A Workers' Perspective on the WTO is one of four 30-page workers' education booklets produced for the course on globalisation.

Globalisation Monitor is a bimonthly Chinese-language bulletin published in Hong Kong. It was launched in September 1999 by a group of social activists, labour activists, community organisers, researchers and educators committed to raising a critical popular awareness of the problems and challenges posed by globalisation.

Over the past year HKCTU cooperated with the Chinese-language bulletin,Globalisation Monitor, in developing a trade union education project on the impact of globalisation on workers and union responses. This was the first trade union education program on globalisation to be developed in Hong Kong.

From June 2000, Sze Pang Cheung from Globalisation Monitor worked closely with HKCTU organisers, affiliates and rank-and-file members to design the teaching material. Several preliminary workshops with union members, as well as grassroots community and women's groups, were held to facilitate the preparation of the course material. The first courses were conducted in March 2001, with classes held in the evenings and on weekends over a three-week period. As the course organisers noted, union members' commitment to learning about globalisation was reflected in their perfect attendance rate – despite the fact that most attended late night classes after a long day's work.

While the introductory course was open to members from all sectors, the second stage was divided into two classes specially tailored to meet the needs of public sector workers and transport industry workers. In the third stage workers from different sectors were brought together again to focus on strategies and responses to globalisation. While the education program organisers were successful in encouraging participants to link globalisation issues to their own concrete experiences and struggles, they continually asked themselves: "Will the participants feel more powerless after attending the course and learning about the impact globalisation?"

Despite this concern, lively group discussions on strategies and responses encouraged a much stronger sense of the need to organise and struggle. However, as Sze Pang Cheung commented, "Looking back on it, I think that if we hadn't had these doubts then the course wouldn't have been as successful as it was. That's because it pushed us to constantly revise the course content and structure, and ensure that it was empowering, not dis-empowering." He added that when one of the union members stood up and spoke eloquently on the need to organise and struggle against globalisation, "she proved to me and all other participants that workers' collective knowledge can cut through the most complicated problems."

Next> Education workshop on casualisation