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Capitol
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NO
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Labor
rallies in Washington on April 12. Note to politicians
of all political parties: Don't take labor's support for
granted. Photo ©2000, Bill Burke, Impact Visuals |
One of the benefits of living near Washington,
D.C., is that you can attend rallies and protests for and
against various things without having to endure the hellride
of getting there. Who can forget the joy of all-night rides
followed by all-day rallies? And there’s nothing like a
whiff of a reeking chemical toilet in the back of your bus or
the thrill of pit-stop eating to remind you that our cause is
just. Let’s have a moment of silence for all those who dare
to venture into our nation’s capital to march and
demonstrate.
I recently had the pleasure of joining about
15,000 union members at one of these grand events here in
Washington, D.C. Back on April 12, I took a quick trip down to
the U.S. Capitol to add myself to the crowd that had assembled
to protest the looming trade deal with China.
The AFL-CIO and a number of affiliates did a
good job of putting this demonstration together and bringing
in the rank-and-file. It was nice to be with fellow unionists
who have suffered the destructive consequences of our
anti-union U.S. trade deals. It was even nicer to be among
those fed up with the U.S. government policy of working with
corporations to close factories here and move them to the
growing sweatshop empires around the world.
OF SORRY RECORDS
As I was walking up to the crowd, a leafleter
handed me a check-sized piece of paper. It was a blank check
made out to "China," and signed "United States
Congress." This was the theme of the day. Speaker after
speaker echoed the message of "No Blank Check for
China!" Speaker after speaker went to work exposing and
denouncing the sorry labor-rights record of China.
(Unfortunately, very little was said about the sorry
labor-rights record of the good old U.S.A., or about the
multinational corporations that are behind the China deal.)
Labor leaders, politicians, and even a couple
of environmentalists took the stage to blast moves to
"normalize" what can only be described as our
profoundly abnormal trade relations with China. How abnormal?
Try this: every month, Big Business buys and imports more than
$6 billion worth of products over and above what they sell to
China. That’s right, the U.S. runs a $6 billion per month
trade deficit with China alone! Just go to WalMart or KMart
and you’ll see why.
SOMETHING'S MISSING
HERE
But something was missing from this fine
demonstration. About halfway through, it hit me. No blank
check for China — sure! But why on earth does organized
labor continue to give a blank check to the Democrats? Did I
miss something, or did the Clinton administration scoop up
labor’s money and votes and then fight hard for every single
antiworker trade deal for the last eight years? And what about
Al Gore? Where is he on China trade or the other job-killing
trade deals? Where is he on a lot of things?
When I got home from the demonstration, I
decided to check Al Gore’s website to see what he has to say
about trade, labor, labor law reform, and the like. Last year
when I poked around on his website, words like
"union" and "labor" were missing. This
time around we at least broke the surface — but not by much.
The Gore site (www.algore2000.com) has a
section called "Vice President Al Gore: Fighting for
Working Families." So far, so good, I thought. And it’s
quite a list. In addition to inventing the Internet, Gore also
takes credit for creating 20 million jobs. (I wasn’t
surprised to see no mention of the ones we lost through those
trade deals or through Gore’s Reinventing Government/slash
the federal workforce campaign.) He also personally revived
the construction industry. He lowered unemployment. He
increased wages. Who knew? What’s more, he’s for pay
equity, expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act, protecting
Social Security, defending real pensions, improving job
training, improving workplace health and safety — the list
goes on.
Gore even mentions his past support for
striker replacement legislation, although he repeats the
unbelievable exaggeration that in 1994 the Clinton regime was
"pulling out all the stops to secure passage" of
this critical bill. The truth is that Bill Clinton flew off to
Europe during the 1994 striker replacement Senate vote, Al
Gore was in hiding, and we got fewer votes in the end than in
an earlier vote during the Bush presidency. Someone should
tell Al to tell one of his consultants to tell a staffer to
rewrite that whole paragraph.
But what about trade? Gore’s position is
predictably fuzzy. It’s listed as "Promoting Free and
Fair Trade." Who could disagree with that? And in case
you were wondering, he does support "normalization"
of trade with China.
LEVEL PLAYING FIELDS?
The fact is, Gore has never met a pro-business
trade deal that he didn’t like. His website says that trade
agreements "must provide a level playing field for
American workers." Level with whom? With Chinese workers
desperate to earn 15 cents an hour? What kind of "fair
trade" is that — especially when workers don’t even
have the right to organize to change things?
And how about enabling workers in this country
to join unions? If Gore won’t defend the good factory jobs
that are left, at least he can support labor laws that would
allow us to unionize and turn the existing crummy jobs into
good ones.
Look under "Supporting the Rights of
Workers to Organize." I could hardly believe my eyes! For
a minute, I thought we had hit paydirt. But as I suspected,
Gore fails to support reform of our sadly broken labor laws.
After saying he’s for the right to organize, he says that as
a solution, he is "supporting administration efforts to
create a new arm of the International Labor Organization (ILO)
that will work with developing countries to protect the
interests of workers throughout the world."
Okay, you can stop laughing now. This kind of
silly nonsense should be reserved for the inside-the-beltway
crowd. Try getting the ILO to investigate the thousands of
workers who are fired every year for trying to join a union
here in the United States. Don’t hold your breath.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Let’s be honest. We have no problem holding
China accountable. That’s easy. We just can’t bring
ourselves to do the same with Al Gore and the Democrats. Labor
holds a good rally to expose the death, destruction, and
misery unleashed by the "free trade" race to the
bottom, but finds it impossible to hold Gore or the Democrats
responsible for their ongoing role in this criminal conspiracy
of government and Big Business. Worse yet, Gore refuses to
weigh in to help us win sweeping labor law reform, which would
enable unions to finally begin organizing large numbers of
workers again.
"No Blank Check for China." It’s a
good slogan. It just doesn’t go far enough. I make a motion
that organized labor amend it to say, "No Blank Check for
China or Al Gore." Or why not, "No Blank Check for
China, Al Gore, Democrats, or Anyone Else Who Wants Labor
Votes and Money"?
And on the subject of checks: sit down and
renew your membership in the Labor Party. Make a donation.
Affiliate your union local. Today. And get busy and recruit.
What are you waiting for? Al Gore?
Chris Townsend is political action director
of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of
America (UE).
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