Labor Union Blog

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Workers Independent News Labor Radio
Internet Radio Program 03/24/10
Producers: Doug Cunningham & Jesse Russell

Labor Radio Rundown:

1) WIN Newscast

2) Economic Policy Institute Director of International Research Robert Scott says every state has suffered from jobs loss to the trade deficit with China. Scott reveals some of what EPI’s report found.

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Even with health care reform expanding access to health insurance to millions of Americans finding a doctor in rural areas could still be an issue for many. Jesse Russell reports:

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By Doug Cunningham

Millions of American workers are jobless because China has manipulated its currency and used trade agreements to flood America with artificially cheap goods. Congress is considering legislation to penalize China for its currency manipulation to try to protect U.S. jobs. The Alliance for American Manufacturing is a partnership between the United Steel Workers and some Fortune 500 companies trying to keep jobs in America. AAM’s Scott Paul.

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Members of Congress, listen up: The nation’s huge trade deficit, mainly with China, has cost jobs in every congressional district, according to a report issued today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Contrary to conventional wisdom, high-tech industries are losing jobs faster than any other sector of the economy.

Since 2001, some 2.4 million jobs have been lost or displaced in this country as a result of the massive trade deficit with China, the report says. More than one-quarter—26 percent or about 628,000 jobs—displaced by trade between 2001 and 2008 are in computer, electronic equipment and parts industries. Last year alone, China was responsible for more than 80 percent of our total, nonoil trade deficit in goods.

The report cites China’s currency manipulation as a major cause of the trade deficit. Over the past decade, China has consistently undervalued its currency by an estimated 35 percent to 40 percent. As a result, while imports from China and U.S. trade deficits set records, American manufacturing employment has plummeted. Other causes of the deficit include massive industrial subsidies in China, lax labor and environmental law enforcement, intellectual property theft and piracy and Chinese policies that block U.S. imports. Click here to read the report.

Says Robert Scott, EPI’s director of international programs:

This intervention makes the yuan [China's currency] artificially cheap and provides an effective subsidy on Chinese exports. Unless China raises the real value of the yuan by at least 40 percent and eliminates other trade distortions, the U.S. trade deficit and job losses will continue to grow rapidly.

The congressional districts hit hardest by the deficit are in the heavy information technology areas of California and Texas, and also in North Carolina, which lost mainly jobs in a number of manufacturing industries. You can check out the impact of trade on your congressional district on an interactive map here.

The Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2010 was introduced last week by Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) and Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Olympia Snowe (Maine), with 10 other co-sponsors. The bill would change the U.S. Treasury Department’s rules to make it easier to determine if a country is manipulating its currency. The bill also provides meaningful sanctions, including countervailing duties or tariffs, if negotiations to stop currency manipulation fail.

As Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) Executive Director Scott Paul says:

China’s cheating is causing America to lose more than just the capacity to make widgets in the one-sided trade arrangements with China. Sophisticated electronics and high-tech products that once were made in the United States are increasingly being made in China instead. We are losing more and more of these good jobs.

The report also notes competition with low-wage workers from less-developed countries has driven down wages for U.S. workers in manufacturing and reduced the wages and bargaining power of essentially all production workers with less than a four-year college degree, roughly 80 percent of the private-sector workforce.

The union movement is working to bring relief to workers in Haiti affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake and to build a long-term strategy to move the country away from a sweatshop economy to one that provides good jobs.

The first priority has been to respond to urgent needs for food, water, medical attention and dry shelter. If you haven’t yet had a chance to help, or wish to donate again to relief efforts, Union Plus has pledged to match up to $100,000 in individual donations to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s Earthquake Relief Fund. Already, Union Plus has matched $80,000 and needs just $20,000 more to reach that goal. Click here to donate online now. Donations also can be made by sending a check with Earthquake Relief Fund for Haitian Workers in the memo line to:

Solidarity Center Education Fund
Attention: Joan Welsh
888 16th St., N.W., Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20006

Goods are currently being delivered to the Association of University Graduates Motivated for a Haiti with Rights (AUMOHD), which is serving as the labor movement’s central distribution point and organizing center. Through donations, the Solidarity Center has helped AUMOHD obtain energy-generating solar panels for their building, allowing union members to charge cell phones, use computers and set up communications—a vital first step in the relief and recovery process.

Even as they distribute needed supplies, unions also are sending a message to those donors who want to invest in Haiti for the long term. Cathy Feingold, Solidarity Center representative for the Dominican Republic and Haiti, told In These Times magazine that an investment strategy “has to be for good jobs, not just jobs at the current minimum wage of $5 a day.”

Now aid organizations are providing cash for work, cleaning up after the earthquake at that minimum wage. That can’t be the model, hiring people at $5 a day without health care, pension, or a right to organize. If it’s just creating more sweatshops, Haiti does not need more of that.

Apparel sweatshops have expanded in Haiti. Before the earthquake, some 18 factories employed 25,000 workers with only one union factory.

Unions and our international allies also are fighting for workers’ right to form a union. Before the earthquake, most workers were employed in the public sector, and private-sector workers trying to form unions were typically fired or threatened with death, Feingold told In These Times. The government rarely enforced laws protecting workers, and the nation’s few factory owners insisted they could not flourish if workers organized unions, she said.

Late last year, 57 leaders of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers’ Union (GBGWU) were fired, without recourse, when miners at the Bauxite Company of Guyana (BCGI) exercised their right to strike after they declared the company bargained in bad faith. 

According to LabourStart, the global labor news service, the company gave 600 miners the choice of accepting one of three bargaining proposals. When the miners voted to accept the deal management wanted least, BCGI fired the union’s leaders.

LabourStart reports that BCGI has since coerced and intimidated workers to sign a petition to decertify the union. The Russian aluminum company RusAl owns 90 percent of BCGI and the government of Guyana owns the other 10 percent.

You can act now to help Guyanese workers. Click here to send a letter to Guyana’s government demanding that it honor the workers’ rights.

In a letter to Guyana’s labor minister, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka noted Guyana’s government has part ownership in the bauxite company, which he says makes it “directly responsible for the egregious infractions of fundamental worker trade union rights in this particular case.”

We respectfully demand that your government do everything to cease, desist and reverse these violations of basic worker rights, including rapid reinstatement of the fired trade union leaders with full compensation, as well as an immediate end to the union decertification effort.

 

Susan Phillips of the Berger-Marks Foundation reports on a speech by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler at a recent women’s organizing conference.

Young workers need a collective voice more than ever, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told a group of women activists last week in New Orleans.

The youngest person ever elected to a top AFL-CIO office, Shuler keynoted a luncheon during a women-only summit sponsored by the Berger-Marks Foundation. The “Women Organizing Women: Social Networks, Social Justice, Social Change” summit is a ground-breaking gathering of women activists from across the United States and Canada to discuss inter-generational issues relating to their advocacy work. Participants ranged in age from 23 to 65. The organization will release a report later this year on the recommendations from this summit.

Shuler is leading the effort to engage youth organizations, online communities and young people about their needs, hopes and expectations in this tough economy.

The AFL-CIO is kicking off the initiative with the first-ever AFL-CIO Youth Summit in early June. Leading up to the summit, the AFL-CIO is sponsoring a series of forums with young union and community leaders over the next two months.

Young activists have sparked some of the nation’s most significant political and social movements, Shuler said. She pointed out that major change in our country has always been led by young people. She noted that Martin Luther King Jr. was 26 when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. At 25, César Chávez was registering Mexican Americans to vote. Walter Reuther headed strikes demanding General Motors recognize its workers’ rights when he was 30.

I’m deeply committed to and passionate about leading the AFL-CIO’s outreach to young workers. It’s not that young people don’t like unions—in fact, polls show they’re the age group most inclined to like unions. It’s just that they don’t know or think very much about us.

Shuler cited a recent AFL-CIO survey of workers between ages 18 and 34 that showed one in three worries about finding a full-time job with benefits. Only 31 percent make enough money to cover their bills and put some savings aside—and 31 percent have no health coverage. Less than half have retirement plans at work.

Today’s young people have no reason to assume that playing by the rules—getting a good education and working hard—will pay off for them, Shuler said. And young people who don’t make it to or through college have an even tougher road ahead.

It’s clear that “young people need a collective voice more than ever,” Shuler said.

And as much as young workers need unions on the job and in the political process to improve their lives and their prospects, it’s just as clear that the labor movement needs young people and young leaders.

Young activists and labor activists are working side by side on many campaigns right now, and we have opportunities to deepen and expand these connections. This is a moment we have to seize.

The Berger-Marks Foundation is dedicated to achieving a voice for working women through organization and union membership. It provides funds for women workers directly involved in organizing and assists groups that support working women who want to form a union.