Both at the Maritime Trades Department executive board meetings last month and the AFL-CIO executive council meetings that followed, I joined with many other union presidents and other labor officials in helping re-focus and define the key goals of our movement.This is a constant, necessary exercise that helps ensure we’re all on the same page. On the surface, it usually involves routine procedures like adopting resolutions or passing policy statements. But those declarations are just the tip of the iceberg. They’re summaries that reflect detailed plans and deep commitments by our unions, our state federations and central labor councils and other bodies dedicated to improving the way of life enjoyed by working families.
Taking part in those meetings, it can be a lot to digest. Whether we’re tackling maritime issues like the Jones Act and the Maritime Security Program, or broader subjects such as health care and the right organize, it is important work that requires serious attention, planning and action.
Nevertheless, a couple of the newest statements that jumped out at me were ones that covered the basics.
One was an MTD statement about “outsourcing.” When we first heard that term many years ago, it probably didn’t hold much meaning. Today, of course, we know it’s a dirty word. Outsourcing is a tricky way of describing job losses, lower wages and disappearing benefits. It means class warfare as companies send good middle-class jobs overseas, all in the name of greater profits for CEOs and stockholders.
In part, outsourcing explains why we hear rosy reports about the overall economy, while at the same time struggling homeowners try to decide between paying their electric bill and refilling their prescriptions.
Outsourcing has cost millions of middle-class workers the livelihood for which they trained. Many of the first factory workers caught up in outsourcing went back to school for new jobs they were told are better suited for the global economy. They took classes to learn about computers and new work in that field. They were part of the high-tech boom of the mid- and late 1990s.
Then a not-so-funny thing happened. Companies discovered that those jobs could be outsourced, too. And what advice is being given to those who have been outsourced a second time? Get over losing your job and train for one in the new global economy.
It’s a grim picture but not one totally without hope. For instance, you may have read or heard about the fact that when America West completed its takeover of US Airways, the new company’s top officials realized that outsourced overseas call centers weren’t getting the job done. They reversed course and re-opened a call center in North Carolina. The MTD-affiliated Communications Workers represented the workers at the original call center and that union once again represents those women and men.
The company noted it may cost more to pay the American workers, but it cost less overall because the job was done right the first time. At the risk of saying, “We told you so,” they could have saved themselves a lot of time and money by listening to those of us in the trade union movement in the first place.
Sending jobs overseas to take advantage of workers in lands without labor laws is penny-wise but pound-foolish. Beyond that, it’s morally bankrupt.
As we said in our MTD statement, “The great American and Canadian economies were built on the back of the middle class. These working men and women made the cars, appliances, clothing and other goods the world craved. It should be no different today. Companies deserve to make a profit, but the middle class deserves to reap their share of the rewards. They should not be cast aside as an expendable cost of business. They should be respected for what they can and do bring to a company’s bottom line.”
In that same vein, the AFL-CIO executive council adopted a six-point plan to promote domestic job creation and keeping good jobs at home. Our position included that good-paying jobs with adequate health care and retirement benefits shouldn’t merely be goals—they should be realities in today’s America.
We can get there by promoting true partnerships between labor, management and government. We can get there by ensuring that workers enjoy the fundamental freedom to join unions and by holding corporations accountable for their actions under our laws and standards. We can get there by protecting workers’ rights in all trade agreements and by rebuilding our manufacturing base. We can get there by providing important public services to all Americans, especially education for our children and care for those most in need.
We can and will get there through solidarity and hard work. It’s a tall order, but I have no doubt the labor movement is up to the task.
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