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February
11-14, 2000 |
Open
World
Conference
Takes On
Free Trade
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©1999
Mike Konopacki |
Trade union leaders and activists from around
the world will gather in San Francisco February 11-14, 2000,
for the Open World Conference of Workers in Defense of Trade
Union Independence and Democratic Rights (OWC). The
conference, which has been endorsed by the Labor Party, along
with trade union federations, leaders, and activists in 74
countries, aims to develop strategies to combat
corporate-sponsored "free trade" and to preserve
workers’ hard-won gains.
'Death Struggle'
"We are in a death struggle against NAFTA
and its deprivations and against the corporate ‘free trade’
agenda," says Jack Henning, Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus
of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, and one of the
conference’s convenors. "These issues strike at the
heart of the labor movement." The OWC is an effort by
workers and their organizations to "think globally"
about how to confront corporations that are pitting workers in
one part of the world against workers in another in an effort
to drive down wages.
International Longshore and Warehouse Union
President Brian McWilliams, a Labor Party founding member,
supplies an example of how this divide-and-conquer strategy
works. Sugar and pineapple workers in Hawaii — members of
ILWU — were once "the best-paid agricultural workers in
the world," he says, producing the best product with the
highest yield per acre. "But the competition from cheap
foreign sugar, produced for subsistence wages with no
environmental or labor standards and dumped on the world
market, drove most of the Hawaii producers out of business.
And of course, it sent thousands of workers into unemployment
with no means of finding new jobs in those rural communities.
At the same time, those workers producing sugar overseas do
not have the opportunity to share in the wealth. Workers on
both sides lost."
Globalization with a
Human Face?
President Clinton and other heads of state are
pushing for what they call "globalization with a human
face." They are trying to get unions to endorse their
global trade schemes by promising "social pacts" or
"roundtable agreements" that at least nominally
address worker rights issues. These efforts are a "ploy
to try to make trade unions responsible for carrying out
layoffs, downsizing, and the elimination of benefits,"
charges Labor Party Co-Chair Baldemar Velasquez, president of
the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.
The "social pacts" will be a key
issue discussed at the Open World Conference. The gathering
will also discuss sweatshops, child labor, the need to uphold
the International Labor Organization’s standards, and the
effect of IMF and World Bank policies on Africa, Asia, and
Latin America.
The conference is open to all. Those who can’t
attend are encouraged to send a donation to help sponsor trade
unionists from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
For more information,
contact OWC co-coordinators Ed Rosario and Mya Shone
at 415-641-8616 or e-mail them at owc@igc.org.
Send contributions to OWC, c/o San Francisco Labor
Council, 1188 Franklin St., Suite 203, San Francisco, CA
94109.
— Mya Shone and Ed Rosario |
