World Bank’s Anti-Labor Analysis Is a Dirty
Business<http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/14092/world_banks_anti-labo...>
Oct
26, 2012, Michelle Chen

It’s a 2012 campaign mantra: On Day One, the new president will reboot the
economy by spurring businesses to grow and thrive. Both mainstream
candidates have vowed to achieve this, in part by eliminating onerous
regulations to “unleash<http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-10-09/news/os-jeb-bush-for-r...>”
the long-suppressed power of American industry.

The story is surprisingly similar across the pond. The financial giants of
Europe’s troika<http://www.france24.com/en/20120611-spanish-banks-monitored-european-...>pummel
Greece<http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/13939/greek_leaders_ratchet_up...>and
other struggling Eurozone countries with a blitzkrieg
of kamikaze deregulation<http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100020504...>,
conditioning financial “rescue” on giving markets free rein to work their
magic, unencumbered by law. The flipside of this celebration of the
Invisible Hand is, inevitably, a merciless beatdown on labor, stripping
protections like unemployment aid and wage standards.

The World Bank has taken the* *extremely dubious science of deregulation
one step further by creating a guide, known as the Doing
Business<http://www.ituc-csi.org/world-bank-s-doing-business-2013.html>report,
that quantifies the regulatory “burden” that investors may face in
various countries. The 2013 report was released this week.

Echoing the corporate “job
creator<http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/the_real_job_creators/>”
mythology of the Washington consensus, Doing Business encourages financiers
and governments to erode public-interest protections, including safeguards
for unions and workers. Labor groups say the publication's* *warped views
on regulation and worker protections* *effectively gives a statistical
justification for leveraging economic aid or investment to pressure
countries to privatize, deregulate and undermine unions.

Labor advocates are particularly critical of the section of the report that
crystallizes these views, the “Employing Workers
Indicator<http://www.doingbusiness.org/methodology/employing-workers>”
(EWI)
which purports to measure labor policy "as it affects the hiring and
redundancy of workers and the rigidity of working hours." Despite the World
Bank’s past assurances that its analysis of labor regulations won't factor
into the main rankings on business friendliness, critics fear that these
data nonetheless filter into the report's evaluations, and in turn imply
labor laws essentially impede development.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
criticizes<http://www.ituc-csi.org/world-bank-s-doing-business-2013.html>the
2013 report’s implicit endorsement of policies that slash benefits for
laid-off workers, which praises governments for “addressing one of the main
factors deterring employers from creating jobs in the formal sector.”
Similarly, the report chastises some countries in Africa for granting
supposedly over-generous severance-pay requirements for displaced workers,
while ignoring the fact that severance pay is especially vital for workers
in weaker economies because, in contrast to wealthier regions,
“state-provided unemployment benefits are practically non-existent.”

.....continue at
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/14092/world_banks_anti-labo...

--
National Jobs for All Coalition
http://www.njfac.org/