APRN chairperson Antonio Tujan said that ASEAN regional integration will hurt workers rights as Asian governments are further pressured to lower labor and wage standards in order to compete for the greatest amount of foreign investments.
Tujan said that such integration moves are not in the service of creating a regional economic bloc like the European Union giving preference to its members, but to turn Southeast Asia into an international production base for the first-world transnational corporations.
ASEAN leaders attending the upcoming 12th ASEAN Summit are expected to endorse plans to step up regional integration and create a common market by 2015.
Jane Kelsey, one of the conference speakers from New Zealand, also expressed concern over negotiations that governments of industrial countries will make during the ASEAN Summit, which may spell greater devastation to the people of Southeast Asian countries.
Kelsey particularly expressed apprehension over what the New Zealand government, an ASEAN trade partner, will offer to leaders of underdeveloped nations in the ASEAN.
Tujan added that within the various export processing zones or special economic zones that have sprouted throughout Asia, workers rights are routinely violated and wage standards ignored in order to prevent investors from relocating to other countries such as China, which have even lower standards. - Jasmin R. Uy/MEEV