-----Original Message----- From: Carl Remick <cremick at rlmnet.com> To: 'lbo-talk at lists.panix.com' <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>>Re: "A hell of a lot of progressive activists in third world country
oppose even
>>negotiated labor standards precisely because they suspect they will
largely be used
>>not for equity purposes, but merely as a tool by the US government to hurt
>>workers historically excluded from employment globally."
-Nathan, do I construe your stance here correctly -- as opposing -harmonization of labor (and environmental?) laws on the grounds that -this could be used as a tool "to hurt workers historically excluded from -employment globally"? If so, this sounds like the same pro-free-trade sophistry the -Clinton crowd has been dispensing right along.
No, I support such harmonization, as long as it is aimed at raising wages and conditions in the third world, not merely preserving standards in the US at the expense of poverty, unemployment and starvation in the third world. But I would quote Lance Compo, who is Director of International Labor Rights Advocates and one of the leading spokespersons for such harmonization. He notes the fact that many third world labor and human rights activists oppose such harmonization. He writes:
"[Those activists'] views often parallel the anti-linkage arguments of investor elites and repressive governments in Southern countries, even while they are in the forefront of struggle against those same elites and governments. But labor rights advocates in the North should listen all the more carefully to what Southern colleagues are saying, precisely because Third World progressives are allies in the fight for social justice in a global economy based on free trade...[They} sound an alarm against environmental and labor linkage to trade policies in the WTO that would allow trade sanctions against Southern countries for failure to meet Northern-defined standards. Their fear, well-founded in experience, is that Northern countries' dominance of the global trade regime, particularly by the United States, Western Europe and Japan, will distort the WTO decision-making process to the disadvantage of the Third World." Compo in LABOR RESEARCH REVIEW, No. 23, 1995.
The fear is that sanctions will be used to punish countries opposed to the Northern regimes, while ignoring abuses by allies or by those countries not threatening privileged workers in the United States. Third world countries will see lost jobs without the economic devleopment support to create the skills and infrastructure needed for higher wage employment.
A Buchanan-style regime of punitive sanctions combined with the slashing of any kind of economic support for third world countries is the nightmare of third world activists - a guarantee that they will have no support in fighting multinational capital, and an additional guarantee that any success in generating economic growth will be met by defensive sanctions by the First World.
There is a global alliance to be made around raising labor and environmental standards in a way that can address such concerns, but that alliance does not include Buchanan in any way. Our allies are in the third world, in deepening the left support we already have in this country, and in strategic alliances with those who support the idealistic gains from free trade while also supporting global labor standards.
--Nathan Newman