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NEWS - Labor Issues Create a Divide
Subject: NEWS - Labor Issues Create a Divide as WTO Set to Meet
Labor Issues Create a Divide as WTO Set to Meet
Trade: Third World nations balk at developed countries' bid to put
workplace concerns on agenda of landmark meeting.
By JONATHAN PETERSON, EVELYN IRITANI, L.A. Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON--Sweatshops. Child labor. Jobs fleeing to Mexico. Organized
labor, long stymied in its
bid to use trade policy as a tool for its agenda, has
persuaded the White House to
take up its cause when trade ministers from
around the world convene in
Seattle on Nov. 30.
But last week,
negotiators got a foreshadowing of what to expect as dozens of
developing nations demanded
that labor standards be put off-limits at the
landmark meeting of the
World Trade Organization.
When the European Union
proposed at a WTO meeting in Geneva that
workplace matters be
included on the Seattle agenda, there was overwhelming
opposition from Third World
nations--demonstrating anew that linking workplace
issues with trade deals
remains an enormously controversial issue in much of the
world, where low pay and
crude working conditions are often the norm.
Many poor nations fear
they could ultimately be forced to improve the lot of
their workers at a cost that
would price their products out of rich overseas
markets. Indeed, sorting out
this conflict in a way that satisfies both human rights
and economic progress has
long eluded trade negotiators and promises to be a
contentious issue at the
Seattle summit.
"It's one thing to say
we want labor rights in the World Trade Organization. It's
quite another thing to say
what we're willing to pay [to emerging nations] to get
them," said Rob Scott, an
economist with the Economic Policy Institute in
Washington.
Yet a combination of
political realities and hardball tactics--including union
plans to shut down all the
ports in Washington state on Nov. 30--has pushed
labor concerns into
prominence as the WTO meeting approaches.
President Clinton last
month proposed that the WTO create a group to look at
how trade rules and
workplace concerns are linked, and European officials last
week agreed to support such
a proposal in Seattle.
But organized labor has
long claimed that American jobs are jeopardized by
exploitative workplaces
abroad.
"We don't want to shut
down the trading system," said David Smith, director of
public policy at the
AFL-CIO. "We want to hold it to a simple standard--that it
improves the standard of
living of working people everywhere."
In fact, labor's
quarrel with the North American Free Trade Agreement and
similar plans is among the
reasons U.S. trade initiatives have all but ground to a
halt during the past few
years.
Against that backdrop,
many observers--including angry union members--were
startled last week when
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney joined a handful of
business leaders in signing
a letter expressing general approval of U.S. plans for
the Seattle meeting. At the
event, officials expect to launch negotiations aimed at
opening global trade in
agriculture, services, electronic commerce and other
areas.
But in the letter
sealing the deal between Sweeney and the business leaders,
labor gained something new:
support from such major companies as IBM,
Hewlett-Packard, Eastman
Kodak and Monsanto for exploring the link between
labor issues and trade
deals.
"Even the business
community is ready to accept what organized labor wants if
that means in the future we
don't have these vicious disputes over things like
NAFTA," said one high-level
U.S. executive. "There is some degree of sympathy
for these points of view if
we can move the U.S. agenda forward."
Some viewed the letter
as a possible watershed if it ultimately signals an
easing of the rigid
polarization between business and labor that has paralyzed
recent trade initiatives.
"This is a big step,"
said Greg Mastel, director of global economic policy at the
New America Foundation think
tank. "One of the things that's been holding up
trade progress in recent
years is that there's been no domestic consensus."
At the same time, the
letter sparked a backlash within the labor movement,
which was already split by
the AFL-CIO's endorsement of Vice President Al Gore
for next year's Democratic
presidential nomination.
Some of the AFL-CIO's
largest members, including the Teamsters and the
International Longshore and
Warehouse Union, want an immediate moratorium on
trade talks and a complete
overhaul of the existing system.
Whereas top U.S. labor
leaders are united in their opposition to child
exploitation in Pakistan and
forced labor in military-run Myanmar, there are sharp
divisions over how to push
for better working conditions at this month's WTO
meeting.
In a memo to AFL-CIO
officials around the country, Sweeney emphasized that
he does not support all
elements of the U.S. trade agenda, such as efforts to
open new service sectors to
trade. "Our critique of the WTO and the world trading
system is both broad and
deep, and our demands in Seattle are strong," he
declared.
The AFL-CIO is pushing
the WTO to adopt standards for protecting workers'
rights and the environment,
to conduct annual reviews on compliance by its
members, to penalize
governments that fail to meet those standards and to set
tough requirements for
prospective members such as China.
Nonetheless, Bret
Caldwell, a spokesman for the 1.3-million-member
Teamsters, said his union is
"very disappointed" at the AFL-CIO's decision to
support a global trade body
that "in its five-year existence hasn't issued one
labor-friendly decision."
Labor's planned
protests have sent jitters through the Clinton administration,
which once looked at the
Seattle meeting as a crowning moment for its
now-beleaguered trade
policies.
When the WTO begins its
four days of closed-door negotiating sessions inside
the Washington State
Convention and Trade Center on Nov. 30, critics are
planning to get their point
across with street theater, hold candlelight vigils and
unfurl banners from downtown
skyscrapers. Their message: By transferring power
to institutions such as the
WTO, governments are placing profits above their
citizens' health, safety and
right to humane working conditions.
The ILWU, whose members
work the docks from Alaska to California and
Hawaii, has already
announced that its western Washington locals will walk off the
job for eight hours as the
conference opens, in effect closing ports in Seattle,
Tacoma, Bellingham, Hoquiam,
Anacortes, Port Angeles, Everett, Olympia and
Poulsbo.
Other ILWU locals on
the West Coast, including Long Beach and Los Angeles,
are considering a similar
eight-hour "stop-work meeting," a maneuver the union
says is allowed under its
contract.
"We make our living off
trade, so we are in a unique position to make the case
that we are not against
trade, we are for 'fair trade,' " said ILWU President Brian
McWilliams.
The AFL-CIO has
promised to bring tens of thousands of workers into
downtown Seattle Nov. 30 for
a protest march and labor rally. But Sweeney's
decision to work at least
partly within the system has jolted the labor movement.
At the heart of this
rift is a fundamental disagreement over whether the WTO,
a 134-member organization
dedicated to expanding trade, can be turned into a
worker-friendly institution
or if such concerns should be directed toward a
different entity, such as
the U.N.'s International Labor Organization.
Under the U.S.
proposal, a WTO "working party" would consider how trade
jibes with such concerns as
child labor, employment, social welfare and labor
standards.
Although the short-term
goal would be merely an assessment, emerging
nations such as Malaysia and
India fret that such an effort would be the first step
toward costly requirements
for their own workplaces. They resent the imposition
of Western values and fear
that wealthier nations could use such requirements to
restrict imports from poor
nations, which may view their cheaper labor as a
competitive advantage.
"It will almost
certainly become a protectionist device--maybe not in the
beginning, but in the end,"
said Martin Khor, president of the Third World
Network, an advocacy group
in Malaysia. Yet opposition to injecting labor
standards into trade
negotiations is hardly limited to the Third World. Leaders in
Japan, parts of Europe and
other developed regions have long argued that taking
on such volatile issues
would doom trade groups such as the WTO and the
Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation forum, which operate on consensus.
Certainly, the issue
will influence the horse trading among nations clamoring
for their own objectives as
the next major round of trade negotiations unfold in
Seattle.
"The U.S. is going to
have to pay something to developing countries if it is
going to get this working
party," noted a WTO official. Similarly, emerging nations
will be under pressure to
make concessions to the United States in return for U.S.
support for their own goals,
such as easier access to richer nations for their
exports.