Re: RE: Re: Fighting the China Deal (re: Keeping focus afterthe WTO

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Nathan,
       There are several core provisions developed
by the ILO.  Who has decided and why that "the
right to organize" is the bottom line one that is to
be used to keep countries out of the WTO or to
otherwise punish them?
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan Newman <nathan.newman@xxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, December 09, 1999 12:18 AM
>Subject: [PEN-L:14511] RE: Re: Fighting the China Deal (re: Keeping focus
afterthe WTO


>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Martin
>> Hart-Landsberg
>
>> It would be very
>> different if an organized wing of the Chinese working class proposed
>> solidarity on this issue.  But that is not the case.
>
>But the point is the lack of the right of the Chinese working class to have
>an "organized wing" that is at issue in having these trade deals.  Those
who
>argue for labor standards are not asking for new standards but that the
>basic right to organize be upheld.  Like intellectual property rights or
>other international rules enforced by the WTO, the basic demand is that the
>basic ILO labor standards be considered on the same (or higher) level of
>importance as those capitalist standards.
>
>The China deal is a basic blueprint for protecting the capitalists in each
>country while ignoring the rights of labor or environmental sustainability.
>Fighting any deal that has that double standard is the point of the Seattle
>movement.
>
>I agree in general that international movements need stronger alliances
from
>grassroots to grassroots, but the lack of that possibility with China is a
>strong argument for not linking our economies so tightly.   If US labor
uses
>its power to leverage stronger rights to organize in places like China,
that
>is little different from a whole history of fighting to extend labor rights
>from organized areas to non-organized areas.   Some folks hold onto some
>idea of China as a progressive more enlightened center of working class
>power, but that is bull-hockey as far as most progressive labor activists
>are concerned.  The United States may be the heart of capitalist power but
>it is also - in however weakened a form - a bastion of labor power as well,
>partly because of its location in the belly of the beast.  There is always
>the fear - quite legitimate - that US labor will use that power in a narrow
>self-interested form rather than in a more progressive strategic way.  But
>that is the role of the US Left is pressuring and advocating for labor and
>other US activists to support a progressive version of international
>pressure for labor and environmental rights in those countries where the
>"organized wing" of the working class is suppressed.
>
>-- Nathan Newman
>
>