Professor Harley Shaiken of Berkley University

Economist Professor Harley Shaiken of the University of California at Berkley addressed the convention. Professor Shaiken is the Director for the Center of South American Studies at Berkley and has written a number of books on the impact our trade deals have with other countries.

“I am proud to be with you here today,” Professor Shaiken stated, “and I hope you understand the importance of your convention here over the next several days. UAW contracts reach a much broader segment of society than just your members.

In the Local Union Hall of Local 600 at Ford, there are a number of photographs on the wall. These photographs tell the story of the River Rough facility, including the battle of the overpass where Walter Reuther and other organizers were beaten by passing out UAW literature to the workers has they crossed the overpass from the parking lot to the plant. One of the last photographs on the wall is that of an older unassuming man in a cap crossing the bridge to work. This man was the first person at Ford to draw a pension.
That bridge that carried this gentleman and countless other UAW members to the plant was much more than a way across the street. This was a bridge built by the UAW to carry the America’s workers to the middle class. The UAW contracts won higher wages, benefits and pensions for their members and all of the working class in general. Walter Reuther once said that the “high velocity purchasing power put the steam in the boiler that was the economy.”

Many say today the pressure of globalization is forcing too many Americans to make that trip back across the bridge from the middle class to the lower class. I am here to tell you, the issue doesn’t necessarily lie with globalization but rather with how globalization is managed. The question comes in who wind and who looses with globalization. Your charge this week is to forge a future that doesn’t force workers back across that bridge.
Today the rules of the game are pushing workers backwards both here and abroad. Economist Joe Steiglitz has stated that “we have become a rich country of poor people, based on the failure of protections in globalization.” If we don’t begin to take the steps to protect our workers here, then the situation is only going to get worse.

The question becomes can U.S. firms and workers compete in a global economy. The answer is yes we can, but we need new rules for the game. With an emphasis on innovation and worker protections, we can broaden the market as oppose to furthering the level of poverty.

In the past 25 years, the United States has seen an increase in foreign trade of 700%. The problem is that we have grown a trade deficit of $800,000,000,000,000. Today, 50% of the U.S. owned manufacturing takes place outside of the country. If these trade deals included provisions for workers rights, the right to organize and a chance of economic improvement, then the organization of workers could result in higher wages, more purchasing power and a market for our goods.

The Bush Administration has made an all out push to implement so called free trade deals all around the world. What we need are managed trade deals, not free trade deals. Trade deals that protect patents and corporate interest without provisions for workers rights result in higher productivity poverty.

Take Tijuana for example, it is politically and geographically in Mexico, but it is economically in the United States. It features high tech manufacturing facilities that produce computer chips built in a world class facility. The same workers, who build these chips in a state of the art clean room environment in the day time, sleep in huts made of shipping crates at night. They go home to children with sores on the bodies and hair falling out from the conditions in which they live. When workers have no ability to raise their living standard through productivity improvements, then all workers suffer. Workers in Tijuana, workers in California, workers in Ohio and workers in Michigan – they all suffer.

In this country, the top 1% of the population account for 16% of all income. Just eight years ago, this same group accounted for 8% of the income. The top one tenth of one percent (.01%) make more income than the lower 50% combined. This has been accomplished through the outsourcing of jobs and the exploitation of workers. Take Delphi for example; in 1998 they had 60,000 U.S. workers. That number is quickly approaching 6,000 in just eight years.

I see three points has being needed to correct this issue:

1. National policies that create the context for good jobs. The top priority on this has to be a single payer health care system that is open to everyone. This isn’t just an economic issue but also a moral dilemma.
2. We need labor rights for workers in these foreign countries.
3. We need real labor law reform in this country.
We need unions in this country. Now unions aren’t going away, but as union density decreases so does the voice they have to advocate for all workers.

In the night before he died, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood in Memphis, Tennessee supporting striking sanitation workers there. In his address to the crowd on that rainy night, he stated “the question is not what will happen to me if I don’t support these workers. The question is what will happen to them if I don’t?

We need to be concerned about those who are impacted in these foreign countries who fall victim to our trade deals, because our futures are tied to theirs.”