The War on Working Americans - Part II - by Stephen Lendman
This article was written to assess the state of working America in the run-up to Labor Day, 2007. Organized labor today is severely weakened following decades of government and business duplicity to crush it. Part I reviewed the labor movement's rise in the 19th century and subsequent decline post-WW II and especially in the last three decades. Hope arose for some change in the Democrat-led 100th Congress. A weak effort emerged, but Senate Republicans killed it.
Organized labor is struggling to remain relevant and claw its way back. The enormous obstacles it faces are reviewed below as well as the condition of working Americans today in a globalized world affecting their lives and welfare heading "south" in the "land of opportunity" offering pathetically little.
The Loss of High-Paying Jobs from Outsourcing Under Globalized Market-Based Rules
World trade isn't new, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was its mid-20th century version after 23 founding nations signed it on October 30, 1947 in Geneva. Earlier in 1946, they drafted the International Trade Organization (ILO) that followed the creation of the IMF and International Bank for Reconstruction (now the World Bank) at Bretton Woods in 1944. Fifty-three nations then signed the GATT in Havana in March, 1948 as the founding international instrument governing world trade.
Subsequent rounds of negotiations followed through number eight launched in Punta del Este, Uruguay (the Uruguay Round) in 1986. It was signed in Marrakesh, Morocco in April, 1994 by most of the 123 participating countries as the updated version of the original 1947 GATT. It was then succeeded by the WTO January 1, 1995, one year to the day after NAFTA took effect as another worker rights legislative weapon of mass job destruction. DR-CAFTA followed next for the Central American countries signing on to it after El Salvador did first in March, 2006.
The WTO is well-seasoned with a corporate-friendly alphabet soup of Uruguay-negotiated agreements like the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), and others all designed for one purpose. It's to override member states' national sovereignty so they're now governed under a uniform set of global market trading rules favoring capital.
They're designed for the Global North, giant corporations and the rich at the expense of Global South developing nations, ordinary people everywhere, concern for environmental standards as well as sanity and public safety. Along with the IMF, World Bank, and other international lending agencies, this entire structure is big capital's neoliberal scheme to commoditize everything, including people and life itself in the human genome, to strip-mine the planet for profit.
Globalized trade has a long history, but the notion of a globalized marketplace came into its own in the 1980s. It was hailed as a western, mainly US, prescription for economic growth and prosperity lifting all boats. In fact, only yachts benefitted by design so the privileged could gain at the expense of all others preyed on.
The UN's International Labour Organization's (ILO) commission on the social dimensions of globalization is comprised of representatives from labor, government and business. In 2004, it issued a damning appraisal of world trade rules harm and the subsequent distress caused by unfair practices. It ranges from how TRIPS prevents affordable generic life-saving drugs being sold in developing countries to the shifting tax burden from business and the rich to workers, and much more.
In the US and West, the damage comes from exporting jobs and offshoring manufacturing and service operations to low-wage countries. It began in the late 1950s when modest numbers of them went to Canada to take advantage of the cost savings there. The pace then quickened in the 1960s and 1970s with the exodus of production jobs in autos, shoes, clothing, cheap electronics, and toys as well as routine service work like credit card receipt processing, airline reservations and basic software code writing.
What started as simple assembly and service work early on, then took off in the 1980s. It spread up and down the value chain and now embraces almost any type good or service not needing a home-based location such as retail clerks, plumbers, and carpenters; top-secret defense research, design and selected types of manufacturing; and certain types of specialized activities companies so far have kept at home. What's moving abroad, however, is big business getting bigger with Gartner Research estimating outsourcing generated $298.5 billion in 2003 global revenues.
The toll adds up to a global race to the bottom in a country where services now account for 84% of the economy. The once bedrock manufacturing portion is just 10% and falling as more good jobs in it are lost in an unending drain. Since the start of 2000 alone, about one in six factory jobs, over three million in total, have been affected. The sector is less than a third of its size 40 years ago and one-fourth the peak it hit during WW II.
It's been devastating for the nation's 130 million working people. No longer are unions strong and workers well-paid with assured good benefits like full health insurance coverage and pensions. Today, all types of financial services comprise the largest economic sector. Much of it is in trillions of dollars of high stakes speculation annually producing wads of cash for elite insiders (when things go as planned) and nothing for the welfare of most others and the good of the country.
Worst of all is the poor and declining quality of most service sector jobs measured by wages, benefits, job security and overall working conditions. It's because fewer good ones exist, unions are weak, and workers are at the mercy of employers indifferent to their plight. People are forced to work longer and harder for less just to stay even. Jobs in this sector are mostly concentrated in unskilled or low-skill areas of retail, health care and temporary services of all kinds. They pay lots less than full-time jobs, and have few or no benefits and little prospect for future improvement. This all happened by design to crush worker rights and commoditize them like all other production inputs.
The Department of Labor now projects job categories with the greatest future expected growth are cashiers; waiters and waitresses; other restaurant-related workers; janitors and cleaning personnel; retail clerks; and child care workers - all low-skill areas. Harvard degrees aren't required. Neither are high school ones.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
You should go outside the American box and see the rest of the world. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for the world. Come to China. Want to have a thrill and see how the people really live. You from America will think you are from hog heaven, yet you still complain?
Is there a reason for the out sourcing of jobs? One American Job pay is equal to the pay for 20 Chinese. You know they are people too. What makes Americans such a/the favored people in the world, while the rest of the world is closed out.
In fact isn't America about making the world as comfortable as Americans. If people in other countries seem to be able to do it, why do Americans think they can't, unless they have more money.
What is the real problem? Power, Control of people through Unions, through Government and laws? Or is it the economics of it, in which prices for goods should be low, instead of high, so all people benefit instead of a few?
People in China have low wages, and pay low prices for goods. They have the things they need, while more and more people are trying to get those things as they work in an ever changing world and environment.
So what about this labor Union stuff? What do we do when there is no more oil in the ground? Who's fault will that be?
There are lots of things and resources that God provided freely, and man takes and charges high fees for. Who makes one man worth more than the other?
I just think these Wars we have conjuring up in our minds are really our own wars, and fears. Instead we should be thankful Americans were able to help other peoples in the world. Life and Death is a minor thing, its the sacrifices and things we do that mean anything in this life.
The war we are facing now is Global Warming, and the end of the Oil supply. Any other perceived war is frivilous, because without a planet who cares, without a fuel to transport goods, who cares!
Thinking that Unions are the answer without considering that the rest of the world is involved is quite unrealistic. If Unions can't stop GW from invading Iraq, how are Unions to going to help me? Really impossible I think.
The picture is saving our planet from the Global sprawl with the use of oil. We need to preserve Oil, while saving the internal combustion engine, by creating ethanol. We need to grow sugarcane on the Ocean, because there is no other larger space to do it. It can be done. Will unions help do this? I highly doubt it.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 930 comments) on Thursday, Aug 30, 2007 at 7:18:55 AM
Oil isn't running out. Besides we don't need to keep using oil. We can invest in clean, renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and hemp. China is no place you should wish to live. China like America murders its own people. China like America has an ever widening gap between the rich and poor. America doesn't need to lower workers wages. China and other poor countries need to raise workers wages.
Stephen Lendman, I love your articles. Especially the ones contrasting America and Venezuela.
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Ty (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 888 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 2, 2007 at 11:22:16 PM
The thought isn't Oil is running out. The reality is that it is and will run out. Do you know the dynamics of Oil in the earth? Isn't there a reason to have oil inside the earth while not sucking it out? Perhaps it has something to do with the gravity anchor. Or the rotational balance. I liken earth itself as an engine. Why are we taking the Oil out of earth's engine? We are doing stuff that we can not replace once it is gone. Can you make manmade crude oil? I say you can't.
China is a place I choose to live because that is where the real fight is. You have democracy, the chinese don't. So I am here to educate, to communicate, to prove. Raising China wages will kill many people, as the great leap forward did during Chairman Mao's time. You advocate more killing in China? I think that is unwise. Since China has a proven record that people can live on lower incomes and not die, what makes you think Americans will suffer death because of lower wages? In fact the greedy people have caused this mess and are trying their damn best to cause more death and destruction, for their higher capitalist agenda. The rich are few, the poor are many. You can not have many rich people, because there is not enough resources on the planet to sustain it. You would collapse, because no one would want to work, no one would do the labor.
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Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 930 comments) on Monday, Sep 3, 2007 at 6:36:15 AM
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