Globalization refers to liberal intercourse of widespread economic activity embracing the whole globe, a multidimensional process channelled by global trade and ultimately vectored towards overall good of the layman, through respective governing set-ups.

It necessitates interplay of free market forces, generally jeopardized by degenerative rigidities in the tariff and non-tariff barriers, tendencies towards privatization, downsizing and the cost cuttings; and nevertheless discouraging of inward FDI.

With regional integrations and strategic alliances being a threat for third parties. These issues in turn undercut the growth of industries; edge out the domestic production and manufacturing and hence propagate unemployment and breed poverty, in the inflicted economies.

Be it production or manufacturing and administered through location specificity or global web, the process mandates active inclusion of human element.

Rather, if there were no human element, the machines and plants whatever their level of sophistication and intensity of automation would lie idle and the processes dormant. Pitiably, the visible hand of humans is flagrantly rendered as invisible or at least minimum visible; and most exploited on the part of industrialists.

Thus there is an ever-increasing need for safeguarding the rights and interests of humans beings; the contribution of the liveliest part of the prime cost deserves full recognition and reward as against surplus value usurped by the capitalist.

Where neither the depreciation thereof is reckoned nor are the agonies and pangs deemed as sufferings and ailments. The cries stay unheeded and screaming mocked. Trade unions in this connection are better able to attempt to shield workers against all atrocities, exploitations and under valuations. And in this noble endeavour they have to bear some costs and confront a few challenges.

At the very outset, we see that the challenge of globalization and human rights takes us on an endless journey, deep into the gold mines of South Africa, oil fields of Iraq, Nike shoes factory in Asia, and nevertheless mines and brick kilns in Pakistan.

However, the growth of the role of social factors and respect for human rights (including trade union rights) can be linked back to the Copenhagen World Summit for Social Development in 1995, which has given impetus to the clear social deficit, one of the causes of the Asian crisis.

This is believed that if social development, including institution-building and respect for core labour standards had been adhered to by the south-east Asian countries, it would have resulted in much more accountability, democracy and equity.

The International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU) has been focusing on respect for core labour standards constituting the standards which are universally agreed to be in no way exclusive to industrialized countries, but instead applicable to every country of the world, regardless of its level of development.

However, these social values yet need to be fully translated into actions of the world's major institutions of globalization viz. the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO and IFIs. In so far, the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) has been undertaking important work to introduce these values into the work of the OECD.

Another global challenge, the competitive advantage banked upon abusing workers' freedom (and child labour) has been observed in countries like Malaysia, where workers in the electronics export sector are denied the opportunity of joining national trade unions; Mexico, where a failure to apply the law in the "maquiladora" free trade zones deprives over a million, mainly young women workers, of freedom of association; Turkey, where free trade zone workers are denied the right to strike; Lesotho, where the mainly women workers in export estates producing goods like textiles and garments face violation of basic working conditions, police violence and even shooting; and Egypt, where child labour is extensively employed in export sectors like commercial agriculture, textiles, leather and carpet-making.

Again, India's failure to address child labour in its carpet sector is marred by the exporters in Nepal making carpets under good working conditions ensured by the trade union; similarly the trade unions of coal miners in India are helpless.

The whole developing world suffers from China's violation of all the core labour standards, magnetizing it so as to induce multinational companies who tend to uproot their production from other developing countries in order to materialize low labour costs in China.

Where the twin objectives; attracting FDI and the MNCs stays at the heart of such manoeuvres, tackling these problems, calls for nothing but a gigantic collective effort from WTO and the ILO.

The worn-out ideas regarding unionism are another challenge. The INTUC for instance is committed to Gandhian concept of self-sacrifice in India. Many of its former leaders practised it to an extent until they moved to political leadership positions and began to hold ministerial offices.

This impedes the fructification of the idea of introducing salaried professionals in the trade unions. Maybe the idea of revival of a trade union college as was run by ICFTU in 1950s and 1960s helps churn out qualified MBA's, oriented towards healthy and humanistic unionism in India.

A big challenge comes in the form of lack of finances, not only in Asian regions, but surprisingly in rich western countries as well. For example, trade union laws provide for less than a cent as subscriptions.

Sea-farers and banking unions and other white-collar unions in some cases collect subscriptions almost equivalent to a US dollar, but in most cases union subscriptions are very low. National centres receive a measly fraction of the already small subscriptions. Therefore national trade union centres have to depend on outside sources.

In fact, in the civil services in India and Pakistan, the British had introduced a foreign service concept of accepting elected general secretary on duty with lien in service and seniority protected during the tenure of office of the general secretary.

The salary was paid out of the union's funds as reimbursement to the government department. This is prevalent only in Post and Telegraph department or maybe in the railways.

In Pakistan, the All Pakistan Federation of Labour (APFOL) holds the candle as a supreme entity. With hundreds and thousands of members, it has so far conducted around sixty national and regional and 300 local and plant level courses where the number of participants exceeds 8,000.

A salient feature that marks its organization is its manuals which cover issues ranging from OSH (Occupational Safety and Health), collective bargaining, trade union finance, labour laws and gender awareness to economic literacy and family planning (for further details visit: www.apfol.org.pk).

Above all, it is allied with International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU). Of course, it cannot escape the challenges similar to Asian trade unions of its like.

For the issues discussed above, the trade unions need not only to assure alliances with the International Trade Secretariats (ITSs), but also to promote global unionism using existing organizations to build tripartite social partnership at the global level, ceding more responsibility to the ITS and the ICFTU to play much more of an active trade union role at a transnational level and developing social movement-based trade unionism certainly involving direct contact between members and communities, to ultimately improve the plight of underprivileged and exploited Lilliputians.