Tampa, Florida
I was covering the release of a report about the local effects of “offshoring”, otherwise known as “outsourcing”, which has become a big topic in the States this election year. Basically, because its so cheap for large companies to do business in other countries, millions of workers in the United States are either becoming unemployed, or are forced to work for sub-par wages and benefits. The 2-hour presentation centered on statistics, and came up with some decent solutions for making the US workforce more attractive to corporations---like better education. The goal of the discussion seemed to be “how can we make it so that companies don’t want to leave our state/country?” But one man in the audience kept asking questions related to labor unions; questions that never really got answered.....
........ It turned out he was in charge of the University department that commissioned the study--and he was sitting there poking holes in it in front of the press, a bunch of businessmen, and a congressman!! Afterwards, I had a few minutes to talk with Mark Amen, the director of the Globalization Research Center at the University of South Florida….Amen spoke about the need for alliances between workers, across the americas and beyond… He wasnt saying anything Ive never heard before, but its nice to hear this stuff from a gringo professor...Im wondering what ya'll spherenticos think about the possibility of these ideas becoming a reality, how different they are from the IWW, and a bit of insight about the ILO...
Andrew Stelzer: It was interesting to me that labor unions were left out of the discussion entirely.
Mark Amen: How could you leave them out of a discussion on labor? What’s so interesting, and I find this true of the study itself, and its not the fault of the people that did this study, but when they discussed with the various focus groups that they met with, all of whom were coming from the corporate sector and none of whom were coming from the union or labor sector, that issue never came up and no ever thought about bringing it up. I found that kind of interesting, as an omission. What does it tell us about where we think the solution lies if you’re not going to go to labor? And of course in this state, (Florida) the notion of the ‘right to work’ is a disincentive to even think about the role that labor might play. I just think we need to get that back on the table when discussing this issue—what role do unions play in all of this? And really I think the interesting thing to look at would be—is there worth in trying to help unions that are based on national economies start connecting with each other across these so-called national economies, to really create if you will at least regional if not global labor unions in response to the emergence of transnational corporations? That’s something that we need to address because were doing everything that we can to support the spread of national based corporations—now they have global markets for producing, global markets of consumers for their goods, and they have been provided incentives to go global as corporations—should we be doing the same thing for unions?—providing incentives for them to start linking up across the national boundaries that divide them? Why not?
AS: What do you think are the odds of that happening with the attitudes businesses seem to have?
MA: on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being no odds, Id go with 1. Unless there is some movement that brings this issue dramatically to the table. And where are signs of that coming within labor unions themselves. But they’re not gonna be handed that on the platter, they’re gonna have to put that on the platter—the unions themselves are. And I am concerned that unions in this country are not thinking about their counterparts in other parts of the world as allies. I’m afraid they may be thinking about them as enemies so there’s some reason for labor itself to think about where its best resources lie or its best allies lie.
AS: How do you think the unions can make a case to these companies which are basically interested in the bottom line that it’s in their interest to promote healthy labor unions even internationally?
MA: I don’t think that’s where to send the message. I don’t think unions can convince companies. I think what unions have to do is mobilize among themselves, overcome the boundaries of countries, and once they galvanize as regional or global labor unions they then will have a seat at the bargaining table with corporations who’ve already gone global. But until then a company is going to hire labor wherever it wants, knowing that one thing its not going to have to deal with are unions. And the reason why they’re not going to have to deal with it is because unions themselves have not established those collaborations so that they represent workers in multiple parts of the world. Once that happens it’s going to be far harder to companies to go simply for the cost reason.
AS: And I guess it will make it harder for them to just move on a whim.
MA: It will because, one of the reasons—I know that guy (one of the researchers presented the study) said, “look, cost is not the only factor”—he used a very poor example, and that is to say ‘if cost was the only factor, wed be losing all our jobs to central Africa.’ That is not a very good point to make because the infrastructure isn’t there in central Africa to begin with. Are the workers there and are they cost effective? Yes. But do they have telephones so that a company could offshore a call center to central Africa? No. The infrastructures not there. So that’s not a very good example. But if unions start organizing workers across countries, this whole question of turning to labor in one part of the world because the costs of it are cheaper there, those differences are going to diminish because one thing unions will do, I think, is standardize conditions for laborers across the world. Once those standards are established, the differential between them are going to be minimized and companies are going to find it less attractive to simply go to a worker in one part of the world because it’s a cheaper source of labor.
AS: Its especially ironic considering what brought this to the public consciousness over the last few years were these mass demonstrations which were organized by labor unions.
MA: Yeah, all the protest movements, but the problem I think with those is that they diluted because those protest movements represented such a wide range of important issues, that in all that protest process what never happened was the establishment of nuts-and-bolts ongoing relationships among the unions that were at those various protest movements themselves. What needs to happen as a next step is some concrete agreement across unions worldwide to identify next steps they can take to eventually become global organizations and I think the international labor organization(ILO) in Geneva
is an important institution they ought to be turning to for help.
Unions aren't the only ones failing to be rational
Submitted November 21, 2004 - 4:18 am by Andrew Grice (not verified)I think there actually is a lot of recognition that successful "offshore" union movements can only be good for U.S. workers. But that doesn't necessarily mean much will come out of it. Shrinking levels of unionization have made it obvious for many years that unions desperately need to go out and organize hordes of new workers. But so far it's not happening, at least not at the levels that would reverse the decline. There are a lot of reasons for that, but many of them land right on the feet of union leadership in this country, whose complacency about organizing and international solidarity don't seem very rational given the future we face.
But it's not like employers in the U.S. aren't even more irrational. Despite using nearly every imaginable tactic to reduce their labor costs, big business has never pushed for single payer health care. It makes no sense. Next to the millions that would be given access to health care, employers would benefit the most. Obviously employers that already provide health benefits would save a mint, but even businesses that don't give any benefits would save a ton of money when the costs of workers' compensation plummet - to say nothing of secondary economic savings from auto and other forms of liability insurance going way down.
So I find it mind boggling when all an even corporate dominated group can come up with to make employing U.S. workers more attractive is "education."