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Workers’ Rights Good for Business |
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The union movement wants the Obama administration to develop a coherent trade policy that advances key domestic priorities and makes our nation more competitive in a global economy.
That means rebuilding our infrastructure, investing in education, cleaning up the environment, creating green jobs and providing affordable health care, AFL-CIO Policy Director Thea Lee told a group of business leaders today in Washington.
Speaking at a forum on “Labor and the American Trade Agenda” sponsored by the Global Business Dialogue, Lee said the economic strategies of the past two administrations relied on privatization and global deregulation, ending up with a failed economy based on “asset bubbles, debt and borrowed money.”
She said ensuring workers’ rights in trade agreements is good for business because customers don’t want to buy products they know are made from child labor or slave labor. They want to know that you treat your workers like human beings, Lee said.
Enforcing workers’ rights globally also helps create markets for our products, provided policies are in place that develop the U.S. economy, she added. The relentless corporate onslaught against unions and the rush to move manufacturing jobs offshore in search of the lowest-wage countries has decimated the middle class here, but has not produced a middle class in other countries. Lee told the business group:
You don’t have anybody to sell to if we don’t rebuild our middle class.
Unions want U.S. workers to be competitive, she said. For unions, that means creating jobs in the United States that produce quality exports and build better lives for workers. In contrast, corporations often see competitiveness as finding the place to make the most profit, U.S. jobs be damned, Lee said.
She also called for more forceful, transparent enforcement of trade laws, including worker rights and environmental protections, which would empower workers and build up a middle class both at home and in developing nations.
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A careful reading of this article (and others appearing lately) is important in revealing the complete bankruptcy of AFL-CIO economic and political perspective. It explains perhaps why, despite the endorsement of AFL-CIO convention for “Medicare for All”, the leadership continues unchanged in it’s conservative self-destructive support of Obama’s “Health Care Reform”.
The now bankrupt ideas expressed by AFL-CIO of Policy Director Thea Lee implies a “mythical capitalism” that no longer exists in the United States. Perhaps after WWII until about 1970, the U.S. economy was wealthiest in the world and when capital could reward the efforts of organized labor was able to force a “living wage” out of labor intensive industries. Such industries, employing millions, were easy to organize and the unions became partners to capital, whose job now was to stabilize the work force, minimize labor disruption, to maximize profit.
But since about 1970, there has been several major changes in capitalism that has devastated working people, organized and unorganized. Wages since 1970 have stayed the same and even declined. Millions of industrial and manufacturing jobs, the jobs that made organized workers a part of the much touted “midd
le class” much supported by Director Lee, have all disappeared.
Most important, there is no possible way for these “middle class” jobs will return under the current capitalist economy.
Why has this happened? Globalization. Not merely “globalization”
but “capitalist globalization”. Millions of jobs were lost and went to China because the capitalists involved, forever seeking maximum profit, found hundreds of millions of workers to exploit for pennies an hour or day. Cheap labor, no benefits, no vacations, no safety requirements, no health insurance, no fringe benefits to pay. Also minimal taxes and minimal regulations for safety, etc.
The tragedy for working people today is that the AFL-CIO is still trying to function under these conditions of a collapsed capitalism using a simple trade union philosophy to acquire and retain some benefits for their members. This simple trade union philosophy has failed because it has not changed to meet the needs of this changed capitalism.
Employers do not want and will not pay for even a decent “living wage” let alone substantial benefit costs as health care, retirement, etc. The fact is that these “fringe” benefits once secured from the employer and now being secured through national legislation.
Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, Student Loans, Section 8 housing, OSHA standards, Minimum wage legislation, etc. must now be secured through political struggle at every level of government. In other words, the simple trade union struggle for a good labor contract from an employer must be greatly expanded to include rigorous political struggle at every level of government.
This struggle will require new strategies and new ways of organizing working people. While it is difficult or impossible to organize small to medium business concerns (too expensive),
the new strategy must incorporate the formation of a new
political party. This new party must have a platform and purpose to expand and improve the economic interests of all working people, not just organized workers. No corporate money or agendas must be permitted.
The Democratic Party, and Obama, is totally an instrument of corporate capital, Wall Street, banking, etc. It is estimated that only about 10 percent of Democrats today are pro-labor. It is impossible to “out bid” (out bribe) office holders, as labor cannot match the billions of funds and power that capital offers. Nor should it try.
The current debate on “health care reform” is a perfect example of the corruption of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Senate Chairman working on the bill, would not even allow “single payer” to be discussed. Only a “Medicare for All” health care bill will serve the needs of the people and be uncorrupted by corporate greed. The Democratic Party cannot be “reformed”
to start listening to organized labor or the needs of unorganized working people.
The corporate interests who now literally own Congress and Obama, also completely own and control the mass media.
Radio and TV spew forth Rush Limbaugh anti-labor babble, without any oppositional voice. NPR and PBS, more sophisticated for the college educated, continue to frame all programming to the corporate agendas. There is no national programming in newspapers, radio or tv that expresses the economic interests of the great majority, the working people of this country.
Thus organized labor must, if necessary, sue PBS and NPR to get prime programming time to communicate the labor perspective on all issues today.
Job creation must bypass bankrupt capitalism. For instance, in articles published here several months ago, the two top builders were being attacked by consumers and the unions for shoddy construction, bad mortgages, etc. The AFL-CIO should establish a national non-profit affordable housing corporation to create thousands of union jobs to build quality housing. BYPASS CORRUPT CAPITALISM.