John Sweeney Press Club 11-19-99 Sp

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Subject: John Sweeney Press Club 11-19-99 Speech 

source: http://www.aflcio.org/publ/speech99/sp1119.htm
Remarks by John Sweeney President of the AFL-CIO
Making the Global Economy Work for Working Families: Beyond the WTO
National Press Club Washington, DC
November 19, 1999

Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining us - and my thanks to the National
Press Club for inviting me to use this prestigious forum to speak on behalf
of the 40 million people in America's working families that our unions
represent. Nothing will have a greater impact on the lives of those working
families than the future direction of the global economy, the rules by which
it operates and the values that inform those rules.

Events of this month have dramatically framed the struggle over that
direction. But the questions of the WTO agenda and China's role are only the
current focus. The larger questions of how to bring fairness and stability
to the global economy will not end with the upcoming meeting of the WTO in
Seattle.

The administration says the China trade deal and the World Trade
Organization meetings in Seattle will be historic, and we agree. But history
won't be made at the meeting of trade ministers there. The truly historic
turn of events will take place in the streets of that wonderful working
class city.

On November 30th, tens of thousands of working men and women and their
families from across America and countries across the world will rally and
march in Seattle. We will be joined by 200 international union leaders
representing over 135 million workers from more than 100 countries.

We will call upon the delegates to the World Trade Organization to address
workers' rights and human rights as well as environmental and consumer
protections in the rules that govern the global economy - demands that are
supported by workers from Argentina to South Korea, from South Africa to the
Czech Republic, tens of millions of workers from developing as well as
developed countries.

The confrontation in Seattle will signal an end to the era of trade accords
negotiated behind closed doors and the beginning of a new era in which
working families participate in trade decisions that affect our lives.

The attempt to bring China into the WTO intensifies our determination,
because we believe it is less likely to reform China, as its advocates
claim, than it is to further deform the WTO. And it is more likely to
detract from the WTO's already questionable legitimacy than to add to it.

The White House and the business community are working hard to sell the
China deal and to launch a "millennial round" of trade negotiations.

Editorials pose a choice between free trade and protectionism, between
engaging China and isolating it, between embracing the global market and
turning our backs on it. Opponents are being dismissed as part of the past,
and as obstacles to the prosperous future of the new economy.

This is nonsense. The debate isn't about free trade or protection,
engagement or isolation. We all know we're part of a global economy. And
we're so engaged that we're already running a $60 billion trade deficit with
China.

The real debate is not over whether to be part of the global economy, but
over what are the rules for that economy and who makes them - not whether to
engage China, but what are the terms of that engagement, and whose values
are to be represented.

Global corporations have defined the global market and dominate it. They
enlisted governments to slash regulations, free up capital, open up markets,
guarantee investments. They made the rules and they cut the deals.

The World Trade Organization, founded five years ago, is the capstone of the
corporate-dominated world marketplace - it oversees and enforces the rules
of the global economy, arbitrates trade conflicts, and claims the authority
to challenge state and national laws that conflict with its rules -- rules
that protect corporate interests, but not people.

Each year in France, at least 2000 workers die of asbestos-related cancer.
Yet when the French voted to ban all forms of asbestos, the law was
challenged as a violation of the WTO's trade accords.

And in Massachusetts in 1998, voters were told that to boycott companies
doing business with the slave labor regime of Burma would run afoul of the
WTO.

China cannot be admitted to the WTO on these terms. If states and localities
decide to boycott any business using forced labor in China, will China be
able to challenge that action as a violation of the WTO?

If students and workers gather again before a Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen
Square and the Chinese leaders slaughter them once again, will China have
the right to challenge U.S. trade sanctions as a violation of the WTO?

Renato Ruggerio, former director of the WTO, claimed it was creating "a
constitution for the global economy." If so, it is a constitution by the
corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations. It is a
constitution with a Bill of Rights that guarantees only the rights of
property.

Not surprisingly then, the global economy works well for the multinationals.
Under the WTO they created, global corporations now control about one third
of all export trade.

But the global economy does not work to the benefit of working people - the
200 richest people in the world have a greater combined income than two
billion of our poorest brothers and sisters. The World Bank reports that 200
million more people live in abject poverty today than in 1987.

Over the last 25 years, the global economy has produced slower growth and
greater inequality in both less developed and industrial nations. Financial
collapses have grown more severe and more frequent.

Working families have suffered most, because indebted countries have little
choice but to compete by lowering their own standards, establish export
processing zones, outlaw worker organizing, waive environmental laws, ignore
food safety and public health regulations, and slash social spending.

So every day, some 250 million children across the world go to work rather
than to school, making goods that flow freely across national borders.

Every day, tens of thousands of workers are chained into forced labor and
prison camps, slaving to make products that enrich global corporations and
dictatorial governments.

Every day, millions of workers work for less than a living wage making
products they cannot afford to buy.

Yet when working people across the world try to join together to gain decent
wages and safe working conditions, what happens?

Last year more than a thousand workers trying to organize in their
workplaces were killed. Thousands were arrested and imprisoned. Tens of
thousands were fired, losing their livelihoods, devastating their families.

For all the talk about free trade and democracy, when corporations invest in
developing countries, they send more money to dictatorships than to
democracies.

China, which has the worst practices of any country, already gets the most
investment by far - and this is a country where anyone attempting to
organize a union is immediately arrested and imprisoned - no exceptions.

Even in the industrial democracies, working families have not fared well
because growth has been slower and inequality greater.

Japan has been in depression for a decade, with workers losing the security
they once enjoyed. Europe is scarred by long term unemployment with
countries pressured to cut back worker benefits. Here in the United States,
inequality has been rising, and families pay the price while men and women
work longer and harder in jobs that offer fewer benefits and less security.

For working families in this country, the global economy is not an
abstraction. Many jobs are dependent on exports. Many are lost to imports.
Employers routinely use the threat to move abroad as a club in contract
negotiations.

Last year's global financial collapse produced tremors on Wall Street but
trauma in Pittsburgh. Even with the economy growing, the U.S. lost more than
500,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 18 months as devastated countries
tried to export their way out of trouble.

The most efficient steelworkers in the world saw their jobs swept away by a
flood of dumped imports, and when they sought relief from the flood, the
President told them unilateral action would run afoul of the WTO.

Seated here with me today is one of the workers I'm talking about. John Folk
and 1,100 other workers were employed at the Huffy Corp. bike factory in
Celina, Ohio, where they built the best bikes in the world for a company
that was making a profit. John was a local leader for the Steelworkers
Union, which helped those workers share in their company's success with
wages averaging $15 to $16 an hour.

But last year, the Huffy bike company decided to shut down their prosperous
plant to move to a less efficient plant in Mexico and import more bikes from
China, where workers are not allowed to organize together to lift their
standards. The directors took home a multi-million dollar bonus. The workers
got a pink slip.

Workers like John will be with us in Seattle to put our version of a "human
face" on the global economy.

America's working families understand the cruelty of a world economy
regulated in favor of the corporations. A majority understands that trade
accords like NAFTA hurt us more than they help. Four out of five Americans
want labor rights and environmental protections built into trade accords.
Over two thirds oppose bringing China into the WTO without further progress
on human rights and religious freedom.

Public opinion around the world is fueling a growing protest movement that
has begun to make itself heard in the halls of power and win real change.

We stopped fast track trade authority in the Congress not once but twice --
despite the best efforts of the Republican leaders of Congress, the
Democratic President and the Business Roundtable.

When Jubilee 2000 enlisted church and labor support across the world, debt
relief finally got onto the global agenda.

When an international movement of workers, consumers and environmentalists
challenged the acceleration of financial deregulation by the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment, they brought its closed negotiations to a halt.

And when students learned that items branded with the names of institutions
of higher learning were being manufactured at a cost of human misery around
the world, an anti-sweatshop campaign spread like wildfire on college and
university campuses.

Many of the leaders of that movement will be with us in Seattle, and some
are here today. I'd like to ask the students from United Students Against
Sweatshops to stand and be recognized so we can tell them, "Don't stop short
of total disclosure."

The students are proving that corporations and others in power may not see
the light, but they feel the heat, and we are going to keep raising the
temperature.

President Clinton seemed to get the message when he told the WTO that it has
to open up and incorporate workers' rights and environmental concerns. The
administration says it is committed to bringing labor rights into the WTO
and as a first step in Seattle, it is actually pushing hard for a WTO
working group on trade and labor rights.

But a working group, even if it is achieved, is only a start - we cannot and
will not be satisfied with gestures or cosmetics. A "human face" on the
global economy isn't enough - we want a body of laws that work for working
people.

Moreover, as I said at the beginning of this week, it is disgustingly
hypocritical for the White House to posture for workers' rights in the
global economy at the same time it prostrates itself for a deal with China
that treats human rights as a disposable nuisance.

It is time to cut through the posturing - when it comes to making the global
economy work for working people, there is no third way, only a right way and
a wrong way.

Incorporating enforceable workers' rights, human rights and environmental
protections in every U.S. trade and investment agreement is the right way;
admitting a repressive China into the WTO is the wrong way. Prohibiting the
import of goods manufactured by children is the right way; excluding the
voices of working families from the WTO is the wrong way.

Let me be clear about our plans to move the right way forward.

In Seattle, working people from across the world will call on the WTO to
review its record and reform its rules before taking on new areas for
negotiation. Our objectives are simple.

Every worker deserves protection of basic human rights - prohibitions
against child labor, slave labor, discrimination, and the freedom to join
together with others in a union.

The WTO must incorporate rules to enforce workers' rights and environmental
and consumer protections and compliance should be required of any new
member.

WTO proceedings must be opened up to give citizens a meaningful voice.

National and state laws and regulations concerning public health and the
environment must be safe from global veto.

And the ability of governments to safeguard their people from devastating
import surges or product dumping must be strengthened.

Until the WTO addresses these important issues, there will be no support for
a major new round of trade negotiations.

But we will not simply wait for the WTO to act - Seattle is the beginning of
a fight we will carry to every level of our government.

We will continue to organize in the Congress against any trade accords that
do not include workers' rights and environmental protections.

We will continue to reject any fast track authority that does not require
negotiation of enforceable workers' rights.

We will oppose the admission of any nation to the WTO until it is in
compliance with core workers' rights -- and that means we will wage a full
and vigorous campaign against granting permanent NTR status to China.

Supported by the vast majority of Americans, we will build a majority in
Congress to sustain our position.

We realize that the business community has hired big gun lobbyists to run a
multi-million dollar lobbying campaign and push the China deal through the
Congress, but we'll counter their money with mobilization and we will make
certain that working families in every congressional district are aware of
the position of every candidate.

Both Vice President Gore and Senator Bradley have pledged to demand that
workers' rights and environmental protections be part of future trade
authority and enforced in future trade accords.

We don't know how they will reconcile their promise with their support for
the China agreement, but we will hold them to their word, and urge the
Republican candidates to join them in that pledge.

We will call upon the White House to translate its rhetoric about workers'
rights into action. Recently, President Clinton issued an Executive Order
banning federal contracting with companies that employ one specific form of
child labor and we will ask that it be expanded to ban procurement of any
products produced in conditions that violate fundamental workers' rights.

We will work to make American law reflect American values - under current
law, countries that enjoy trade preferences in America can be stripped of
them if they violate core workers' rights, but the enforcement process is
slow and difficult.

We will work with congressional allies to strengthen our laws to make sure
respect for workers' rights and the environment becomes a reality for all of
our trading partners and we will urge Congress to strengthen laws that
safeguard U.S. industry from import surges or dumping efforts.

Clearly, the agreement with China suggests that the business community is
not yet convinced that basic human rights and environmental protections must
be incorporated into the trading accords. We must turn up the heat.

To do that, our central labor councils and state federations will take the
message of Seattle to their state legislatures and city councils, where they
will seek legislation and executive orders that ban procurement of goods
produced in conditions that violate fundamental workers' rights.

If the WTO will not enforce workers' rights and environmental protections,
then national and local governments must act to do so. Let the WTO explain
to citizens why they cannot choose to boycott companies producing goods with
child labor in Honduras, or slave labor in Burma, or workers who are locked
up when they try to organize a union in China.

Seattle marks the beginning of a new order. The China deal is the final and
most extreme example of the corporate era of trade negotiations. The popular
protest in Seattle escalates the struggle to make the global economy work
for the many and not just the few.

At the turn of the last century, when the great trusts and banks of the
Gilded Era forged a national industrial economy, America faced a similar
challenge.

It was an era of sweatshops, child labor, brutal repression of workers, and
poisonous workplace conditions. The new industrial giants enlisted the
government and the courts to suppress local attempts to regulate them and
literally arrest efforts to organize them.

It took decades of courageous organizing, sacrifice and struggle and a Great
Depression, but eventually we wrote new rules - including the minimum wage,
a forty hour week, workplace health and safety, the right to organize,
anti-trust, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The result, after World War
II, was a growing economy in which the blessings were widely shared, and the
great American middle class created.

Now we face the same daunting circumstances in the global economy and once
again, we confront sweatshops, child labor and brutal repression. Once
again, corporations enlist private tribunals to strike down efforts to
regulate them. And once again, we must struggle and sacrifice to write new
rules to ensure that the blessings of this new economy are shared and its
excesses controlled.

Those who say that corporate free trade is the future and that the demand
for workers' rights and environmental protections are part of the past have
it wrong.

They are proven wrong by workers in south China who risk arrest to demand a
living wage. They are proven wrong by small farmers in the Philippines who
demand protection against fields poisoned by foreign corporations. They are
proven wrong by American students who demand an end to sweatshop labor, and
they will be proven wrong by those of us who will gather in Seattle to begin
lifting our country up to a high road into the 21st century.

The paths to that road are steep. Our adversaries are powerful and
entrenched.

But we can and will reform the global economy because we have faith in what
Dr. Martin Luther King taught us, that the moral arc of history is long, but
it bends towards justice.

Thank you. God bless you all.