. . .
So you insult me needlessly by claiming that I am channeling him, or am his
bedfellow.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I never brought up sex. I save that for Yoshie & the Woman of Many Names.
RK:]
. . . Friedman did say that the textile mfg association, not UNITE, had
imposed this condition and would only accept a trade deal that included it
In the letter, Mazur did not say that he would not under any conditions
support any compromise deal that included such a condition. My suspicion
remains that he will accept such a condition as long as the compromise bill
includes his main demand for core labor rights. This is called
management-labor cooperation.
>>>>>
[mbs] I would call it guilt by association.
RK:
2. Which raises the question of why Mazur is so interested in core labor
standards if Africa's exports would be non competing with American
production anyway. Mazur simply does not respond to this seemingly accurate
point of Friedman's. It would seem to me that core labor rights are meant
at one level simply to appease American workers that jobs won't be lost to
foreign competition--they are purely symbolic victory that allows Mazur to
justify his salary--while both textile capitalists and union bureaucrats
agree to a kind of export content law: inputs from basic materials to
machinery from the US must be used for tariff free access to US market.
>>>>>>>>
[mbs] Seems like the union can't win for losing. They are attacked for not pursuing international solidarity, and when they support something consistent with it like labor standards, their behavior is said to be mysterious and a cover for phantom support of 'export content law.'
RK: . . .
If countries seem unwilling to meet these export content laws (as I am
dubbing them), then Mazur will be called upon to cry violation of core
labor standards by that country (though any and every country in the
capitalist world market violates them) and raise the protectionist barrier.
This is the new 1-2 punch of social imperialism.
>>>>>>>>>>>
[mbs] This reflects a gross failure to discriminate among different levels of labor standards. On one level, say in China, you go to jail for being a trade unionist. On another, in the U.S., you are subject to arbitrary harassment by employers and a general lax enforcement of social protection. These are different worlds. Law is imperfect but it makes a difference. Otherwise nobody would criticize it. It is gross ultra-leftism to overlook this.
>Why anyone should expect the U.S. (or European, or Japanese,
>etc.) working class to defend other workers before themselves
>is beyond me.
RK: How do core labor standards in Africa defend American (as opposed to Honduran or Chinese workers)? When do you think the US capitalist state will agree to slap sanctions on a country for having violated them? Any time Jay Mazur makes a phone call?
[mbs] higher standards anywhere benefit workers everywhere, insofar as capital is mobile.
>Casting an interest in labor rights and environmental
>protection as somehow a ploy of U.S. capital is simply
>absurd. NO corporate interests have indicated any
>sympathy for this, except as a political sop to facilitate
>trade deals.
. . . Oh, that's right, you don't consider Clinton a corporate hireling. And if it's merely a political sop--a gesture in these deals that has no practical consequence--should we not be clear that this is a dead end strategy that US labor leadership has pursued?
[mbs] I'm on public record calling Clinton a cross between a jellyfish and a polecat. The political sop is from the standpoint of capital, and it entails no more than gestures. From labor's standpoint, much more is desired and required. If Gov Bush commutes somebody's death sentence, it doesn't make him an opponent of capital punishment, nor does it make the movement against capital punishment a tool of the Gov's.
> Framing this as a U.S. national-corporate
>interest is precisely backwards and is contradicted by
>what all the elites in the U.S. are doing, which is
>denouncing labor on this every day.
Didn't Clinton laud Sweeney at Davos?
[mbs] Clinton's habitual recourse to bullshit is a truism by now. It is an election year. meanwhile he is getting set to launch a campaign to admit China to the WTO.
I'll let you have the last word.
cheers, mbs