
Issue No 70		07 September 2000

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International

Turning Up The Heat

John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO says the union movement can and will reform the global economy, for as Dr Martin Luther King taught us, the moral arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.

This speech was delivered just prior to the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle late last year. The AFL-CIO is the peak union body in the United States.

My thanks to the National Press Club for inviting me to use this prestigious forum to speak on behalf of the 40 million people in America's working families that our unions represent. Nothing will have a greater impact on the lives of those working families than the future direction of the global economy, the rules by which it operates and the values that inform those rules.

Events of this month have dramatically framed the struggle over that direction. But the questions of the WTO agenda and China's role are only the current focus. The larger questions of how to bring fairness and stability to the global economy will not end with the upcoming meeting of the WTO in Seattle.

The administration says the China trade deal and the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle will be historic, and we agree. But history won't be made at the meeting of trade ministers there. The truly historic turn of events will take place in the streets of that wonderful working class city.

On November 30th, tens of thousands of working men and women and their families from across America and countries across the world will rally and march in Seattle. We will be joined by 200 international union leaders representing over 135 million workers from more than 100 countries.

We will call upon the delegates to the World Trade Organization to address workers' rights and human rights as well as environmental and consumer protections in the rules that govern the global economy - demands that are supported by workers from Argentina to South Korea, from South Africa to the Czech Republic, tens of millions of workers from developing as well as developed countries.

The confrontation in Seattle will signal an end to the era of trade accords negotiated behind closed doors and the beginning of a new era in which working families participate in trade decisions that affect our lives.

The attempt to bring China into the WTO intensifies our determination, because we believe it is less likely to reform China, as its advocates claim, than it is to further deform the WTO. And it is more likely to detract from the WTO's already questionable legitimacy than to add to it.

The White House and the business community are working hard to sell the China deal and to launch a "millennial round" of trade negotiations.

Editorials pose a choice between free trade and protectionism, between engaging China and isolating it, between embracing the global market and turning our backs on it. Opponents are being dismissed as part of the past, and as obstacles to the prosperous future of the new economy.

This is nonsense. The debate isn't about free trade or protection, engagement or isolation. We all know we're part of a global economy. And we're so engaged that we're already running a $60 billion trade deficit with China.

The real debate is not over whether to be part of the global economy, but over what are the rules for that economy and who makes them - not whether to engage China, but what are the terms of that engagement, and whose values are to be represented.

Global corporations have defined the global market and dominate it. They enlisted governments to slash regulations, free up capital, open up markets, guarantee investments. They made the rules and they cut the deals.

The World Trade Organization, founded five years ago, is the capstone of the corporate-dominated world marketplace - it oversees and enforces the rules of the global economy, arbitrates trade conflicts, and claims the authority to challenge state and national laws that conflict with its rules -- rules that protect corporate interests, but not people.

Each year in France, at least 2000 workers die of asbestos-related cancer. Yet when the French voted to ban all forms of asbestos, the law was challenged as a violation of the WTO's trade accords.

And in Massachusetts in 1998, voters were told that to boycott companies doing business with the slave labor regime of Burma would run afoul of the WTO.

China cannot be admitted to the WTO on these terms. If states and localities decide to boycott any business using forced labor in China, will China be able to challenge that action as a violation of the WTO?

If students and workers gather again before a Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square and the Chinese leaders slaughter them once again, will China have the right to challenge U.S. trade sanctions as a violation of the WTO?

Renato Ruggerio, former director of the WTO, claimed it was creating "a constitution for the global economy." If so, it is a constitution by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations. It is a constitution with a Bill of Rights that guarantees only the rights of property.

Not surprisingly then, the global economy works well for the multinationals. Under the WTO they created, global corporations now control about one third of all export trade.

But the global economy does not work to the benefit of working people - the 200 richest people in the world have a greater combined income than two billion of our poorest brothers and sisters. The World Bank reports that 200 million more people live in abject poverty today than in 1987.

Over the last 25 years, the global economy has produced slower growth and greater inequality in both less developed and industrial nations. Financial collapses have grown more severe and more frequent.

Working families have suffered most, because indebted countries have little choice but to compete by lowering their own standards, establish export processing zones, outlaw worker organizing, waive environmental laws, ignore food safety and public health regulations, and slash social spending.

So every day, some 250 million children across the world go to work rather than to school, making goods that flow freely across national borders.

Every day, tens of thousands of workers are chained into forced labor and prison camps, slaving to make products that enrich global corporations and dictatorial governments.

Every day, millions of workers work for less than a living wage making products they cannot afford to buy.

Yet when working people across the world try to join together to gain decent wages and safe working conditions, what happens?

Last year more than a thousand workers trying to organize in their workplaces were killed. Thousands were arrested and imprisoned. Tens of thousands were fired, losing their livelihoods, devastating their families.

For all the talk about free trade and democracy, when corporations invest in developing countries, they send more money to dictatorships than to democracies.

China, which has the worst practices of any country, already gets the most investment by far - and this is a country where anyone attempting to organize a union is immediately arrested and imprisoned - no exceptions.

Even in the industrial democracies, working families have not fared well because growth has been slower and inequality greater.

Japan has been in depression for a decade, with workers losing the security they once enjoyed. Europe is scarred by long term unemployment with countries pressured to cut back worker benefits. Here in the United States, inequality has been rising, and families pay the price while men and women work longer and harder in jobs that offer fewer benefits and less security.

For working families in this country, the global economy is not an abstraction. Many jobs are dependent on exports. Many are lost to imports. Employers routinely use the threat to move abroad as a club in contract negotiations.

Last year's global financial collapse produced tremors on Wall Street but trauma in Pittsburgh. Even with the economy growing, the U.S. lost more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 18 months as devastated countries tried to export their way out of trouble.

The most efficient steelworkers in the world saw their jobs swept away by a flood of dumped imports, and when they sought relief from the flood, the President told them unilateral action would run afoul of the WTO.

Seated here with me today is one of the workers I'm talking about. John Folk and 1,100 other workers were employed at the Huffy Corp. bike factory in Celina, Ohio, where they built the best bikes in the world for a company that was making a profit. John was a local leader for the Steelworkers Union, which helped those workers share in their company's success with wages averaging $15 to $16 an hour.

But last year, the Huffy bike company decided to shut down their prosperous plant to move to a less efficient plant in Mexico and import more bikes from China, where workers are not allowed to organize together to lift their standards. The directors took home a multi-million dollar bonus. The workers got a pink slip.

Workers like John will be with us in Seattle to put our version of a "human face" on the global economy.

America's working families understand the cruelty of a world economy regulated in favor of the corporations. A majority understands that trade accords like NAFTA hurt us more than they help. Four out of five Americans want labor rights and environmental protections built into trade accords. Over two thirds oppose bringing China into the WTO without further progress on human rights and religious freedom.

Public opinion around the world is fueling a growing protest movement that has begun to make itself heard in the halls of power and win real change.

We stopped fast track trade authority in the Congress not once but twice -- despite the best efforts of the Republican leaders of Congress, the Democratic President and the Business Roundtable.

When Jubilee 2000 enlisted church and labor support across the world, debt relief finally got onto the global agenda.

When an international movement of workers, consumers and environmentalists challenged the acceleration of financial deregulation by the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, they brought its closed negotiations to a halt.

And when students learned that items branded with the names of institutions of higher learning were being manufactured at a cost of human misery around the world, an anti-sweatshop campaign spread like wildfire on college and university campuses.

Many of the leaders of that movement will be with us in Seattle, and some are here today. I'd like to ask the students from United Students Against Sweatshops to stand and be recognized so we can tell them, "Don't stop short of total disclosure."

The students are proving that corporations and others in power may not see the light, but they feel the heat, and we are going to keep raising the temperature.

President Clinton seemed to get the message when he told the WTO that it has to open up and incorporate workers' rights and environmental concerns. The administration says it is committed to bringing labor rights into the WTO and as a first step in Seattle, it is actually pushing hard for a WTO working group on trade and labor rights.

But a working group, even if it is achieved, is only a start - we cannot and will not be satisfied with gestures or cosmetics. A "human face" on the global economy isn't enough - we want a body of laws that work for working people.

Moreover, as I said at the beginning of this week, it is disgustingly hypocritical for the White House to posture for workers' rights in the global economy at the same time it prostrates itself for a deal with China that treats human rights as a disposable nuisance.

It is time to cut through the posturing - when it comes to making the global economy work for working people, there is no third way, only a right way and a wrong way.

Incorporating enforceable workers' rights, human rights and environmental protections in every U.S. trade and investment agreement is the right way; admitting a repressive China into the WTO is the wrong way. Prohibiting the import of goods manufactured by children is the right way; excluding the voices of working families from the WTO is the wrong way.

Let me be clear about our plans to move the right way forward.

In Seattle, working people from across the world will call on the WTO to review its record and reform its rules before taking on new areas for negotiation. Our objectives are simple.

Every worker deserves protection of basic human rights - prohibitions against child labor, slave labor, discrimination, and the freedom to join together with others in a union.

The WTO must incorporate rules to enforce workers' rights and environmental and consumer protections and compliance should be required of any new member.

WTO proceedings must be opened up to give citizens a meaningful voice.

National and state laws and regulations concerning public health and the environment must be safe from global veto.

And the ability of governments to safeguard their people from devastating import surges or product dumping must be strengthened.

Until the WTO addresses these important issues, there will be no support for a major new round of trade negotiations.

But we will not simply wait for the WTO to act - Seattle is the beginning of a fight we will carry to every level of our government.

We will continue to organize in the Congress against any trade accords that do not include workers' rights and environmental protections.

We will continue to reject any fast track authority that does not require negotiation of enforceable workers' rights.

We will oppose the admission of any nation to the WTO until it is in compliance with core workers' rights -- and that means we will wage a full and vigorous campaign against granting permanent NTR status to China.

Supported by the vast majority of Americans, we will build a majority in Congress to sustain our position.

We realize that the business community has hired big gun lobbyists to run a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign and push the China deal through the Congress, but we'll counter their money with mobilization and we will make certain that working families in every congressional district are aware of the position of every candidate.

Both Vice President Gore and Senator Bradley have pledged to demand that workers' rights and environmental protections be part of future trade authority and enforced in future trade accords.

We don't know how they will reconcile their promise with their support for the China agreement, but we will hold them to their word, and urge the Republican candidates to join them in that pledge.

We will call upon the White House to translate its rhetoric about workers' rights into action. Recently, President Clinton issued an Executive Order banning federal contracting with companies that employ one specific form of child labor and we will ask that it be expanded to ban procurement of any products produced in conditions that violate fundamental workers' rights.

We will work to make American law reflect American values - under current law, countries that enjoy trade preferences in America can be stripped of them if they violate core workers' rights, but the enforcement process is slow and difficult.

We will work with congressional allies to strengthen our laws to make sure respect for workers' rights and the environment becomes a reality for all of our trading partners and we will urge Congress to strengthen laws that safeguard U.S. industry from import surges or dumping efforts.

Clearly, the agreement with China suggests that the business community is not yet convinced that basic human rights and environmental protections must be incorporated into the trading accords. We must turn up the heat.

To do that, our central labor councils and state federations will take the message of Seattle to their state legislatures and city councils, where they will seek legislation and executive orders that ban procurement of goods produced in conditions that violate fundamental workers' rights.

If the WTO will not enforce workers' rights and environmental protections, then national and local governments must act to do so. Let the WTO explain to citizens why they cannot choose to boycott companies producing goods with child labor in Honduras, or slave labor in Burma, or workers who are locked up when they try to organize a union in China.

Seattle marks the beginning of a new order. The China deal is the final and most extreme example of the corporate era of trade negotiations. The popular protest in Seattle escalates the struggle to make the global economy work for the many and not just the few.

At the turn of the last century, when the great trusts and banks of the Gilded Era forged a national industrial economy, America faced a similar challenge.

It was an era of sweatshops, child labor, brutal repression of workers, and poisonous workplace conditions. The new industrial giants enlisted the government and the courts to suppress local attempts to regulate them and literally arrest efforts to organize them.

It took decades of courageous organizing, sacrifice and struggle and a Great Depression, but eventually we wrote new rules - including the minimum wage, a forty hour week, workplace health and safety, the right to organize, anti-trust, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The result, after World War II, was a growing economy in which the blessings were widely shared, and the great American middle class created.

Now we face the same daunting circumstances in the global economy and once again, we confront sweatshops, child labor and brutal repression. Once again, corporations enlist private tribunals to strike down efforts to regulate them. And once again, we must struggle and sacrifice to write new rules to ensure that the blessings of this new economy are shared and its excesses controlled.

Those who say that corporate free trade is the future and that the demand for workers' rights and environmental protections are part of the past have it wrong.

They are proven wrong by workers in south China who risk arrest to demand a living wage. They are proven wrong by small farmers in the Philippines who demand protection against fields poisoned by foreign corporations. They are proven wrong by American students who demand an end to sweatshop labor, and they will be proven wrong by those of us who will gather in Seattle to begin lifting our country up to a high road into the 21st century.

The paths to that road are steep. Our adversaries are powerful and entrenched.

But we can and will reform the global economy because we have faith in what Dr. Martin Luther King taught us, that the moral arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.

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Issue 70 contents

Interview: New Internationalism
In its battle with Rio Tinto the CFMEU has pioneered global campaigning. National Secretary John Maitland talks to Workers Online about globalisation, a union response and using new technologies to organise .

History: Pickets and Police
S11 protestors would do well to be wary. Fred Paterson, CPA member of the Qld Parliament, was bashed by the Queensland police on St Patrick's Day 1948, when a Labor Government was in power in that state.

Education: The WEF -Why Should We Care?
An event like the World Economic Forum attracts all the spin doctors for every interest, often obscuring real issues. For educators the issues may seem remote but a closer look shows that services like public education could be dramatically affected by the unfolding agenda of global trade liberalisation says Rob Durbridge.

Economics: A Vandalised Economy
Since New Zealand was opened up to the forces of globalisation, it has performed dismally, both economically and socially. NZCTU Economist Peter Conway reports.

Unions: Our Vital Role in Society
Eight months into his new role as ACTU Secretary Greg Combet reflects on the challenges facing Australian unions.

International: Turning Up The Heat
John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO says the union movement can and will reform the global economy, for as Dr Martin Luther King taught us, the moral arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.

Satire: Threat to withhold pocket money derails S11 protest
MELBOURNE, Tuesday: Members of the activist collective S11 announced today that they had decided to cancel their protest at the upcoming World Economic Forum meeting at Crown Casino.

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