Brain Flossing

« The deluding of America | Main | The working impoverished. »

February 09, 2004

How the Vons Strike Relates to Workers Rights in a Global Economy.

I was leaving Vons, seeing a larger than normal number of strikers and listening to CNN in my car when I had a thought. I know it isn't an original thought and seem to remember hearing it before, but I'm not sure where. The news was talking about how more and more jobs are going overseas. At first it was only manufacturing jobs. Professional jobs were believed safe. In the last years this has proven to be untrue. Professional technology jobs are fleeing the country at an alarming rate. The reason manufacturing jobs starting going oversees is because of how much cheaper it was. With manufacturing jobs, little formal training is necessary. So its just a matter of how many people you can hire at the cheapest rate. Many countries, such as India, saw there was an opportunity to take professionally trained jobs in the same manner. All that was required was training.

Our current administration has sought to make it easier for corporations to send jobs overseas through policies such as NAFTA and supporting the WTO. Opening up these types of trade agreements benefits large corporations a tremendous amount. It benefits the average American very little. Those in support of these types of arrangements claim it benefits everyone using a modified 'trickle-down economics' explanation. Cheaper labor means cheaper products. More people buy those products, it helps the whole economy. Unfortunately, we've seen that trickle down economics doesn't work. Maybe its too simplistic to say it doesn't work because it does help some people, just not everyone. In this instance, lower-class and increasingly, middle-class Americans lose their jobs. They didn't tell us that would happen. Did they know?

So what do we do? We're the great America. We're adaptable right? We've been through this before when the foreign auto makers started schooling us on price and quality. We fought back then right? Yup, and we're fighting back now. How? We're competing on benefits and pay in order to compete on price. That is to say, we're paying people less and offering fewer benefits, just like our foreign counterparts, in order to compete on the global market. Not so ironically, this echos the Vons vs. Walmart issue that lies at the hart of the strike. Walmart is paying less and offering fewer benefits. Vons is saying that in order to compete they must do the same. Walmart is so big, they can control the entire industry. Walmart went from not having a grocery store, to commanding over 50% of all grocery sales in under 5 years. Walmart is so big, they can control their vendors as well. A perfect example is Walmart's demanding its top 100 suppliers start using RFID tags in all of their products by 2005 or be dropped, despite public outcry against them. In this way, Walmart will single handedly make RFIDs standard in everything we buy. (Read about it here.) We are not the only ones suffering from this world leveling of employee treatment. Other countries are reducing their vacation time, retirement, and other benefits in order to compete with us.

America is the single largest consumer of goods on the planet. The USA alone, with only 4.5% of the world's population, consumes 25%-50% of its resources. (ref) We also spend more money than any other country, individually and as a country. When the US demands something of our 'suppliers', they listen, just as Walmart's suppliers listen when they demand something. We've done it before. This massive buying power is one of the things that keeps us safe. Other countries might loath us, but they need us for our deep pockets.

Taking all of these facts into account, here is the idea. America should come up with a workers bill of rights that extends to any employee of any American company no matter where that employee is. We could go further and say that any company that wants to buy or sell goods in this country must obey these same rules. In Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars he talks about how the Bill of Rights makes America unique, but that our Bill of Rights fell short as it did not extend to the workplace. Though laws and conditions for employees have improved a tremendous amount over the last century, most employees are still basically slaves to their employers. He suggests a workers Bill of Rights just like we have a regular Bill of Rights. I am proposing the same thing, but requiring all companies who want to do business with America adopt the same policies. These rights would deal with how many hours an employee can work, overtime pay, benefits, minimum wages, minimum vacation, sick pay, maternity leave, etc... If all companies had to obey these rules, it would level the playing field and American companies could choose to keep jobs in this country, or outsource them globally depending on who would do the best job.

I'm not naive enough to think this type of change could actually become a reality, but it is intriguing to imagine the resulting world. Companies would be forced to adopt these policies in order to keep US dollars flowing, and they would. These laws would affect lower and middle class citizens more than anyone and would result in reduction of negative class distinctions throughout in many many countries. The millions who really ARE slaves to their employers in third world countries would suddenly be given an opportunity to rise above. It would be an extension of the original American dream brought to the rest of the world.

We COULD do it.

But we won't...

Posted by wonko at February 9, 2004 09:19 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wayfargone.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/221

Comments

Posted by: kasei at February 10, 2004 12:35 AM

Posted by: pdhman at February 10, 2004 03:48 AM

Posted by: obigabu at February 10, 2004 08:13 PM

Post a comment