Forum: Problems and Prospects for a Global Labor Movement

Edited by

Bradley Nash, Jr.
Department of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
bnash@vt.edu

Cite: Nash, Bradley Jr., Ed. (1998). "Forum: Problems and Prospects for a Global Labor Movement." Journal of World-Systems Research http://jwsr.ucr.edu/ 4: 3 - 9.

What are the roles for local, national, and international labor and worker organizations in struggles against intensified global integration? How do we achieve these possibilities? Inside this issue are five PEWS members' answers.

Rapidly globalizing capital obviously calls forth the need for a global labor movement. If capital can shift production from one country to the next in an effort to find the lowest living standards and most politically oppressed workers, then the efforts of workers to improve their conditions anywhere will be undone. Workers worldwide need to join together in an effort to set standards and protect the political rights of all, so that capital cannot pit one group against another in a race to the bottom.

The necessity is so obvious that it barely needs stating, yet the pitfalls in achieving this objective are legion. I mention only a few:

1. Poor countries need industrial development. Joining globalizing capitalism is the only option available to achieve this goal, or at least so it seems. No other viable models exist today (even if we might want to experiment with alternatives). What poor countries have to offer capital is their workforce at bargain prices. Both workers and governments can see that, if demands for improved conditions come too quickly, all will be lost. Capital and industry will flee. (It matters not that the "need" for industrial development arises from the erosion of alternative economies brought on by multinational corporations. The current reality is what it is, and insistently demands solutions now.)

2. Efforts by workers and unions in the richer countries to reach out to workers in poorer countries smell of protectionism. Workers in the richer countries want to protect their jobs against flight, which translates to mean that they don't want those jobs to move to the poorer countries. To workers in the poorer countries, this seems like selfishly holding on to an advantage and not being willing to share it. Why should an impoverished worker who cannot feed her family fight to stop a factory from moving to her country where she might get a job?

3. The odor of protectionism is not diminished by the history of the AFL-CIO in Latin America and other areas of the world (to use a U.S. example). The U.S. working class, at least as represented by some of its political alliances, has given the appearance of aligning itself with imperialist domination. Why should workers in poor countries support the fights of such "allies" now that they are suddenly waking up to the fact that global capitalism hurts them too? Where was the AFL-CIO when the marines were invading their country and destroying its democratic movements?

4. What is our model for international labor organizing? Do we mean that union organizers from the richer countries send their representatives south to "help their little brown brothers and sisters"? Too often, unfortunately, that is the way it looks. From the perspective of workers in poor countries, the response is likely to be: "Who the hell are you to help us? You are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Get out of here and let us figure out our own problems." (Needless to say, both the parallels to racism within a country, and the reality of racism in relation to workers in poorer countries, are evident.)

These things said, is there any hope for the development of a global labor movement? Here are a few signs of hope or possibility:

1. To the extent that the U.S. (again limiting ourselves to U.S. examples) workforce and labor movement comes to consist and be led by people of color, immigrants and women, the chances of forming alliances across borders improve.

2. International organizing efforts need to be sensitive to the dangers of capital flight from poor countries to even poorer countries. Thus support efforts need to include in their demands the idea that flight is not acceptable.

3. Consumer movements are showing a new potential for putting pressure on companies to improve their work standards even as workers themselves are not put in jeopardy. Similarly, corporate campaign-style strategies recently developed by unions can be used to put pressure on global companies just as they can be used for domestic campaigns.

4. Unions from the richer countries need to be engaged in a continual struggle to negate their own imperialistic tendencies. They need to respect indigenous leadership, and give up on trying to control what happens, even if they have given money in support of the movement. Simply giving money to local labor movements, without strings attached, may be the best thing the AFL-CIO could do.

5. We all need to recognize that the solutions to global capitalism are not to be found in the labor movement alone, because it operates within the constraints of capitalism. We need to develop transnational political movements that attempt to posit alternatives about the way both the world's production system, and the world's product, can be more equitably distributed within and between nations.

Of course I recognize that as we try to settle the differences among ourselves, the international capitalist class keeps getting fatter and more powerful. The need to find a solution to the conundrum of working together to fight effectively against them is intense. We should keep on evolving new tactics for better communication, understanding, cooperation and support. And we in the U.S. need to be especially sensitive to what workers in poor countries need and want.

The globalization of the world economy has opened up new possibilities for cross-border labor organizing. In fact, several U.S. unions are working together with unions from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Japan, South Korea, and many European nations. For example, over the last several years, UNITE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees), the AFL-CIO, and the international garment workers trade secretariat have worked directly with maquiladora workers in Honduras and the Dominican Republic. These efforts led to the formation of several labor unions and the first contracts ever negotiated in the maquiladoras in the Dominican Republic. In addition, labor rights and solidarity organizations, like the Campaign for Labor Rights, Witness for Peace, and the US/Guatemala Labor Education Project (US/GLEP), along with many other groups, have also played key roles in the formation of maquiladora unions in Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Two recent and successful cross-border labor organizing campaigns involved Phillips Van-Heusen (PVH) and the GAP (Armbruster, 1997; Pattee, 1996). These two U.S.-based garment manufacturers "contract out" production - mostly shirts and jeans - to factories in Guatemala and El Salvador respectively. Both companies employ mostly young women who work very long hours and who earn far below the prevailing "living wage." These conditions, along with dehumanizing treatment from supervisors, led PVH and GAP workers to begin organizing. However, both companies responded with repressive tactics that included mass firings, death threats, severance payments, and involuntary dismissals. Both companies also threatened to cut their contracts with their suppliers and move to different locations. Yet, these women workers continued organizing and eventually won. After seven years, the PVH workers' union was recognized and contract negotiations are currently underway. The GAP signed a historic independent monitoring agreement with labor and human rights groups who oversee the company's contractors in Central America.

These victories contradict the theoretical literature, including some variants of the world-system perspective, on cross-border labor organizing. Previous research indicates that there are three main forces which limit the possibility of cross-border organizing. First, the globalization perspective suggests the rapid dispersion of production, especially in the highly mobile garment industry, can undermine cross-border organizing between labor unions in two different nations. Second, repressive and corporatist state-labor relationships often produce small and weak labor movements. Under these conditions the establishment of cross-border labor linkages is extremely difficult. The third factor limiting cross-border labor organizing involves the long history of the AFL-CIO in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. For nearly fifty years the AFL-CIO's foreign affiliates undermined and divided labor unions all over the world. These machinations generated suspicion of the AFL-CIO and restricted cross-border organizing between U.S. unions and unions in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

Interestingly, these three factors were all present in the PVH and GAP campaigns. The existing literature would predict that cross-border labor organizing that effectively targeted two highly mobile garment manufacturers in nations noted for their violent history of labor repression, and which involved the AFL-CIO and U.S.-based labor rights groups such as US/GLEP and the National Labor Committee (NLC), would be virtually impossible. Given these overwhelming odds, how did the PVH and GAP workers achieve their victories?

In the case of Phillips Van-Heusen, the PVH workers obtained critical support from the garment workers trade secretariat. Second, US/GLEP and NLC used trade pressure and provided legal assistance and media coverage to the PVH and GAP workers. Third, a new, strategic organizing model and local union activism were critical elements of the PVH campaign. Fourth, students, religious groups, and Central American solidarity organizations from the United States and Canada leafleted retailers (like J. C. Penney and Wal-Mart) who sold PVH and GAP products and raised consumer awareness of these issues. Fifth, the PVH and GAP workers and their international network of supporters targeted the "socially responsible" image of both companies. Interestingly, PVH and the GAP both have corporate codes of conduct, establishing minimal standards that their overseas suppliers must abide by, but neither company ever informed their workers of these codes. Public scrutiny and direct attacks on these companies' carefully crafted image was particularly effective in limiting capital flight. The combination of these elements produced two stunning victories for women garment workers in Guatemala and El Salvador.

These two cases illustrate the potential of cross-border labor organizing and the limitations of the existing literature. However, there have also been many unsuccessful cases of cross-border organizing. For instance, the United Auto Workers (UAW) has not yet developed ties with the Ford Democratic Workers Movement in Mexico, although UAW Local 879 and UAW Region 1A have done so. Thus the current outlook for the development of a global labor movement is mixed. Renewed labor militancy in the United States, the closing of the AFL-CIO's foreign affiliates, harsh working conditions in many developing nations, and the emergence of consumer campaigns that attack the public image of multinational corporations have generated exciting cross-border organizing campaigns. However, bureaucratic union structures, corporatist labor movements, and other factors still limit cross-border organizing.

Cross-border organizing is very difficult and there are no easy formulas for action. As academics and activists we should study these cases carefully and offer our support.

While the prospects for a global labor movement are ripe, working people and their supporters may fail to take full advantage of this historical opening. A potential barrier is the existence of a strategic myopia when it comes to the role of preexisting labor organizations at the national and international levels. Specifically, these higher-tier institutions are often viewed by labor activists and the rank-and-file as inherently autocratic and imperialistic, and are thus deemed to have little value for efforts at fostering global labor solidarity. A consequence is that many in the labor movement concentrate their energies solely at a local or community level, with the idea that it is only here that true progressive change can result. In terms of broader solidarity and resistance, it is felt that cross-regional and cross-national linkages will eventually develop to expand the struggle to a truly global level. In effect, it is presumed by many that a global labor movement will, and in fact must, be built strictly from the "bottom-up" (e.g. Brecher and Costello, 1994).

I by no means wish to undermine the value of bottom-up strategies for furthering the development of a global labor movement. Indeed, in recent years grass-roots initiatives and struggles have undeniably been enormously more successful in resisting capitalist exploitation, furthering local interests, and establishing equitable linkages between working peoples around the world than their counterparts at the national and international levels. However, such bottom-up strategies do need to be complemented by "top-down" initiatives as well, including such actions as the implementation of global labor standards, accelerated cross-border organizing by national and international unions, and transnational coordination and cooperation between various peak-level labor confederations. Further, global level initiatives like these can in part be accomplished by transforming existing institutions, rather than by the lengthy creation of entirely new international worker organizations from the bottom-up.

The trepidation and hesitation with which working people approach existing national and international labor institutions is certainly warranted. Taking the AFL-CIO as one example, it is certainly understandable why rank-and-file workers even in the United States, let alone in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, would resent and mistrust collaborating with this organization. At home, the AFL-CIO leadership spent decades stifling domestic labor militancy and channeling it into an acquiescent "business unionism" that supported, rather than challenged, U.S. capitalism. This support was even more salient abroad, as the AFL-CIO used its Department of International Affairs to implement the anti-Communist foreign policy of the U.S. government and to ensure the continued global hegemony of American capital (e.g., Bina and Davis, 1993: 158-160; Borgers, 1996: 78-79; Howard, 1995: 371).

If anything, then, as an established labor organization operating at the transnational level, the AFL-CIO has long hindered, rather than facilitated, the prospects for a global labor movement. Despite this inglorious history, the AFL-CIO has in recent years moved, however slightly, toward a more progressive position. Armbruster (1995: 78), for example, cites the importance of the AFL-CIO's membership in the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM), as well as the utilization of its "vast organizational resources", in the success of corporate campaigns in Mexico. Frundt (1996: 396-397) also lauds the AFL-CIO's involvement with the CJM, and additionally notes the federation's involvement with progressive labor groups in countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

This shift in AFL-CIO strategy is attributable both to external and internal pressures. Externally, as put by Bina and Davis (1993: 160), "[t]he global integration of capitalist production has undermined the material conditions that have supported [the] AFL-CIO's traditionally nationalist, class-collaborationist posture". In effect, the need for a global response to global capital has become an unavoidable reality. Internally, progressive change has emanated both from the bottom and from the top of organizations. Beginning in the mid-1980s, rank-and-file activists and several member unions successfully challenged the AFL-CIO leadership on its stance toward Central America, notably its support of the Reagan Administration's Nicaraguan policy (Howard, 1995: 376). In the mid 1990s, the AFL-CIO leadership itself changed, with a coalition coming to power that, at least on paper, appeared more attuned to the needs of rank-and-file workers both within and, importantly, outside the United States (Borgers, 1996: 71-72).

The case of the AFL-CIO points to a fact that proponents of a strictly bottom-up organizing strategy frequently lose sight of: organizations and their structures are human creations and are therefore malleable. The "Michelsian paradigm" that has long dominated thinking about formal organizations, and about labor organizations in particular, needs to be fully discarded (Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin, 1996). Large-scale bureaucratic organizations do not all inevitably slide into oligarchy, and those that do need not remain that way. The democratization of existing institutions for the representation of worker interests, albeit extremely difficult, is always a possibility. Overall, given the pace with which the globalization of production proceeds, workers of the world may not have the luxury of waiting for a new global labor movement to be built anew from the bottom-up. It might be better to also consider working with what we already have at the "top," and thus conduct the struggle on two fronts.

The articles above bring welcome attention to a key issue - possibly the key issue facing us today: left political responses to "globalization." Bonacich, Armbruster, and Nash each advance our understanding and indicate directions for future work. What strikes me, however, is how far we have to go, both as a movement and as theorists. In material terms capital is eons ahead of labor in establishing international ties. As a Marxist I believe that theory develops in symbiosis with practice; predictably, therefore, our limited material practice is associated with underdeveloped theory. As these pieces demonstrate, we have specific sharp insights, case studies, and examples of ideas that need to be part of a general theory, but such a theory doesn't exist even for us, academic members of a section that provides the most promising theoretical base for developing a theory of international labor solidarity. It certainly does not exist in the consciousness of rank and file workers.

The internationalization of capital gives it huge advantages in struggles with labor. Two basic labor responses are possible, each embracing one side of a contradiction: protectionism or international labor solidarity on a scale and at a depth that can match capital. The dominant left response unequivocally endorses a strategy of building international labor solidarity; most workers and many unions are more inclined to protectionism, often associated with xenophobia. The readers of PEWS News undoubtedly want me to say 'we're right, the workers are politically retrograde and need to switch to embrace the left-academic position.' Let me make an intentionally provocative case: it's not that simple. Workers also have hold of an important truth, and we need to take it seriously.

Each of these approaches faces enormous problems. The nature of a real contradiction is that it cannot be wished away simply by embracing one side or the other; each pole captures something important and simultaneously involves huge problems. The left position stands with internationalism, ever and always. That stance comes in part from the shaping events of many of our political lives: struggles against racism and U.S. imperialism (above all in Vietnam). The contradiction is that the left often finds itself arguing for the international free market, essentially saying that it is illegitimate and inappropriate to interfere with the sanctity of markets. Carried to an extreme that position requires the total dominance of capitalist values and organizational practices, and makes it impossible to develop or carry through any alternative.

The other side of the contradiction, protectionism, involves a massive danger for left politics: racism, nationalism, and xenophobia. As an attempt to limit the impact of capital's internationalism, protectionism has almost invariably involved racist (e.g. anti-Japanese) and anti-immigrant stances ("they" are taking "our" jobs; we need to keep "them" out). But it is also an assertion that the economy should not be driven by an unfettered market, that limits need to be imposed on the drive for profits, and that some means must be found to protect workers and the environment in order to put human needs above cost-benefit analyses.

We need to develop a general theory of international labor solidarity, a theory that recognizes the need for local community built on planning and some degree of protection from an unfettered market, and that simultaneously embraces international labor solidarity, rejecting all racism, nationalism, and xenophobia. Such a theory can develop only in relation to praxis. Each of the above pieces helps move us in that direction. Armbruster does so through a careful examination of successful cases of labor internationalism, cases where praxis contradicts (and is in advance of) theory. Nash proceeds by insisting on the importance of the (top-down) actions of central bodies (and I note that Barbara Shaler, the AFL-CIO's new international director, openly refers to the old regime as the AFL-CIA). Finally, Bonacich progresses with a series of stimulating observations detailing some of the key problems that must be addressed by any attempt to develop a general theory (or practice).

The widespread view that labor movements are facing a general and terminal crisis and have become irrelevant actors in the contemporary world is based on analyses which are short-term and core-centric. From a world-systems perspective -- that is, if we lengthen the temporal and geographical boundaries of analysis -- patterns can be identified that raise doubts concerning the wisdom of either generalizing from the recent experience of core countries to the entire world or projecting the current crisis of labor movements in the core into the indefinite future.

The sharp decline in overt expressions of labor unrest over the past two decades has been a strictly core phenomenon. Outside the core labor unrest has been rising during the same period (see the World Labor Group's special issue of Review, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1995). This labor unrest has taken two main forms. First, as Fordist-type mass production has expanded in the semiperiphery, dynamic union movements emerged in countries as diverse as Brazil and Poland, South Africa and South Korea. These labor movements have not only been effective in demanding "more and better" for their members; they have also played a key role in pushing the democratization processes in these countries beyond the limits intended by business and political elite. Second, a wave of labor and mass popular protests has swept the Third World in response to IMF-type structural adjustment policies and austerity politics. Seen from this point of view, the 1995 general strike in France is not "the first revolt against globalization" - as Le Monde would have it - but the tail end of a major world-wide wave of resistance.

These two types of labor unrest are rooted in two different (largely sequential) responses to heightened world-economic competition by corporate decision-makers in the post-1968 period. First, a handful of semiperipheral and peripheral sites with cheap labor and authoritarian governments were chosen as "safe bets" for industrial investment by U.S. and West-European mass production multinationals. However, as productive capital flowed into these countries, it also brought into being powerful new working classes and labor movements. Corporate decision-makers have responded to these new labor movements with a further round of "deindustrialization." For example, industrial employment in the ABC region outside Sao Paolo (and membership in Brazil's metalworkers union - the core of "new trade unionism") has been cut in half since the height of the mass strike movement in the mid-1980s. The new favored sites of investment are largely in East Asia (especially China); and if past experience is a guide to future dynamics, we should expect powerful new working classes and labor movements to emerge in those regions which are now industrializing rapidly.

By the 1980s it had become clear to corporate decision-makers that there is no such thing as an inherently docile working class. It was as if they had been chasing the mirage of cheap and disciplined labor around the world, only to find themselves continuously recreating militant labor movements in the new locations. As the limits of the industrial relocation "solution" became clear, a second response to heightened world-economic competition gathered force in the 1980s and 1990s: disinvestment from production, investment in finance and speculative activities, and pressuring states to redistribute resources from labor to capital. The growing financialization of capital, thus, has gone hand-in-hand with a rapid and unseemly polarization of wealth, both intra-nationally and internationally.

The limits of this "solution" are also beginning to dawn on the world's business and intellectual elite. Fear of a major popular backlash against "globalization" is growing. They draw their lessons from the protests against structural adjustment in much of the Third World, the growing social disorder in countries subjected to the "cure" (Yugoslavia being an extreme exemplar), and perhaps, from a reading of The Great Transformation (in which Polanyi links the "utopian" attempt to fully commodify labor and create a self-regulating world market economy to the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century).

Workers and workers' movements thus have been key actors shaping the historical development of the modern world-system. Moreover, there is every reason to think that this will continue to be the case. However, reliance on a simple repeat of past patterns would also be misguided. Most importantly, the responses of capitalists and states to worker resistance have continuously undermined old working classes and created new working classes. In core countries, the predominant transformations brought about during the past several decades have been (1) the feminization and internationalization (through immigration) of the labor force; and (2) the decreasing size and growing "flexibility" of workplaces. Just as the rise of a semiskilled immigrant factory proletariat and the shift from craft to mass production debilitated old forms of working-class organization and mobilization and required a major new rethinking of working class strategies, so recent transformations provide an analogous challenge for contemporary labor movements. There are embryonic signs that core labor movements have taken up this challenge after a long-period of denial (and hence, decline).

Finally, the promise of mass consumption - the extension of the "American Dream" to the workers of the world - had been a central prop legitimizing U.S. hegemony, as well as defining what is an acceptable goal for labor movements world-wide. (Even in communist states "catching-up" with the consumption standards of the West was a clearly stated goal.) However, it is clear that the world-scale generalization of mass consumption standards is limited, not just by the recent U.S. abandonment of its own hegemonic promise in favor of regressive redistribution, but also by increasingly tight ecological constraints. Given these constraints, and the enormous inequalities in world-income distribution now existing, a major reorientation away from consumerist dispositions is required. In sum, serious strategic rethinking on multiple fronts is crucial if labor (and other social) movements are to contribute effectively to the construction of a more egalitarian and sustainable world.