International trade union leader Sharan Burrow has compared the labour movement's struggle for fair trade with Hong Kong's democracy movement. In an early salvo against the conference, Ms Burrow said the same corporate leaders pushing the global agenda on free trade were against democracy in Hong Kong.
Ms Burrow said she was inspired by watching the peaceful march for universal suffrage, which she claimed Hong Kong's union movement was leading. 'What people are struggling for is not only the right to vote for their own government but to have a say in the policies that will shape their future,' she said.
The leader of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions said that like their global partners who opposed fair trade, the city's tycoons were 'ugly and greedy' and putting profit before people.
'Ultimately it will be their undoing, because unless they can build a world of co-operation based on rights, what are they saying, that they want to be the 21st century totalitarian leaders?'
Capitalism and democracy were partners, she said. Capitalism would eventually be destroyed without fair trade around the world. 'If you don't have an ability to bargain for a fair share of the wealth, you don't have a consumer base, [you have] a narrower and narrower group of people who have the ability to spend.'
Corporations were in the process of 'subjugating their own views of humanity to profit', she said. 'If you constantly drive profit before people, you don't have any freedoms, because you are just slaves to the interests of the corporation.'
