Protect Workers' Rights
By Bruce Raynor
The Washington Post
Monday 01 September 2003
This summer Pillowtex Corp., successor to the century-old firm
Fieldcrest Cannon, the largest unionized textile company in the country,
closed its 16 textile plants and let go almost 6,500 employees in 10 states.
In North Carolina, where the largest plants were located, it was the single
biggest layoff in state history.
Pillowtex is only one of hundreds of textile mills that have closed in the
past several years. For me, the Pillowtex shutdown was especially painful
because for 20 years I was involved in efforts to organize a union there. In
1999 the workers finally succeeded. These workers overcame illegal threats,
harassment and attempts to racially divide the workers. But the
hardest-working, most dedicated workers in the world could not overcome a
government policy that believes open markets and expanded trade, whatever
the cost, are always justified. Problem is, the costs keep rising and the
benefits never seem to trickle down.
The workers are now desperate. They received no severance payments.
Their health insurance is gone. Mortgages, car payments and taxes aren't
being paid. Kannapolis, N.C., where Pillowtex is located, has always been a
textile town. There are no other jobs available. And while the union is still
trying to find a buyer for the company, the local government's response for
economic development is to buy an ad in USA Today or the Wall Street
Journal asking Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey or Warren Buffett to consider
moving some of their business operations to Kannapolis.
What happened to Pillowtex workers is illustrative of destructive trends
that threaten American prosperity and, indeed, the global economy.
Every manufacturing industry in the United States -- apparel, textiles,
metals, paper, electronics -- has lost jobs in the past year. Over the past 36
months manufacturing employment has declined by 2.7 million. This is the
longest decline since the Great Depression. The job crisis is not only in
manufacturing. Since the economic recovery began, more than a million
jobs have disappeared. Apparently the economy is doing well. Only workers
are suffering.
The usual response of policymakers to manufacturing workers who have
lost their jobs is to preach the virtues of education. Workers are told that if
they would only acquire new skills, they would qualify for white-collar service
jobs that are safe from the economic forces that have shifted millions of
factory jobs to foreign countries. Perhaps that was once true.
Today white-collar jobs -- telemarketing, accounting, claims adjusting,
home loan processing, architectural practices, radiographers and even
some state and local government jobs -- are going offshore. In a survey of
the world's 100 largest financial services firms, Deloitte Research found that
these companies expect to shift $356 billion worth of operations and about 2
million jobs to low-wage countries over the next five years. These
developments appear already to be affecting wages in some sectors.
According to Sharon Marsh Roberts of the Independent Computer
Consultants Association, outsourcing has forced down hourly wage rates by
10 percent to 40 percent for many U.S. computer consultants.
These trends also affect workers in developing countries. For example,
since January 2000, 520 manufacturing plants have closed in Mexico, most
of them moving to China. And in 2005, when all apparel and textile quotas
are to be lifted, developing countries around the globe will be faced with a
massive loss of jobs as the industry moves into China. For example, a
United Nations study predicts that Bangladesh will lose 1 million apparel
jobs when quotas are abolished. Many other countries in Africa, Asia, the
Caribbean and Eastern Europe, where the apparel industry is the largest
employer, will also suffer huge job losses when quotas are lifted.
As low as wages are in many developing countries, they can't compete
with the pennies an hour paid in China. China scholar Anita Chan describes
how different regions in China seek to maintain their attractiveness to foreign
capital by lowering minimum wages and not enforcing labor regulations and
health and safety laws. According to Chan, "though employment in the
low-wage industries in China may be expanding, the wages of the workers
in these industries are not rising, and for many of them have been falling."
The benefits of globalization, Chan warns, "will not trickle down to those
who make products."
So it turns out that workers in Kannapolis, N.C., Silicon Valley, Calif.;
Juarez, Mexico, and Guangdong, China, have much in common. It is
becoming increasingly clear that when wages and conditions of work are
undercut in one part of the globe they will eventually be cut in others as
well.
The downward spiral of lower wages and worsening working conditions is
fueling popular skepticism over globalization. A prosperous economy
requires that workers be able to buy the products that they produce. That
means we need rules for the global economy that protect workers' rights --
and not just in China -- we also need then in the United States.
truthout.org
The writer is president of UNITE, a union of 250,000 apparel, textile,
laundry and distribution workers. |
