On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> As for your response to WSJ article on denial of Cambodia's quota
> increase, I don't quite understand your point.
Rakesh, I share your strong suspicions that no good would come of a social clause added to the WTO for all the reasons you've mentioned many times. My point is that this particular article doesn't support that position. In it, nothing but good things happen to Cambodian workers. You are right that bad things might happen in the future due to how things turned out. But then someone will have to write an article in the future. In *this* article, 3 months after what looks like the basest perfidy on the part of US unions, the Cambodian workers are *still* substantially better off than they were a year ago. It's ironic, but it's not unprecedented. On the site that Patrick Bond recommended on your behalf, www.aidc.za, there is a long series of 5 interesting articles that fully support your position entitled "The Social Clause as an Ideology." One of the contributors, Ajit Roy, writes in part four, "Globalisation and the World Working Class"
<quote>
The Indian working class should also remember that whatever may be the motive behind their moves, it has historically benefited on more than one oaccasion from the (undoubtedly hypocritical) solicitous action of the metropolitan capitalists. The initial stimulus for the Factories Act of 1881, for instance, came from the British textile interests of Lancashire.
<unquote>
And he goes on to detail how this was a good thing for Indian workers, and how similarly protectionist motives led to similarly positive outcomes. My suggestion was that in this article, the hypocritical and antagonistic actions of metropolitan unionists seem to have led to nothing but benefit for Cambodian workers -- not as much as was promised, surely, but more than was there. And there is no sign in this article that any of those gains have yet been turned back. So while you are certainly right in arguing that there might be bad payoff in the future; and while I still tend to agree with you that a social clause written into the WTO is a bad idea; I'm saying this article doesn't support that argument. Instead it seems to me that this article provides (admittedly flimsy and impressionistic) support for the ironic argument that a social clause might be good for third world workers *even if* metropolitan workers mean in their hearts to do them down.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com