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

["Nathan Newman" <nathan.newman@xxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of J. Barkley Rosser,
> Jr.
> 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?

The reason the right to organize is a core issue is that without it, all
this talk about what "developing countries want" is mere cant by the elites
of those countries who suppress their own workers to the benefit of local
elites.   Without the right to organize, there is no room for non-government
democratic voices from the workplaces of the world.

So that is the basic point.

The other point is that I sometimes can't believe we have revived pre-New
Deal law at the international level and progressives seriously are arguing
in defense of it.  Back then, conservative federal judges struck down laws
in some states that barred the sale of goods made with child labor and
fought against national labor standards in exactly the terms we hear today
by those who oppose enforceable international labor standards.  And many
Southerns fought tool-and-nail against national labor laws like the Wagner
Act based on their comparative advantage of exploitation.

I support expanded trade as a good for developing nations, but I have no
problem saying that if basic human rights, including the right to organize
and right to strike are abridged, goods from those countries should be
barred.  Otherwise, whatever economic gains to those countries that may come
from trade will go overwhelmingly to the elite.  I am all for economic
transfers from the developed world to the developing world, but I am against
economic transfers from working class Americans to the bank accounts of
multinational corporations and third world millionaires and billionaires.

And if the threat of "punishment" leads to greater freedom and higher wages
for third world workers, I am all for that kind of punishment.

-- Nathan Newman