EDITORIAL – Bad times for workers

When the global economy goes into a tailspin, the first to suffer are daily wage earners and ordinary workers. As the world marks Labor Day today, prospects for workers aren’t promising for the coming months. The war in Iraq is over, but instability in that region is expected to persist. There is the continuing threat posed by Islamist terrorists to worry about. Then there is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which is currently the bigger worry for Asia.

SARS has devastated some of the best performing economies in the region. Hong Kong survived the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and even bouts of bird flu, but now SARS has turned the Special Administrative Region into a virtual ghost town. China, which was barely touched by the Asian financial flu of 1997, is now battling both a killer disease and an international pariah status for initially covering up the outbreak of SARS. Even clean, efficient Singapore is reeling from the disease.

SARS has forced people to stay home, canceling overseas travels during what should be a peak tourism season. Airlines that survived the Asian crisis and the fallout from the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 could fold up due to SARS. Overall the global economy is expected to slow down this year due to SARS and the effects of the Iraq war. Even if the Asian Development Bank is predicting that Asian economies will outperform the rest of the world this year, the outlook is anything but rosy for workers as they mark Labor Day today.

One positive development is that workers appear to recognize the pro-blems and are not demanding wage increases that they know employers cannot give at this time. One labor group is asking simply for free SARS kits from employers. President Arroyo is expected to unveil a package of non-wage benefits in her Labor Day speech, and to launch job generation programs. There isn’t much, however, that governments can offer workers today, other than to do their best to shield workers from the SARS typhoon and hope it will blow over soon.