January 7, 2011 - Government of Newfoundland and Labrador

Protecting the Labour Rights of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians in a Globalized World
The unprecedented surge in corporate power as a result of globalization, free
trade agreements and policies such as deregulation, privatization and free market
economics has had an enormously negative impact on working people and trade
unions.
Many of Canada’s labour and foreign investment laws have failed to protect
working people from the downsides of globalization. Labour laws and regimes in many
provinces across Canada underwent dramatic transformations in the late 1980s and
1990s as the right to a union and to free collective bargaining were battered by
governments rushing to implement neoliberal policies.
The basic tenet of labour relations – that unions are part of correcting the huge
imbalance in power between workers and their employers – has been undermined by
governments who have failed to protect the rights of workers. At the same time,
governments have eagerly granted not just investor rights, but the equivalent of human
rights to corporations through trade agreements.
Globalization is the result of several developments and processes that are
generally linked together. These include:
The growth and relative importance of foreign direct investment which provides a
greater role for multinational enterprises, accompanied by the increasing
importance of imports and exports for virtually all countries;
The internationalization of financial markets;
Deregulation and liberalisation;
Privatization of the public sector;
And the increased coordinating role of international financial institutions such as
the World Bank, and the IMF.
Up until the 1970s, international economic activity was mostly in the form of
exchange of goods and services between countries – trade being the driving force.
Since then, the movement of capital itself has transformed the global economy. Put
simply, instead of having a system where products are made in one country and then
Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour Page 16