Rotten Apple
Apple sells out Irish workers
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The Apple debacle shows yet again the need for an industrial
development strategy that does not depend on how much money you can
shove at transnational companies
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``Hello again'' ran one of the many advertisements used to launch the
iMac computer last year. Now Apple computers has said goodbye to 450
workers in the most unfriendly and nasty way.
Having being told that their jobs would be secure if the iMac
computer was successful they now find that because of the phenomenal
sales of the iMac their jobs are actually to be lost.
The job cuts were compounded by the fact that the details of the
losses were disclosed to investment brokers in Wall Street and leaked
to the press days before Apple workers themselves were told of the
problem.
The Korean company LG Electronics will make the iMac under licence
for Apple. LG has plants in Singapore, Mexico and Wales. One of these
plants will manufacture the iMac supposedly more cheaply than is
possible in the Cork Apple plant.
It will be little comfort to the Apple workers that there is an
economic theory which accurately describes their predicament but it
is indicative of the scope of the problem.
The product cycle theory states that transnational companies need
first world countries to develop their new products. Once the new
product is being manufactured successfully and the technological
development is stabilised then the product can be manufactured at
higher volumes in more low cost locations. This is essentially what
has happened to the Cork Apple workers.
What is worse is that the Dublin Government, and more specifically
the minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment Mary Harney has done
little to force Apple to honour their commitments to Cork workers,
whose efforts have helped Apple to return to profitability after
running losses of $1 billion.
Apple have sold over 630,000 iMacs and had net earnings for the first
quarter of 1999 of $152 million. How much more did they need to make?
Much has been made in the media of the turnaround in Apple's fortunes
achieved by chief executive Steve Jobs. However, if the decision to
renege on their promise to keep jobs at the Cork plant is
representative of Jobs' management then maybe we would be better off
without Apple.
Most importantly the Apple debacle shows yet again the need for an
industrial development strategy that does not depend on how much
money you can shove at transnational companies on the basis of
unkeepable promises.
There are thousands of jobs in the Irish computer industry, over
12,000 in software alone. Many of these Irish-owned companies do not
make huge profits. They do however employ huge numbers of people and
receive less funding than the high profile multinational companies
that the government courts endlessly.
Surely these companies deserve the same amount of funding and aid as
the multinational companies. As long as the Dublin Government bases
its job development policies on fickle multinationals who are
interested only in profit there will be more Apples and more Fruit of
the Looms.
The lesson of the week then is that a promise from a politician is
only slightly less worthless than one from a multinational company.
Fighting the financial markets
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Fischer also said that it was ``an illusion to think that the IMF have
no social conscience and do not care''.
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A smiling Al Gore with a varying cast of international leaders and
executives graced many newspaper pages and TV bulletins over the last
week. Gore was speaking in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic
Forum, an annual meeting of top business executives and invited
politicians.
The core topic of the week-long conference was the impact of the
``Asian flu'' on global financial markets.
alternative set of meetings to the World Economic Forum's was
organised by Attac, the Association for the Taxation of Financial
Transactions. Attac was launched in France in June 1998 and has 6,000
members, mostly in France.
The main aims of Attac are to: counter international speculation; tax
capital revenue; punish fiscal parasites; stop the extension of
pension funds; promote transparency of investment in developing
countries; establish a legal framework for financial and banking
operations which would not penalise consumers and citizens; press for
a cancellation of the debt of developing countries and for the uses
of resources freed in this way in favour of the people and of
sustainable development.
Attac came into being when a journalist in the paper Le Monde
Diplomatique wrote an article critical of the way financial markets
operate and the implications for ordinary people of their activities.
The groundswell in opinion following the article led to the formation
of Attac, whose initial aim was to ``fight the dictatorship of
financial markets''. They want to tax financial transactions ``for the
benefit of citizens''.
Attac believes that ``Financial globalisation increases economic
insecurity and social inequality. It bypasses and devalues people's
choices''. They want to ``recapture the spaces of democracy lost to the
financial sphere''.
Attac stress that they are not ready to ``offer ready-made solutions''.
Instead they are calling for ``a democratic exchange of ideas and
working out of alternatives''.
Judging by the events at the World Economic Forum Attac will have
their work cut out for them. Stanley Fischer, first deputy managing
director of the International Monetary Fund, told the Forum that he
was fed up hearing ``arrant nonsense'' from those who claimed IMF
programmes did not include measures to deal with the social
consequences of its programmes, meaning in plain English the poverty
the IMF creates.
Fischer also said that it was ``an illusion to think that the IMF have
no social conscience and do not care''. It was, he said, an ``outrage
and an offence to be told things which are patently not true''.
Well, when it comes to deciding whether you believe the IMF or
Concern, Oxfam or Attac it doesn't take long to make up your mind.
Fianna Fail - U-turn
Changing their position on Irish neutrality was not the only U-turn
implemented by Fianna Fáil in the last week. In the heady days of the
1997 election campaign Fianna Fáil told Oxfam that ``we will continue
to withold funds from the ESAF, pending reform of the IMF, which we
believe is very important as a policy issue. The IMF must undertake a
complete debt-relief programme, which must include debt forgiveness,
particularly for several indebted low-income countries''.
Now the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat coalition is set to allocate
£7 million to the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF)
which it previously criticised.
The IMF fund imposes tough conditions on the states who get the
money. These states often have to cut spending on public services
such as health and edcuation as well as privatising state companies.
The outcome is that the IMF funds can actually lead to increases in
poverty in the recipient states.
Fianna Fáil's short memory is only matched by the silence of PD
minister Liz O'Donnell who threatened to resign before last year's
budget if the level of aid to less developed states was cut. Now when
the government is set to increase poverty in the states who receive
aid she is nowhere to be seen.
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