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Georgetti urges union leadership to embrace new thinking on industrial policy to ensure labour influence over national economic strategies

OTTAWA - The president of the Canadian Labour Congress is urging the country’s labour leadership to work towards a new industrial policy that, while acknowledging the post-free-trade-agreement world, would promote a more activist role for government in steering market forces towards jobs-rich economic development.

Ken Georgetti issued the collective challenge in his opening remarks to a CLC Industrial Policy Conference, being held in Ottawa today and tomorrow, September 22-23. It is the labour movement’s first new attempt to influence national industrial policy since the anti-NAFTA battles of the late 1980s.

“All of us appreciate that this country more than ever needs good jobs with good wages,” said Georgetti. “The lives and livelihood of working people require it. The ability of governments to fund public services and programs demands it.

“The reality today is that much of our domestic economy is part and parcel of a North American economy. And to a much greater extent than was the case before the FTA and NAFTA. Nor are we immune to the pressures on North American manufacturing posed by the rapid rise of China and developing Asia to world dominance in the production of consumer goods. Nor to the recent rise in the offshoring of services.”

The CLC President told Conference participants that the labour movement must begin to devise a new, credible and workable industrial policy that allows it to become a serious player in the national debate and determination of economic strategies.

“Unfortunately, the dominant governmental approach of the past 20 years, and more, has been to leave industrial development almost entirely to the whims of the market. We need to sustain and create good private sector jobs, and a strong industrial sector should be an important goal of our overall economic policies. We also want active, not passive, government action to ensure that corporate decisions promote national and regional economic development. And the job creation that goes along with it.”

The Conference, being held at Ottawa’s Fairmont Château Laurier Hotel and open to media, continues today and tomorrow with a series of panels, presentations and debates by leading economists, commentators and politicians.

The Canadian Labour Congress, the national voice of the labour movement, represents 3 million Canadian workers. The CLC brings together Canada's national and international unions along with the provincial and territorial federations of labour and 137 district labour councils. Web site: www.clc-ctc.ca

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They basically said, "yep, the labour movement was wrong, we knew it all along, but they just realised it! What idiots!" I believe the author was Bill Curry, who I suspect is the labour "writer" for the Post.

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An Open Letter to Ken Georgetti on Free Trade from Dr. Karl Marx
The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) annonces that it no longer opposes free trade agreements like the FTA and NAFTA, it now embraces Free Trade, wanting to ameloriate its worst aspects. Dr. Karl Marx responds

Public Speech Delivered by Karl Marx
before the
Democratic Association of Brussels

January 9, 1848

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To sum up, what is free trade, what is free trade under the present condition of society? It is freedom of capital. When you have overthrown the few national barriers which still restrict the progress of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom of action.

So long as you let the relation of wage labor to capital exist, it does not matter how favorable the conditions under which the exchange of commodities takes place, there will always be a class which will exploit and a class which will be exploited. It is really difficult to understand the claim of the free-traders who imagine that the more advantageous application of capital will abolish the antagonism between industrial capitalists and wage workers. On the contrary, the only result will be that the antagonism of these two classes will stand out still more clearly.

Let us assume for a moment that there are no more Corn Laws or national or local custom duties; in fact that all the accidental circumstances which today the worker may take to be the cause of his miserable condition have entirely vanished, and you will have removed so many curtains that hide from his eyes his true enemy.

He will see that capital become free will make him no less a slave than capital trammeled by customs duties.
***

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http://lnn.laborstart.org/more.php?id=245_0_1_0_M

In a wealthy country like Canada it is more difficult for everyone to risk their current affluence for a broader general goal. But "Free Trade" cuts both ways. There will come a time when China will be overpoweringly dominant in certain areas of the economy. The protections of a North American free trade zone will fall to free trade agreements with this economic supernova in the making.

By scrapping NAFTA and the FTA unions are not risking the buisness that goes on across borders we are just reasserting the principle that allows US governments to protect softwood workers and Canadian governments to protect healthcare and our water, as two examples.

Georgietti's support for NAFTA and FTA is a contradiction of the whole process of collective bargaining itself. It is akin to saying that unions do not have to negotiate on an ongoing basis for new wage deals, benefits, job protection and so on.

Tarrifs can be negotiated like collective agreements and can be used as useful ways to avoid social dislocation for short term profits or for political reasons. Under the rigid rules of these trade agreements disputes must be litigated, usually resulting in Canadians being forced to cave in to US interests anyway.

We have had a 20 year experiment with so called "free market" economics and it has failed utterly as the stats for wages will show. As Polanyi suggested in the last century "markets" do not exist independent of the social and cultural milieu they are in. Free Markets do not end "political economy" they skew it totally in favour of the small minority of the capitalist class.

As head of the CLC he should know better. I think it is time he stepped down. I vote for Buzz to take over. He wouldn't be trying to cosy up to the financial class. Georgietti is typical of the phenomenon of "nouveau riche" unionism that occurs when unions become successful and lose touch with their roots as they eye the enormous amounts of money in their pension funds...

They begin to see that the protection of this fund and its enrichment are the primary goal of unions. They see the world at a crossroads in 1988 when the dye was cast in favour of the demise of government as the protector of the public weal and the emergence of the union trust fund as the new vehicle. Either extreme is incorrect and Mr. Georgietti should be more honest about where he is leaning.

[ 26 September 2004: Message edited by: Boinker ]

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This past Wednesday saw fierce controversy in the labour movement as Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) president Ken Georgetti tried desperately to explain to his federation members media - read CanWest - claims that he now supported free trade. In an email to CLC union heads Georgetti stated official CLC policy: “We continue to oppose NAFTA and other similar trade deals.” But the speech reported on, and a CLC position paper on the economy, were much more ambiguous. Georgetti talked of a North American economy and how, regarding NAFTA, it was hard to “unscramble an omelette.” The CLC paper said free trade had not been the “economic disaster” once predicted.

I guess it depends on your definition of disaster.

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Read the Rest

I found both Bookers comments above, and Dobbin's article, very insightful. That being said, my impression is that it is not so much "free trade" that matters as it is unregulated capital flows. And that's been less of a problem between Canada and the US as it has between the broader "North" and "South." I think Georgetti's recognition that you "can't unscramble the omelette" may also help re-focus labor's attention on other problems we can tackle today.

[ 27 September 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

[ 27 September 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

Those words are as true now as they were then.

From Georgetti's speech:

"Nor are we immune to the pressures on North American manufacturing posed by the rapid rise of China and developing Asia to world dominance in the production of consumer goods. Nor to the recent rise in the offshoring of services."

This is great, pitting working people in Canada against working people in China.

This is precisely the argument CEO's use when trying to get their employees to accept cutbacks.

Why in heaven's name would someone from the labour movement make their argument for them.

The real argument would be to help increase the standard of living of Chinese workers, including through unionization.

Of course, Georgetti would never think of trying to get capital to accept a "level playing field" in terms of wages and working conditions. That would be far too radical for him.

So right now the Chinese are telling their workforce that they must accept lower wages in order to really get Chinese exports going.

In fact, the very words used by Georgetti might be used by some Chinese official to tame the workforce.

Or they may be pointed to by some official as a way of showing how Canadians are trying to prevent Chinese workers from getting jobs.

How different it would be if, instead of blaming workers in another country, Georgetti offered CLC assistance to 3rd world workers in organizing themselves.

A Single Spark Starts a Prairie Fire

It discusses how farmers are organizing and fighting back against the corrupted revolution.

I think we need to think about looking after our own backyard. We shouldn't be feeding the capitalist iniatives in China that are undermining the revolutionary spirit there.

The spark

One way this might happen is if labour sponsored funds lent money to Chinese farm cooperatives. Georgetti's CLC might see this as a useful use of labour funds. I don't know. To me it would empower the farmers and protect them from price gouging bureaucrats.

[ 27 September 2004: Message edited by: Boinker ]

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Originally posted by fuslim:
I think in the Manifesto it was given as something like: "Free trade or no free trade, all for the benefit of the bourgeiose."

Those words are as true now as they were then.

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From the World Bank progress report on poverty:

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China alone lifted about 400 million of people out of absolute poverty. GDP per capita increased five times since 1981. The number of extremely poor people fell from over 600 million to slightly more that 200 million, or from 64 percent to 17 percent.

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The number of extremely poor people fell from over 600 million to slightly more that 200 million, or from 64 percent to 17 percent.

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Or are they looking at genuine social indicators?

I'd be the first to say that China had been hampered by some Maoist excesses, but to say the present process is an unmitigated blessing is also going a bit far.

Whatever it is, it ain't free trade anyway. China demands much from foreign investors and deviates from the Washington consensus in many ways.

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The World Bank uses an income threshold of the equivalent of one USD per day to classify extreme poverty.

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If the Chinese are eating better, is it shared all around? Have market reforms increased agricultural productivity overall? Or are some now very wealthy Chinese (numbering in the millions or even tens of millions) been able to afford to import more food from elsewhere and eat much more than previously and this increased caloric intake is likewise divided through the whole population?

Reason I ask is that neo-liberalism, free trade, and all that stuff, is a very mixed bag. While China's political system was obviously stultifying and sometimes very unproductive, there were efforts made to feed, house, cloth, and educate everyone at a minimum level. Today, landlessness is rising, there is a unemployed, transient population of 30 million, corruption is rampant in some areas, prostitution (due to economic necessity not libido/see my other posts on the subject) has reappeared, and pollution [from aping our unsustainable system] is on the climb).