George's Senate Finance Testimony

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Mar 25 06:42:23 PST 1999


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Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 15:09:16 +0100 From: Harald Schumann <HSchumann at spiegel.de> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [de] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: George's Senate Finance Testimony References: <199903251225.HAA29026 at dont.panix.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


>

"D.L." wrote:


> It makes me uncomfortable to see a labor leader acting as a frontman for
> domestic capitalists. After all, Japanese and Korean steelworkers are
> relatively well paid compared to industrial workers in the rest of the world
> and if steel is being dumped from those countries, that represents some sort
> of subsidy to keep steel and steelworkers alive in those countries. The
> problems in steel appear to be two. First, there is probably slightly more
> than adequate capacity worldwide. Second, unions in developed nations have
> not kept up their commitment to organizing workers in less developed
> nations. Thus the threat is not *from* Japanese and Korean steel companies
> It's all very well for Becker to cry foul on trade policy, but the leader
>of a
> trade union should be talking about worker power first.

I agree with you completely, but I would add: First of all, a union leader should do the right analysis. How the current trade situation has developed? Who pressed South Korea to open its capital account? Who directed the IMF to force the Koreans in a crash programm? And who told them to export themselves out of crisis? Was'nt it Bob Rubin, Summers and the other Clintonites, who were so generously supported by the unions?

Harald



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