MOSCOW (Sputnik), Daria Chernyshova — There is no evidence that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal will create millions of new jobs in member countries, the policy adviser with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), world’s largest trade union promoting workers’ rights, told Sputnik.
The text of the TPP deal between 12 Pacific Rim nations was published for the first time on Thursday, following five years of closed-door talks by trade officials.
"There is no R&D that more jobs will be created," Yorgos Altintzis, the policy adviser at the Belgium-based trade union network that operates in 186 countries, said on Friday, stressing that job creation depends on various factors, not just free trade.
"I don’t think I can say it will destroy jobs, but it will not create millions of jobs. So it could be balanced, it could have positive and negative effects on job creation," Altintzis said, adding that wages in specific sectors could drop.
Altintzis predicted that big multinational enterprises would be the winners as they would have more opportunities to enter or increase their presence in other markets.
"I think big news is going to be mainly in services areas, especially financial services, because it is going to consolidate the markets of Japan and Canada, and US and Australia, and Singapore," Yorgos Altintzis said.
He added that these countries already had big companies which would buy out smaller companies, "so there is going to be a concentration of market power especially in services."
Altintzis stressed that the situation where big companies swallow smaller companies is bad, especially for the financial services. During the 2008 global financial crisis, national governments were forced to bail out large banks because their failure was feared to hurt economies.
"In the financial crashes of 2008 we learned that it is not a good thing to have companies that are too big to fail. This agreement, and TISA and TTIP and other agreements coming later are going to do exactly that," Altintzis warned.
The Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) is one of the secretive deals that the United States has been negotiating with 22 other parties alongside the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe.
