Afscme Local 444, retired
Just a few thoughts about NAFTA and our jobs going abroad. It is important to understand that “our” jobs don’t go abroad. Capitalists invest capital abroad and purchase the labor power of workers in other countries. They do this mostly in low waged countries with oppressive regimes that maintain a union and regulatory free environment. They want no curbs on capital.
When striking Cambodian workers were shot a couple of years ago the US and European retailers that are supplied by the manufacturers in Cambodia, Vietnam and other places, cried a few crocodile tears and whined about conditions, fair this and fair that. The US media for example will inform us that companies like Apple or WalMart and others will pressure the foreign manufacturer to “treat their workers right goddamit.” Who knows, Robert Reich or Elizabeth Warren might make a few fine speeches about human rights.
But the very same companies forced to make some public statement condemning the brutal treatment of the workers that make the products they sell to us will also let the manufacturers know that if the workers are successful in raising wages and increasing protection and safety on the job, they will move to a cheaper and more lucrative neighbor. Vietnam is one of the cheapest labor markets. Just like they do here in the US, they blackmail communities, low wages, low taxes or no taxes, free land or we go somewhere else.
The owners of capital that invest it in manufacturing do not choose to do so in China or Mexico or Vietnam in order to raise the wages and living standards of the workers there. The whole idea is to take advantage of cheap labor, exploit these resources as much as they can.
Trump savages the Mexicans and talks of what a bad deal NAFTA has been for the US. Investors in the auto industry moved to Mexico for more profits. They did it to escape the unions here, the cost of labor power and conditions that are an obstacle to capital accumulation, regulation, safety controls, union power in the workplace etc.
No doubt NAFTA did hurt US workers as production moved south. The auto bosses moved from Detroit to Kokomo, from Michigan to the southern right to work states to access cheaper labor, escape curbs on capital and to boost profit making. In the Boeing worker's struggles over the past few years this has been the threat held over their heads constantly, that production would move to the US South and some has.
For Mexican workers NAFTA has not produced much, in fact, according to BusinessWeek, Mexican economic growth “has averaged 2.6 percent a year since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect on Jan 1 1994”. This is half the average in the developing world. But BW also points out that while that’s similar to the US and Canada, the population of Mexico has grown faster than its Nafta partners which means that relative to the US and Canada, Mexicans have lost ground.
This is not news to Mexicans of course as NAFTA threw millions of Mexican subsistence farmers off the land who were unable to compete against US agricultural giants like Con Agra. In the US, whole communities were devastated by the export of what were jobs that were the entrance in to what workers in the US call the middle class. Both offshoring and in particular innovation have eliminated this work. As I write I am reminded of the rise of capitalism in Britain when peasants were thrown off the land but capitalist industry had not yet developed to the point that it could absorb this surplus labor. Vagrancy was punished severely as was poaching, both increasing due to the destruction of the peasants means of subsistence. Begging became a capital offense.
In Mexico, Carlos Slim, who has headed Forbes wealthiest people list a couple of times is still the world’s 6th richest man and along with two other Mexican billionaires have a collective wealth equal to 8.5% of Mexico’s GDP according to Gerardo Esquivel an economics professor at the Colegio de Mexico, “The main idea was to promote convergence in wages and standards of living.”, he tells BW, “That has not been achieved…” he says. I'll let him in to a secret, it never was the "main idea". And according to UN data, the number of people living in poverty in Mexico rose by 2 million from 1992 to 2013 while in Brazil it declined by 30 million in the same period. Here's a Guardian piece on NAFTA
Reporting on the NAFTA talks in Mexico City, Business Week points out that Jerry Dias the head of the Canadian union Unifor said at the talks on November the 21st that while workers in auto plants in the US and Canada can buy the vehicles they produce with five months wages, “A Mexican worker in five months can only buy four tires and a steering wheel.” With regard to Dias’ comparisons between Mexican and US workers I’m not even sure that US workers can do that. Some US manufacturing plants in Canada have been shifted to the US which is a less union friendly environment and wages are lower.
Dias’ union, Unifor just settled a four-week strike at a GM plant in Ingersoll Ontario. Despite the strike, GM would not agree to the union’s demand that it guarantee that the work won’t be sent to Mexico. “The automaker threatened last week to shift more production to Mexico if a settlement wasn't reached swiftly and the two sides agreed to a deal on Friday.”, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported on October 16th. This is economic terrorism of course as well as interfering in an election, legal interfering.
The key freedom for capitalists is the right to do whatever they want with “their” capital whether it is in the form of manufacturing production or a work of art. In capitalist society, the capitalist as a buyer of labor power has a right to use it as he wishes, as Marx pointed out, he has the right to “…make the working day as long as possible and to make whenever possible, two working days out of one.” Of course, with a commodity like human labor power there are limits to it use by the capitalist simply being as it is contained in the form of a human being. So the workers as sellers of labor power have a right to get the best price for it and to limit its use by reducing the working day.
What actually exists then is what Marx calls, “….an antimony, right against right both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights, force decides.” (my added emphasis)
Marx wrote these words in capital Volume 1 “The Working Day” pointing out that the struggle over the working day and its length was a collective struggle between capitalists as purchasers of labor power and workers as sellers of it.
In the Canadian example above the use of force on both sides was over production itself, where it should take place. The collective workers (those at this one factory anyway) were withdrawing their labor power in order to force the capitalists (in the form of GM) to keep their capital invested in their factory in that locale. The workers lost that battle. The capitalists have other options, they can move that production to Mexico where labor power is cheaper and conditions more favorable to them as a class.
The capitalists that have their capital in auto production have an advantage. They have the government on their side, they have an armed force to help them, the police, they own the media to sway public opinion and the courts are their courts and their justice overseen by their judges and they possess much more wealth to tide them over.
We on the other hand have numbers. Workers internationally, as a class, actually hold more power in our hands but one disadvantage is accepting in our own minds that a small minority of people in the world have the right to own wealth and the means and process of producing it and the ones in our own country are our allies in the global competition for work, We compete for work, they compete for profits.
The comments from the head of GM Canada Steve Carlisle, after the return to work, illuminate the problem, "I am confident that we will quickly pull together to continue to demonstrate to the world the outstanding productivity, innovation and quality that is synonymous with the CAMI workforce,", he announced.
The words of the victor reaching out to the defeated, urging them to return to the family after internal conflict, "The challenges of the past months have been hard on all of us but now it's time to show the character of our region and our plant. He describes it as a "challenge" as opposed to a battle between two contending and diametrically opposed classes over economic interests.
The head of GM Mexico will be saying the same things to the Mexican workers. Have they not character? Do those workers in a plant in Mexico or China for that matter not work hard, have character, have dignity?
Leaders of the organized workers unions in the US, Canada or Mexico cannot solve these problems. They certainly can’t solve them at a negotiating table with representatives of capitalism from competing nations trying to figure out how best to manage their so-called free market economy. The president at the Ingersoll plant argues that the reason GM wouldn’t guarantee the jobs stay in Canada is about “greed and power”. But what does that mean? It’s abstract. The reality is that the capitalists have to do this, they are driven by the forces of the market, by the laws of capitalism to do so. These Canadian workers will have to lower their living standards or the production will move.
Just a few thoughts about NAFTA and our jobs going abroad. It is important to understand that “our” jobs don’t go abroad. Capitalists invest capital abroad and purchase the labor power of workers in other countries. They do this mostly in low waged countries with oppressive regimes that maintain a union and regulatory free environment. They want no curbs on capital.
When striking Cambodian workers were shot a couple of years ago the US and European retailers that are supplied by the manufacturers in Cambodia, Vietnam and other places, cried a few crocodile tears and whined about conditions, fair this and fair that. The US media for example will inform us that companies like Apple or WalMart and others will pressure the foreign manufacturer to “treat their workers right goddamit.” Who knows, Robert Reich or Elizabeth Warren might make a few fine speeches about human rights.
But the very same companies forced to make some public statement condemning the brutal treatment of the workers that make the products they sell to us will also let the manufacturers know that if the workers are successful in raising wages and increasing protection and safety on the job, they will move to a cheaper and more lucrative neighbor. Vietnam is one of the cheapest labor markets. Just like they do here in the US, they blackmail communities, low wages, low taxes or no taxes, free land or we go somewhere else.
The owners of capital that invest it in manufacturing do not choose to do so in China or Mexico or Vietnam in order to raise the wages and living standards of the workers there. The whole idea is to take advantage of cheap labor, exploit these resources as much as they can.
Trump savages the Mexicans and talks of what a bad deal NAFTA has been for the US. Investors in the auto industry moved to Mexico for more profits. They did it to escape the unions here, the cost of labor power and conditions that are an obstacle to capital accumulation, regulation, safety controls, union power in the workplace etc.
No doubt NAFTA did hurt US workers as production moved south. The auto bosses moved from Detroit to Kokomo, from Michigan to the southern right to work states to access cheaper labor, escape curbs on capital and to boost profit making. In the Boeing worker's struggles over the past few years this has been the threat held over their heads constantly, that production would move to the US South and some has.
For Mexican workers NAFTA has not produced much, in fact, according to BusinessWeek, Mexican economic growth “has averaged 2.6 percent a year since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect on Jan 1 1994”. This is half the average in the developing world. But BW also points out that while that’s similar to the US and Canada, the population of Mexico has grown faster than its Nafta partners which means that relative to the US and Canada, Mexicans have lost ground.
This is not news to Mexicans of course as NAFTA threw millions of Mexican subsistence farmers off the land who were unable to compete against US agricultural giants like Con Agra. In the US, whole communities were devastated by the export of what were jobs that were the entrance in to what workers in the US call the middle class. Both offshoring and in particular innovation have eliminated this work. As I write I am reminded of the rise of capitalism in Britain when peasants were thrown off the land but capitalist industry had not yet developed to the point that it could absorb this surplus labor. Vagrancy was punished severely as was poaching, both increasing due to the destruction of the peasants means of subsistence. Begging became a capital offense.
In Mexico, Carlos Slim, who has headed Forbes wealthiest people list a couple of times is still the world’s 6th richest man and along with two other Mexican billionaires have a collective wealth equal to 8.5% of Mexico’s GDP according to Gerardo Esquivel an economics professor at the Colegio de Mexico, “The main idea was to promote convergence in wages and standards of living.”, he tells BW, “That has not been achieved…” he says. I'll let him in to a secret, it never was the "main idea". And according to UN data, the number of people living in poverty in Mexico rose by 2 million from 1992 to 2013 while in Brazil it declined by 30 million in the same period. Here's a Guardian piece on NAFTA
Reporting on the NAFTA talks in Mexico City, Business Week points out that Jerry Dias the head of the Canadian union Unifor said at the talks on November the 21st that while workers in auto plants in the US and Canada can buy the vehicles they produce with five months wages, “A Mexican worker in five months can only buy four tires and a steering wheel.” With regard to Dias’ comparisons between Mexican and US workers I’m not even sure that US workers can do that. Some US manufacturing plants in Canada have been shifted to the US which is a less union friendly environment and wages are lower.
Dias’ union, Unifor just settled a four-week strike at a GM plant in Ingersoll Ontario. Despite the strike, GM would not agree to the union’s demand that it guarantee that the work won’t be sent to Mexico. “The automaker threatened last week to shift more production to Mexico if a settlement wasn't reached swiftly and the two sides agreed to a deal on Friday.”, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported on October 16th. This is economic terrorism of course as well as interfering in an election, legal interfering.
The key freedom for capitalists is the right to do whatever they want with “their” capital whether it is in the form of manufacturing production or a work of art. In capitalist society, the capitalist as a buyer of labor power has a right to use it as he wishes, as Marx pointed out, he has the right to “…make the working day as long as possible and to make whenever possible, two working days out of one.” Of course, with a commodity like human labor power there are limits to it use by the capitalist simply being as it is contained in the form of a human being. So the workers as sellers of labor power have a right to get the best price for it and to limit its use by reducing the working day.
What actually exists then is what Marx calls, “….an antimony, right against right both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights, force decides.” (my added emphasis)
Marx wrote these words in capital Volume 1 “The Working Day” pointing out that the struggle over the working day and its length was a collective struggle between capitalists as purchasers of labor power and workers as sellers of it.
In the Canadian example above the use of force on both sides was over production itself, where it should take place. The collective workers (those at this one factory anyway) were withdrawing their labor power in order to force the capitalists (in the form of GM) to keep their capital invested in their factory in that locale. The workers lost that battle. The capitalists have other options, they can move that production to Mexico where labor power is cheaper and conditions more favorable to them as a class.
The capitalists that have their capital in auto production have an advantage. They have the government on their side, they have an armed force to help them, the police, they own the media to sway public opinion and the courts are their courts and their justice overseen by their judges and they possess much more wealth to tide them over.
We on the other hand have numbers. Workers internationally, as a class, actually hold more power in our hands but one disadvantage is accepting in our own minds that a small minority of people in the world have the right to own wealth and the means and process of producing it and the ones in our own country are our allies in the global competition for work, We compete for work, they compete for profits.
The comments from the head of GM Canada Steve Carlisle, after the return to work, illuminate the problem, "I am confident that we will quickly pull together to continue to demonstrate to the world the outstanding productivity, innovation and quality that is synonymous with the CAMI workforce,", he announced.
The words of the victor reaching out to the defeated, urging them to return to the family after internal conflict, "The challenges of the past months have been hard on all of us but now it's time to show the character of our region and our plant. He describes it as a "challenge" as opposed to a battle between two contending and diametrically opposed classes over economic interests.
The head of GM Mexico will be saying the same things to the Mexican workers. Have they not character? Do those workers in a plant in Mexico or China for that matter not work hard, have character, have dignity?
Leaders of the organized workers unions in the US, Canada or Mexico cannot solve these problems. They certainly can’t solve them at a negotiating table with representatives of capitalism from competing nations trying to figure out how best to manage their so-called free market economy. The president at the Ingersoll plant argues that the reason GM wouldn’t guarantee the jobs stay in Canada is about “greed and power”. But what does that mean? It’s abstract. The reality is that the capitalists have to do this, they are driven by the forces of the market, by the laws of capitalism to do so. These Canadian workers will have to lower their living standards or the production will move.
Short video here
Readers have seen or read the material we have been publishing about the role of the AFL-CIO leadership collaborating with the US government and the CIA in suppressing the trade union movement in Mexico and other parts of the world. See some of the material on this page here. Once we accept that we have to compete with workers in Mexico or China, North Carolina or Tennessee, we are lost. One factory in Canada cannot stop GM, cannot prevent capital from seeking the most fertile ground for exploiting labor. They fight wars, kill millions of people for this right. The way their system is organized demands it.
Leaving aside the fact that auto production is not the most efficient way of transportation in society, the workers in the factory in Canada have allies, and that is the workers in the factories and workplaces of Mexico and the US. Central Americans don’t head north to the grueling brutal attraction of US meatpacking or hog farms, or the fields of California because they don’t like their homes. Rather than join with US capitalism calling for keeping jobs at home or helping them in their efforts to grab market share from their foreign (or domestic) rivals, a no win strategy, our alternative is the ever increasing unity of workers organizationally and in action against US and global capitalism.
Jack Henning, the long time head of the California Labor Federation once called for “Global Unionism to fight Global Capitalism”. He was right to do so even though he never did much to help that happen. But it is not enough. Workers must not look beyond just organizing the workplace, we must build a movement to own the workplace and the labor process. Transportation is a social necessity and it cannot be left to the market. Public transportation in all its forms including the manufacturing element must be a publicly owned, worker and consumer managed enterprise. We must produce for social need not profits.
Trump’s protectionist and nationalist/racist rhetoric about making America Great Again is a disaster for US workers. It will not produce jobs. It divides and weakens workers internationally and benefits the owners of wealth not the creators of it. Our answer to immigration is to help workers in low waged countries fight for higher wages and better conditions, fight for them to control the workplace as we must. We must eliminate the competition for the necessities of life that drives us all in a downward spiral, a race to the bottom. As long as there are starving people one side of a border and an opportunity to feed one’s family on the other side of it people will risk their lives getting there.
Walls won’t advance workers’ interests working class solidarity and the building of a world federation of democratic socialist states based on cooperation will.
Readers have seen or read the material we have been publishing about the role of the AFL-CIO leadership collaborating with the US government and the CIA in suppressing the trade union movement in Mexico and other parts of the world. See some of the material on this page here. Once we accept that we have to compete with workers in Mexico or China, North Carolina or Tennessee, we are lost. One factory in Canada cannot stop GM, cannot prevent capital from seeking the most fertile ground for exploiting labor. They fight wars, kill millions of people for this right. The way their system is organized demands it.
Leaving aside the fact that auto production is not the most efficient way of transportation in society, the workers in the factory in Canada have allies, and that is the workers in the factories and workplaces of Mexico and the US. Central Americans don’t head north to the grueling brutal attraction of US meatpacking or hog farms, or the fields of California because they don’t like their homes. Rather than join with US capitalism calling for keeping jobs at home or helping them in their efforts to grab market share from their foreign (or domestic) rivals, a no win strategy, our alternative is the ever increasing unity of workers organizationally and in action against US and global capitalism.
Jack Henning, the long time head of the California Labor Federation once called for “Global Unionism to fight Global Capitalism”. He was right to do so even though he never did much to help that happen. But it is not enough. Workers must not look beyond just organizing the workplace, we must build a movement to own the workplace and the labor process. Transportation is a social necessity and it cannot be left to the market. Public transportation in all its forms including the manufacturing element must be a publicly owned, worker and consumer managed enterprise. We must produce for social need not profits.
Trump’s protectionist and nationalist/racist rhetoric about making America Great Again is a disaster for US workers. It will not produce jobs. It divides and weakens workers internationally and benefits the owners of wealth not the creators of it. Our answer to immigration is to help workers in low waged countries fight for higher wages and better conditions, fight for them to control the workplace as we must. We must eliminate the competition for the necessities of life that drives us all in a downward spiral, a race to the bottom. As long as there are starving people one side of a border and an opportunity to feed one’s family on the other side of it people will risk their lives getting there.
Walls won’t advance workers’ interests working class solidarity and the building of a world federation of democratic socialist states based on cooperation will.
1 comment:
What has capitalism done for you? For many it has meant a low paying job, and the prospects for a family life are not improving.I read a report from Pew Research about the squeezed middle class, and at the end, part 4, it stated that among adults 18 to 34 the median income was $15,000 in 2014, and it had been $27,300 in 1960. And the percentage in marriage in that age group was 62% in 1960, but now about 31%. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/24/4-the-job-market-and-young-adult-living-arrangements/
In 1960 about 85% of men age 18 to 34 had jobs, and the middle income was $27,300, and in 2014 the portion with jobs had fallen to 67%, middle pay $15,000. Marriage, family, optimism about economic security -- a fading dream. Huffpost had an interesting article, if I can find it -- http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/
Our news media is terrible. Mexico is a tragic country in deep trouble. Who would know. Has the State Department issued warnings on travel?
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