Access to safe drinking water is a basic human need and a fundamental right. Those of us who live in the developed world take this for granted. But for millions of people around the world it is a need and a right that have yet to be realized. World-wide millions are without safe water—in Latin America alone 75 million people do not have reliable access to safe water. Each year two million people in the world die of water born illnesses.
The careful stewardship of water resources is also essential to maintain the delicate balance of nature and ecosystems everywhere. Yet throughout the world a reckless assault on the land, forests, streams, lakes, and aquifers essential to preserving water resources has undermined the ecological balance of the planet and put at risk not only a sustainable supply of safe drinking water, but also water needed for agriculture.
In the 1990s water became a major battleground in the globalization process. The World Bank and other International Financial Institutions (IFIs) encouraged privatization schemes in the developing world as a way to answer the needs for safe water. Giant global corporations like Suez, Bechtel, Thames River, and Veola along with a host of smaller companies, sensing new profit centers, moved in. The privatization schemes failed badly almost everywhere. And throughout the world—in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa—privatization efforts triggered massive protests forcing many of the giant global firms to significantly reduce their involvement or to withdraw altogether.
In addition to the threat of the privatization of water systems, the issue of control of the resource has become an important cause for concern. In Nevada, for instance, a major battle is underway that pits Las Vegas water authorities, intent on drawing water from a major aquifer hundreds of miles from the city, against a broad coalition of environmentalists, planners, citizens groups, farmers, and ranchers in rural Nevada and Utah. A private water company is also at work in the state buying up groundwater rights wherever they can. Water grabs like this are happening in localities across the globe and they create a common problem and a common frame that can be used to link movements across borders.
Labor unions and other worker organizations around the world have played a key role in the fight against privatization and for creating public entities to ensure access to safe drinking water. So far US labor has not played a leading role in the fight for just and sustainable water resources; but it shares a core set of interests with labor movements around the world that have been. These include:
• Steep price hikes for water after privatization that stretch the ability of workers to afford water
• The threat that privatization poses for direct job loss and the undermining of trade union strength as jobs are shifted from the public to the private sector
• The loss of accountability, transparency, and democratic control over water resources that result from privatization
• The lack of access to water that fuels an urban/rural divide that pushes people off the land and into cities which lack infrastructure to support them
• The basic belief held by workers and their organizations that water is a right and not a commodity
• New venues to reach out to new allies and build innovative and broad-spectrum social movement strategies
Some unions and Global Union Federations —like the Public Service International—have linked many of these national struggles and helped steer resources—especially expert technical support—to the developing world.
The global nature of the fight for just and sustainable water policies also gives US labor an opportunity to pursue its stated goal of building a global labor movement capable of confronting the global corporations that dominate the global economy. Building such a global labor movement means moving beyond conventional trade union bargaining to a broader approach to representing the economic interests of workers. This includes developing and supporting worker friendly public policy initiatives to promote sustainable development and economic justice around the world—and water is a core part of that fight throughout the world.
GLS is launching a project to draw the US labor movement into the global fight for public control of water resources, universal access to save drinking water, and the broad recognition that water is a human right. In the coming months we’ll be reporting on water issues and how and why the labor movement needs to help in this global battle. We think that unions need to be out front on critical issues—like access and control of water—that affect the lives of millions of workers worldwide if we are to actually create a global labor movement.
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