Global Labor Strategies

Driving Dangerously

(GLS staff members have returned from a visit to Beijing and Shanghai in April and early May. This is the first of a number of posts prompted by the trip that will appear over the next month or so.)

According to a new report, China has now surpassed the US as the world’s largest total emitter of greenhouse gasses. (Of course, the US retains the dubious honor of leading the world in per captia emissions.) This raises the question: is it possible for China and the developing world to find a path to sustainable development at a pace necessary to raise hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Given the current development trajectory, there is reason to worry.

One thumbnail measure of how aggressive a country is in combating global warming is how easy it is to cross a city street. This tells you a lot about which mode of transportation is privileged by law and public policy: do non-polluting pedestrians and bicycles have the right-of-way, or do carbon spewing motor vehicles? In China, the answer in cities like Beijing and Shanghai becomes clear as soon as you step onto the street on the walk signal: cars, trucks, and buses, utilizing the right on red rule, regularly honk and push through the throngs of people on the cross walks. Pedestrians and bicyclists beware.

China has plunged headlong into the automobile culture and on China’s roads, the car is now king. Gone are the massed pelotons of workers riding bicycles home at rush hour, replaced now by traffic jams of cars, taxis, and buses and (on a more positive note) subway cars loaded to “crush” capacity. While bike lanes are still a fixture on Chinese roads, and many in Beijing and Shanghai still ride bikes or electric mopeds, one now has to travel to European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam to find genuinely bicycle friendly big cities.

While Beijing and Shanghai both have clean and efficient subway systems that would be the envy of any city, they are hopelessly overburdened and do not yet provide adequate coverage in these rapidly sprawling cities. New public transport is desperately needed and some is on the way.

But, China has massively invested in the internal combustion engine. It has built a world class road and highway system in much of the country. Automobile production is growing by double digits every year: according the Beijing Review, production in the first quarter of this year was up 20% and by 24% in March.  Each day 1300 new cars join the 3.35 million vehicles already on Beijing’s roads.

When Global Labor and China's Union Talk

(Note: half of GLS's staff is travelling in China, the other half is busy on different assignments, so we will be posting only sporadically until early May.)

In our recently released report, Why China Matters: Labor Rights in the Era of Globalization and in a subsequent post, Labor’s Opening to China, we discuss new and on-going efforts by global labor organizations to open a dialogue with the All China Federation of Trade Unions, China’s only legal union. We argue in some detail that the talks are long overdue but that they pose problems for both sides.

Western unions want a presence on the ground in China where so many of the companies that employ their members have set up shop.  But they worry about giving their stamp of approval to a state/party affiliated union that may sign sweetheart agreements with global corporations. And indeed, at the local level, the ACFTU, by all accounts, often functions as a management dominated company union in the workplaces where it is present. 

The ACFTU wants global recognition and support in a world increasingly skeptical of Chinese institutions but they must also worry that Western unions often talk cooperation abroad and practice protectionism at home.  China bashing is still a standard part of the repertory of many unions despite the fact that it is US based and other foreign corporations—not the Chinese government—that drive much of China’s export oriented economy.

Both sets of concerns are legitimate.

It is a given that unions, like other organizations, have institutional, industrial , and national interests that they seek to promote and these interests shape their actions abroad to a significant extent.  But unions are also learning an important lesson of modern diplomacy:  it is essential to talk even with those with whom you may not agree.  Engagement need not be a sign of approval, but rather a search for common interests. It is in this spirit that non-Chinese labor organizations and the ACFTU should conduct their dialogues.

King’s Legacy Grows Green in Memphis

Today they’d be called “green-collar jobs” - cleaning up the environment. Back then, the workers who performed those jobs were just garbage men. And they were treated like garbage. Martin Luther King Jr. died fighting to make their green-collar jobs be good jobs.

On the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination, the green-collar jobs group Green for All is bringing people from all over the country to Memphis, Tennessee, April 4-6 for The Dream Reborn, a celebration of the life of Dr. King - and a call to create millions of good green-collar jobs as a pathway out of poverty.

The Dream Reborn will “bring together a generation of new leaders who are taking on the chief moral obligation of the 21st century, building a green economy for all.”

The gathering will dramatize the message that “today we must respond with the same courage to perhaps the biggest crisis our species has ever collectively faced: global warming.”

We believe that if Dr. King were with us today, he would be working to build a green economy - strong enough to lift people out of poverty and restore hope to America. He would be standing with those communities that have been locked out of the last century’s pollution-based economy. And he would indeed be working to ensure that ALL our people, the entire beloved community, is included in the emerging clean and renewable economic vision.

How Green Is Your Collar?

[this post by GLS staff oringinally appeared on The Nation.com March 26, 2008]http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080407/brecher_et_al

As cities and states from New York to California to Minnesota race to invent policies to address global warming, new mandates for investment in green energy will produce many billions of investment dollars. In the short run, the Bush Administration stands in the way, but major federal legislation this year or next is almost a foregone conclusion--and the carbon market it will establish will generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year and create thousands, even millions, of new jobs. But the realities of how Americans will work and what jobs they will have in a green future are only beginning to be addressed.

Nearly 1,000 trade unionists, environmentalists, green businesspeople, political leaders and allies came together recently in Pittsburgh to explore these issues at the first annual conference on " Good Jobs, Green Jobs," sponsored by the Blue-Green Alliance of the United Steelworkers Union and the Sierra Club.

It has taken labor a long time to address the threat of global warming--the AFL-CIO even lobbied against the Kyoto Protocol. It doesn't help when environmentalists don't stand up to insist on protecting workers from the pain that may accompany environmental protections. But all that may be changing. For example, the AFL-CIO Executive Council issued a statement March 4 on "greening the economy" that said, "It is time for our nation to take bold steps to meet the 21st century challenges related to climate change."

There are both risks and opportunities for labor in the shift to a green economy. For coal miners, for example, restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions might mean real job losses, and many environmentalists are deeply concerned by the insistence by some union leaders on continuing a coal-based economy. But for Midwestern steelworkers, the building of parts for wind turbines is already a source of thousands of jobs.

There is a growing consensus that greening will on aggregate produce more jobs, but they are likely to be spread across a wide range of occupations and industries. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Teamsters sent significant delegations to the conference but didn't call attention to jobs that are threatened or those likely to expand as a result of new climate change policies. Indeed, the conference focused more on the overall implications of those policies than on their consequences for particular unions. Marianne McMullen, SEIU communications director, told the conference that in years to come, "The environmental movement may be the only movement" as different groups come together to build a new economy.

New GLS Report - Why China Matters: Labor Rights in the Age of Globalization

Nearly three years ago GLS undertook an informal listening project to hear what was on the minds of labor leaders, labor rights advocates, and NGO staff from around the world as they grappled with the challenges of globalization.

It is clear that globalization has produced a host of challenges for worker and social movements. But when we asked those we interviewed what specific issues they faced were most perplexing, at or near the top of nearly everyone’s list was what to do about China.

No wonder. China has become a focal point for much of the questioning and insecurity that globalization has produced. For the past two decades China has experienced explosive economic growth that has attracted jobs and capital from around the world. Today 25% of the global workforce is Chinese. No other industrializing country has ever attracted jobs at both the high and low ends of the production chain. From basic level assembly work to the upper tiers of industry and services, China is setting the global norm for working standards around the world.  Workers in rich countries and poor countries alike, in almost every nook and cranny of the global economy, feel the effect of China.

Crucial to addressing China’s global impact is the often ignored fact that the driving forces in China’s labor market are the global corporations that move to China to lower labor costs and use the threat of this mobility as a lever to drive down wages and working conditions for workers in other countries, and even within China itself. China has welcomed foreign firms with open arms. A partnership has developed based on a quid pro quo: the Chinese government provides a compliant low wage labor force in exchange for massive foreign investment.

Over the past 3 years, GLS has produced scores of articles and two major reports on labor law reform in China. We have paid particular attention to the critical role played by global corporations in China’s development.  This report builds on that work. Why China Matters: Labor Rights in the Age of Globalization provides background information needed to understand the issues involved and why the outcome of this battle matters so much to people everywhere.

Download the pdf version of the report here. Read below for a summary of the report.

Why China Matters: Labor Rights in the Age of Globalization

This report examines the forces at work inside and outside of China pushing for and against labor rights reforms.

Part one provides a survey of China’s new global economic power and its impact on the global economy.  A case study from Namibia shows how employers use China as leverage to suppress wages, working conditions, and labor rights in other countries.

Part two examines the development of the Chinese working class. We briefly look at the structure of the Chinese workforce in the period before the era of economic reform began in the 1980s. Then we look at how the largest migration in human history—the movement of 200 million people from China’s countryside to its cities—reshaped China’s working class and its labor markets.  Finally, we look at the reasons migrants leave the countryside and the conditions they face in the cities.

Labor’s Opening to China

The announcement in December by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) that it would begin a “dialog” with the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) marks a sea change in global labor’s approach to China.  Equally significant is the endorsement of the talks by the AFL-CIO.  Until now, the ITUC, the AFL-CIO, and most national labor federations shunned official contacts with the ACFTU—China’s sole legal union—because they did not consider the party-state controlled organization a legitimate representative of China’s workers. 

But, according to Guy Ryder, the ITUC’s General Secretary,

“By starting a dialogue with the Chinese trade union, ITUC wants to have more influence on the ground in China….It should enable us also to discuss the role of China in the world.”

The action actually caps a gradual shift toward engagement with China by unions from around the world. Some European unions affiliated with the ITUC have been active in China for over a decade. The Change to Win federation in the US began talks with the ACFTU last year. Officials have exchanged visits and plans are underway to expand contacts in the coming months.

The policy shift by the ITUC, the AFL-CIO, and other global unions is long overdue. Three decades of rapid economic growth have transformed China from an economic backwater into the world’s workshop.  Workers, trade unions, communities, and countries throughout the world are confronting the challenges posed by China’s growing role in the world. Today, about 25% of all the workers employed in the global economy are Chinese.  The “China price” sets the global norm for wages and working standards up and down the value chain, from inexpensive garments to sophisticated electronics.  As a result the hard-won gains of workers in the global North are being rapidly undermined, while the aspirations of workers in the developing world are being dashed, as China becomes the wage setting country in industry after industry.

China’s export oriented development model has had a particular impact on trade unions everywhere. Multinational corporations—the very firms that employ millions of union members around the world—have flocked to China seeking to take advantage of its low wage workers and business friendly policies, reducing labor’s bargaining leverage and the number of union jobs. These firms have been central to China’s development. Roughly 66% of the increase in Chinese exports in the past 12 years can be attributed to foreign owned global companies and their joint ventures. (Stephen Roach, Business Times, Singapore, 8/8/06) These companies account for 60% of Chinese exports to the US. Despite all of the talk in the current presidential campaign, the “Chinese threat” is less about trade with China than it is about “trade” with US based companies like Wal-Mart, GE, or any of the other of the hundreds of Fortune 500 companies that have set up shop in China to cuts labor costs and avoid environmental regulations. Ways, however imperfect, must be found to reach out to Chinese workers to find mutually acceptable ways to halt a global race to the bottom, which in end, hurts all workers.

Labor's War on Global Warming

This week GLS staff will be attending the Blue-Green Alliance’s “Good Jobs, Green Jobs: A National Green Jobs Conference” scheduled for March 13-14 in Pittsburgh.  We will be covering the event for The Nation.com and in preparation have published the following article.  We hope to see some of you there!

Labor's War on Global Warming - The Nation.com

by Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith (click here for the original)

Figuring out how to respond to global warming has been difficult for organized labor. The issue can pit union against union and unions against environmentalists. Now, however, a new alliance is developing around the idea of “green jobs”–the jobs that will be needed to rebuild our economy and drastically reduced greenhouse gasses.

Seemingly from nowhere, “green jobs” have emerged as a key issue in the presidential election. Barack Obama calls for a $150 billion investment in green-collar jobs. Hillary Clinton refers to renewable energy employment as “jobs of the future” that can create 5 million jobs. Even John McCain calls for research and development of green technology, calling it the “path to restore the strength of America’s economy.”

The stealth “green jobs” issue did not emerge from nowhere. Its prominence in the presidential debates results in good measure from the commitment of some, though by no means all, environmental and labor leaders to building an alliance for jobs that fight global warming.

In 2006, the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers initiated the Blue-Green Alliance under the banner of “Good Jobs, A Clean Environment, And a Safer World.” This “strategic alliance” would focus on “those issues which have the greatest potential to unite the American people in pursuit of a global economy that is more just and equitable and founded on principles of environmental and economic sustainability.”

Linking jobs and the environment, Steelworker president Leo Gerard said, “Secure twenty-first-century jobs are those that will help solve the problem of global warming with energy efficiency and renewable energy.” Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope added, “Our new alliance allows us to address the great challenge of the global economy in the twenty-first century–how to provide good jobs, a clean environment and a safer world.”

As the presidential primaries approached, the Blue-Green Alliance called on all candidates to commit to reducing carbon emissions by 2 percent every year, increasing green-energy based manufacturing jobs by 2 percent and rewriting American trade laws to advance labor and environmental standards.

Policy Issues Facing the “Green Jobs” Alliance

(fourth in a series on labor and global warming after Bali)

Combating climate change requires unprecedented economic and social change.  The world has never done anything like cutting greenhouse gasses before.  While the need to do so is now certain, the policies that will be required to do so are not.  We have to start implementing potentially promising policies immediately, while gearing up for a steep learning curve to figure out what really works.

In a series of previous posts, we have looked at the emergence of an alliance of labor and environmental advocates around the necessity for creating “green jobs” in the struggle against global warming.  In this post, we look at some of the policy issues that alliance will need to address.    

Blogging from the UN climate change conference in Bali, Lauren Asplen, communications director of IUE-CWA, described a meeting labor delegates from North American had with the U.S. Climate Action Network “to start a dialogue about our concerns.”  It was agreed that there were many opportunities for synergies.  In particular, “both groups could benefit from working cooperatively and from trying early on to work through our differences so we can present a united front.”  Here are some of the potential areas for synergy, and for conflict, this alliance must face.

Arenas for the Green Jobs Alliance

(third in a series on labor and global warming after Bali)

In a previous post, we described an upcoming conference on Green Jobs sponsored by the Blue-Green Alliance, a “strategic partnership” of the United Steelworkers union and the environmentalist Sierra Club.  And we described how the emerging labor-environmentalist coalition could have a major impact on the current presidential debate.  But global warming is caused, and has its effects, at every level from the personal and local to the global.  So does the effort to combat global warming.  In this post, we lay out some of the other opportunities for the emerging labor- environmentalist alliance to affect it.

Congress

Historically, Congress has acted as if energy policy were a pie being divvied out to the coal, oil, gas, electric, nuclear, auto, and other interests.  Unions have often played this game, pushing for benefits for their employers’ industries.  In this context, a broad vision for addressing global warming is essential for overriding the effects of competing special interests.

Which way organized labor goes will play an important role in shaping the future of global warming.  According to the highly respected Congressional reporting of the Congressional Quarterly, lawmakers in Congress view support of the AFL-CIO as “essential” to passing any climate change bill.  James Grumet of the nonpartisan National Commission on Energy Policy says, “If you don’t have organized labor, you can’t get something through” Congress.

Congressional action on global warming has been and is likely to remain an on-going scramble. Last year’s energy bill included higher-than-expected auto fuel efficiency standards, but cut funding for renewable energy and failed to establish a national renewable energy standard. 

In December, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, headed by Barbara Boxer, passed the Warner-Lieberman America’s Climate Security Act, which would put carbon caps on the U.S. economy – the first such bill ever to get through the committee.  It is not yet clear whether the bill will go to the Senate floor this year, and it is doubtful that President Bush would sign such a bill if it passed.

While the bill represents a significant step forward, with global warming legislation the devil is in the details.  The bill sets targets for long term reduction of greenhouse gasses that are lower than those proposed by international climate scientists, the UN, the international labor movement, or the Democratic presidential candidates.  It exempts a significant portion of the economy from the caps.  And it starts by giving corporations “pollute-for-free” allowances that have been estimated at a trillion dollars.

There is no doubt that major energy legislation will be on the agenda when a new Congress comes to office in 2009.  Or that a unified labor-environmentalist alliance could play a major role in getting the devil out of the details.

Green jobs advocates in Congress tried unsuccessfully to include investment in climate protection in the recently passed economic stimulus package.  But, given the current direction of the U.S. economy, job creation bills are likely to proliferate in the next Congress.  They will provide an ideal opportunity to make the case for green jobs as the centerpiece of rebuilding America’s employment base.

Turtles and Teamsters Together Again?

(second in a series on labor and global warming after Bali)

At the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” against the World Trade Organization, a prominent sign celebrated the emerging labor-environmental coalition with the slogan, “Turtles and Teamsters: Together at Last!”  The threat of global warming is updating that slogan to “Turtles and Teamsters: Together Again.” 

At the core of this convergence has been the mantra “green jobs.”  While some in the labor movement have long feared that environmental policies would lead to the loss of jobs, others have long argued that appropriate environmental strategies would lead to a much greater increase in “green jobs.”   

The green jobs argument has been greatly strengthened by the emergence of global warming as a national, local, and global issue.  Scientists have established that limiting the catastrophic results of global warming requires massive cuts in the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.  And that in turn will take a complete reconstruction of our economies to run on a low-carbon basis.  Such a reconstruction will take massive investment – and create millions of jobs.   

The coming-of-age party for this alliance may well be “Good Jobs, Green Jobs: A National Green Jobs Conference” scheduled for March 13-14 in Pittsburgh, PA.  The event is coordinated by the Blue-Green Alliance, a “strategic partnership” of the United Steelworkers union and the environmentalist Sierra Club. The conference will bring together advocates representing “local, state and federal policy makers; labor; business; the environment and public health; economic and workforce development specialists; investors; and scientists and technology experts.”  The aim is to launch a “nationwide dialogue about moving our country rapidly toward leadership in promoting a new green economy.”

Conveners of the conference include heavy hitters from organized labor, including some who have previously held aloof from actions addressed to global warming.  Both U.S. labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, are listed as conveners.  So are such unions as the Service Employees, Industrial Division of the Communication Workers, Operating Engineers Local 95, United Food and Commercial workers, and United Steelworkers.