[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This HR Reader is about the origins and the evolution-of, as well as the resistance-towards social security. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
Where it all began
1. It was 1889, and Otto von Bismarck, Prime Minister of Prussia and Chancellor of the new German Empire (1871), took pity on the sad fate of workers living in abject poverty. He, therefore, decided to invent a pension system, deducting a contribution from their meagre wages that would enable retirees to avoid starvation. These contributions soon accumulated a large amount of capital. (Louis Casado)
Flash forward: The fallacy
2. People rendered poor are those excluded by a paternalistic state under the guise of being protected by the market. The solution to their problem was to participate in the market!? Poverty alleviation thus became ‘social protection’, but only making sure the market and its growth were defended. There were protests, there was resistance*, but without organization, without structure, without strategy. Social movements had also come to believe in neoliberalism and advocated little in calling for unity. (Francine Mestrum)
*: Social justice is, of course, closely related to class conflict. With growing inequality in the world, class conflict is more than ever the order of the day. There is no longer a common (savable) world between the rich and the non-rich.
Flash forward: Public systems
–Recent research shows that more public money and subsidies go to corporations than to social security.
3. The public social security apparatus, has since been designed to provide protection against income loss due to aging, illness, or disability. Being a crucial instrument for eradicating extreme poverty, social security rights are meant to guarantee income protection and promote social inclusion for vulnerable groups –preventing active protests. As was originally the design, workers contribute from their paychecks every month to access these benefits –so it is their money that is used.
4. Currently, 3.8 billion people worldwide are deprived of adequate social protection coverage**, such as paid child/sick leave benefits, with direct and lasting impact on their health and wellbeing outcomes. High debt burdens have been crippling the capacity of governments to invest workers’ money and provide the social security services. Mind you, the total value of debt interest payments made by the world’s 75 poorest countries increased fourfold over the past decade. (WHO) …Wither social protection.
**: No tengo miedo de morir, tengo miedo de jubilar. (Graffiti in Mexico City) (“I am not afraid to die, I am afraid to retire”).
5. Moreover, in the countries rendered poor, a majority of the workforce is in the informal sector –with no social protection whatsoever. Nevertheless, it is perfectly possible to provide social security to all these people. Why is it not done? After all, social security IS a human right.
Oddly, the language of human rights has played only a marginal role in these struggles
6. Although social security rights are recognized as human rights (HR) under international law, HR movements have seldom prioritized these issues thus failing to address the systemic injustices that breaches of social security generate. This trend ultimately distances social rights litigation from the broader HR agenda, weakening the latter’s transformative potential. What we see is a primary weakness in litigating social rights using a broader HR agenda and framework. What there is, is a fragmentation of claims that obscure the underlying social relations and collective dimensions of inequality. Individual successes in court, though important, do not equate to needed sustained public policy reform in social security. Actually, social security litigation should, not merely plug institutional gaps in this social right, but serve as a driver of structural accountability. To fully reclaim the HR promise of many a constitution, a significant shift is needed.Greater participation by affected groups of workers and stronger integration with international HR mechanisms are essential. (Priscilla Costa Corrêa)
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has forever insisted on ‘social justice’ and on ‘decent work’
7. ILO proclaimed its ‘Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work’ and, in 2012, adopted a recommendation on ‘social protection floors’. Slowly, the World Bank had to adapt its agenda along these lines …or was it only its discourse that changed? Yes, only its discourse.
The Bank totally ignored the existing UN covenant on economic, social and cultural rights
8. Instead, the Bank embarked on a ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy’ that did not have the formally expected results. (We know that…). In 2000, it published a first theoretical and strategic framework for social protection. It was actually called ‘social protection’ but, in fact, it was about risk management and, therefore, based on “the resilience to be developed by individuals and families so as to cope with sudden shocks”.
9. In 2022, it then published a ‘Compass’ on ‘Charting a New Course’ for social protection where it speaks about social protection, (and even about ‘universalism’), about social contracts, about trade unions and about collective bargaining. But social protection was phased out in their lingo and again replaced by poverty reduction, a policy more compatible with the Bank’s neoliberal ideology –and public insurance mechanisms are not in the neoliberal agenda. Time and again, the idea of social protection either never entered the Bank’s political agenda or was weakened and watered down even before it became reality. The main point in the Bank’s strategy is the neoliberal belief that ‘insurance,’ which social protection basically is, should not be provided by the public, but the private sector.
10. Finally, needless to say, and as opposed to the ILO, the World Bank does not speak about HR. The ‘risk sharing policies’ they advocate-for are not about protecting people against the whims of the market; for them, it is about creating and promoting markets for insurance. Despite repeated requests by trade unions to engage with the Bank on this and on other initiatives that have major implications for workers, the Bank went ahead with its flawed position on labour rights topics, ignoring the concerns of democratic workers’ representatives.
11. The World Bank did and has not change(d) its basic philosophy. It constantly adapts its discourse, it uses the concepts en vogue when they are without risk and changes its vocabulary*** when it is needed to avoid the traps of more solidarity and redistribution. The basic ideas remain the same as in 1990: Target the poor and let governments and workers help companies to thrive. Ergo, for the Bank, the fight against inequality leaves the rich untouched. (F. Mestrum)
***: Talking about vocabulary, for a long time, there was some confusion about social security and social protection. Today, there is a consensus to say that social security encompasses the mechanisms of social insurance and social protection is a broader concept that can include public services or even labor law.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–Ongoing militarization also requires enormous resources that in many, if not all, cases are taken away from social policies, such as social protection, pensions, and health care. (F. Mestrum) …Protection may henceforth well be with arms, not rights.