit just recently at
Wal-Mart) - "Hey, Sorry folks! But you just didn't work hard enough!"

Surely we have to keep our eye on the ball - 'ownership' of the firm, I
believe.  Then we can make our own decision on when to congratulate
ourselves on a job well done and when to tighten our belts.  It's good to
get a share in the economic wealth created by our labor, sure, but it's
necessary not to be sidelined by pursuing the economic grail - that has been
exactly the problem of labor unions over the years and why they now have to
compete in the social marketplace with a myriad NGO pressure groups.  We
should be careful not to confuse the central aim of control with the latest
motivational device of modern management.  By the way, while Wal-Mart/ASDA
was 'giving away' £3.5 million to its 'colleagues' in the UK, Wal-Mart USA
was buying back $3 BILLION of its own shares off the market to distribute an
altogether better class of rewards to its regular shareholders and
directors.

2.  All that's not to say that I don't agree that the multinationals will
inevitably need to be transformed from solely profit-minded corporations
into more socially oriented organisations.  I do so believe.  And I think
it's happening.  The expansion of ethical codes of conduct, social and
environmental auditing and the shift in self-image from 'corporation' to
'organisation' (see 'Disney Organisation', for example), is all evidence of
the shift in collective corporate consciousness that is taking place.  If
the corporations have inherited the earth they now have to decide what they
want to do with it.  Only the very short-sighted would decide to continue to
rip it off as has been the case in the past.  "Sustainability" is the name
of the game for corporations too.

3.  So, by that rather long-winded route, I come to an accord with Karen
May.  We have to be prepared to promote worker ownership as THE alternative
to destructive globalisation of competition, under which the poorest and
most exploited can labor in hope of inheriting the dirtiest, least paid and
least protected jobs.  We can also persuade the corporation that it needs to
ensure its dynasty for the ages to come through a new kind of 'open door
policy'.  Not one that leads onto the street for those that do not share the
company culture ("Are YOU a Wal-Mart Person?"); but one that leads from the
workplace to the boardroom - AND back again!  The corporation must become a
community owned economic AND socio-cultural organisation, or it will have to
buck the trend for as long as it can hold out.  There's a real job there for
the few of us who think we see where it should be headed.

4.  As to micro-finance, I strongly agree that there are opportunities there
to encourage growth of exemplary organisations.  But the past efforts of the
IMF and World Bank do not suggest that they are well equipped to act as the
agencies of that kind of transformation without root and branch reform.
Their record is in preparing the ground for multinational capital to run
riot in the Third World and for that they've done a remarkable job.

There's a crossroads at the entry to Ahmedabad in middle India with five
water standpipes, around which are encamped some 200 families, living in
various kinds of shelter - from cardboard and tin, up to hardened mud and
the odd brick or two.  The standpipes were courtesy of an external NGO aid
program some years back.  Aid too supplied the money with which each of the
200 or so shacks equipped itself with a little furnace and anvil.  The
kids - and there are many - are fully occupied finding fuel for the furnace
for which they must venture ever further afield, of course.  Mum typically
oversees the fuel collection and operates the bellows at the fire.  Dad
squats from dawn to dusk at the anvil hammering small pieces of iron into
specially twisted shapes as fast as he can.  Twice a day an overseer comes
round with a large handcart (its probably motorised by now for efficiency -
this was all four years ago).  He inspects the twisted pieces of metal and
rejects a depressingly large number.  He takes the rest and marks the number
off on a control sheet.  He drops off some more flat pieces of metal and
moves on.  The pieces of twisted metal find their way to a large local parts
supplier to the motor industry.

That's the bottom end (and I do mean that in every sense of the word) of
globalisation and the 'aid chain'.

On the other hand, there is also in Ahmedabad a wonderful organisation
called the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA).  Formed of the Ghandian
tradition, it is founded on the principles of cooperativism and self-help,
but is not above receiving a bit of aid from the outside world when it comes
without strings.  Under the watchful eye and inspiring leadership of Sister
Ela Bhatt, the group has organised people such as the paper pickers (those
who pick up paper from the streets, sort it and sell it on to a scrap
merchant), bidi rollers, rag pickers, water carriers, hod carriers and
others into a cohesive social force that now boasts its own public market,
housing cooperative, credit bank, day-care service and so on.  The group has
changed also the working lives of its members by arranging collection of
office waste paper direct from source, negotiating rates with big growers of
tobacco for the bidi rollers, taking care of the kids while Mum and Gran get
on with earning money for the family...  The group is run on democratic
lines and members decide what should be prioritised next and what should
happen to any funds received or earned.  Previous 'untouchables' have
emerged as powerful spokeswomen for their group.  Kids without hope of a
future have been educated.  A whole community has been given dignity in the
face of despair.

There's a world of difference between these two kinds of aid.  Let's just be
sure we keep our reality spectacles on when we view the works of the
multinational and multilateral givers of aid.

As I said above - a real job to be done out there.  Let's get to it!

Vic Thorpe
Just Solutions
Belgium