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With the installation of
the new Democratic-controlled Congress, the Republican Party no longer controls
all three branches of government. This, however, was not thanks to a compelling
Democratic alternative, but rather to the continuing fiasco in Iraq, along with
a host of other Republican misadventures. People throughout the world had waited
to see if the American electorate would give the president a pass or the
thumping he in fact got. The results were good news to most of the world—however
late or whatever the precise motivations.
What will the Democratic victory mean for organized
labor and the 88 percent of workers who fend for themselves? Unions committed
100 million dollars and 100,000 volunteers to “flipping” Congress. Will the
achieved flip catapult workers to higher ground or leave them where they were?
As we go to press, momentum is building toward a plan to end the botched U. S.
military operation in Iraq, with a death toll now estimated at about half a
million Iraqis and nearly 3,000 mostly working-class Americans. There are also
hopeful signs about raising the minimum wage. Labor’s coveted Employee Free
Choice Act which would make it easier to form a union may pass. On the other
hand, it is highly doubtful that the Democrats have the will power to overturn
Big Oil’s stranglehold on our economy and environment, challenge the further
monopolization of the media, or the privatization of nearly everything else.
Nowhere does the profit-making principle dominate more decisively than in the
health care field. There, more than 40 million people remain uninsured and many
more underinsured. And labor, with its continued interest in preserving its own
Taft-Hartley health funds, has yet to step up to the plate. Some union leaders
who are pushing for reform, among them Andy Stern of the service employees—the
nation’s largest union—view the corporate sector as their most important ally.
In this issue, Marie Gottschalk argues against this approach. She assesses the
prospects for health care reform in light of labor’s divisions and employers’
new push to shift the burden of insurance on to workers.
Even as labor continues to spend enormous resources
on politics, national governments and national unions face increasing limits on
their ability to control labor’s chief foe: global corporations. Traditional
approaches to this problem—international solidarity campaigns or lobbying
efforts by organizations like the ILO—can’t meet the challenge. Stephen Lerner
argues that building global unions is a necessary and urgent task. He suggests
that service-based jobs in global cities (where a handful of giant corporations
control the labor market) present the greatest opportunity to build these new
global unions. Using building services—the industry Lerner represents—as a
model, he describes what this effort would require. We note with interest here
the recent dissolution, on October 31, 2006, of the International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions, product and instrument of the cold war, in a merger with
the World Confederation of Labour to form the new International Trade Union
Confederation. In future issues we expect to assess the implications of this
development and the progress of the new federation.
Viable global unions will, of course, depend upon
sufficiently strong national labor movements. In recent years the U.S. labor
movement has paid much attention to the role of union density in strengthening
labor’s hand. Yet, the French labor movement presents a paradox of very low
union density yet enormous social and political influence. Helen Bouneaud
explores how this can be, while acknowledging the considerable challenges French
labor still confronts. In an effort to stimulate discussion on the French model,
we have invited Mark Kesselman to respond to Bouneaud. He finds much to agree
with, yet notes Bouneaud’s failure to emphasize what he considers a crucial
dereliction of French labor: its neglect of unemployed workers’ interests, many
of whom also happen to be northern and sub-Saharan Africans.
While high Black unemployment in the United States
has received much public notice, little is made of bad jobs in the Black
community. This skewed perspective, Steven Pitts argues, has made it very
difficult for community organizations and their political allies to address the
exploitation of low-wage black workers. Wal-Mart deliberately locates stores in
Black communities to take advantage of the Hobson’s choice between no jobs and
low-wage jobs, as well as the lack of decent retail options. Pitts suggests that
tackling this problem will require an understanding of the neighborhoods where
Black workers live today, both in the new exurbs and the older central cities.
The spring of 2006 saw enormous immigrant workers’
protests in cities and towns throughout the country. With a few notable
exceptions, labor did little to help organize these protests. This was
surprising, given the union movement’s increasing attention to immigrant
organizing, and its leadership of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Rides. Kent
Wong, Victor Narro, and Janna Shadduck-Hernández explore the nature of these
massive demonstrations, the policy divisions among unions about how to ally with
this new movement which they believe contributed to labor missing the boat, and
the continuing opportunities for labor to join with this nascent workers’
movement. One particularly volatile site of immigrant worker struggle is the
hotel and restaurant industry. David Bacon describes an example of a remarkably
successful effort of this sort among largely immigrant San Francisco hotel
workers. HERE, the hotel and restaurant workers’ union, won a major organizing
victory and set in place innovative contract language protecting workers’ rights
as immigrants and establishing an affirmative action program for African
American workers.
While labor’s alliances with immigrant groups shows
some promise, unions have failed to find sufficient common cause with the
environmental movement. Yet, for well over a decade, the steelworkers union has
worked to develop a strategic alliance with the environmental movement that
links big issues of job security to environmental stability. In June this year,
the union and the Sierra Club announced an historic formation they call the Blue
Green Alliance. David Foster, the executive director of this new alliance,
describes the alliance’s program for job creation and environmental
sustainability.
Deregulation is another arena where corporations
seek to divide the interests of workers from those of the general public. Ken
Peres debunks this myth, examining the high price that consumers have paid for
deregulation. He outlines the counterproposals of the communications workers
union to promote telecommunications projects, restore government regulation,
create jobs and defend consumers.
During the past two decades, a corporate-funded
think tank industry has arisen to promote deregulation, tax reform, and
union-busting. A new Center for Union Facts has emerged for the express purpose
of smearing unions. Esther Kaplan describes the billion-dollar union-busting
industry, the support it receives from the Bush administration and the way this
new center does its dirty work.
New Labor Forum continues to host discussions about
labor developments in China, magnet of global capital. In our last issue, Greg
Mantsios examined differing Chinese perspectives on that communist government’s
embrace of a market economy. He suggested that the official labor movement, the
ACFTU, was undergoing changes that could allow it to become a viable instrument
to restrain capitalist excesses. In this issue, Brendan Smith, Jeremy Brecher,
and Tim Costello look outside the official labor movement for sources of hopeful
resistance, and find them in a plethora of grassroots pre-union organizations.
If the global economy has transformed China, it has also reshaped the music
industry. Jay Schaffner describes how it has done this and what musicians and
the American Federation of Musicians might do to reverse the resulting job loss.
In this issue we are pleased to run the first
installment of what will become a regular column “Economic Prospects” by Robert
Pollin. This column will analyze crucial economic trends and what they are
likely to mean for workers and organized labor. In this issue, Pollin discusses
what he believes are the implications of a recent report that predicts a
geometric increase in outsourcing. Kim Phillip-Fein’s column “Caught in the Web”
provides valuable online sources of information and analysis of income
inequality, and, in keeping with our cover story, guides readers to rich data
about the health care crisis and tips on ways to respond.
In our Books and the Arts section, a review essay
by Kent Worcester discusses the new genre of graphic novels suggesting its yet
unrealized potential for treatment of the “labor question.” Davis Davies reviews
Andrew Ross’ Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences for Free
Trade—Lessons from Shanghai that challenges the myth of China’s exceptionalism
in the global economy. Anita Palathingal, our managing editor, reviews
Shipbreakers, a documentary directed by Michael Kot and set in the world’s
largest ship-breaking yard in Alang, India. The film depicts how ships are
dismantled by bare hands, in life-threatening conditions, by some of the poorest
people in the world. Matt Witt’s column “Out of the Mainstream: Books and Films
You May Have Missed” offers a listing of noteworthy resources, including a
documentary on Oaxaca teachers’ long history of struggle for democracy in their
schools, union, and country, and books about the rampant greed in Iraq’s
so-called “reconstruction”; a history of the now collapsing post-World War II
creation of our system of private health and retirement benefits; and a
conversation about the possibilities and challenges of a movement that unites
African Americans and Latinos. And we close with a selection of poems by and
about women workers.
Note: We apologize for omitting the following acknowledgment
in John Hammond’s article, “Choices for the World Social Forum,” which appeared
in New Labor Forum Vol. 15 Issue 3, September 2006: “The research reported in
this paper has been supported by the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society,
Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the Hunter College
Presidential Travel Fund. I appreciate the helpful comments of Tony O'Brien and
Thomas Ponniah.”
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