Ben Moxham's Archive — Page 2

Ben Moxham

I’m a policy officer with the TUC’s snappily titled European Union and International Relations Department. I cover trade, decent work and international labour standards, as well as our work on priority countries such as Iraq Palestine/Israel and Burma. I’m also the TUC’s backstop on a range of complicated international meetings that begin with the letter “G”. I represent the TUC on the board of the Ethical Trading Initiative and as an alternate member on the even more snappily titled, Steering Board of the UK National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises.

Before joining the TUC in 2007, I did a Masters in development studies at the LSE, masqueraded as an industrial relations lawyer in Melbourne, and worked as a policy officer for a Southeast Asian development NGO based in Thailand from 2002-2004. When pressed at immigration, I claim to be Australian.

Economics
It’s CDC – not our aid commitment – that needs to change

15th September 2010 — Filed under: Economics, International

Ben Moxham

The wolves are circling CDC, the Department for International Development’s little known private sector investment arm that is supposed to be helping the poor in the developing world.

The Daily Mail has had a great run with its “snouts in the trough” stories about the excessive expenses and pay of CDC’s bosses. Although it’s Richard Brooks at Private Eye, especially in the latest edition, who has been the prime digger of so much CDC dirt – albeit stuck behind a blog-unfriendly subscriber wall. And the Parliamentary International Development Committee is tackling CDC in its current inquiry into DFID. Judging by the evidence in NGO submissions, CDC will be in for a torrid time.

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International
EU investment treaties – can we have labour standards with that?

6th August 2010 — Filed under: International, Pensions & Investment

Ben Moxham

We’ve just sent in our submission to the European Commission’s public consultation on its trade policy. The consultation covers everything under the trade sun, and so does our long submission.

It’s not exactly weekend reading, so I’ll pick out one of the more juicy issues (and award a prize to anyone brave/sad enough to read the whole thing): the EU’s new investment powers under the Lisbon treaty.

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International
Little known treaty could be big help for workers in supply chains

1st July 2010 — Filed under: International

Ben Moxham

That’s a slightly better title than the one I used for a blog I’ve just uploaded to the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) site: “The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprise: What do they mean for ethical trade efforts?“.

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Economics
Off to Mansion House… via Sherwood forest?

16th June 2010 — Filed under: Economics

Ben Moxham

Our brand new Chancellor is revealing his master plan for financial regulation in Britain as part of his Mansion House speech tonight. It finally promises some gritty detail on how the coalition government’s proposed bank levy can get the big banks to pay for the economic mess they’ve left us all swimming in.

That a bank levy is even on the cards is a big victory for the tenacious Robin Hood Tax campaign, and a sign of the positive influence of the Liberal Democrats on the coalition. But the big question for these budget slashing times is - will it raise enough?

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International
We all agree: Gaza blockade strangles jobs and hopes

14th June 2010 — Filed under: International, Labour market, Working Life

Ben Moxham

If William Hague, a Palestinian worker, the ILO and an IMF official agree on something, there’s a fair chance it might be right. All conclude that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is strangling the economy and jobs and must be lifted immediately.

Under Israeli restrictions only 72 of 4,000 commodities are allowed in, and only then, at a dismal trickle. The export trade is non-existent and concrete and raw materials are banned. The result: construction used to employ a quarter of the Gazan workforce, now it’s less than one percent. Without the means to repair bombed schools, hospitals and houses, Gaza looks like a permanent war zone.

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Economics
G20 labour ministers speak, but are the global bean counters listening?

23rd April 2010 — Filed under: Economics, International, Labour market, Politics, Working Life

Ben Moxham

The G20 labour ministers, meeting in Washington earlier this week, have come up with a decent list of recommendations to get the world back to work, and strengthen our fragile economic recovery. Yet with treasuries and the IMF sharpening their budget cutting knives, will these recommendations just hang in the air like so much volcanic ash?

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Economics
Time to stop the $1 trillion capital stampede

6th April 2010 — Filed under: Economics, International

Ben Moxham

As if our financial Sheriffs of Nottingham didn’t have enough bad press, a new report shows that Africa may have lost $1 trillion US dollars in illicit flows to western financial institutions over the past four decades. The report – Illicit Financial Flows from Africa: Hidden Resource for Development – goes even further, stating that given the hazy nature of the data available, the true scale of this capital stampede might be as much as $1.8 trillion US dollars.

Is this just corrupt leaders buying Premier League football clubs and leaving their people destitute? According to the report by the think tank, Global Financial Integrity, only three percent of this total is due to the corruption of government officials, with a further 30-35% coming from crime. That leaves a staggering 60-65% due to, “the proceeds of commercial tax evasion, mainly through trade mispricing”.

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Economics
The IMF in charge of the hen house?

26th March 2010 — Filed under: Economics, International, Labour market, Pensions & Investment, Working Life

Ben Moxham

Deemed irrelevant prior to the financial crisis, the IMF was given enormous powers by the G20 to resolve it. But in light of statements it made earlier this week, trade unions are wondering whether world leaders have put a fox in charge of the hen house.

At the end of April, the IMF will give an interim report to G20 Finance Ministers on their efforts to build “strong, sustainable and balanced growth” and outline options on how the Banks should help pay for the mess they got us in. In a worrying omen of what their conclusions might be John Lipsky, the second in charge at the IMF, said earlier this week, that to drive growth, “…liberalization of goods and labor markets and the removal of tax distortions… should be pursued vigorously”. As the global trade union movement’s statement of priorities for the meeting makes clear, the world is crying out for millions of green and decent jobs, not the cutting of taxes and slashing of workers’ rights.

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Economics
Global jobs black hole threatens Millennium Development Goals

9th March 2010 — Filed under: Economics, International, Labour market

Ben Moxham

The UN Secretary General’s office has just released a draft report on progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It makes for sober reading. Given the scale of the global financial crisis, “over 300 million new jobs will need to be created over the next five years” and that’s just to “return to precrisis levels of unemployment.”

Pre-crisis, some 633 million workers, or 21.2% of the world’s workforce, were struggling to feed their families on less than $1.25 per person per day. Thanks to the global financial crisis our planet is now home to an extreme 215 million workers living in absolute poverty.

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Ben Moxham's Archive — Page 2

Ben Moxham

It’s CDC – not our aid commitment – that needs to change

EU investment treaties – can we have labour standards with that?

Little known treaty could be big help for workers in supply chains

Off to Mansion House… via Sherwood forest?

We all agree: Gaza blockade strangles jobs and hopes

G20 labour ministers speak, but are the global bean counters listening?

Time to stop the $1 trillion capital stampede

The IMF in charge of the hen house?

Global jobs black hole threatens Millennium Development Goals

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Ben Moxham's Archive — Page 2

Ben Moxham

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