Challenges of a Changing Environment - cont.

 

The economic philosophy of low taxes, few business regulations, privatization, low wages and weak or no unions has affected the United States just as it has Bolivia or Nepal. Now, American unions are being forced to consider global forces and to work with labor in other countries as equals. Although some U.S. unions still want to address these threats by retreating into a protected high-wage shell, the old tactics of blaming foreigners and immigrants are being challenged by a more internationalist view. This has created some new alliances and new opportunities for collaboration, both at home and abroad. Many new relationships between labor and environmentalists, for example, were forged during the fight against the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 and refined in the 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization.

 

By 2003, organized labor had evolved a clear position on trade. According to Bruce Nissen of the Center for Labor Research and Studies at Florida International University, “The officially stated position of the AFL-CIO is that the problem with the FTAA negotiations was not that they promoted trade and globalization, but that they did so in a manner that promoted the interests of multinational corporations at the expense of workers on all sides of national borders...”

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