I missed Rakesh's reply on this issue of technology transfer and unions, where I had noted the contradiction in his criticism of labor in the US for lack of militancy in fighting technology transfer in the workplace while also criticizing them for being too militant in fighting technology transfer in trade policy. Here's my reply-
>From Rakesh Bhandari [mailto:bhandari at Princeton.EDU]
>
> Nathan astutely notes a contradiction in my position. Yet there are at
> least two divisions of labor that must be uprooted--the hierarchical one
> within the abode of production as well as an intl division of
> labor, suited
> to the interests of the already advanced industrial countries.
> In one case, one class gets rich at the
> expense of the other; in the other case, one nation gets rich at the
> expense of the other.
> Technology transfer threatens to worsen the first while reforming the
> latter, so I don't know if the contradiction is mine or inherent in the
> nature of things. There just seems to me some tradeoff here.
Your distinction between class and nation transfers seems artificial, since exploitation of third world workers still transfers money to the capitalist elite, overwhelmingly to capitalists in the US as well. If exploitation of third world workers was really a transfer between nations, capitalists and unions would be united on trade policy (as they were at times under colonialism, especially in Britain). Instead, US unions know they will not gain from exploitation of those workers; instead both will lose out ultimately, which is why many developing nation unions support social clauses.
Where US workers do gain from international trade is where Chinese and other developing nation workers organize strongly enough to have the wages to become reciprocal consumers of US goods- a basic labor Keynesianism. This is not a protectionist position (since most jobs going to China are not going to stay in the US, but will go to the country will the next lowest wage system), but a fight for expanding global worker shares of the production pie.
Yes, there is self-interest by US union workers, but it is not the black-white distribution between nations that you allege. There is still a strong class against class element to the fight over social clauses and involuntary production transfers.
But on the specific issue of technology transfer, you write:
> It is also becoming clear that with the collapse of Keynesianism,
> labor now
> seeks to secure itself through the domination of the world market via a
> stranglehold on key industries through this very illiberal tech transfer
> policy and threat of social protection on countries that do not abide by
> it.
You still haven't resolved the contradiction. If labor fails to protect worker control of technology and their jobs (and thereby prevent outsourcing to other countries), you put on your Slaughter/Moody cap and accuse the unions of betraying the class war. Then you accuse them of try to prevent the exact same loss in trade policy and they become the bad guys for trying to achieve the same result. When the results are the same, you can't try to specify your class v. nation distributional grid as the explanation of the results.
But taking a step back, you have yet to actually detail what the unions "illiberal tech transfer" policy is, other than to quote one sentence from the union's WTO goals. Since that language dates back to the Boeing contract fights, it's worth exploring what they meant in that contract fight.
Boeing machinists have fought hard to retain their jobs and control of technology at Boeing without subcontracting (so far, so good in Rakesh's Slaughter mode of analysis). However, China's government has demanded that Boeing, as a condition of airplane purchases by the state-run airline, must subcontract various parts of the plane, along with the technologies involved, to plants based in China. So Boeing workers have argued that such state conditions by China should not be allowed to overturn the contracts they negotiated with Boeing, or be used by Boeing in new contract negotiations to force new concessions on threat of losing jobs due to loss of the China contract. In this case, Boeing was not going to subcontract to China because the union was too weak (bad according to Rakesh) or because wages were more attractive (good in Rakesh's more neoliberal comparative advantage stance) but because of state coercion by China to force technology transfer in order to override the Boeing union contract balance of power.
The fact is that the only time companies won't transfer technology to developing nations where it is economic is where there is a union contract in the way. So the difference between your two kinds of good versus bad union resistance to company control of technology transfer is in practice largely illusory.
You can condemn privileged workers for hoarding jobs and technology (a standard critique of unions in analyzing segmented labor markets, both domestically and globally) or condemn them for insufficient vigilance in doing the same (Slaughter et al), but condemning both just looks like anti-Sweeney animus grabbing contradictory critiques for maximum accusations of sell-out. Which is especially unfair to Sweeney since his whole union career has been with service workers for whom technology transfer has been largely irrelevant, and in fact he has spent most of his time organizing the sub-contractors (like janitors) rather than the core workers.
It's also worth noting that condemning China's state-required domestic content laws is little different from general critiques of domestic content laws (which you have engaged in agains the US version.) So do you approve of domestic content laws when applied by the Chinese government but condemn them in the US?
As I said, I think the generally progressive position is to relax technology transfer worries across the board, including weakening IP laws, while focusing on strengthening unionization across the board, so whereever a company trys to subcontract work, they will face worker demands for fair compensation.
Which turns us to your next point:
Even if
> workers are 'unionized' in the contracted out plants, it seems quite
> probable that capital will nonetheless enjoy a higher rate of exploitation
> due to the the lower value of labor power abroad.
Since the value is lower because associated costs are usually higher (from training to transportation), it doesn't necessarily follow that lower wage regions automatically allow greater exploitation.
What is clear is that capitalists love a situation like China, which is willing to sign onto international agreements that benefit the capitalists like the WTO's protection of IP, while refusing to enforce either international labor agreements, or even any semblance of democracy or labor rights within their country.
If China was resisting across the board any international rules restricting its sovereignty, I might have some sympathy for you casting it in the role of resistance against the imperialists. But since the Chinese elite is willing to restrict its sovereignty around general IP and other capitalist concerns, I think the characterization of China's elite as collaborators in general class oppression is much more accurate than your framing of the debate in nation-to-nation exploitation.
China is quite willing to restrict technology transfer from the capitalist elite in the US; the only technology transfer rights it is demanding is the right to override residual worker control of technology in order to enforce mandatory transfers as a condition of state purchases. Sounds less like nation-to-nation transfers, than a nice collaboration where US capitalists exploit China's sweatshop labor, while the Chinese capitalist elite exploit and destroy US workers residual claims on technology to launch themselves into global business.
Just looks like class-against-class exploitation across the board.
-- Nathan Newman