People's Conference Resolution on Heightening the Workers Struggle Against Imperialism

Whereas, APEC is accelerating the imperialist globalization agenda already developed through the Structural Adjustment Programs of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and consolidated through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Similar initiatives are being advanced in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and in Western Europe through the European Union.

Whereas, a principal objective of imperialist globalization is super-profits through exploitation of workers in all countries including reducing or eliminating trade unions and suppressing workers' democratic rights. Women workers, child labor, migrant labor, and agricultural workers are also subjected to extended exploitation.

Whereas, the working class is being attacked through restrictive and repressive labor codes, privatization and deregulation of public sector enterprises and services, and contracting-out and sub-contracting of work. Labor codes now include contractualization and casualization of labor. In many countries, workers' organizations are subject to repression and state violence backed by imperialist countries.

Whereas, imperialist globalization intensifies poverty in the Third World and downgrades the existing social security systems in the advanced industrialized countries. When combined with increased unemployment, these budget cuts result in the reduction of wages, inhuman working conditions, and weak bargaining power of trade unions.

Whereas, imperialist and client states, representing foreign and local big capital, use ideological weapons such as racism, "development," and "international competition" to divide and overcome working class resistance at both the national and international levels. They also use old and new yellow trade unions to advance their "flexible labor strategies" and to attack genuine unions struggling to defend the workers' and people's basic rights.

Therefore, it is resolved that participants in this workshop of the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization will develop international and national campaigns against the imperialist globalization agenda by:

Expanding political and class struggle education campaigns among workers on the impact of the APEC/WTO agenda, and other imperialist integrations;

Information dissemination of campaigns and policy activities undertaken in each country;

Launching pickets of MNCs/TNCs and embassies in support of each others' campaigns against the APEC/WTO agenda and other imperialist integrations;

Organizing exchanges of trade union activists among countries;

Arousing, educating and mobilizing urban poor and worker communities to fight the imperialist globalization agenda;

Working within our unions to make them more democratic and effective expressions of the members' interests; and

Organizing actions against imperialist globalization on May 1, 1997 and other synchronized international days of action.