Labor in a Global Economy. Perspectives from the US and Canada. Conference Proceedings (Eugene, Oregon, September 1990) (original) (raw)

hands that will repair the damage of recent decades must be visible ones." Robert Kuttner, The End of Laissez-F Narional Purpose and the Global Economy After the Cold War The economy confronting labor movements in the twenty-first century will be vastly different from the one which spawned these movements. International capital mobility, technological change, and the communications revolution have created a global economy in which individual nation states and, in turn, the labor organizations in these nations, have less influence and control over economic events. Unions in all countries know that they must understand, respond to, and shape global economic forces in order to continue to have a voice in the workplace and in public policy within their own national borders. The U.S.-Canadian "Labor in a Global Economy" conference convened in September, 1990, in the midst of events and trends that illustrate the relationship between global economic forces and national labor movements. For example, the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (ETA) was the central issue of the 1988 Canadian federal elections. Canadian labor led the opposition, yet the agreement generated little interest in U.S. labor circles. In contrast, the announcement in June, 1990, by U.S. President George Bush and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari that they would embark on "fast track" negotiations for a similar U.S.-Mexico agreement, provoked quick and forceful reactions by both U.S. and Canadian labor unions. These negotiations now involve Canada as well as the U.S. and Mexico, and labor and other interests are mobilizing for a battle. Meanwhile, the nations of Western Europe are quickly approaching the 1992 target for a united European market, and the European labor movements are actively negotiating the "social dimension" of that integration, including standards for the workplace, the labor market, and social programs. The logic of a binational U.S.-Canadian conference within this larger global context is dictated by several factors. Despite the numerous international unions whose memberships span the border, contacts between Canadian and U.S. unions have been infrequent, particularly regarding strategy and strategic planning. The precipitous decline of union membership in the U.S. compared with the relative strength of Canadian unions has caused American trade unionists to pay increasing attention to the Canadian system of industrial relations. Similarly, the crisis in the U.S. health care system, manifest in the human tragedy of inadequate access to care and in collective bargaining gridlock and strife over health care benefits, also focuses attention on Canada and its system of universal health care. Both the U.S. and Canadian economies have experienced substantial change in the past decade. The Reagan era in the U.S. brought a free market ideology and concession bargaining. Canadian unions have Labor in a Global Economy on the part of businesses and the governments of the U.S. and Canada prompts deregulation and privatization and manifests itself in an increasingly part-time and contingent work force. At the workplace, innovations in work orga. ization and work rules, job classification systems, and traditional labor management relationships have accompanied the transition to a global economy. INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN CANADA AND THE U.S. The most often cited statistic in any comparative discussion of labor in Canada and the U.S. is the striking divergence in union density in the past twenty-five years. From a high point of about 35 percent in both countries in 1954, density began to fall. However, in 1964 a pattern of divergence began that has continued to the present. Canadian density increased, peaking above 40 percent in the early 1980s, while U.S. density has declined almost continuously to the present day. Density in Canada has begun to fall in recent years, but in 1989 it was still about 37 percent compared with 17 percent in the United States. (Meltz, 1990). Explaining this divergence has become a major area of research in North American industrial relations. The explanations fall into the following major categories: Differences in public policy and labor laws; Different levels of employer resistance and union avoidance behavior; Differences in societal and cultural values and public opinion regarding unions; Structural changes in the economies of the U.S. and Canada; and Union organizing strategies: While there is some evidence for all of these explanations, and they are by no means mutually exclusive, they are not equally plausible. Bruce (1989) makes a strong case that differences in political institutions in Canada and the U.S. have led to public policies and legislation favorable to union organization and certification in Canada. These differences include the active presence of a social democratic party, the New Democratic Party, at the federal level and in many provinces. (The Parti Quebecois, another party with strong union ties, plays a similar role in regard to labor issues in Quebec I Meltz, 1990D. There are also much smaller regional differences in legislation and union density in Canada than in the U.S., so that Canada does not have "right to work" provinces or a largely nonunion internal region like the U.S. sunbelt, where companies can escape unions. Canadian labor law is largely provincially based, but there are a number of provisions prevalent in most jurisdictions that are particularly favorable to union organizing success. These include card check certification, found in eight of ten provinces and the federal sector, and first contract arbitration, found in five provinces. That these types of provisions have been central to (failed) U.S. labor law reform efforts over the past three decades demonstrates that their importance has not been lost on the U.S. labor movement. However, one must be careful not to confuse cause and effect in discussing political structures, cultural values, union density, superior labor laws and enforcement, and less overt management opposition to unions in Canada. This is especially true in seeking lessons for U.S. unions from the Canadian experience. The extent to which "simple" changes in U.S. labor law, based on Canadian precedents, could significantly improve the success of union organizing, is enmeshed with these other factors. Huxley et al. (1986) ask if "Canada's experience is especially instructive" to the U.S. situation. They maintain that Canada's favorable policies are tied to the more adversarial and political nature of its unionism, and especially to the ties between unions and the New Democratic Party in English Canada and the electoral left in Quebec. They conclude: 1 0 4 Labor in a Global Economy the freedom of capital to pursue the lowest cost of production. Other strategies, according to this school, are too reactive to globalization and accept too readily its inevitability. For example, Donohue (section three) argues convincingly that we must pay attention to plant closures and economic dislocations that affect workers where it countsin their communities. He argues for economic analysis of the importance of domestic industries and for protecting these industries while developing an alternative economic strategy to challenge the agenda of the transnational enterprises. In a similar vein, Leo Gerard (section three) argues that unions must organize to change the terms of debate from one centered on benefits to international capital to one that focuses on the needs of workers and communities in all nations. Shirley Carr (section one) points out that labor would best be served by "managed" trade rather than free trade, and this may involve protectionist policies. The second main strategy for labor is international cooperation in organizing and bargaining and demanding that international trade agreements include standards or conditions for the rights of workers and unions, and for social programs in the signatory nations. All of these approaches force international capital to deal with labor in both the domestic and international spheres. Peter Dorman (section three) believes that there is no alternative to an internationalist approach, that the global economy is already highly developed and will continue to follow this path. He argues for labor standards and worker rights conditionality in trade agreements. Larry Cohen and Fred Pomeroy (section three) present one case example of international labor cooperation in the telecommunications industry. They show how the international trade secretariats can facilitate international labor cooperation in bargaining and in community mobilization in support of bargaining. They are careful to point out, however, that such cooperation requires strong internal labor movements. Thus, organizing internally against the effects of globalization will remain a primary concern for unions. These concerns and related strategies are also discussed in section eight on organizing. The section on the forest products industry shows how global economic changes have wrought significant effects on one important regional industry. While the strategies of U.S. and Canadian unions have diverged in this industry in the past, unionists now argue that these global economic changes should be met with more coordinated labor strategie! Several authors encourage us to focus on the link between the industrialized nations and the developing and underdeveloped nations of the Third World. Leo Gerard insists that the twin problems of debt and environmental degradation in the Third World are the problems of U.S and Canadian unionists as well. Dorman links Latin American economic performance to that of the U.S., and Donohue insists that labor in the already industrialized countries must not shift the burden of reining in multinational corporations to workers and unions in developing nations who have far fewer resources. The third main strategy is discussed at length...