WHEREAS:

The International Monetary Fund was created to assist less developed nations with low-cost loans for internal investment designed to improve the lives and living conditions of the people of such countries; and

WHEREAS:

Despite widespread opposition and in apparent contradiction of its charter to assist all the people in the countries to which it makes loans, the IMF has persisted in approving a huge loan to South Africa in apparent support of its apartheid program; and

WHEREAS:

In recent years the IMF has appeared to ignore the developing crisis in third world countries whose huge debt has become unmanageable because of the oil shock, the soaring value of the U.S. dollar, the growing U.S. debt, falling commodity prices and other economic trends; and

WHEREAS:

In pressing for conditions it imposes for new loans the IMF is insisting on economic policies and actions that threaten to destroy emerging democratic governments or to destabilize existing democracies in many third world countries; and

WHEREAS:

The IMF typically insists that the public sector, workers and the poor must suffer the heaviest sacrifice as the price for debt management assistance, failing to demand that the privileged classes, and the banks also share the costs of world-wide recession; and

WHEREAS:

IMF-imposed economic restraints have actually triggered demonstrations that have threatened governments that the United States had carefully nurtured back to democracy.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

That this 26th International Convention of AFSCME urges the IMF to abandon its policies which impose unequal burdens of sacrifice on those nations seeking help from the industrial world in managing their debt; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

That AFSCME calls on the United States government to exert its influence within the IMF to moderate its demands on newly-emergent democracies so that the financial strictures imposed by the IMF will not serve to destroy these democracies before they get a chance to survive; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

That AFSCME reaffirms its request to the U.S. government and the Congress to require the U. S. Executive Director of the IMF to oppose loans to any country that practices apartheid and extends that position to one of opposition to loans to any country that oppresses its own people denying them the basic human rights including the right of trade unions to organize and represent their members in free collective bargaining; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED:

That AFSCME urges that the oppressive debt burden that now threatens the existence of emerging democracies shall be shared by the privileged classes and the banks, and shall not be unfairly borne by the workers and the poor of these countries.

SUBMITTED BY:

International Executive Board