More than 50 delegates from various unions affiliated to the CSG-Solidarité demonstrated in front of the World Bank Office in the capital of Mauritius, Port Louis, to mark the World Day for Decent Work.

Unionists stand in turn, in a row of 11 (more than this number is considered illegal demotration in Mauritius) with placards. The press and radios covered this first ever demonstration in front of the new World Bank Office in Mauritius.

Slogans included:

§ Decent Work for a Decent World!

§ Another World is Possible! without WB Bankrupt policy!

§ No to IMF/World Bank indecent work policies

§ WORLD BANK STOP YOUR INDECENT JOB POLICY!

§ WORL BANK = WALL STREET BANK

§ WB ‘Flexibility’ = INDECENT WORK

§ World Bank = World Bankrupcy!

§ WB/Sithanen’s Employment Rights Act = INDECENT WORK

§ WB = PROFITS FOR GREEDY CAPITALIST = POVERTY FOR WORKERS

§ WB/Sithanen’s Employment Rights Act = Neo-Slaverism

§ Fire World Bank Bankrupt policy! Not workers!

§ IMF/WB = Hundreds of Rich = Billions of Poor

§ Peoples’ Need! Not Capitalist Greed!

After the demonstration a delegation of CSG-Solidarite handled a letter to the World Bank representative in Mauritius.

Here with below the content of the letter:

World Day for Decent Work.

Open Protest Letter to World Bank Office in Mauritius

Attention: Mr. Constantine Chikosi Country Representative, World Bank 3 rd Floor, Medine Mews, La Chaussee Street Port-Louis, Mauritius

Dear Sir,

The CSG-Solidarité, uniting four major militant Federations of Mauritius, namely the General Workers Federation, Federation of Progressive Unions, Federation des Travailleurs Unis and the Rodrigues Workers Federation, is organising a protest action in front of your office in the context of the World Day for Decent Work.

As you may be aware, on the 7th October 2008, the trade union movement all around the world is organising a World Day for Decent Work. In Mauritius, the CSG-Solidarité, has decided to mark this event by a symbolic activity in front of the new World Bank Office in Mauritius.

The Bank that you represent, in collusion with the IMF, has been one of the main instrument promoting ‘indecent work’ around the world. For more than 20 years, the World Bank and the IMF have imposed onerous conditions into ‘loan’ or ‘aid’ packages on the people of many countries of the world. Sometimes, concocted with local economic and political elites, these ‘conditionalities’ have been disguised as ‘home grown’. These “conditionalities” shaped as ‘structural reform’, have undermined the peoples’ democratic sovereignty, and have largely contributed to increase poverty and inequality in many countries of the world. The neo-liberal package of - privatisation, downgrading of social subsidies, deregulation of wages and labour laws, tax reduction for the rich, locking of economies in cheap labour based export led strategy, destruction of production for local consumption, de-regulation of capital and finance – has meant that the working people have shouldered the burden of these ‘structural reforms’ though the proliferation of indecent work conditions and a downsliding of wages and working conditions. The present world triple crisis - food, energy and financial crisis – has now ring the bell of the total bankrupcy of capitalism and the neo-liberal doctrine promoted of WB/IMF during these recent decades.

This is why today, all around the world, working peoples’ organisations are saying, enough is enough!. Working people have had enough of policies which have delivered vast wealth to a tiny few who have profited from lax or non-existent regulation of financial markets, while those who actually produce the goods and services of the real economy have seen their wages stagnate or fall.

The ‘doing business’ index, is just one more illustration of the shameful ‘indecent work’ policy promoted by World Bank since 2004. For the World Bank the more a country ‘deregulates’ the more this is synonymous to economic progress. ‘Deregulations’ are simplified as mere measurement of ‘reforms’ for private sector ‘investment’. One wonders, what the World Bank ‘Doing Business’ would have been, had it been applied to ‘Wall Street’ and private financial institutions that have just crashed! The ‘DB’ includes as one of its measurement ‘employing workers’ . The less a country have employment protection regulations the less it is rated in the DB.

In Mauritius, economic ‘reforms’ lead by WB/IMF have encouraged poverty and social inequality. This is an undisputable fact and the living reality of more than 80% of the people. The GINI Coefficient have confirmed that the rich have become richer and the poor poorer under the WB/IMF inspired ‘reforms’. Real wages have declined in relation to inflation and stagnated in relation the GDP. Meaning that the wealth created by the labour force, through economic growth of the recent years, has been massively directed to capitalist and specially capitalist in the financial and estates businesses. Massive profits of private companies and banks only mirrors the poverty and social inequalities upon which they have been generated.

The new Employment Rights Act, promoted by WB/IMF, will only deepened the proliferation of ‘indecent’ work and bring our people into neo-slaverism, at the mercy of jungle of the market and capitalist greed.

Is the present financial and economic crisis spreading around the world not sufficient enough to demonstrate that the neo-liberal doctrine of World Bank is a Bankrupt one?

The CSG-Solidarite joins our voices to the millions of trade union organisations to say ‘that decades of deregulation, of reward for corporate greed and excess, have brought the world to the brink of global recession. a fundamental transformation of globalisation is needed. and the time for that change is now” …“workers are tired of promises for a better future when what they and their families have to endure today is a constant degradation of working life and an ever harder struggle for the basics of a decent existence”

Yours sincerely,

Serge Jauffret , Atma Shanto, Alain Tolbize, Giandeo Peeharry & Ashok Subron on behalf of the CSG-Solidarite 7th October 2008

cgs-solidarite@myfreeit.org