Global Labor Strategies

A Letter from Europe: Labor at Malmo

The European Social Forum held in Malmo, Sweden from September 17-21 marked another step in the reappraisal by European trade unions of how to approach the neo-liberal policies of the European Union. The Forum featured a vigorous and productive debate on new directions for labor among traditional unions, the alternative labor movements, and allied social movements.

The debate could not come at a more opportune time. As the impact of the global economic crisis spreads throughout Europe, labor movements can not expect that the so-called European Social Model will protect workers from its consequences. That model, which emerged in the decades following WWII, was characterized—with national differences—by a generous welfare state, collective bargaining, and more or less full employment. It was the result of a tripartite “social partnership” between trade unions, employers, and the state.  But the reality is that, today, even before the crisis fully envelops the continent, you can barely recognize many of the model’s traditional elements. And yet while trade unions increasingly realize that the European Social Model has been undermined, they still tend to look back to the model as strategy for the future.

Neo-liberal Europe

But the good old days are gone. Today, the fundamental goals of the European Union are guided by the principles of neo-liberalism. Collective social programs such as health insurance, pensions, and educational systems have become partially privatized in some countries as politicians seek to open new markets to private capital. “Precarity” of work now extends to the entire life of an increasing number of workers. And collective bargaining is under direct attack by many European institutions. For instance, in the last two years, the European Court of Justice ruled on cases –filed by both corporations and the European Commission itself—which, while acknowledging that fundamental labor rights such as the right to strike and the right to collective bargaining exist in Europe, also ruled that they are less important than the right to freely compete by the employers. And the EU is just about to approve a new Directive (the term for European laws) which not only allows companies to increase working time to more than 60 hours per week, but also introduces individual bargaining in place of collective bargaining on this issue.

On migration there is a dual strategy: on the one hand, with the "Blue Card Directive”  the EU is promoting access to Europe by highly skilled and educated workers. On the other hand, policies toward undocumented workers are becoming increasingly xenophobic, legitimating current laws in some member states by “regulating” detention for up to 18 months as well as allowing repressive “deportation” policies.

Overall, conditions for workers in Europe are worsening. According to official EU statistics—which in many cases are underestimates—around 8% of all employees in the European Union are officially registered as unemployed. More than 16% of the EU population, that is 72 million EU citizens, are currently considered at the risk of poverty (with an income below 60% of the median income in their country). Furthermore, since the 1980s real wage increases are no longer in line with productivity growth and the wage share (the workers income in relation to the overall national income) has declined in almost all European countries. (see European Commission, European Economy, Statistical Annex, 2006. 

A developing discourse

Many trade unions are increasingly becoming open critics of neo-liberal Europe, and the European labor movement is trying to find ways to respond to the attacks that it is now under. This includes the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), which is the formal representative of trade unions within the EU’s tripartite structure and which is deeply enmeshed with the bureaucracy which runs the EU. They formally support both the Lisbon Treaty—the latest attempt to redesign the institutional and political framework of the EU along neo-liberal lines, and the aggressive free-trade agenda of the EU Commission (see Global Europe Competing in the World).

Labor and Immigration: Looking Beyond the Elections

Right-wing politicians are trying to fan the flames of passion over immigration during the current election campaign. So far they have met with mixed success, but as the election nears and the Right becomes more desperate, we can expect their efforts to intensify and the flames to grow higher. How should labor respond?

The importance of immigration as a campaign issue varies from region to region and from constituency to constituency. Nationally, just 15% of those surveyed in December in a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll list immigration as a “top priority” in the coming election, and only 27% list it as “one of the most pressing problems facing the country”, but 81% think it is an “important” issue. The two parties are running true to form. Republican candidates, trolling for votes among the nativist wing of the party, are vying to see who can promise the longest and the highest wall along the Mexican border and the most vicious law enforcement in the rest of the country. Democrats, unsure of where key parts of their base stand and unwilling to stick their necks out, are scrambling for cover with rhetoric about the need for “comprehensive” immigration reform.  This duck and cover approach is reflected in replies to a question about immigration and the election posed by the New Republic in November to five prominent Democratic “strategists and consultants” likely to play a key role in the upcoming election.

The press conveniently divides the debate between those candidates who believe in “enforcement only” approaches and those who believe in “enforcement and a road to citizenship”. It is assumed that everyone believes in “border security”.  Other approaches are pushed from mainstream media.

Gone are the hopeful days of two years ago when millions were in the streets demanding immigration reform and amnesty for the undocumented. Instead a Pew Research poll released last week shows that, “just over half of all Hispanic adults in the US worry that they, a family member or a close friend could be deported…..”    And, “nearly two-thirds say the failure of Congress to enact an immigration reform bill has made life more difficult for all Latinos.”

GLS: Why We Do What We Do

When we launched GLS nearly 3 years ago our goal was to contribute to building global labor solidarity through research, analysis, strategic thinking, and network building around labor and employment issues. It seemed to us then, as it still does today, that labor movements and their allies around the world are at a watershed moment.  Capital mobility and global outsourcing have allowed footloose global corporations—the dominant players in the world’s economy—to effectively outflank national labor movements. Workers and communities around the world are increasingly being pitted against each other to attract or retain decent jobs. Unions, labor laws, and social benefits are under attack in the name of global competitiveness. The choice for unions and worker organizations everywhere is to adapt to global realities and build a global labor movement or decline into irrelevance.

While it would be a stretch to say that great progress has been made toward this end, over the past few years some real progress has been made. There is widespread—if not universal—recognition of the need to go global among labor activists the world over. New institutional links between global labor movements have been forged or strengthened. (Although it should be noted that a significant part of the US labor movement—unions that are now part of CtW—have been barred from joining the new International Trade Union Confederation.)  But formidable obstacles remain to constructing a global labor movement that reaches beyond high level institutional contacts and inspiring rhetoric.

 

Economic nationalism continues to be a problem as unions seek to protect jobs, or poach jobs, by sometimes supporting counter-productive trade policies, tariffs, and subsidies to lure businesses. Unions sometimes make common cause with their employers to defend narrow sectoral interests rather than broader class and social interests. In the end these actions are generally unproductive and inhibit global solidarity. 

Global diversity in union structures and industrial relations systems rooted in national histories and national laws makes cooperation difficult.  Just look at the differences in the way unions bargain—and what they bargain about—in the US, Scandinavia, France, Brazil, and Japan and the difficulty in creating a common front against global corporations becomes apparent.

The lack of effective labor unions in many parts of the world—including China the former Soviet Union and East bloc countries—makes finding partners for building global alliances extremely difficult.

And, finally, the legacy of distrust from labor supported economic nationalism and cold war policies often puts an edge on efforts to work together.

But as difficult as these obstacles may be to surmount, we think there are many new opportunities for cooperation and a growing recognition in labor movements around the world that cooperation is needed.

There has been lots of discussion about how the race to the bottom harms poor countries, but there is an upsurge of general discontent with globalization and its consequences throughout the world. A recent poll shows people in the rich countries of the world overwhelmingly think that the current globalization process is having a negative effect on their lives. As the socially sanctioned representative of the interests of workers, organized labor has an opportunity to give voice to this discontent.

The technical obstacles to cooperation have been greatly reduced. Today, the internet, phone cards, and cheap transportation make communication across borders easy. Labor can use these advances in communication by exponentially increasing the flow of information among workers and their organizations at all levels over the web and through worker to worker exchanges. That alone would be a major advance in international cooperation.

Much more difficult is finding the issues and modalities to forge lasting links among workers and their organizations. Here in the States, where unions are much more focused on collective bargaining with specific companies than they are in many other countries, efforts to build international cooperation have generally revolved around support for contract or organizing campaigns. While necessary and important, such cooperation is not likely to build a global labor movement since it is episodic, touches only a small number of workers, and often is not about directly shared interests. In addition it runs into all of the obstacles that we list above. Instead, building real global cooperation will take collective action on critical issues that directly affect large numbers of workers and unions everywhere—regardless of their structures. There are many such issues. We at GLS have chosen to work on 3 which we think challenge workers and their organizations everywhere and which can only be effectively addressed through global cooperation: the emergence of China as a global powerhouse, the challenge of global warming, and creating worker friendly approaches to immigration.   

China

China is the essential country in the fight for a fair globalization. Workers, communities, and countries throughout the world are confronting the challenges posed by the emergence of China as a global economic powerhouse. About 25% of the global workforce is now Chinese. China increasingly sets the global norm for wages and working standards as it attracts jobs at both the high and low ends of the production chain. As a result, the hard-won gains of workers in the global North are being rapidly undermined while the aspirations of workers in other developing countries are being dashed as China becomes the wage setting country in many industries and attracts more capital. And within China workers are fighting to get their fair share, but lack effective unions or aggressive labor law enforcement. They need help in their struggle.

GLS proposes a new paradigm—one that we developed with activists inside and outside of China—that focuses on the role of multi-national corporations doing business in China as a strategy to find common ground among labor and their allies around the world. These companies wield enormous power yet they are potentially vulnerable to global public opinion in ways that the Chinese state is not. Foreign owned global corporations account for 60% of Chinese exports to the US. Indeed, if US retail giant Wal-Mart were a country it would be China’s 8th largest trading partner. The “Chinese threat” is less about trade with China than it is about trade with companies like Wal-Mart and GE.

This past year, GLS played an important role in exposing efforts by global companies to weaken China’s new Labor Contract Law in an effort to preserve the status quo in China’s labor markets. In the coming year we aim to expand our efforts by launching a China Corporate Observatory. It’s a project that we hope others will support or replicate.

Here’s how we think it can work. There is an acute need to know about what’s really going on in China’s economy and its workplaces, but it’s difficult to get accurate information. The recent consumer scares have made the need for transparency more pressing than ever.

It’s easy to blame the Chinese government for the information gap. But corporations in China—both foreign and domestic—are as much or more to blame. They generally do business through a labyrinth of suppliers and middle men which they control but do not own. The identity of the firms in most corporate supplier chains is generally considered “proprietary knowledge” and kept as a closely guarded secret. This is at odds with the transparency needed for the rule of law and social accountability. If labor laws, product safety standards, and environmental regulations are to be enforced, public access to a wide range of information is required.

The China Corporate Observatory will promote transparency by conducting research and analysis inside and outside of China. The Observatory will enlist Chinese and non-Chinese activists and scholars to research the Chinese press, corporate and government documents, academic and business journals, and other rarely accessed data. Information gathered will be made widely available to people inside and outside China through reports, web posting, and other means and will, we think, help build links between them.

Global Warming

The need to confront global warming offers another potential for building global labor cooperation. Both global warming and the effort to combat it will directly affect workers and unions.  Global warming, if not halted, will lead to massive economic disruption and job loss.  Some anti-warming measures will lead to job losses in particular sectors and this presents a challenge to the unions that represent those workers as well as to traditional notions of labor solidarity.  At the same time, there are huge opportunities for job growth presented by many anti-warming measures.

Corporations are already launching well publicized “business friendly” approaches to global warming.   Now, labor must develop a coherent response that meets the specific needs of its members at the bargaining table and the general needs of its members as human beings confronting a potentially catastrophic event.  Labor must stake out a position if it is to remain a vital social and political force. Tackling the tension between the specific sectoral interests of unions and their more general class and social interest is the essential first step in that process.               

Now that even energy corporations are admitting the reality of global warming, a serious “climate debate” is finally underway throughout the world.  Labor is one of the few organized forces that can represent the interests of ordinary people in that debate.  A constructive labor involvement is essential both for establishing the measures needed to counter global warming, and for ensuring a “just transition” in which workers and the poor are not forced to bear the burden while corporations and the wealthy further enrich themselves. The search for constructive involvement offers an important way for unions and worker friendly organizations from around the world to work together. GLS has produced a discussion paper on labor and global warming. In the coming year will expand on some of the ideas and actions outlined in that report.

Immigration

The UN estimates that there are some 200 million migrants in the world. Most are on the move in search of work. Fierce debates are underway in the US, Europe, and elsewhere on how to handle this flow of people. Right-wing forces in the rich countries are using the immigration issue to promote a nativist agenda among working and middle class people worried about globalization and its consequences. As organizations that represent all workers—immigrant and non immigrant alike—unions can play a critical role in this debate. And in many countries they are doing so.

Yet, up to now the debates on immigration have been generally a series of national debates that treat the problems of sending and receiving countries as if they were unconnected. But the global movement of people is taking place in the context of a global deficit of decent jobs. That creates pressures for migration in the sending countries and it generates tension with established workers in the receiving countries. Just immigration policies will need to protect the interests of both established workers and newcomers. Effective policies must also address the decent jobs deficit in both the rich and poorer countries.

We have written in many posts over the last year or more of the need for a hemispheric approach to US immigration reform. US labor—with its relationships throughout the hemisphere and its diverse membership—should help convene such a hemispheric dialog. But international migration is not just an issue for the Americans Europe faces a major migration crisis. We need a global dialog in which to learn from each other and find common solutions.

Over the next year GLS will continue to focus on immigration reform in the US through our writings and through workshops with workers. We think there are approaches that can reconcile the rights and the needs of immigrants with those established workers that are often over-looked or dismissed as reactionary or racist. In an effort to expand the debate we are also planning look at how the immigration debate is played out in countries and labor movements around the world as a way to contribute to the search for global solutions to a global problem.

If trade unions are to survive as vibrant institutions they will have to move beyond representing just the national and sectoral interest of workers to representing broader global interests of all workers. We at GLS have selected 3 issues to work on—China, global warming, and immigration—that can help build global solidarity.

The GLS Team

In Memoriam: Tim Costello has over 40 years of work and union experience in the area. He helped organize and served (until July 2005) as Coordinator of the Boston based North American Alliance for Fair Employment a network of 65 unions and community based organizations in the US and Canada. Costello was a truck driver and workplace activist for many years; following that, he worked on the staff of SEIU.  He has extensive collective bargaining experience in a number of industries.

Brendan Smith is a legal expert (J.D. Cornell University Law School) specializing in national and international labor law and policy.  He is currently co-director of the UCLA Law School Globalization and Labor Standards Project.  He has worked previously as a senior legislative aide for Congressman Bernie Sanders and staffed the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, where he organized a series of hearings and legislative efforts on the Asian and Russian financial crisis.  Smith has also consulted for the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, International Labor Rights Fund and Service Employees International Union, as well worked extensively throughout Asia, including China.  He has also been a lead organizer on global campaigns targeting NIKE, child labor abuse, and solidarity fights to free imprisoned trade unionists. He has published two books and his commentary has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Baltimore Sun, CBS.com, Yahoo.com, New Labor Forum, the Nation and Advertising Age.

Jeremy Brecher is a leading labor historian, writer, and documentary script writer best known for the labor history Strike!.  For more than two decades Brecher and Costello have studied and written about labor and globalization, writing such well-known books as Building Bridges: The emerging Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community and Global Village or Global Pillage. For the past 8 years they have been joined by Brendan Smith, who collaborated with them on the book Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity.  Their Emmy-nominated documentary Global Village or Global Pillage? has been used by unions and other groups in the US and throughout the world to present an international grassroots response to globalization.

Claudia Torrelli lives and works in Montevideo, Uruguay. Torrelli handles GLS’s Latin American networking. She is an activist the in labor—community based Hemispheric Social Alliance, and in other social movement organizations in Latin America. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and English.

Starting Over

George Bush’s immigration bill is returning Dracula-like to the floor of the Senate. In the unlikely event that it passes it faces an uncertain future in the House where there is intense opposition to key provisions of the bill from different constituencies.  Bush likely does not have the political capital to overcome opposition from the anti-immigrant Republican Right that wants no truck with legalization and Democratic progressives who think the bill is too draconian.

Bush’s efforts on behalf of the bill—from high profile raids to show he’s tough on enforcement to attacks on Republican opponents of the bill—spotlights the long-time split in the Republican party between a corporate wing that wants access to more skilled and unskilled guest workers and a nativist base that wants to send undocumented workers home and lock down the borders. Bush—who does not face re-election—is squarely in the corporate camp.

The original Kennedy-McCain bill introduced in the last Congress set the basic framework for the current debate. It proposed a “grand bargain”: amnesty for millions of undocumented immigrants in exchange for a business friendly guest worker program.  And to deflect some of the attacks of anti-immigrant critics, the bill also included punitive enforcement and border security provisions. It was a Faustian deal from the start. When the reform debate resumed in the current Congress the amnesty provisions were weakened (indeed the very word amnesty has been banished from the debate) and the guest worker and punitive provisions were strengthened. But the terms of the bargain had been set: limited legalization for increased repression.

 

Sí Es Verdad

President Bush got a big surprise  on his goodwill visit to Guatemala this week.  Protesters filled the streets of Guatemala City to denounce an immigration raid that took place at a leather goods factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts on March 6th.  The raid resulted in the arrest of 361 people, most of them undocumented immigrants from Guatemala and El Salvador. Even the President of Guatemala criticized the raids in his welcoming speech to Bush on his arrival. This is big news in Guatemala because 10% of the entire Guatemalan population—many of them undocumented—lives in the US.

The press in Guatemala—and in Massachusetts—has been filled with stories of the raid and its aftermath of families shattered, children separated from their parents, and children being held in federal custody. According to the New YorkTimes,

Facing pointed questions from Guatemalan journalists, Mr. Bush stood by the raid, saying, “People will be treated with respect, but the United States will enforce our law.”

Mr. Bush said he disputed “conspiracies” relayed by Mr. Berger[Guatemala’s President] that children were taken away from families.

Mr. Bush denied such accounts. “No es la verdad,” Mr. Bush said, “That’s not the way America operates. We’re a decent, compassionate country. Those are the kind of things we do not do. We believe in families, and we’ll treat people with dignity.

Well, sí es verdad.  Days after the raids the Massachusetts Department of Social Services ( DSS) reported that they “…could not connect 100 children with their families”.   One woman arrested in the raid was flown back from Texas where she was being held when her 7 year old daughter called a hot line created to unite families divided by the raid to ask about her mother’s whereabouts. Two nursing infants were hospitalized for dehydration when they were separated from their mothers .

Once again Bush is either lying or out of touch with reality. The events of this raid have been well documented and roundly condemned by the press and politicians in Massachusetts across the political spectrum.  In the era of global communications, people in Guatemala didn’t even have to rely on the media; they could pick up the phone and call their relatives in New Bedford to find out what was really going on.

Time to Put ICE on Ice

The immigration raids continue. From California to Connecticut, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are picking up undocumented immigrants and sending them home or to holding pens. A long editorial in last Sunday’s New York Times describes the current climate like this:

Almost a year ago, hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their families slipped out from the shadows of American life and walked boldly in daylight through Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, New York and other cities. "We Are America," their banners cried. The crowds, determined but peaceful, swelled into an immense sea. The nation was momentarily stunned.

A lot has happened since then. The country has summoned great energy to confront the immigration problem, but most of it has been misplaced, crudely and unevenly applied. It seeks not to solve the conundrum of a broken immigration system, but to subdue, in a million ways, the vulnerable men and women who are part of it. Government at all levels is working to keep unwanted immigrants in their place - on the other side of the border, in detention or in fear, toiling silently in the underground economy without recourse to the laws and protections the native-born expect.

The overwhelming impulse has been to get tough, and tough we have gotten.

Indeed the press has been full of stories of families split apart and communities shattered by the raids. And while the raids have generated a chorus of righteous indignation, there is little indication thus far that they have changed the political discourse on immigration reform. None of last year’s crop of immigration reform bills—some with broad bi-partisan backing—would have prevented the kinds of raids now underway. In fact, they may have promoted them by beefing up the government’s enforcement capacity. So far, this year’s proposed bills promise more of the same even though Democrats now control Congress and many hard line xenophobes were defeated in last fall’s elections.

What’s It Got to do with the Price of Tortillas in Mexico?

Hundreds of thousands of people marched through downtown Mexico City the last day of January protesting the rise in the price of tortillas and other staple foods.   The march was filled with housewives beating pots and pans in the kind of “casarolazo” made famous by the resistance movements of Argentina.  Supported by unions, farmers, and leftist groups, the march was initiated by the National Union of Workers (UNT), a federation of labor organizations independent of Mexico’s political parties, according to an article by John Ross in UE's invaluable web publication Mexican Labor News and Analysis.   

Mexico’s “tortilla crisis” provides an all-too-vivid illustration of the way globalization, neoliberalism, and trade agreements like NAFTA actually affect the lives or ordinary people around the globe.

Raids, Reforms, and the Labor Movement

The December immigration raids at Swift & Co, and increased enforcement activity elsewhere, are a body blow against labor’s attempt to organize low wage workers.

Undocumented workers comprise a significant percentage of the workforce in many of the industries targeted for organizing by unions including cleaning contractors, hotels, meatpacking, food processing, light industry, and commercial laundries. The raids will make workers feel more insecure and may make them less willing to take the chances required to organize. The raids may also make employers more willing to use immigration status as a club to thwart organizing and more willing to cooperate with immigration authorities to protect themselves from prosecution or lawsuits. If a significant percentage of the workforce feels vulnerable, all workers will be hurt since chances of successful organizing campaigns will be greatly reduced.

With so much at stake the response by unions has been remarkably timid. Those unions that have spoken out have mainly issued press releases to condemn the raids and to call for Congressional action on immigration reform. That is simply not enough.

In fact, the raids also provide a good opportunity for labor to reframe the immigration debate with fresh ideas and new action. The raids were an affront to common decency. They were an assault on human rights, on labor rights, and on the notion of proportionality in the conduct of law enforcement. The raids were conducted under false pretenses —only a handful of those caught in the raids were charged with “identity theft”—the ostensible reason for the raids; and they were discriminatory—company officials who knowingly built an entire staffing system in the meatpacking industry based on undocumented workers walked away free.

As part of reframing the immigration issue, labor leaders need to stand shoulder to shoulder with workers from the affected communities, in the affected communities. They need to make a public display of supporting those swept up in the raids, many of whom are now unemployed and facing deportation.  And—very importantly—they need to stress that the raids undermine working conditions for all workers—not just undocumented immigrants.  One way to do this would be to hold public hearings in which workers in the industry—immigrant and non-immigrants—tell their stories. Properly done, reframing the immigration issue can both help build alliances between immigrant and non-immigrant workers for real immigration reform and cement the relationship of labor with immigrant communities in the upcoming policy debates and the 2008 elections.

Immigration Raids and the Politics of Fear

The cruelty—the utter contempt for common decency and common sense—of this government was on full display last week when agents of the Department of Homeland Security’s division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), some in riot gear, stormed into six Swift & Company plants in Cactus Texas; Grand Island, Nebraska; Greeley, Colorado; Hyrum, Utah; Marshaltown, Iowa; and, Worthington, Minnesota. They detained 1282 day shift workers, roughly 10% of the entire workforce. Workers on other shifts were left to worry.

Inside the plants workers were separated into two groups: US citizens and non-US citizens. Non-US citizens were herded on to buses and transported to deportation centers, some in distant states. Families were wrenched apart. In some communities children were left in school at the end of the day with no one to pick them up. Immigrant communities were in shock.

The raids were clearly calculated to spread terror. Michael Chertoff head of the Department of Homeland Security ominously put it this way:

It’s going to be a deterrent to illegal workers.  It’s going to cause them [immigrant workers] to say that, you know, this happened in Swift, it could easily happen somewhere else. In fact, I’m pretty much going to guarantee we’re going to keep bringing these cases.”

Alternative Worker Organizations: Taking the Alliance Global

On August 10th, the AFL-CIO reached what is being heralded as "a historic partnership agreement" between the Federation and the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON).  The hope is that this pledge of cooperation "will pave the way for AFL-CIO central labor councils and state federations and NDLON’s day laborer worker centers to work together on issues ranging from workplace rights to immigration to health and safety and other job-related concerns."