The concern about women in some settings (ones where government funding is involved on some level) may be because there are job cuts on the horizon (few people seem to realize this, though) due to "services liberalization" and the fear is women will be impacted greatly and their replacements who might be likely to be from elsewhere may not be women. (The idea as its being pushed is to channel those jobs to developing country services export firms. There is a lot of concern that global "de-industrialization "will push the developing countries into a state of perpetual warfare or more likely encourage them to assert rights and develop more of a domestic employment capacity and charge more for raw materials - which the corporate world fears.
The real conflict they fear is not the one because of jobs vanishing in great numbers and not enough to eat. Its the one where the children fo the elite in those countries demand - and get reforms and reductions in corruption and nepotism, and build their own industries that compete with the rest of the world -
Instead these deals encourage patronage systems and corruption.
And especially, the trickle down economics (help the rich and maybe they will help the poor someday, maybe not) which is a big part of that logic is utterly disproven.
We don't help poor people by helping the richest and most corrupt insiders in the poor countries who are arguably responsible for them being poor, We shouldn't help those people stay in power at all, actually, if we want the poor people to actually get helped.
So sacrificing the bird in the hand (precious, vanishing jobs) of our own (alleged to be "overpaid", which shows what the real motivators of the advocates for these schemes are) skilled workers' jobs to help the very few get even richer makes less than zero sense.
This scheme was always being pushed in one form or another going back to the 1970s, with teh argument that it would vastly increase profits.
Now they have changed how its marketedhowever adding in the assertion it will help poor countrie. The biggest advocate for this scheme internationally right now in that context is one of the most stratified and unequal countries, a country that has shared very little of its growing wealth with anybody other than its elite, India. (Contrast it with China where living standards for the vast middle and poor have steadily risen) You can read quite a bit about the services export agenda and the various issues - many focus on market access and visa obstacles - The best place really, the only place you can read about this dispute is in the Indian press. because its not covered at all in the US press, except in the very slightest of mentions. (Surprising for something that could literally change millions of peoples future lives overnight.)
One can see right off the bat that they are looking at this scheme as some kind of savior which is inappropriate given that it depends on millions of existing workers being replaced by their firms.
Even if the economics look compelling to them, the political aspects of it make it a nonstarter, unless some international organization can be enlisted to be the bad guy. Thats where the WTO comes in.
india sees huge growth opportunities if they can just get the WTO to force the developed countries to open up. And indeed, that may happen. Similar things have happened before but coverage of all news of this kind, has been conspicuously absent from the Western media.
Think of two basins filled with water with a hose thats plugged between then. Remove the plug and the levels equalize "somewhat". Well, technical people realize... they equalize.. its simple physics. Similarly with these schemes. I would be lying if I didn't say that the appeal of getting workforce for a third of what it costs today is substantial - and will become much more so if the global economy tanks as is expected, as a response to all these allegedly "long-promised", changes coming as they will, on top of automation.
(which will also make the number of jobs actally traded much smaller than advocates anticipate, so why do it, if many of those jobs will vanish anyway, "naturally" soon?)
In other words, its a vicious circle of economic implosion that will self perpetuateonce it begins! So why trigger it in the first place?
Because the alternative is more equality, something they see as threatening their statuses as the rulers of all they survey. When you are on top, all movement is seen as a threat! And technology makes everything exponentially less predictable. Thats whats causing this panic reaction. or so it seems. But its also I think simply an attempt to extract the worst possible outcome for working people out of the shift to automation, instead of the best.
because lets not forget, automation in theory means much more free time, and one would think, more time to spend with families and more time to become involved in governments, around the world, and less corruption. And maybe even new forms of direct democracy. To the elite, all this translates as "mob rule".
Developing countries for the most part are fairly realistic about the chances for this scheme, with the exception it seems of India.
The Indian government is much more inward looking than many others, they also dont want to have the people realize that- in the case of the US and to a lesser extent probably also the UK to really support the healthy growth rates they enjoyed in the past they would have to overcome a great many obstacles and pretty much turn back the clock on US public awareness of these programs.
Which is still low but which is likely to expand substantially in the future, spoiling the still fairly good relationships that exist. because most Americans still are living in sort of a pre-WTO dream world adn polticians do their best to keep it that way. therefore in the US mindset, it still is 1993 before the WTO and all the things these indian firms do are framed in the US press as likely to be illegal, even thoughthey arguably are not, under WTO law. Which is seen as superseding national laws.. See the work of the WTO Working Panel on Domestic Regulation for the process and timetable of when those changes must be incorporated into Members national laws.
Certainly currently, things like quotas DO currently limit the ability of Indian and other skilled services firms to supply the cut rate medium tech services they specialize in.
They complain quite a bit about requirements they hire workers locally. (Its SOOO expensive! Luckily, they only have to hire the less skilled ones. As it was previously pointed out, (Thank you!) they only have to hire cheaper, less skilled workers here, to make up some arbitrary percentage, 50%. imagine if they had to hire 50% of their engineers!)
Still, to expand they have to hire local workers who cost them several times more, and they have - in international neoliberal media, framed this as discrimination.
After all, if an American firm were to set up a factory in India, bringing Americans along, to work there, would they choose to hire only the lowest skilled Indians ? To save money? No, because wages there are much lower. but this selective myopia to the key economic issues is a hallmark of all the media coverage of these issues. And that should be a red flag to everybody about whats being planned and executed.
Up until now, they have successfully framed rules that make them pay workers prevailing wages or minimum wages as discriminatory. And its likely the various international bodies will rule their way, potentially disrupting a great many careers. there needs to be much more awareness of this and there needs to be a discussion about it. One which brings in all the various groups involved. that has not happened in even the slightest amount.
So, we move closer and closer to irreversible changes which may make a number of "tradable" professions - quite likely including portions of the engineering professions an even less attractive career choice for developed country young people.
Changes that could make some of the most difficult professions into low paid, precarious work on a large scale. as long as the workers are temporary.
in the case of the US, typical trade deal based visas are for six years. For 'body shops' that supply tech workers to firms, this is a way of getting their high skill workers for less than US minimum wage.
They get a way of having high skill workers working for far less than what would be considered the norms. And they work very very hard. And cant get raises for six years.
I think that all workers in a country should be subject to the same rules. And get the same opportunities as much as possible. And should be able to negotiate raises.
Creating a new system thats often been compared to slavery (the WTO GATS Mode Four visa tied to corporate employer system) isn't working out in the Middle East and its not working out in the US.
Its a bad bad thing.
Get rid of the low wage slavery and then the visas can be based on merit. Not cheap labor. THEN their numbers dont have to be limited to some arbitrary number. BUT only award those visas to people who are really good. NOT to people who are simply okay- and cheap.
But, then they HOWL that that gets rid of their chief "compatitive advantage" cheap labor. Under the"global value chains" system countries like the US and Australia produce high value products and ideas, countries like india produce labor. So "Global Value Chains" is a recipe for mass unemployment in developed countries on a scale its never been seen before, and those people will never get jobs again once it happens, because they will be priced out of their old proessions by competition that gains an irreversible right to stay. After all, this right "is the repayment of a debt" they are claiming. they "kept their part of the bargain" and privatized their education. If you dig a bit deeper, you'll find that there is a widespread perception that there was a tit for tat involved. A promise of jobs in exchange, in the form of market access.
They got rid of their social programs, claiming they were promised jobs in return..
What it really is is a backroom deal between the rich in both countries that does away with democracy and is intended to make all of our problems impossible to fx by the means which make the most sense and are time proven. instead, globalization, more globalization and more deregulation becomes the proffered cure for everything. the very worst kind of cult-like, delusional logic.
Its real goals are not altruistic in any way. Quite the opposite. Its all to lock us in to bad policy and business models that are already old in the tooth, without any means of escaping them. To increase profits, and provoke a race to the bottom on wages, and steal all the gifts of technology for a very few people who will use the situation to prevent the positive changes the entire planet deserves and substitute oppression.
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