U.S. Unions Rail Against China Trade, Buchanan Grabs Spotlight

by Charles Walker

Despite the current economic expansion, American workers have every right to fear the loss of their jobs. If the lingering memories of the wrenching deprivations of the catastrophic Great Depression no longer incite that fear, the mass layoffs of the past two decades in one industry after another are more than enough to keep workers warily looking over their shoulders. Clearly, workers need a new jobs program to replace the bosses’ jobs scheme that pits workers against workers, domestically and internationally.

In other words, workers need a jobs program that protects working families from the built-in boom and bust cycles of the capitalist economy. Such a program would automatically raise wages to counter the scourge of inflation. Such a program would automatically divide all available work among all available workers to thwart the plague of unemployment. Such a program would ensure that the highest aggregate share of the gross national product that workers have achieved historically would be guaranteed. In short, such a program would make sure that the terrible burdens of the economic system that benefits bosses and investors — that is, capitalism — would not fall on the backs of workers.

For example, if Ford were to drive General Motors out of business, or vice versa (remember all those other auto companies that have bit the dust, like American Motors, Packard, and Studebaker), auto workers should not have to be forced into unemployment. Production in the remaining auto plants should be spread around to the entire auto workforce. Nor need the auto workers suffer a reduced standard of living, if a legally binding agreement were won that the auto workers’ share of the gross national product must stay the same. That’s not the present practice, of course, as the fewer and fewer auto workers building more and more cars know first-hand. Meanwhile, Ford bosses are strategizing on how to distribute “nearly half its $24 billion cash hoard, one of the largest of any company in the world, while minimizing taxes for its shareholders and giving the Ford family greater financial flexibility, especially for estate planning [read: tax avoidance],” as reported in the New York Times, April 15.

No Jobs Program Presented in D.C.

In Washington, D.C., this month, the leaders of the AFL-CIO and some affiliated unions passed up a golden opportunity to lay out such a workers’ jobs program. The AFL-CIO leaders had the national media spotlight. The labor representatives were surrounded by an estimated 15,000 rank-and-file workers, hopeful student youth, and social justice and environmental activists who rallied to protest the depradations of global capitalism and fight for a better life for all.

If the labor leaders had proclaimed that from April 12 forward the unions would fight for a jobs program based on all workers’ fundamental right to a job and a secure, decent standard of living for working families, the leaders likely would have won the immediate approval of American workers, and the solidarity of workers around the world. The approval and solidarity easily would have surpassed the enthusiastic worldwide support for both the 1997 Teamsters United Parcel Service strikers and the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrators in Seattle.

Mass Lobbying Against China Trade Bill

However, what the AFL-CIO brass did in Washington was organize a mass lobbying effort to urge a congressional turndown of a proposed bill instituting permanent normal trade relations (NTR) legislation with China. The union leaders claimed that as many as 800,000 domestic jobs were at stake if Big Business gained greater access to a Chinese workforce that earns as little as 14 cents an hour. At the same time, they said they were not knee-jerk protectionists fighting with Chinese workers over an artificial shortage of jobs in the international economy. Rather, they asserted, they oppose the likely increase in Chinese exports to the U.S. (if the NTR passes), because they oppose China’s record on democratic rights, prison labor, working conditions, and the like.

“When you look at China’s record on not only worker rights but human rights, it is atrocious,” argued Rob Black, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, according to the April 12 Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported on an AFL-CIO rally.

However, union statements about abuses suffered by Chinese workers usually also contained references to competition over jobs. For example, the following statements made at the AFL-CIO rally:

“[W]hile we are losing hundreds of thousands of jobs, China is setting new records for violations of human rights and polluting the environment.” (AFL-CIO President, John J. Sweeney)

“Who will make sure the workers of America know who voted to ship our jobs to China and ship our morals to the moon? We will!” (AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer, Linda Chavez-Thompson)

Not surprisingly then, suspicions abound that the labor leaders are not really backing off from their traditional protectionist stance on trade. (Typically, business unionists try to protect the profits of some corporations or entire industries in order to retain their memberships, even at the expense of other workers, unionized or not.)

Buchanan Boosted

Those suspicions were bolstered by the appearance of Patrick Buchanan at the Teamsters rally held earlier and separately from the AFL-CIO rally on April 12.

Buchanan hopes to be the organizer of a serious, substantial ultra-right movement. His speech to the 1982 Republican Convention brought flashbacks to countless minds of the Fascist horrors of the 20th Century. His anti-Semitic, racist, jingoistic pronouncements regularly bring rebuke from mainstream organizations and publications. Lately, Buchanan has baited his arch-rightist hook with populism; as did the white supremacist and one-time Alabama Governor George Wallace, who demagogically championed poor and middle-income (white) workers against the rich.

On the Teamsters platform, Buchanan disgraced the union movement with his racist chauvinism, as did Teamsters President James Hoffa, who gave Buchanan a union pulpit and a blue and gold Teamsters jacket.

“At the Teamsters rally, Buchanan, wearing a Teamsters jacket, told a cheering throng…‘With NAFTA we were defeated and lied to…The deficit with Mexico grows every year…If I was in the White House and the Chinese communists came to my office, I’d tell them, “Stop threatening my country; stop persecuting the Christians or you will have sold your last pair of chopsticks…”’” (Washington Post, April 12).

Buchanan paid homage to Hoffa by publicly offering Hoffa a high federal post (top trade negotiator) should Buchanan win his bid for the presidency this year on the Reform Party ticket.

Of course the union officials are right about the abysmal working conditions, wages, and political tyranny that the Chinese people endure. Of course U.S. corporations intend to exploit the poorly paid Chinese workers (and at the same time further the privatization of the still largely  nationalized Chinese economy). And of course corporate America intends to use its lower costs in China to whipsaw American workers into taking lower wages and benefits.

What Can U.S. Workers Do?

All that is fairly obvious. What isn’t obvious yet to American workers is what to do about it without falling victim to the bosses’ game of divide and conquer. All for-profit trade strategies, free trade, protected trade, and yes, so-called fair trade, are, at bottom, strategies for fending off or beating up business rivals. That’s why trade-for-profit rivalry (sharks gobbling up the sardines) is bad news for workers. Clearly, American workers would be much better off if they and their leaders understood that the unemployment resulting from trade as well as from strictly domestic causes originates in the inevitable workings of a social system that puts profits before everything that makes life worth living.

The AFL-CIO tops misled the workers gathered in Washington when they sent them off to lobby on behalf of a for-profit trade strategy that will not and cannot protect workers’ well-being. That strategy will not and cannot end the enforced rivalry between workers. They mislead the workers when they consciously spread the illusion that capitalism can and will provide a bountiful, peaceful world. The 20th century speaks for itself on that score.

Finally, they mislead the workers when they fail to explain American imperialism’s responsibility for the present plight of China workers. The phrase “gunboat diplomacy” only begins to suggest the gangster tactics used by American capitalism over the past century to try to win control over and shape China’s fate.

April 15, 2000