I Love FIFA-Politics

The International Trade Union Confederation in Geneva launched a campaign against the World Cup in Qatar and moved on to over throw Sepp Blatter. Instead of improving the conditions of workers, the activists shows to mix up inside the Soccer policy, as their internal-mail traffic shows.

The General Secretary of the ITUC-CSI, Sharan Burrow, just had a big show-up at the WEF in Davos. The 61-years old Australian woman called for better working conditions worldwide. That is something nobody will disagree.

Sharan Burrow

However, one of the favorite destinations of the public money financing the ITUC seems to be the FIFA. The International Football Federation with its controversial activities around the globe provides itself the unionists with a perfect campaign platform. But working conditions and human rights seems to be an old marginal story as internal emails the Weltwoche have been aware of shows. Together with Transparency International and other NGOs, the mingled unionists have gone very active in the business policy around FIFA. During their lobbying action against Sepp Blatter, Burrow and company even evoked the possibility to dissolve the FIFA.

Let’s have a short flashback. In December 2010, the Qatar was awarded the organization of the FIFA World cup 2022. The two other candidates, the United States and South Korea went back home with empty hands. Just six months after the vote, in May 2011, the ITUC launched a campaign called “Re-run the Vote”. The ground of such campaign against Qatar was the question of human rights violations and that FIFA shall award the World Cup to countries where worker’s rights are respected. However, when looking at the Global Law Index made and published by the ITUC itself, only very few countries should have the right to host the World Cup indeed. On the watch list, one can find not just dictatorships such as North Korea and Cuba, but also stable democracies such as Ireland and Switzerland. This ITUC lists systematic violation of worker’s rights in 27 countries including the United States. An an equal number of countries such a Greece or Qatar, the fundamental rights are not guaranteed according to the ITUC list. Whatever one may think of these listings, a World Cup doubtly will provide a great platform to promote these rights. However, the ITUC strategy seems to be another one.

In June 2011, the ITUC hires the Australian public relations firm Essential Media Communications (EMC) to manage its just launched campaign against Qatar. In August, EMC Director Gemma Swart started to work as the press officer for Sharan Burrow alogside with ITUC communication Director Tim Noonan (another Australian). In March 2014, the ITUC published a 34 pages report on Qatar, stating that 1.4 million workers would be held in the desert like slaves and stated that FIFA could have the ability to change that. The title of the document itself, “The Case Against Qatar” in however another indirect attack on FIFA, challenging directly Qatar as a World Cup location and organizer.

In the same vein, the next ITUC campaign was entitled “Save the FIFA”, which was launched during spring 2015, in preparation of Blatter’s re-election. The election is launched. The polls are promoting four candidates: Sepp Blatter, Luis Figo, Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein and Michael Van Praag. ITUC is moving to make the withdraw of the World Cup from Qatar an issue for all challengers. The key message for this campaign is: the FIFA must be protected against the Qatar-disaster so look for a candidate to the FIFA presidency that will vote against the World Cup in Qatar. And according to ITUC, only one candidate fulfilled all these requirements. The dutch Van Praag. These world-masters also tried to involve the BBC in their anti-Blatter campaign. In March 17, the ITUC employee David Norton emailed to Gemma Swart: “I wonder if you have heard from your contact at the BBC, whether they intend to carry out the candidates debates without Blatter”. Stupidly, the ITUC favourite Van Praag withdrawed his candidacy. However, this did not affect the fighting spirit of our unionists. ON the 20th of May, Swart writes in an email to Burrow and Noonan: “I love FIFA-politics. Better than the Labour party”.

During Spring 2015, the events rolled over. On May 27th, two days before Sepp Blatter’s re-election, the famous arrests of seven FIFA delegates happened in Zurich at the instigation of the United States attorney. However, Blatter was re-elected. A week later, on June 2nd, he gave the way to a legal and political Power play from overseas and announced his resignation for February 2016. Swart responded euphorically to the “Blatter’s exit visa”. In an email to Noonan she writes: “Qatar and Russia should now be invalidated. We can have a new assignment. And six months of open path for a campaign toward the Congress”. The next morning, both want to know from Borrow: “Do you think we can claim compensation from the investigations conducted by the FBI or Switzerland? If corruption is proven in the award of the WC to South Africa, Russia, Qatar, could government in Oz (Australia), the US, UK, Japan, South Korea, etc. sue the FIFA on the lost $$ for unfair tenders that costs millions to taxpayers ?”.

On June 15, 2015, Swart wrote a long email to Noonan and asked how they could launch a call for FIFA reforms to make it look more international. Swart also lists a few suggestions. The Union tempered her zeal in a diplomatic way and called for a more slower approach: “We need to find partners to go along with us, no surprise therefore, very gently”. On June 29, Swart then send emails to Alex (Wilks), campaign Director of the civil rights movement AVAAZ and to Bonita Mersiades, PR specialist working inside the official Australian sport federations. Until January 2010, Mersiades was in the Australian team to bid for the hosting of the 2018 or 2022 World Cup in Australia. Swart’s mail is entitled: “Fifa campaign coordination call Tuesday, June 30”. She called for more pressure to reform the football associations. And her wish seemed to be granted. Indeed, the FIFA Ethic Committee is about to meet for the first time in Bern on the 2nd of September. Soon after, she sends Blatter into the desert.

The fundings of a disinformation campaign
How NGOs are financing their campaigns is always a difficult question. But the Spin doctors of the causes appeared to be safe. On September 9, Swart wrote to Noonan and others: “Prince Ali just announced that he may run again (for the presidency). We do benefit if he wins and Sheikh Salman lose. We can use some money for a disinformation campaign against Salman”. You have to understand: Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa of Bahrain is the favorite for Blatter’s succession. Facing allegations that he had something to do with the repression of the uprising in Bahrain, the FIFA election commission did not retained this as no evidence were brought up as we will be notified later. Indeed, it was another Sheikh Salman.

On September 25, the Swiss federal prosecutor opened a case against Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini. Sharan Burrow writes from her IPhone to Noonan, Swart and Jaimie Fuller, the Chairman of the sports water manufacturer Skins: “We should all urge Blatter’s resignation”. On September 29th, Deborah Unger from transparency International writes and email entitled: “Next steps of FIFA campaign” to Swart, Noonan, Mersiades and Fuller: “It looks like both Platini and Blatter hold still (in their position). Would it be worthwhile to briefly Skype to talk about the next steps?. Amongst other things: We start in October a global call, in which people can choose the worst example of corruption and FIFA is one of our “candidate”.

ON 7th October, a conference call between Unger, Mersiades, Noonan, Swart and Fuller took place. An email from Unger summarizes what was discussed. They agreed that the pressure on sponsors like Coca-Cola and Adidas should be increased and a TV debate should be organized between the candidates for the FIFA presidency. Jaimie Fuller answered: “I propose to keep that secret and invite the candidates to a meeting. At the appropriate time, we can propose a TV debate with the rules of engagement. So no one who has promised can turn back due to schedule conflicts”.

On October 8, 2015, the Ethic Commission of the FIFA suspended Blatter and Platini for a period of 90 days. This spurs our top NGO football politicians. On October 21, Tim Noonan writes to Gemma Swart and Sharan Burrow in copy: “FIFA publishes a anthem to Syria just when Assad is visiting the Kremlin” (this refers to a FIFA statement according to which, the Syrian U-17 soccer team was so proud to participate, despite adverse conditions at the U-17 World Cup in Russia). Swart answered: “Can we do something on Syria campaign? We need a picture of a bombed football field to show that this love anthem is just a joke. Could do a good share on social media”.

Destabilize and Dissolve
Then she comes to speak about Sheikh Salman: “If he wants to be invisible as a candidate, it might be worth, now to build pressure and slinging him out of the FIFA candidate pack. Otherwise we legitimize him as a candidate. Do we really want that the February elections takes place without Reform Commission ? More we can destabilize, better it is — starting right now”. How far the agencies would go on their destabilization moves, if only they could do it, is clear in an email from Deborah Unger, who writes to the ITUC, Fuller, Mersiades and the British MP Damian Collins and its other allies on the 20 December :”We have investigate through our Swiss colleagues of Transparency the likelihood that Swiss government could dissolve the FIFA”.

However, they noticed that no strong will on this existed on the Swiss Parliament. Burrow defended their involvement as normal campaigning. But critics to the unions and their allies comes now mostly from within their own ranks. Union’s representatives in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka stated that these campaigns do not improve but deteriorate the worker’s positions. These are the countries from which the largest number of workers in Qatar comes from. If the World Cup will not be in Qatar, then they will be the first to lose. The profits will then go back to the industrialized countries, among them the United States. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) threatens thousands of jobs, complained Sanjeeva Reddy, President of the Inda largest trade union and also Vice-President of the ITUC. The workers will be harmed in the first place due to such campaigns and policies.

Worker's warrior and ITUC head Sharan Burrow tackles injustice

As head of the world’s largest trade union federation, former ACTU president Sharan Burrow is waging war on international youth unemployment and ‘modern slavery’ in the Gulf states ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Australian Sharan Burrow is punching above her weight on the world stage, yet few in this country know much about her work. As head of the International Trade Union Confederation, Burrow is tackling modern slavery in Qatar as it prepares to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and challenging the G20 on dangerous levels of youth unemployment. Representing 176 million members in 162 countries, the ITUC is a long way from the Australian royal commission into trade unions, where lurid allegations and criminal charges have tarnished parts of the movement Burrow once led as president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. She spoke to Mary Delahunty in Europe.

Sharan Burrow

Mary Delahunty: You’re in Turkey trying to persuade the G20 to set a target to lift youth employment; you’re also gathering workers’ testimonies to complement your independent polling on living standards.

Sharan Burrow: The G20, the world’s biggest economies, recently adopted the “25 per cent by 2025” target for women’s employment and we, business and labour, ask now why not a target for youth? Get the young into work. We have stats in each country — 50 per cent of young people in Greece, for example, idle or in the black economy. This is where the structural decline starts. There are about 2.9 billion people in the global workforce. Only 60 per cent of workers have a job in the formal economy and even then the majority are in precarious work. Forty per cent are struggling in the informal economy with no minimum wage or income, no social protection and excluded from legislated labour rights, and these numbers are increasing. We want a worldwide minimum living wage, evidenced based. What does it cost to live on a minimum wage in each country? ITUC polling reveals falling or stagnating wages in 14 countries surveyed with 80 per cent of respondents in Australia, for example, saying they can’t save any money on declining incomes. With half the families in the 14 countries that constitute half the world’s population not keeping up with the cost of living, there’s a problem.

Mary Delahunty: In this workers’ focus group are you charting one of the deep structural downsides of globalisation?
Sharan Burrow: A hospital cleaner [in Turkey] has just told me she can work up to 11 hours a day for a monthly pay of $A525, and can be asked to do everything in that hospital, anything except surgery! Down the road at a dairy-processing plant locals serve international brands working up to 60 hours a week and are forced to use leave in lieu of overtime. This is the hidden workforce of some international supply chains, for global companies such as Siemens, Apple and Samsung. Siemens has 343,000 direct employees but another 4.6 million hidden workers, contractors around the world for which they have no responsibility. Many of these workers are women and they are part of the “desperation” economy.

Mary Delahunty: You go much further than fairness when you, and others, accuse the Arab states of slavery. Isn’t this mediaeval language in the 21st century?
Sharan Burrow: This is modern slavery. These workers are not in chains but they are owned lock, stock and barrel, and in the Gulf they’re building football stadiums and art museums. Armies of migrant workers from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. Twenty-two million of them, 90 per cent of the population of the UAE and Qatar. Bound to an employer by the kafala sponsorship system, these labourers arrive, heavily indebted from recruitment and transit fees, often to find their Gulf dream a mirage. Typically the employer takes their passport, pays them much less than promised despite punishing hours in the desert heat, and crams them into substandard housing. The campaign to end slavery in the Gulf states began in 2011. We had undertaken a global scan to identify where labour rights were absent and where the threats to progress were. While we have many countries at risk, on our global rights index the Gulf states stood out. They are the richest bloc of countries pursuing rapid development but on the back of enslaved workers. The 2022 FIFA World Cup had been awarded to Qatar despite being a slave state and so that’s where we started. Indeed it’s a long story but we started with two bloggers four years ago and now it is a global storm.

Mary Delahunty: As general secretary of the ITUC you have taken personal risks to take journalists and TV cameras into the workers’ sheds of Doha [Qatar’s capital]. The pressure of this soft power has seen FIFA sponsors such as Visa, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola join the call for an independent inquiry and the toppling of [FIFA president] Sepp Blatter.
Sharan Burrow: And kids in Pakistan have been saved from the factories making footballs with FIFA labels.

Mary Delahunty: Now you are being asked to take on the Guggenheim.
Sharan Burrow: International art brands New York’s Guggenheim and the Paris Louvre are building museums in the Gulf and they’re also doing it on the back of exploited migrant workers. For five years artists and activists have been pushing the museums to recognise this. On international Labour Day on May 1 last year, when the artists’ protest shut down the Guggenheim for the first time in its history, the shocked trustees asked for a meeting. The artists called me.

Mary Delahunty: What did you recommend?
Sharan Burrow: The FIFA strategy. Build public waves of pressure. Insist on the moral responsibility of the Guggenheim and the Louvre for the conditions of the workers building their museums, but also look to the sensitivity of their sponsors. Say to these international companies, “Don’t do business in these slave states or you’re at risk, your brand reputation is at risk.” So a social media campaign broke out: “Dior, the Essence of Slavery.” Sponsors are risking their global reputation here but their brand and presence can force change. It’s the sons and daughters test. Would you want your kids to be in this situation. And that’s not to absolve the Arab states from responsibility. Why are the richest countries in the world deciding to build their modern nations on modern slavery?

Mary Delahunty: When the UAE unveiled its “Island of Happiness” concept on Saadiyat, off the coast of Abu Dhabi, part of the pitch to sell its super villas was access to branches of the world’s most iconic art museums.
Sharan Burrow: Apparently it’s a necessary cultural amenity demanded by the global investor class, but it’s got a hidden cost. ITUC’s goal is to eliminate the kafala system by 2018. We’ve lodged a case with the ILO [International Labour Organisation] against forced labour in the UAE and we say that the World Cup should not go ahead in Qatar without workers’ rights, nor should the Guggenheim and the Louvre be built in the Gulf without basic workers’ rights.

Mary Delahunty: You have met with Barack Obama in the White House, Germany’s Angela Merkel and leaders in Africa and Latin America. You have been asked by the sheikhs of Qatar to meet their prime minister. What will you say to him?
Sharan Burrow: There are more than 1400 workers dead already among the million building the World Cup stadiums. The Gulf states don’t recognize ILO standards but we are asking for a living wage, safe working conditions and a debt settlement fund for the recruitment fees. All we want is for governments and companies to follow the rules.

Mary Delahunty: You’ve worked with UN climate envoy Mary Robinson and now Nicholas Stern on the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. Does this mean big industrial job losses?
Sharan Burrow: I think citizens are ahead of governments on this. There are no jobs on a dead planet, so we are working on a transition plan, a bargain for industrial transformation into a low-carbon economy that gives workers and companies fair adjustment.

Mary Delahunty: The Productivity Commission’s draft workplace relations review concluded that: “Contrary to perceptions, Australia’s labour market performance and flexibility is relatively good by global standards … Strike activity is low, wages are responsive to economic downturns and there are multiple forms of employment arrangements that offer employees and employers flexible options for working.” Though Labor fears the further fragmentation of bargaining with employer-driven “collective contracts” and, as predicted, the Productivity Commission is going after Sunday penalties particularly in the hospitality industries, does Australia need unions?
Sharan Burrow: Show me an employer who voluntarily offers a raise. Are we prepared to have corporations driving our social norms? Unions are still the biggest institution, bigger than our political parties, bigger than the churches and I see it all the time here in Europe, they’re the bulwark of democracy, the basis of social Europe and the grand bargain that built it. Unions are the biggest cross-border movement on the planet with global research and campaigning capacity at the moment focused on reducing the deficits of globalization.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz alarm corporate America

Barney Jopson in Washington and Gregory Meyer in Miami Beach

Donald Trump

Bemusement over the Republican presidential race is giving way to alarm in corporate America as the traditional party of business toys with nominating two candidates — Donald Trump and Ted Cruz — who many executives view as intolerable.

The spectre of Mr Trump’s caustic bluster and Mr Cruz’s unbending conservatism has left some Republican-leaning business people discussing a previously unthinkable prospect: voting for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner.

Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Jim Newsome, a derivatives lobbyist who chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President George W Bush, said until recently he was laughing about the Trump campaign.

“I’m not laughing any more . . . I’m slightly worried about it,” he told a conference following last week’s Iowa caucuses, where the property mogul saw victory snatched from his grasp by Mr Cruz, the Texas senator.

“If it comes down to Hillary and Trump or Cruz, Hillary’s got my vote. While I don’t agree with Hillary on a lot of issues, I know what I’m getting if we elect Hillary versus a Trump or a Cruz,” said Mr Newsome.

Joshua Lewis, founder of Salmon River Capital, a New York private equity group, said: “I think it’s a devil’s choice. I categorise myself as an independent. There are Republicans I could vote for. But neither one of those two under any circumstance.”

An executive at one of America’s biggest companies said of Mr Trump and Mr Cruz: “They are getting invested in issues that are not of interest to business — or actively anti-business.”
Despite Mr Trump’s credentials as a billionaire entrepreneur, he has dismayed business people with his attacks on women, Mexicans and Muslims and his tendency to offer more vague promises of greatness than concrete policies.

“Trump has been so bereft of any detail that it’s very hard to know what you are going to get,” said the executive.

Mr Trump has suggested mass deportations that would risk paralysing the US economy, declared a new Pacific Rim trade deal backed by business a “disaster” and vowed to make Apple manufacture all its devices in the US, an idea experts say is implausible.

He however has the backing of Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor, who has said Mr Trump is the right man to shake up Washington. Mr Trump also secured a high-profile $1m donation from Ike Perlmutter, chief executive of Marvel Entertainment.

Mr Cruz, a slick speaker with sharp intellect, has a reputation for arrogance and is regarded by many as too rightwing to win the general election.

He gained notoriety in 2013 when he helped to shut down the government in a protest over President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms, an episode that many executives saw as a triumph of ideology over good sense.

“Even if I were a libertarian — which I’m not — I don’t think Cruz is capable of governing,” said Mr Lewis. “He’s better at burning the house down than building it.”

On the campaign trail Mr Cruz calls for monetary policy to be linked to the gold price, an idea mainstream economists disparage. He has vowed to abolish five government departments, a position that goes beyond what even rule-weary corporations want.