------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Feb. 7, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
LABOR AND THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM By Milt Neidenberg What was needed was a loud and clear voice that could be heard around the country and the globe demanding global economic justice. It wasn't to be. They let out a squeak when it should have been a bellow. On Jan. 17, less than two weeks before the meeting of the World Economic Forum, AFL-CIO leaders finally joined the growing protest against this wealthy group of corporate and banking moguls allied with government elites. This group of billionaires will spend Jan. 31 to Feb. 4 defending their grossly disproportionate share of the world's precious resources. The WEF will be held in New York to show the world that, following the World Trade Center attack, the city is now a secure setting for this glorified, ostentatious function. The mobilization of police and other law enforcement personnel who have been training for weeks, the media blitz of violence baiting that has saturated the public, is all unprecedented and calculated to intimidate participants from joining the protest. It seems to be working in regard to the AFL-CIO leaders. In a letter and leaflet addressed only to local unions in New York City and the state federation, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney outlined two modest activities scheduled for Jan. 29 to provide laborresponse to the World Economic Forum. One activity will be a forum to hear "what globalization is doing to our families, our communities, our countries, our future." Sweeney will be the featured speaker. AFL-CIO CALLS OFF MARCH The other activity would have been a "March for Global Justice." However, the march was called off. Instead, the AFL-CIO will hold a rally at a Gap storefront near the Waldorf-Astoria, where the WEF is meeting. Unfortunately, this was the union leadership response when city and higher- up law enforcement officials denied them their constitutional right to march. Their literature states, "Say 'no' to sweatshops, layoffs and the global corporate agenda, and say 'yes' to the worldwide movement for global justice." This is a step forward from previous years when they responded to the global corporate agenda with an appeal for "fair trade, not free trade." As if these greedy, marauding scoundrels who scour the globe to enrich their treasuries at the expense of the most oppressed have any sense of fairness. Behind the fa�ade of glitter and gold, a sense of gloom and doom appears to be pervading the WEF participants. Robert Hormat--vice chair of Goldman, Sachs International and a spokesperson on many occasions for Wall Street's sentiments-- expressed his view that there is no longer a feeling of invulnerability. "A new sense of realism has descended on us, and we realize we're all in peril." (New York Times, Jan. 27) This should be a wakeup call for these labor leaders. The mood of the class enemy is significant in planning action struggles. One such struggle that is sure to come up at the WEF is the Free Trade Area Agreement. FTAA--a threat to the millions of workers here and abroad--is a top priority for the Bush administration and corporate/banking tycoons. AFL-CIO President Sweeney has been invited to address a session of the WEF. Will he denounce this multilateral bosses' agreement--which is nothing more than another North America Free Trade Agreement? NAFTA, which opened up Canada and Mexico to U.S. capitalists, decimated the jobs and working conditions of workers here and abroad. The FTAA is much more threatening. It will encompass all of South America and the Caribbean. It remains to be seen what the text of his remarks will be. But one fact is certain. There is a growing opposition and a deep distrust abroad, particularly in Latin America, for the FTAA, which seeks to open up those markets for further U.S. exploitation. SWEENEY SHOULD SHOW SOLIDARITY ON FTAA President Sweeney should acknowledge this growing militancy in a show of international solidarity and spell it out. In Argentina, the labor movement and the poor continue to take to the streets in general strikes and other mass actions. In a show of defiance, they are demanding that the new government break the financial and political grip U.S. banks and corporations still hold on their country. In Brazil, unemployment is on the rise. Organizations like the Landless Workers Movement--who work on the sugar plantations--are opposing the stranglehold U.S. tariffs and quotas have on their economy. In Mexico, steelworkers have occupied a number of plants beholden to U.S. NAFTA agreements, along with other struggles. Venezuela, Colombia and much of Latin America are seething with anti-U.S. rage as unemployment, poverty and hunger rise. President George W. Bush's "free trade" policy, the FTAA, and all the exorbitant benefits accrued to U.S. banks/corporations, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are in jeopardy. Meanwhile, socialist Cuba stands as an alternative, a beacon of hope for the downtrodden masses of workers and peasants. This is all good news for the labor movement here and it should make the most of it. This militancy can only help the AFL-CIO and the millions of members who are under assault from the Bush administration and Wall Street. The Bush administration is already charging these worldwide movements with "terrorism" to justify its plans for military aggression, as it is doing in Colombia. According to an extensive article on the WEF in the Jan. 27 New York Times, "terror ism is now synonymous with opposition to globalization." Financial writers Ste pha nie Strom and Louis Uchitelle claimed: "Not only has globalization been cast by terrorists as the cause of many ills, but it also may be the culprit behind the synchronized slowdown of the world economy, the first global downturn since the oil crisis of the 1970s." This phony propaganda won't fly. The workers know well enough who are responsible for the global recession: the billionaires who will be attending the WEF. WORKERS MORE CONCERNED WITH ECONOMY THAN 'TERRORISM' In a recent New York Times/CBS poll, a cross-section of the population has shifted its opinion in recent weeks. According to the poll, "the economy has now supplanted battling terrorism." This is a significant development. Since the attack on the World Trade Center, the government's campaign to inject "terrorism" and patriotism into every facet of life has enabled the Bush administration to successfully carry out U.S. imperialism's war drive and the war against labor, the poor and the oppressed. Are those days numbered? Will the AFL-CIO leaders deal with this dramatic development? In his opening remarks to an AFL-CIO Biennial Convention held in Las Vegas in late November, which most commentators and analysts called uneventful and uninspiring, Sweeney urged union leaders to "take the offensive in a war here at home." He was referring to an offensive against President Bush, congressional Republicans and corporations. While he repeated again and again this theme of waging war here at home to the 1,000 delegates, he added, "even as we support the president and our troops in the conflict abroad." Sweeney praised Bush for "waging the war against terrorism." This sends the wrong message at a time when the deepening recession is awakening the workers to struggle. The AFL-CIO leaders are in a dangerous contradiction. Unless they detach themselves from the frenzy of the campaign on "terrorism" that justifies expanding the war abroad, the labor movement can't wage an effective fightback against all the social ills impacting on the workforce here. Events such as the Enron debacle, which exposes every feature of capitalist accumulation of wealth and the system that deepens the gap between rich and poor, have awakened anger among the workers--especially people of color--who will bear the brunt of the recession. Is the class-consciousness of multinational rank-and-file workers on the rise? Is a people's movement--made up of students and youth, immigrant and community organizations-- taking their grievances into the streets? Just maybe, these developments have overshadowed the views of AFL-CIO leaders and turned the wheel leftward toward new and creative forms of struggle. It's time for these labor leaders to get aboard and check it out. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
