Globalization, Democracy
And An International Labor Communication Strategy



Steve Zeltzer




A key element in the growth of the global economy today, is the development of international telecommunications and information technology. These technologies are crucial in the production, distribution and planning of multi-nationals and the world economy.
These technologies are also the fastest growing industries in the world's economies. In nearly every country of the world, these telecommuniation and information links are seen as vital to the development of the economy and the future of the country.
Labor on a world scale must seriously examine not only these technologies and who owns and controls these technologies but how these technologies can be harnessed for the use of global labor.
At the recent October 1997 AFL-CIO convention, John Sweeney, president of that organization called for "Global Unionism". American unions now pragmatically are reaching out internationally because they see that they cannot solve their struggles with multi-nationals that operate can shift and organize production globally to break their unions.
In one struggle after another, US workers have been forced to reach out to their Brothers and Sisters in other countries for support. This has happened with the UMWA Pittston miners strike where a miner's delegation went to Europe and Japan, the Bridgestone-Firestone URW-USWA strike where the workers visited the head offices of Bridgestone-Firestone in Japan and in the recent New Otani Hotel workers fight in Los Angeles where Sweeney visited Japan to get support from the Japanese labor movement. In more and more of these struggles videos and the internet are being used as important tools. The Bridestone-Firestone workers Union and the International Chemical Workers (ITS) launched an international cybercampaign against Bridgestone-Firestone and the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) have a web page for their battle with Otani Hotel Corporation.
In fact, US labor is under assault with more than 13,000 workers fired last year for simply trying to organize a union. Today, the United States has more unorganized auto plants than any other country of the world. Toyoto, Nissan, Honda, BMW and Mercedes all have built plants in the US with the avowed policy of keeping the unions out, and they have been successful. This threatens not only US labor but world labor.
In order to have "Global Unionism" the world trade union movement must have a high degree of labor communication links. At present, world labor is just beginning to use these technologies to build such links.
Only a small percentage of the world's unions use computers for the internet and regularly use videos. The International Trade Secreatariats of the ICFTU are also just beginning to develop company wide web pages for workers who work for the same company world wide.
This is will be an increasingly important tool to link all workers who work for every multi-national in the world. This work however is very slow. At present, the ITS organizations are very poorly funded in relation to national TU federations. Thousands of trade unionists and workers world wide must be trained in computer use, the internet and video making and labor television for world labor to begin to catch up and challenge capital in the communications battle.
In the United States, because of the development of community access television and the expansion of the internet into the schools and workplaces, this has proceeded much faster but we must work for the training and use of these technologies for labor in every country of the world.

The Issues Facing Labor

From privatization drives, deregulation, casualization of labor and the toxic environment, labor is under attack. Unfortunately, most union and countries are fighting their struggles alone. As the capitalists are fond of reminding us "Capital Has No Borders" and we need to have the same slogan in all our unions "Labor Has No Borders".
In Turkey recently a unionist said that "The Turkish media tells us every day that the struggle against privatization is over and the Turkish working class are the only ones left fighting privatization."
This is a common propaganda statement that is mirrored in one country after another from Turkey and Lithania to Japan and Brazil. The corporate dominated and controlled media push their policies internationally yet are able to implement them with a divided working class who do not have all the information about the real role of these policies globally.
The internet has already helped to transform this situation. The unionist in Turkey using the Internet was able to write a series of articles for the only unionized national paper left in Turkey about privatization world wide and was able to expose these schemes.
One of the valuable tools that LaborNet-IGC www.labornet.org/labornet/ has done is to develop a whole electronic conference on privatization world wide so we can see how this policy is implemented around the world.
The privatization of all the ports of England and the fight of the 500 Liverpool dockers who were fired in a historic case of a local fight against privatization and casualization that has gone global both with the use of their web page and video documentaries in different languages. As a result of the Liverpool Docker's web page www.labournet.org.uk, other docker's web pages were established in Quebec, Canada and in Brazil as well as other countries. Their slogan "The World Is Our Picket Line" has become more and more of a reality as dockers and others throughout the world have taken direct action in solidarity. This again would have been probably been impossible today without the use of the internet.
Deregulation of the Japanese ports and privatization of Sri Lanka ports are all part and parcel of an international plan to destroy organized labor in every country of the world. We can also see again and again that only a global response will succeed in defeating these policies. As we have seen in the Liverpool fight, the importance of breaking the information blockade was crucial to take this fight forward.

Democracy, Deregulation, Censorship And Labor

The drive for deregulation in the telecommunications industry is a direct threat not only to the workers in these industries but to the entire population. The nearly 2 and 1/2 year old Detroit newspaper workers strike and lock-out has been censored from the media not only in Detroit but throughout the United States. The Detroit unions were prevented from running pro-labor ads on all but one Detroit radio station. This censorhip of labor is just one small example of what is happening throughout the world. The Detroit newspaper workers face the Gannett Corporation which owns not only USA Today, but hundreds of other papers and also the Knight-Ridder Company which also owns papers throughout the US. They use their monopoly power and wealth to frontally attack organized labor and have spent over $600 million just in defeating the Detroit newspaper workers alone.
Today, under the recently passed US telecommuncation deregulation law, one company can own a community or cities cable company, all the newspapers and all the television and radio stations. This is truely a dictorship of capital with nearly total control of information. It is not only a threat to labor but a threat to environmentalists, consumers, women, anti-war activists and others who are "marginalized" and "censored" in the media. For these multi-national companies like News Inc, Time-Warner, GE, Disney, TCI, Gannett. Microsoft and Sony there are no borders in their drive for media/Telecommunications control. The Democratic and Republican parties along with other capitalist parties around the world have together relentlessly pushed these deregulation policies to the detriment of the world working class.
There is also an international campaign for the censorship of the internet by government rules against "pornography" which could also be used against labor and other material. World labor must oppose all forms of censorship on the internet and against technolgies that are used to censor labor or political information. Microsoft, through it's monopoly control of it's operating system is also forcing most world computer makers to use it's Web Brouser and Microsoft like other monopolies will seek to prevent labor issues from being exposed to the public. In fact, we learned at the 1997 LaborTECH conference that they even banned a Web Page of Microsoft workers. These workers are being forced to become part time workers or are being casualized into contract workers. Their page at www.speakeasy.org/~tmpscape was prevented from being on other servers by Microsoft and finally found a home at Labornet-IGC.
The need for labor to build an international movement for democracy in telecommunications and the internet is a critical necessity if we are to fight for our own issues as well as others who are under attack by the multi-nationals and governments that they control. Labor must also defend public access on all cable stations around the world as well as the defense of public broadcasting. In the United States, Australia and Britain, the governments are seeking to privatize and sell off the public broadcasting systems to the highest bidders, and already corporate driven programming dominates pubic broadcasting in the US. This takes place at the same time that labor and other groups are prevented from having any regular programming on radio and television.
At the same time, labor must build it's own media so it can get it's story out uncensored. The development by the ITS's of an international labor cable channel and development of labor channels around the world is an important task.
Support is also growing in the US for a labor cable channel and recently I heard that Japan's RENGO is planning a 24 hour labor cable channel starting in January 98. Even on short wave radio it is possible for labor to have it's own radio program on an international scale and world labor must develop a plan for such facilities.
The AFL-CIO also at it's recent convention voted to spend $40 million on TV commercials and radio ads during the next two years in the United States. While commericals maybe useful, they are certainly no substitute for a national labor radio and TV channel as well as labor TV and radio programs around the country. This is also in a country without a national labor daily or even weekly newspaper.

Linking Workers Of Multi-Nationals In Soliaridarity And Action

The increasing globalization of the economy and the growth of non-union sectors can also only be answered by international links and action. Already, there are thousands of labor web pages and many are coming on line daily. There are 26,000 union locals in the AFL-CIO and a web page for every local will have a tremendous communication potential for labor. These web pages are already being linked so that workers can link with their brothers and sisters in other locals and other workers in similar industries around the world. The potential for a worldwide day of action against a multi-national by millions of workers is on the agenda and will be greatly enhanced by the internet and other communication technology. Information blockades can happen in both directions and some companies like Mitsubishi have already discovered that during an international communication campaign by the environmental movement against a development project in the Philippines that would have destroyed the forest. By the massive of use of faxes, phone and other communication technology, Mitsubishi was virtually shutdown and had to abandon their development project.
We need to develop workers' web pages for every multi-national in the world that allows workers to see what their multi-national is doing to it's workforce worldwide. The use of videos can also be vital. One of the most important was the Oil, Chemical And Atomic Workers (OCAW) battle with German owned BAF in Louisiana. The locked out workers only got their jobs back after the OCAW produced a video about the role of the company and prepared to put it on German television. At this point, the company settled. Recently in a union election in a Mexican maquiladora Hyundai parts plant, the workers voted for an independent union. Following the election, the company began to fire some of the key union organizers. A video was made of the election, and plans are being made for it to be distributed to Korean Hyundai workers and other Korean people to build support for labor rights for Hyundai workers in Mexico.
In the fight to defend 12,000 Mexican city bus drivers who were members of SUTAUR-100 union, bus drivers in San Francisco downloaded articles and were able to post them in bus barns so all San Francisco bus drivers could follow the struggle of their brothers and sisters in Mexico.
The historic establishment of the Korean General Strike web page has allowed workers world wide to not only learn directly from the Korean labor movement what was happening during the strike and what the issues were but provided an opportunity to build direct global international solidarity for the strike.
Support is also growing for global contracts, so multi-nationals cannot pit one group of workers in one country against another. The development of global contracts neccesitates close and timely communication links that can only be developed with the use of the internet. Already in Labournet-UK Opel-GM workers have regular stories in German and English about their struggles. The failure of the Caterpillar UAW workers in the United States to defend their union was in part, a failure to directly link up in action with their brothers and sisters in Brazil, Belgium and Japan. Implementing the slogan "Labor Has No Borders" could have physically changed the outcome of the Caterpillar strike.
The future will lead to more and more pressure for global unionism as more and more workers and unions see this as vital to defend their union and win their struggle.

Death Of National Unionism

The death of national unionism is the logic of the globalization of the world economy. This means no more borders for workers around the world, and more and more direct links with their brothers and sisters in other countries.
It also means an increase of union democracy. Discussion and debate within the world trade union movement is necessary in this new situation. The difference today is that rank and file workers from throughout the world can participate as they become connected to the internet or they have friends who are connected to the internet.
The debate within the International Transport Federation on the issue of international support for the Liverpool dockers will be increasingly mirrored by other union struggles around the world. This is a positive development that will raise labor conciousness worldwide. The slogan "Workers Of The World Unite! You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains" is more relevant today than at any time in history and today we have the tools to make that slogan a reality.