REPA Booklet - Stop Epa

33
Temporary Migration
How is the right of Pacific people to work in Europe connected to trade negotiations?
The Islands want to increase the number of Pacific people allowed to work temporarily in other countries to get
more remittances and develop skills. This should be dealt with as a development matter. Historically, however,
temporary migration was a hugely sensitive issue. So, now that ‘temporary movement of natural persons’
(known as ‘Mode 4’) forms part of trade in services agreements, the Pacific Islands and many similar governments
are making this a centrepiece of trade negotiations.
“The principal interest
of the Pacific ACP
States for the near
future would be in
increased Mode 4
access (movement of
Pacific ACP nationals
for work purposes to
the EU market in
specific sectors where
this would contribute
to their development
objectives.”
(The Pacific Way, 2004)
Why is this called ‘Mode 4’?
The WTO’s services agreement – the GATS – sets out 4 ways of trading services internationally. The 4 th of
these covers people moving from one country to another to deliver services on a temporary basis. Almost
invariably the commitments of WTO Members are limited to professionals, managers and highly skilled technical
people. Often they are linked to foreign firms that have set up in the host country under what is called Mode 3
– ‘establishing a commercial presence’ (foreign investment). The Commission is currently trying to secure
guaranteed rights of multiple entry for a wider range of employees from Europe’s firms on a temporary (2 to 3
year) basis, even where there are locals who can do the work.
Does Mode 4 also cover semi-skilled and unskilled workers?
The low-skilled services workforce isn’t excluded. However, richer countries fear a huge influx of workers from
poor countries. So they treat this as a ‘trade’ issue when it involves skilled workers from those countries that fuel
the ‘brain drain’, but it reverts to being an immigration issue when it involves low-skilled workers. A clear
hierarchy is emerging: the richest countries recruit the nurses, teachers and skilled technicians trained in other
First World countries, such as Australia and NZ; those countries lure replacements from poorer countries, such
as the Pacific Islands, who have paid for their training but can’t compete to retain their professionals by providing
equivalent wages, conditions and facilities.
What are Pacific Islands proposing?
The idea is to secure access for a quota of people from the Pacific Islands into Europe to work on a temporary
basis in services sectors such as tourism and security. This could form a stand-alone agreement or be a tradeoff
for other parts of a free trade deal. There are two benefits:
1. Workers could use the training they receive offshore to build up local services when they come home.
2. Their remittances would help replace the income that the country loses from removing tariffs on imports.
The real target is not the European Union, which Pacific Island people find less attractive because of distance,
language, lack of family and climate; but to secure an equivalent deal with Australia and NZ under PACER.
Who is pushing the idea?
These proposals have come from Southern governments at the WTO, so far without success. In the Pacific, the
Melanesian Spearhead Group has tabled a paper that argues strongly for temporary access for workers with
qualifications below tertiary level, including seasonal agricultural workers. It has also been preparing a proposal
on tourism. The Vanuatu government, which will be hit hardest by the loss of the tariffs, has assessed the number
of temporary migrants whose remittances would compensate for the loss of revenue under both an Economic
Partnership Agreement and PACER. Wadan Narsey is also pushing Mode 4 as the basis for initiating negotiations
with Australia and New Zealand on a Pacific Economic Community. He has suggested a flexible system of
permanent residence for skilled and professional workers that would allow them to come and go freely from the
Islands; and a scheme for unskilled labour that would provide lower cost workers for unattractive jobs in
Australia and New Zealand, reduce unemployment pressures in the Pacific and provide remittances.
Would a temporary scheme like this be attractive to people in the Pacific?
Its supporters say it is one concrete benefit that ordinary people can get from trade agreements and would far
outweigh any abstract concerns about loss of national sovereignty. In response to fears that people would
‘overstay’, they say the idea of being able to earn better money than people can in the Islands, then return
home, would be much more attractive than having to emigrate permanently. Others doubt that.
How trade unions in Australia and NZ feel about more cheap Pacific Islands labour?
That depends on how the scheme operates. Many workers in low-skilled services industries, such as cleaning,
already come from the Pacific Islands and are grossly exploited by the transnational firms that control those
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A People’s Guide To The Pacific’s Economic Partnership Agreement