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Globalization
& World
Trade
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In
the Wake of Seattle ...
We've Barely Begun
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"Open markets," said Bill Clinton in
his recent State of the Union address, "are the best
engines we know of for raising living standards, reducing
global poverty, and environmental destruction."
So what were those 40,000 workers, farmers,
and environmentalists from around the world doing in Seattle
November 30 – December 3? While inside the World Trade
Organization meeting, delegates from different parts of the
globe clashed, outside on the street there was a stunning
unity. One thing everyone could agree on: "Open
markets" and "free trade" are about global
corporations putting their feet on the necks of workers
everywhere — reducing living standards, degrading the
environment, and robbing people of democratic control.
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One thing everyone could agree on: "Open
markets" and "free trade" are about global
corporations putting their feet on the necks of workers
everywhere ... |
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"This was the first thing I’ve ever
seen in this country that wasn’t against a policy or a
position — it was against capital. It was against The Gap
and McDonalds and Nike. And that made it different,"
observes David Brooks, who reported on the protests for the
Mexican daily La Jornada. He adds that "the energy behind
it was youth and students, who came to the farmers’ rallies,
who picked up the steelworkers’ slogans, who were everywhere
and put their bodies on the line." In solidarity, the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union, a Labor Party
endorser, shut down ports in every west coast city on the
opening day of the Seattle meeting.
"This is the beginning of a new movement
to take back this country," Labor Party organizer Tony
Mazzocchi told people at an LP reception in Seattle during the
protests. "And not only for us in this country, but for
workers all around the world who are fighting to take back
their countries." The Labor Party took part in the WTO
protests and LP representatives spoke at several of the many
forums that took place over the week.
NOTHING SIMPLE
There’s nothing simple about the issues
surrounding trade and the global economy, as the debate inside
the WTO demonstrated. There, the world’s most powerful
supporter of "free trade," Bill Clinton, feeling the
heat from protesters, called for a WTO "working group on
labor rights." He even told a Seattle paper that some
day, countries that didn’t meet labor standards would be
sanctioned.
While most protesters thought Clinton’s
proposal lacked substance, it was still hotly opposed by
representatives from many less developed countries of the
southern hemisphere. They argued that rich countries like the
U.S. will only use such standards to shut them out of trade
and degrade their economic well-being. They rankled at having
the U.S., which hasn’t even ratified most of the
International Labor Organization’s conventions on labor
rights, presume to judge them on their own labor records. They
were also outraged that although they outnumbered
representatives from the U.S. and Europe at the WTO summit,
they were often literally shut out of the meatiest
negotiations. It was partly this tension between the U.S. and
the South that brought the summit to an unsuccessful close.
MAKING MATTERS WORSE
But workers from some of the same developing
nations protesting outside take a different view. While they
might share the fear of domination by the U.S. and U.S.-based
corporations, they think unfettered trade will only make
matters worse. Under NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO, together with
such global institutions as the International Monetary Fund,
governments in developing countries have been forced to pursue
policies that impoverish working people: cutbacks in social
programs, deregulation, suppression of labor rights, and other
concessions designed to attract foreign investment and put the
focus on exports.
The main victims of all this are, of course,
workers. And, notes Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm
Labor Organizing Committee and Labor Party co-chair: "The
third world governments that were inside the WTO meeting
protesting against a labor rights clause — they weren’t
representing workers. They represented the people in power in
those countries."
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Build A Just
Transition Movement
to Protect Jobs and
the Environment
From
the
Labor Party's program,
A Call for Economic Justice
This Labor Party affirms its commitment to a clean
and safe environment. We all need clean workplaces, clean air, and clean water. But we
also need our jobs.
We reject the false choice of jobs or the
environment. We will not be held hostage by corporate polluters who poison our workplaces
and our communities.
We refuse this corporate blackmail. Corporations are
not interested in either saving our jobs or protecting the environment.
But we also know that environmental change is
coming. What we produce and how we produce will change as steps are taken to protect
people and the natural environment from harm.
The Labor Party will support taking such steps if
and only if the livelihoods of working people endangered by environmental change are fully
protected.
Therefore, the Labor Party calls for the creation of
a new worker-oriented environmental movement — a Just Transition Movement — that
puts forth a fair and just transition program to protect both jobs and the environment.
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All workers with jobs endangered by steps taken to
protect the environment are to be made whole and to receive full income and benefits as
they make the difficult transition to alternative work.
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The cost of this Just Transition Income Support
program will be paid for by taxes on corporate polluters.
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'ECONOMIC EXTORTION'
"When NAFTA was being wheeled and dealed,
people were saying that one reason we needed the agreement was
so that the Mexican economy would grow and workers would
eventually be earning enough to buy products from the
U.S.," says José Bravo of the Southwest Network for
Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ). "But salaries
in Mexico are now on a par with what they were in 1962. So
that tells us NAFTA hasn’t done anything to equalize things.
We want trade, we see that globalization is a fact, but that
doesn’t mean we want to be held hostage so that every time
we want to organize or have labor laws enforced, a company can
just move to another country. We call it economic extortion,
where a person, in order to have a job, has to take the worst
kind of job, the worst paid, and give up a lot of their human
rights." SNEEJ is a coalition of 72 organizations,
including 28 in Mexico. Most represent people of color
concerned about environmental degradation and health and
safety dangers facing workers and the community on both sides
of the U.S.-Mexico border. The coalition sent a delegation of
17 people to Seattle for the WTO protests.
Bravo believes that Just Transition, a concept
initiated by the Labor Party (see sidebar at left), is essential to ensuring that
workers are not victimized by trade liberalization or forced
to compete against one another. Just Transition calls for a
tax on corporations to create a fund to provide substantial
support for workers and their communities when jobs are lost
due to trade, new technology, or the transition to less
polluting industries.
The common denominator for unionists from all
around the globe is that corporations shouldn’t be allowed
to pit workers against one another, driving wages and working
conditions lower and lower. Many also agree that the trade
rules set by entities like the WTO are essentially robbing the
nations of the world of their sovereignty. Under these trade
rules, laws workers have fought and sometimes died for can be
overturned by a tiny group of trade bureaucrats we’ll never
know and certainly didn’t elect.
Unionists from North and South also seem to
share the belief that there should be enforceable global labor
standards. However, opinions differ on what those rules should
be and who should create and enforce them.
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