Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

The vice president's stiff comedy
Al Gore's problem is not that he lacks a sense of humor -- he's just not showing it.
By Daniel Kurtzman
[11/29/99]

Republicans lost in space
Polls suggest that the "Democrats' issues" will dominate next year's elections; if so, the GOP better learn how to fight more effectively in a hurry or it will be in for a bruising.
By David Horowitz
[11/29/99]

Smog alert
The Texas governor is trying to clear the air about his environmental record -- trouble is, the state's alarming pollution levels are getting in the way.
By Robert Bryce
[11/24/99]

Desperately seeking a legacy
President Clinton has little time left to improve his standing in history. Could foreign affairs, especially a negotiated peace in the Middle East, offer him a chance for salvation?
By Nina Donaghy
[11/24/99]

Gingrich vs. Gingrich
Why has the former speaker of the House chosen to let his dirty linen be brought out for all to see?
By David Corn
[11/24/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

They want the WTO to give priority to national and international environmental laws and to use its powers to enforce internationally recognized workers' rights. For example, while most countries have committed themselves to certain core labor rights -- preventing child labor, forced labor and discrimination, and guaranteeing the right of workers to organize -- the WTO could actually penalize countries that don't adhere to such standards.

In a Nov. 19 speech at the National Press Club, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said that organized labor would not support a new round of negotiations if it did not incorporate protection of workers' rights, the environment and consumers, give citizens more of a voice at the WTO, protect public health and environment laws from WTO rulings, and ensure that governments could protect against surges of imports or dumping of products below cost. "The real debate is not over whether to be part of the global economy, but over what are the rules for that economy and who makes them," Sweeney said.

Other critics think that the WTO is fatally flawed -- too undemocratic, too pro-corporate, too biased in favor of trade above everything, and too dominated by the rich countries. They want to roll back or eliminate the WTO, and don't trust it to do anything worthwhile -- even on behalf of their causes, whether it's protecting arctic forests or the right of Indonesian workers to organize unions.

"I don't believe the WTO as it is can be reformed," argues Steelworkers union president George Becker. "The whole thing needs to be scrapped and started all over." Even if worker rights are protected, he argues, it will take many decades for workers in poor countries to improve their wages and social welfare laws.

These critics point to the track record of the WTO panels charged with settling disputes that come before the organization when one member country challenges laws of another as unfairly impeding trade. So far, according to a report by Lori Wallach and Michelle Sforza of Public Citizen, the watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader, "no democratically achieved environmental, health, food safety or environmental law challenged at the WTO has ever been upheld. All have been declared barriers to trade."

The WTO overturned U.S. regulations promoting cleaner gasoline, for example, and ruled that Europe could not ban American beef grown with artificial hormones. In many cases, governments have dropped or watered down regulations simply because of the threat of a WTO challenge; subjects of such challenges have included Guatemalan rules to discourage misleading promotion of infant formula, Korean food safety laws and a bill before the Maryland legislature to boycott goods from Nigeria because of the country's human rights violations.

While leaders of developing nations oppose expanding worker rights and environmental protections, union organizers and democracy advocates in these poorer countries are trying to link up with Western labor and environmental groups, arguing that their own leaders rely on suppressing unions and keeping down wages as a way of attracting international investment and keeping democracy at bay. Some Western unions claim these tactics should be treated as an illegal subsidy to business under WTO rules, and that the international body should penalize the offending countries.

Going into this week's WTO meetings, it appears that the protesters have American public opinion on their side. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland showed that 93 percent of Americans thought that "countries that are part of international trade agreements should be required to maintain minimum standards for working conditions." The survey showed that while Americans are open to free trade and globalization, they think that corporations rather than working people have benefited most from these trends; respondents say they are willing to slow down trade -- and even pay somewhat higher prices -- to protect American jobs, support worker rights around the world and preserve the environment.

Increasingly, it seems, the divisions at the WTO are not the kind of questions that can be settled by trading tariff reductions in a lawyer-filled back room. More fundamental issues about the nature of the new global economy are coming to the fore and spilling into the streets of Seattle.
salon.com | Nov. 29, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon