UNI is among the global unions lobbying hard in Hong Kong as trade ministers gather for the latest trade round discussions.
UNI held a Seminar that looked at Special and Differential Treatment – SDT – ways to give developing countries some flexibility in adapting to the liberalisation process driven by the World Trade organisation and others that can often destroy jobs in developing countries and create more poverty.
Workers in services sectors, who are represented by UNI, are concerned with the outcomes of the trade negotiations.
UNI’s Deputy General Secretary Philip Bowyer addressed the UNI-Asia pacific seminar workshop “Hong Kong’s Missing Agenda: SDT and Development for the South.”
SDT and flexibility was clearly defined in Doha development agendas but it isn’t highlighted at various WTO meetings – a situation the seminar aims to change.
Around 50 trade union and NGO activists participated to the seminar.
Philip Bowyer pointed out various examples in UNI sectors as the outcomes of liberalisation under the WTO rules.
“Issues such as poverty, human rights, transparency should be highlighted at WTO meetings,” he said.
The seminar participants agreed to propagate the concept of SDT and to lobby each government to pay more attention to the SDT for control the impact of liberalisation. |  | 
“Kongi WTO” (Protest WTO) demo in Hong Kong
More than 5,000 demonstrators marched from Victoria Park to the HKSAR Government Headquarters in the city centre.
UNI Hong Kong affiliates in postal and telecom unions, international guests took part. |