Love thy labourer
p. 31 · Read in the full issue
ONCE upon a time, there was a region of islanders whose cul tures valued people above all
else, though not necessarily everyone
equally. Communalist values like shar ing, redistribution and reciprocity were the hallmarks of their societies. But one day a school of big bad sharks moved in. They had dollars for eyes and bellies hungry for the people’s land, minerals and fish. One of their favourite dishes was the people themselves.
Being hospitable people, the islanders
did not complain. They gave gener
ously and graciously, though not all
equally since some were better at
organising the gathering and offering of
others. However, sometimes the sharks found these humans a little tough to chew. They usually softened up after a beating, but if this didn’t work, they would spit them out and swim on to
other feeding grounds where they
would be sure to find other human morsels more to their liking.
End of legend.
At the government-owned tuna cannery on Levuka in Fiji known as PAFCO, privatisation and a relocation of operations to Suva were recently mooted, though not publically. According to Fiji’s Director of Fisheries, Peniasi Kunatuba, the pressure to privatise is mounting in the face of tough competition for markets from countries like Taiwan and Thailand. There is also a real possibility of opening up Fiji’s protected tuna export canning market to other
companies.
Up until now, Kunatuba says, the Fiji government has held out on both actions, partly out of indecision. But the winds of economic change are blowing the gospels of deregulation and privatisation with increasing intensity. Certainly, the belief that government-controlled corporations are better off consigned to the private sector is gaining ground.
But the fall-out from privatisation could be considerable for the tiny community of Levuka which is economically dependent on the cannery, hundreds of women workers and many labour-supplying villages around the island of Ovalau.
As far as Kunatuba is concerned, profitability, privatisation and relocation to Suva (probably in a few years time) go hand in hand for PAFCO. He is adamant that “if this company is to be run as a profitable enterprise, if it is to be privatised, we’d have to say good-bye to Levuka today. If deregulation proceeds, its going to be survival of the fittest”.
For Levuka’s mayor, George Gibson, saying good-bye to Levuka would be disastrous. “It would leave us with a ghost town.” For PAFCO on the other hand, relocation would mean access to Suva’s unlimited labour market and higher level of skills. There would be less interference of vaka vanua (traditional Fijian) ways such as poor time-keeping, says Kunatuba; and the hefty (Suva-Levuka) freight costs, currently running at around FIJSLS million a year, would be usefully slashed. But until the private sector gets the green light, PAFCO will focus on “getting some sense of belonging to the company. At the moment, the workers just think of themselves as union members”.
An interesting sequence of arguments that hints at one of the unstated reasons for relocation, namely the costly indus
trial dispute (branded an illegal strike
by the government) that seriously
disrupted production for two weeks late last year. Its effects continue to be felt in widespread discontent about wages and other employment conditions.
So the threat to pull out of Levuka may be just that a threat to “persuade” recalcitrant workers that they stand to lose their jobs if they don’t behave themselves. But if Fiji’s post coup political culture is anything to go by, a close down could proceed even if they do. A kind of rigged poker game!
A variation on the PAFCO scenario is the relocation of operations from one export manufacturing country (or re gion) to another. An old favourite of the global capitalist economy, it has never really gone out of fashion for economic reasons, notably the cheap, well
behaved female labour havens that flourish in the third world.
For the host countries and their workers dumped in the withdrawal process, the effects of lost export earnings, lost jobs
and over-night impoverishment can be crippling.
The threat of relocation hangs ominously over a number of countries in our own region at present. American Samoa, for example, could lose its tuna canneries, the mainstay of its economy and a crucial source of employment and remittances for other Pacific Islanders. Similarly, in Western Samoa, closure of the large car wiring assembly plant owned by the Japanese multinational Yazaki (its cross-country credentials already proved by strategic moves from Australia and New Zealand to Apia) cannot be ruled out in the future. In both cases, strike action, union organisation or other legitimate forms of labour militancy would provide the perfect textbook pretext.
Workers will usually take a hammering when they step out of line. Or in recessionary times. Or when there is competition for markets or investors. Or if they’re women. Or when the World Bank says so. The Book of Labour is one of the most sacred texts of the capitalist bible, and it is not about “loving thy labourer” either. Rather it is a crib on cost-effective ways of “managing” your labour force with tips on what to do when worker demands upset your profits or their voices get a little shrill. One strategy is simply to spit them out and swim on to other feeding grounds. Just like our friendly folk-lore sharks.
Pacific governments are understandably nervous of the social and economic dislocation that can result from foreign owned companies pulling out over night. And it is largely for this reason that they are willing to play policeman in the labour market on their behalf. But is it not time that a concerted effort was made to stop some of the (human) trade offs and to reclaim the finer humanist values of traditional Pacific cultures? If people are really what development is about, then should we be so ready to flog our workers off at bargain basement prices, or, as in PAFCO’s case, to dump them ourselves and run? □