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Labor's claim of WTO victory is validated
Wednesday, December 8, 1999
By PAUL NYHAN
The World Trade Organization meeting collapsed last week, but organized labor emerged from the chaos legitimately claiming a victory in its battle to influence U.S. trade policy, according to academic observers.
Amid the tear gas and protests, unions won President Clinton's support for eventually using sanctions against countries that violate certain core labor practices. Union leaders also helped turn back policies that some feared would weaken existing labor standards.
Together, the events represented one of the labor movement's most successful efforts to help shape the Clinton administration's trade agenda, according to labor professors.
"Labor was a central voice and it was the opposition that was very much playing defense," said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "Overall, I think it was a major victory" for the labor movement.
The longstanding relationship between organized labor and the Democratic Party played a key role in forcing WTO delegates to consider union trade issues, according to Tom Juravich, the director of the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The Clinton administration also felt compelled to offer union leaders some support since it's trying to rally their members behind Vice President Al Gore's campaign for the presidency, Juravich added.
Unions helped their own cause by staging a massive, and generally disciplined, march through the streets of Seattle during the WTO meeting.
"What the Gore campaign saw and what Clinton saw wasn't 30,000 marchers, they saw 30,000 people that would normally be at phone banks," said UC Berkeley's Shaiken.
Clinton handed unions their greatest victory as the WTO conference opened, when he told the Post-Intelligencer he would eventually consider sanctions against countries that violated core labor standards.
While, Clinton couched the statement -- calling for a working group to develop the standards and setting no timetable -- union leaders saw his words as a major step in their direction.
Not all of the news out of Seattle last week was good for U.S. unions. For example, the WTO didn't endorse a strong WTO working group to examine trade and worker rights.
But, unions were more concerned with getting trade ministers to simply consider their issues, such as barring child labor and permitting workers to organize.
"Originally, they (trade ministers) were going to evade it all together . . . By the end, they were actually conflicted about that," said Margaret Levi, the director of the University of Washington's Center for Labor Studies.
American steelworkers also suffered a symbolic blow. Under a draft proposal, the WTO promised to review anti-dumping rules, which penalize countries that sell products below cost in foreign markets. The U.S. steel industry and its union workers are adamantly opposed to altering the rules, charging that so-called dumping policies threaten the steel industry.
In the end, the world's trade ministers didn't issue a comprehensive proposal. Still, the fact that they even discussed the idea upset the United Steelworkers of America.
"We were extremely distressed by the discussion," said Gary Hubbard, a spokesperson for the United Steelworkers. Dumping "destroys our steel industry and our jobs."
The dumping proposal died when the entire negotiating effort collapsed late Friday night.
The collapse also amounted to a major victory for WTO opponents as a whole, according to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
"The breakdown reflects the first step in a serious coming to terms with pivotal issues -- accountability, democratic procedures, workers and human rights, and the environment -- that protesters highlighted all week," Sweeney said in a statement released on Saturday.
Now, Sweeney and others are trying to use the momentum from Seattle to tackle what they say are threats to U.S. union members.
Their first major challenge will occur next year when the U.S. Congress votes on whether to accept a deal -- between the Clinton administration and China -- that would allow China to join the WTO.
Labor's role in and around the WTO meeting and the meeting's collapse will pressure lawmakers to consider rejecting the proposal, according to Juravich of the University of Massachusetts.
"It ups the ante," Juravich said.
Whatever the outcome of the vote, the events of last week invigorated a U.S. labor movement that some observers feel was struggling with declining membership and a changing workplace.
"Reports of labor's death have been greatly exaggerated," Shaiken said, playing on the old Mark Twain line.
P-I reporter Paul Nyhan can be reached at 206-448-8145 or paulnyhan@seattle-pi.com
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