Banned from Barbie's birthday celebrations

It will be hard to miss the fabulous 50th birthday celebrations of a fabulous doll, Barbie. Guess who will be forgotten during all that hoopla? The very people who make Barbie and have been making her for 50 years.

One person who noticed that omission is Marie-Claude Hessler, a retired lawyer in Paris who is a Mattel shareholder. On March 5 she wrote an open letter to Robert Eckert, chairman and CEO of Mattel. I quote it in full here.

Mr Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,

Barbie is turning 50 on March 9th.

Impossible to miss the event with so many parades, fashion shows, special events, broadcasts and articles. Nothing is too beautiful nor too luxurious to celebrate Barbie's birthday : the best fashion designers dressed Barbie for the New York fashion show, Louboutin made her shoes, a big Barbie shop is opening in one of Shanghai's most prestigious avenues, there are British pink chocolates and Monaco's stamps representing Barbie. In Paris alone, there will be special events at the Galeries Lafayette; a Barbie week in the exclusive fashionable shop Colette with a Lagerfeld exhibit and the sale of the collectibles created by Jeremy Scott and of other various Barbie's objects; the doll museum will show 500 Barbies. And there is an Angela Merkel Barbie... and a luxurious pink Barbie Fiat 500 will parade through Milan on March 9th...

A true success in public relations – even if it does not make the product any younger.

But who has been left out of the parties? Among the flood of words and images nothing at all about the tens of thousand people who manufacture Barbie, her numerous accessories and licensed products. Yet without them, no Barbie and no party.

Why have they been left out? Because they have nothing to celebrate.

For twelve years, I have been watching closely the working conditions in Mattel's own factories as well as in Mattel's subcontractors' and licensees' factories : Mattel's track report is poor. Despite the adoption of a code of conduct in 1997, despite multiple independent audits, working conditions remain unacceptable : low wages, daily working hours of 12 if not more, weeks on end without a day off, noisy factory floors, too hot or too cold depending on the season, terrible smell of solvents due to insufficient ventilation... To make it short, conditions unworthy of Mattel... and Barbie.

Mr Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, I am asking you: will everybody be included in the celebrations? What will you do for the workers who have been left out of Barbie's birthday parties?

Yours sincerely,

Marie-Claude Hessler
Mattel shareholder

Mattel is not alone in its forgetfulness. Far, far from it. The whole global system of trade and investment is guilty of it.

I expect that Mattel’s CEO will have an answer. When will the World Trade Organization come up with its answer?

A final thought: imagine how much fairer globalization would be if a few more shareholders were as conscientious and diligent as Marie-Claude Hessler.


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Holes In President's Trade Agenda

After reading the government’s new report, “The President’s Trade Agenda: Making Trade Work for American Families,” I asked myself: will President Obama be willing to go all-out to pass the Employee Free Choice Act? My hunch was that he won't be.

I may turn out to be wrong (I hope I am) , but the thrust of his trade policy statement suggests otherwise. Yes, it may seem strange to link domestic labor legislation to foreign trade issues, but there are many connections. Let me describe a few of them.

My overall impression of this agenda, prepared when most of Obama’s trade people were not yet on board, is that it is weak on worker rights. It makes no mention of the key worker right, the right to unionize. If the report truly reflects the President’s position, it seems to follow that President Obama will also be weak on restoring the American worker’s right to unionize.

The agenda is very strong on continuing U.S. support for a “rules-based system of global trade,” with the World Trade Organization institutionally at the top.. But it says nothing about a huge hole in the WTO’s rules. Those rules are now one-sided. They protect the rights of business people and their organizations in thousands of pages, but contain not one single page protecting the rights of labor and its organizations.

The agenda praises Congress for making progress in upgrading adjustment assistance to workers made jobless by globalization. But trade adjustment assistance, a favorite prescription of Larry Summers, is a palliative and no substitute for reorienting trade to make the international labor market less of a jungle that it now is for many millions of working men, women, and children.

The agenda promises to “build on the successful examples of labor provisions in some of our existing [bilateral, non-WTO] agreements.” But it leaves the successes unnamed. Under sunlight, not one of the labor provisions in existing agreements qualifies as amodel to emulated.

The agenda is eloquent in expressing the benefits of foreign trade, but says nothing about how it is built on a huge global production system where sweatshops flourish. Nor is there any recognition of the shameful role that American multinationals like Nike and Wal-Mart play in that system.

Apart from what this report says and doesn’t state, however, the crucial test for the Obama administration is in whether it will sign a pending free trade agreement with Colombia, the world’s deadliest place for unionists. For this holdover from Bush negotiators, the administration plans to “establish benchmarks for progress” that would clean it up it for Obama’s signature.

Benchmarks? What kind of benchmarks? A reduction of the union assassination rate to 50 or 60 percent?

Compromises are normal in foreign trade policy. The pressures from trade enthusiasts and business lobbyists are incredibly powerful. But at some point there comes a decision on an issue so noxious that you must have the guts to say NO. The Colombia FTA is that point.

In domestic policy, too, compromises are normal. Organized business, grown fat under the viciously anti-union policies of the Bush administration, is waging the campaign of campaigns to bury the Employee Free Choice Act, with mounds of cash to gain gravediggers in the Senate

President Obama will have to invest a large amount of his own political capital to persuade the Senate to restore freedom of association to American workers. Will he? Hoping won’t make it so.


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‘Card check’ for unionizing gets scholarly OK

A group of Catholic scholars “committed to Catholic social teaching concerning the human rights of workers to organize employee unions” is pressing for the adoption of the Employee Free Choice Act.

“Badly broken” is how the group calls “the present legal and moral framework” that is supposed to safeguard freedom of association for American workers. In a statement that invites others to sign, the Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice praises the Employee Free Choice act as “rooted in and supported by Catholic Social Teaching.”

The statement summarizes three features of the proposed legislation, which is being reintroduced in the Congress after being adopted in the House and getting bogged down in the Senate last year:

1. Recognizing the right of workers to form a union through filing signed cards (known as “card check”) that state their decision to form a union.
2. Mandating mediation and arbitration if a first contract cannot be negotiate within the fist 90 days.
3. Imposing stronger penalties on firms that violate worker rights.

“Workers can also choose a secret ballot election if that is their choice,” the statement ads.

A longer expression of support for worker rights is contained in a policy paper adopted when the Catholic Scholars group was founded in mid-2008.


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Shelve worker rights because of crisis? No!

“Right now everyone wants to maintain jobs, even if they are sweatshop jobs (China). I think it is exactly why many union people will tell you it is not the time to push on labor standards...The economic logic is against [your] perspective.”

That message was in an email criticizing something I wrote. The email reflects a tempting notion that may be spreading: forget the pro-worker agenda for the sake of the anti-recession agenda. But the temptation is based on a fallacy: that the two agendas are necessarily in conflict.

I started to write a strong rebuttal, but soon realized that there was no need to do so. Why should I, when much wiser heads have already rejected that position? They did so in a letter timed for President Barrack Obama’s official meeting on February 19 with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Canada.

The letter, dated February 18 and addressed to the top leaders of the two countries, was signed by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and President Kenneth Georgetti of the Canadian Congress of Labor (CLC), who together represent 12,200,000 union members.

Their five-page letter detailed the ways in which Canada and the United States need to work together on the economic crisis and on advancing worker rights. They discussed those two major areas under two headings: “1. Coordinated Response to Current Economic Crisis” and “2. NAFTA Renegotiation.”

The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) sparked by far the most interest. Media accounts suggested that Obama’s concerns center on moving the “side” (separate) agreements on labor and the environment into the main body of NAFTA. Whatever the administration’s closely held position may be, the AFL-CIO and CLC position is not limited to what the existing labor and environment agreements cover.

“Substantive amendments” are required in otherimportant areas, Sweeney and Georgetti state. For example, NAFTA’s investment section is flawed by, among other things providing investments “unwarranted and excessive protections.” Other “central concerns with NAFTA” cover its provisions on energy, trade in services, and agriculture.

All in all, “a very ambitious list,” as the two labor leaders conceded. But they certainly don’t believe that the economic crisis requires sacrificing the rights of workers, whether here at home or abroad.

UPDATE: Since writing the above, I learned that the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)has just released a long report on the President's trade policy, which I'll comment on as soon as I have a chance to read it and think about it. Meantime, check it out yourself at www.ustr.gov, and do by all means send me YOUR comments.


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39 economists OK employee free choice law

Thirty-nine leading American economists, including two Nobel laureates have publicly endorsed a proposed law that will make it easier for workers to unionize. In a full-page ad in the February 25 Washington Post, they call the Employee Free Choice Act. “a critically important step in rebuilding our economy and strengthening our democracy by enhancing the voice of working people in the workplace.”.

After a review of the present cumbersome government procedure for workers to get a union legally recognized, the statement says that the proposed law “would give workers the choice of using sign-up—a simple, established procedure in which workers sign cards to indicate their support for their union—or staging [the existing National Labor Relations Board-style] election.”

The statement concludes:: “In recent decades, most bargaining power has resided with management. The current recession will further weaken the ability of workers to bargain individually. More than ever before, workers will need to act together. The Employee Free Choice Act is not a panacea, but it would restore some balance to our labor markets.”

Kenneth Arrow of Stanford University and Robert M. Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are the two Nobel laureates among the 39 signers. Another prominent signer, surprisingly, is Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University, the prolific defender of free trade.

U.S. business people, as organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers, are engaged in a vigorous lobbying and PR campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Economic Policy Institute, which coordinated the economists’ public statement, has developed a comprehensive analysis that, in effect, rebuts the arguments used to attack the proposed law. For example, the law is not as radical as its opponents make out.

Since 2003 more than half a million workers have formed unions through the majority sign-up system. Among the employers who have agreed to remain neutral in organizing campaigns and recognize unions through majority sign-up are the leading wireless phone company AT&T Mobility and Kaiser Permanente with its huge chain of hospitals and health plans.

In a brief filed with the NLRB, Kaiser Permanente explained that it did so because it “recognized that the protracted and often adversarial election process frequently undermined the ability of everyone involved to focus on the primary mission of providing quality health care.”


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Extraordinary things possible in no time at all

During the afternoon before President Obama’s address to Congress yesterday, I read a fascinating review of a new John Muir biography in the March 12 New York Review of Books. A particularly fascinating point made by the reviewer was this:

“One of the lessons we all may learn from Muir’s career is that inspiration is a powerful agent of change, and that when the ‘fierce urgency of now’ is upon us, it is essential to make room for, and to ride, the wave of enthusiasm while it lasts. The wave does not last long, but while it does an extraordinary number of good things may be achieved in practically no time at all.”

Is this such a moment in American history? I think so, but only if we make room for it and seize it. But the enthusiasm and hope engendered by the President could well be dissipated by the media’s weird twist on reporting “both sides,” which in today’s crisis they think requires giving equal time to politicians who have a strong partisan interest in having the President fail.

The reviewer of this biography, “A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir” (Oxford University Press) by Donald Worster, is Robert Pogue Harrison, professor of Italian literature at Stanford, whose latest book is “Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition.”

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Canadians urge NAFTA renegotiation

In an open letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, major Canadian organizations urged him to commit to a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The letter was released just prior to U.S. President Barrack Obama’s February 19 visit to Ottawa.

“Canadaian public opinion is solidly behind the need to renegotiate NAFTA,” the letter pointed out, citing a September poll in which 61 percent of respondents favored that position.

The letter was signed by 26 Canadian organizations, including Oxfam Canada, Sierra Club of Canada, the Council of Canadians, Common Frontiers, Canadian Federation of Students, the Canadian Auto Workers, and a variety of other unions.

In releasing the letter, Rick Arnold of Common Frontiers said: “We were all promised a golden future under NAFTA, but the reality for the three signatory countries is that the gap between rich and poor has grown exponentially, and government’s ability to set public policy has been curtailed in favor of giving carte blanc to foreign investors.”

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Rooting out worker rights abuses abroad

Is there anything that the governments of rich countries can do to integrate human rights into the overseas operations of their multinational corporations? Yes, the government of Norway says, and shows how in a recent statement on corporate social responsibility.

That responsibility does not stop at the Norwegian border, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in releasing the policy statement, or white paper.

A key element of that policy urges all Norwegian multinationals – about 100 in number – to enter into “global framework agreements” with global unions to safeguard the rights of workers in foreign countries in conformance with core conventions of the UN International Labor Organization.

Among the Norwegian companies that have already taken that step are StatoilHydro, with an agreement covering 29,500 workers in 40 countries, and Norske Skog, a newsprint producer with 11,000 workers worldwide, both with Norwegian unions and their global union, the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine, and General Workers Unions. (ICEM).

The white paper states that; in countries that do not respect the right to organize and to bargain, multinationals should seek ways to establish some sort of system that permits the voice of workers to be heard in workplaces.

In addition, the white paper provides guidance on corporate responsibility with regard to decent working conditions, the environment, and anti-corruption among other human rights issues.

The government also intends:

-- to address by legislation, through Accounting Act amendments, the duties of corporations to provide information on their actions to implement ethical guidelines, and

-- to strengthen the Norwegian government's “national contact point” for dealing with worker rights complaints alleging violations of the multinational guidelines of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In short, supplementing its efforts to root out worker rights violations through trade negotiations and ILO programs, the Norwegian government intends to use its own powers to regulate corporate behavior beyond its national boundaries.

So far, that’s only an intention, but it’s an intention that the U.S. government would be wise to adopt as its own.
* * *

The government of Australia is considering a similar initiative. See To Embed Huuman Rights in Multinationals.



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Passing the buck to Uncle Sam

It is up President Obama to take the lead in opposing the worldwide spread of “protectionism.” Otherwise, says the Economist in its February 7 issue, “America and the rest of the world are in deep trouble.”

The Economist advises the United States to show “forbearance” when foreigners benefit from the multibillion-dollar U.S. stimulus package. Any “Buy American” requirement “would send a disastrous signal to the rest of the world” that would rekindle economic nationalism.

Really?

What’s wrong about giving the troubled American steel industry the first shot at orders for rebuilding American bridges and American school buildings? Why must the U.S. government show “forbearance” if Communist China wins the business with low bids from its government-built, government owned, and government subsidized steel mills?

Oh, but we dassn’t start a trade war. Well, here’s some hot news. Communist China, for one, has long waged a de facto trade war with the United States. And guess who’s won ?

Last year the United States imported $337,789,000,000 worth of goods and services from China -– almost five times more than we exported to China. Year after year, our trade deficit with China balloons further. It quadrupled over the past decade. thanks to our “forbearance.”

The lesson to other countries? Our non-China global trade deficit is astronomical. In 2008, not counting China, the United States imported $411,000,000,000 more in goods and services than we exported despite the global slowdown.

As a nation, we are consuming far more than we produce. Economists have long warned that this disparity could not last, and it can’t. The United States needs to produce more. The shock of the crisis may be the opportune time to begin.

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Crisis reversing fight against world hunger

Food and financial crises have added 115,000,000 men, women, and children to the ranks of the world’s hungry since 2007, according to Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN’s World Food Program.

But it isn’t a problem of food availability, she emphasized. “It is a problem of distribution -– and of greed, discrimination, wars, and other tragedies. There is enough food on earth for every human to have adequate access to a nutritious diet. This is indeed a challenge of the human heart.”

Calling on national governments to take the lead, Sheeran urged that a very small percentage -– 0.7 percent -- of financial stimulus plans be dedicated to fighting hunger.

She spoke February 3 at a Vatican press conference that presented the Lenten message of Pope Benedict XVI, in which he said that the Lenten fast can nourish a spirit that offers help to our suffering brothers and sisters.

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Toward a new day for trade

In a letter sent to Congress on February 7, more than 350 organizations representing faith, family farm, labor, consumer, and environmental groups said they strongly support Senate and House action to “replace the failed trade policies of the past with those that deliver broadly shared benefits.”

“Hundreds of groups are now organizing, rolling up their sleeves, pushing for reform, including support for Buy American provisions in the stimulus package,” said Andy Gussert of the Citizens Trade Campaign, which organized the petition to Congress.

The four page letter summarizes the key issues facing decision by lawmakers and the Obama administration.; and specifically expresses opposition to harmful features contained in “hangover” Bush administration free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and Korea.

Among those objectionable features:

-- Foreign investor are granted rights that promote off-shoring and also subject U.S. domestic environmental, zoning, health, and other public interest polices to challenge by foreign investors in foreign tribunals.
-- Food-safety provisions would require the United States to limit import inspection and accept imported food that does not meet our domestic safety standards.
-- Procurement rules would hamstring many reasonable procurement practices of our federal, state, and local governments.

The worsening recession is distracting policymakers from the need to reform the U.S. foreign trade and investment policies. Forgotten is the role that our outmoded trade policies, and their failure to share their benefits more widely, play in fueling economic decline.

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Warning about ‘specter’ of protectionism

Under today’s global financial crisis, developing nations can gain more influence in economic globalization if they handle their present opportunity right. So says Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard, in his lead commentary as moderator of the economic development and the global crisis debate launched last month by VoxEU.org/.

In opening a debate on the interests and priorities of developing nations, Rodrik offers the following advice in the context of the U.S. situation, where trade policy is “under severe pressure to provided some redress” for globalization’s adverse impact on workers.

“It will not do much for good for developing nations to raise the specter of protectionism each time such concerns are voiced. The political and economic reality demands a more nuanced and cooperative approach. They should say no to trade protectionism straight and simple.

“But they should be willing to negotiate with advanced nations on avoiding regulatory races to the bottom in such areas as labor standards or tax competition. This is in their long-term self interest. Without buy-in from the middle classes of advanced nations, it will be very difficult to maintain a global trade regime as open as the one we have had in recent years.”

A sound message, but not only for the developing world. When will pundits in the rich world start getting it?


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Five lessons for new U.S. trade policies

An experienced American trade negotiator, Robert B. Cassidy, is speaking out with a candor rare among high-ranking trade bureaucrats. Cassidy, a former assistant U.S. Trade Representative,is discussing the mistakes of the past and the lessons that should be learned from them by the Obama administration.

In remarks before a packed audience at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington on January 27, Cassidy, now in private practice, offered “five overarching lessons” to guide any overhaul of U.S. trade policy.

Fortunately, EPI provides the full text of Cassidy’s talk on its Website, from which this report draws his five lessons and a brief explanation of each, as follows:

First: Trade policy should be based on U.S. economic self-interest, not as the equivalent of corporate self-interest, nor as a subset of foreign policy. Cassidy cites the free trade agreement with Korea as one motivated largely by foreign policy objectives, in this case to surround China with bilateral FTAs.

Second: Trade policy as such has only limited reach. Global monetary, fiscal, and competition policies are more important. As the “only country capable of standing up to China,” the United States should take the lead in the WTO in challenging China’s manipulated exchange rate.

Third: The advisory and decision-making processes of trade policy “need to be balanced,” that is enlarged beyond State, Treasury, and Commerce (plus Agriculture occasionally) to include Labor and environmental interests. The present race to the bottom on labor standards should be abandoned, and indeed can be abandoned fully consistent with WTO principles.

Fourth: We need to get our trade relationship with China on a more balanced footing by asserting our interests more aggressively. On our imports of tainted foods, why are we relying on China to safeguard the health of our citizens?

Fifth: Reconsider “trade promotion authority” to make negotiations more transparent and negotiators more responsible in pursuing our objectives.

The administration, according to Cassidy, should take advantage of a “short window of opportunity” to ensure that the benefits of trade “flow to the broader U.S. economy. . . and help achieve other goals such as improved labor standards and environmental objectives.”

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Why union membership remains low

The number of workers belonging to unions in the United States grew by 428,000 last year to 16,100,000, mostly thanks to increased membership in the ranks of teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other local government employees.

The 2008 union membership rate in the public sector generally – 36.8 percent –stood in stark contrast to the rate in the private sector – 7.6 percent. In other words, government workers were nearly five times more likely to belong to a union than employees in the private sector.

Collective bargaining contracts covered about 1,700,000 workers who themselves refrained from joining a union. These holdouts were distributed about half and half between the public and private sectors.

Exhaustive data on union membership is contained in the latest annual report, “Union Members in 2008,” issued by the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), based on monthly household surveys conducted by the Census Bureau.

The BLS report, which covers 12 pages, does not explain why unions are stronger in the public than in the private sector. Numerous surveys, however, show not only that private business is much more unreceptive to unions than government agencies, but also that U.S. law permits companies to put that attitude into action.

A new Human Rights Watch briefing paper focuses on labor law and practice in the U.S. private sector, without drawing a contrast with the public sector. After reading the 12-page report, however, I cannot help marveling that even 8,255,000 of private sector workers still belong to unions.

U.S. labor law “is weak and riddled with loopholes,” and employers take advantage of that weakness in the law and in its enforcement to vitiate the right of workers to organize. The HRW briefing paper supports those two findings with detailed evidence. For example:

-- Penalties for firing pro-union workers and for otherwise breaching the law are so small that employers dismiss them as a worthwhile cost of doing business.
-- The government run election procedures by which workers vote for or against a union are heavily slanted against the union.
-- Even if workers succeed in winning an election, an employer can stall reaching a collective bargaining agreement to the point of making the victory meaningless.

HRW is among a growing number of organizations supporting Congressional approval of the Employee Free Choice Act. For Human Rights Watch, that passage is “a human rights imperative.”

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The case for a huge economic stimulus

More than a third of the U.S. labor force will be plagued by periods of unemployment or underemployment next year if government spending does not surge substantially to spur demand for goods and services. So says a new Issue Brief published by the Economic Policy Institute.

In the absence of a large recovery package, the unemployment rate is expected to reach 10.2 percent in mid-2010, according to the Brief, and middle-income families would earn about $4,700 less in 2010 than they had in 2007,

But the overall statistics “don’t capture the pain” that would impact specific groups of people, warn Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz, the authors. Those especially hard hit next year would include:

-- Nearly one in five African-Americans in the labor force would be jobless.
-- So would 13.1 percent of Hispanics.
-- Underemployment would reach 18.8 percent of women workers.

In the Brief, entitled “Without Adequate Public Spending, a Catastrophic Recession for Some,” the authors recommend government spending on the order of $600,000,000,000 a year for two years to head off the “catastrophe” they consider otherwise inevitable.


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For blacks, depression is already here

For most white people, it’s a recession, but for blacks, it’s already a depression. That’s a conclusion of a new report, “State of the Dream 2009: a Silent Depression,” released on Martin Luther King’s Day, January 15, by a Boston think tank, United for a Fair Economy (UFE).

“People of color have been experiencing a recession for five years,” says Amaad Rivera, UFE’s racial wealth specialist and one of the authors of the 70-page report. “By definition, a long-term recession is a depression.”

Why has this “silent depression” gotten relatively little attention? In large part, according to UFE, because the economic indicators we rely on are not sophisticated enough to mark the racial divide.

The facts, though, are there deep and not so deep in government documents, and the UFE report digs out many of them, as in a UFE chart showing a poverty rate in 2007 of 8.2% among whites and 24.5% among blacks.

Economic inequality and structural racism “were created, so they can also be eliminated,” the UFE report insists, by adopting reforms small and large, immediate and long range. A significant example: taxing work and wealth at the same rate would generate $95,000,000,000 a year in revenue.

“The current economic crisis requires more than a color blind stimulus,” says Dedrick Muhammad, UFE research associate and a co-author of the report. “It requires a complete economic restructuring that addresses the racial wealth divide.”

For more details, check the Website of United for a Fair Economy.

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Competition gone bezerk

“Companies [today] are competing with everyone from everywhere for everything.” So say the authors of Globality, a new book about the latest phase of globalization. The Economist quotes those words approvingly in its most recent report on globalization, “A Bigger World.”

Both the book and the Economist favor the global economy as it is, not as it should be. They reflect the perspective of a leading economist, N. Gregory Mankow, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. He holds that when you invoke ethics or morality, you leave the economics department and go over to the philosophy department.

Over at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, a professor of economics, David George, has published a fascinating study, "On being ‘competitive’: the evolution of a word." Diligently, he tracks the six-decade-long evolution of “competitive” as the label for a limited characteristic, or idea, into a universal ideal with frequent perverse results. For example:

“Amazingly, the firm that is least able to be described as ‘competitive’ by the old definition (a single firm in a sea of many firms) now is most able to be described as ‘competitive’ under the new definition (a victorious or most [competitive] firm).”

Most significantly, George shows that "competitiveness" has acquired an excessively high positive value in the business and the public mind. This poses a serious temptation to the Obama administration as a priority goal of its global economic policy. If Obama succumbs, he would be continuing the disastrous policies of the Bush administration.

Let’s leave the world of Real-World Economics Review, where George’s study appears, for the real world where the consequences of the new meaning of competitive are often very perverse. What does it mean to be competitive with everyone from everywhere for everything? When unfettered competition drives economic policy?

It means, as some Southern senators have proposed, cutting the wages of Detroit auto workers to the level of those who work for Japanese-owned non-union plants in the South. It means, too, something that pro-competitive advocates won’t discuss: gradually bringing the wages of all American workers, white- and blue-collar employees, in line with the wages of workers in China and other competitive countries in our bigger world.

But it also means far more than that. American workers cannot be truly competitive until they meet many more conditions of the bigger world, such as:

—cutting or eliminating company health care benefits, a process that has already begun.
—reducing government inspection of labor conditions, another process that is far along.
—trimming private pension plans, also well under way
—eliminating on-job discrimination programs against women and minorities

Those are just a few examples of the consequences of modern competitiveness, of how the “competitive” bandwagon imperils the whole range of human achievements gained (despite stiff resistance) in the United States.

No wonder globalization is in crisis. Competition has gone bezerk.

The sage of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, saw it coming. In a special section of the Economist 15 years ago, he predicted what globalization held in store for the United States. “America’s top 10% will enjoy the highest incomes in the world. But the wages of its less-educated citizens will drop to those of workers in the developing countries.”

That trend did not disturb Lee, a self-confessed social Darwinist. He and his government vigorously opposed any global regulation that would, for example, put limits on employing under-age boys and girls full time in factories.

Pope John Paul II extolled a different approach. In an address to more than 200,000 people on May Day eight years ago, he declared: “Globalization is a reality present today in every area of human life, but it is a reality which must be managed wisely. Solidarity too must become globalized.”

Which brand of globalization will the Obama administration follow? I wish I knew.


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Corruption in politics and in business

Reflecting on the stranger-than-fiction scandal in the Illinois governor’s office, Virginia’s political scientist/philosopher, Larry Sabato, published this comment on his Website two days ago:

A system of government or politics can be at least as corrupting as human nature itself. We have studied politicians in close proximity for years, and as much as it may disappoint the cynics, we have not found politicians to be venal as a class. While there are a number of individual exceptions, most professional politicians, especially those already in public office, want to do good or seek to do the right thing, if doing good is an option that does not result in their political demise.

However, if the "normal and customary" practices of campaigning engaged in both parties are seedy, and if a candidate believes "everybody's doing it, and if I don't do it, I may lose," then most politicians will suspend their ethical codes. They will willingly accept a distasteful means that ensures what they regard as the good and essential end of their continued power. In other words, otherwise ethical people are put at a disadvantage by a corrupting system and almost forced to do unto others as they are being done to.

Strict ethicists will correctly argue that the truly honorable person would not stoop to conquer, whatever the provocation. Yet reasonable reformers must keep in mind that the professional politician has a "power gene" in his or her genetic code that overrides all usual inhibitions to achieve victory or maintain power--and genetic engineering, however advanced it may become, will never be able to change that reality.

That analyis, first published in 1996 in Dirty Little Secrets, which Sabato co-authored with Glenn Simpson, is relevant today beyond the political scene.. Reread those paragraphs with business people replacing politicians. And change the kind of DNA involved: replace victory or maintain power with competitive drive.

After making those changes, you have a pretty good insight into today’s Wall Street scandals and how unregulated competition corrupted even many otherwise ethical people.

But the Sabato/Simpson closing sentence above is too pessimistic. Serious time behind bars can be a great deterrent, if seriously applied to enough guilty politicians and business people.


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The global durability of sweatshops – II

Life for garment workers in Bangladesh is a daily struggle for survival. A 2006 study by a British human rights group, War on Want, documented the “shameful” labor conditions at six factories producing clothes for three leading British retail chains. Now, a new War on Want study finds that nothing has changed in two years. Still the order of the day at those factories are extremely low wages, poor working conditions, arduous hours (up to 80 a week), and a “fierce” management opposition to unions.

“In fact,” says John Hilary, executive director of the War on Want, “given the damaging effects of the global food crisis, workers are now in an even worse position than they were before.”

Two of the retailers, Tesco and Asda, were founding members of the Ethical Trading Initiative, set up 10 years by companies, NGOs, and unions to improve labor conditions. The largest of the three, Primark, joined in 2006. In a press statement, Primark called the latest charges unsubstantiated and claimed that the practices of its suppliers are continually audited.

The new report, “Fashion Victims II,” criticizes the government and the retailers for relying on “the voluntary approach of ‘corporate social responsibility’” as the answer to sweatshops. Now War on Want insists that it is time “to stop companies from using sweatshop labor” by passing legislation regulating the operations of United Kingdom companies both in the UK and abroad.

War on Want’s Website supplies a sample letter to Members of Parliament urging them “to regulate UK companies and allow workers to seek justice in the UK.” In the United States, it is time to send the same letter, with Americanized changes, to members of both Houses of Congress and to the White House.

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The global durability of sweatshops

Even after 15 years of antisweatshop campaigns and corporate social responsibility programs, sweatshops are still alive and well throughout the global economy, both in developing and developed countries. So says Garrett Brown, a health and safety expert who speaks from the perspective of a California state OSHA inspector and a coordinator of worker rights projects in Mexico, Central America, Indonesia, and China since 1993.

Brown made that assessment last month in an address to a conference of industrial hygienists in Tampa, Florida. Although he focused on the state of on-the-job health and safety, he also presented an overview of how workers are faring in today’s global production and distribution system. Among the specifics he cited were these:

—Most factories in the global system have a constantly shifting work force. In China, for example, “good” factories have annual turnover rates of 35-40 percent; “bad” factories have turnover rates of 90 percent or more.

—China’s contract factories often have two worksites: a “trophy factory,” clean, well lit, and code compliant for the benefit of visiting clients and monitors, and the “shadow factory” nearby where production actually occurs under sweatshop conditions, outside the purview of monitors or government inspectors.

—Another way used to game the system, in China and elsewhere, is to maintain three different books on financial accounting and the wages and hours of worker: one for internal use only, one for the government, and one set for outside monitors of compliance with codes of conduct. Some large factories producing for (say) four international brands may provide four separate books, each customized for the code of conduct requirements of the specific clients.

Even “high road” employers, the minority with corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, have made only slight improvements in their treatment of workers, according to Brown. He blames their “schizophrenic” business model of trying to maximize implementation of codes of conduct while also exerting pressures to minimize production costs.

In his Tampa talk on November 10, Brown described this schizoid scenario as typical:

On Tuesday. a brand’s CSR staffers lecture the factory manager to obey all the country’s labor laws and regulations and to meet old and new requirements of the brand’s code of conduct, or else—. On Thursday, the brand’s buyers tell the manager to maintain the same product quality while requiring him to cut contract costs by x percent this year and by xx percent the next, or else—.

The main purpose of Brown’s presentation was to encourage occupational health professionals to be educators and advocates to improve health and safety in the global supply chains.

“Industrial hygienists,” he said, “can take the lead in this effort within our own companies, especially transnational corporations with global supply chains; within our professional associations; as citizens, constituents, and consumers; and as champions of a ‘big picture’ perspective and a pro-worker approach.”

The Website of the Maquiladora Health & Safety Network, which Brown coordinates, has the full text of his Tampa presentation at http://mhssn.igc.org/PCIH08_GBrown.pdf, as well as a wealth of other information on the global production system and the need to reform it.



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