Kiss The Jobs and Wages Goodbye: Hello "Free Trade" Again

[marmar]

from the Working Life blog:




Kiss The Jobs and Wages Goodbye: Hello "Free Trade" Again
by Jonathan Tasini

Thursday 04 of November, 2010


Yesterday, I wrote about the disastrous state of labor in the wake of the elections. Suffering from either a lack of sleep or simple brain lock, I neglected to include one of the most dangerous coming debacles: we have lost much of the ground built opposing so-called "free trade" agreements, which have played a central role in undermining jobs and wages here--and have caused the decline in wages across the planet. And it is now about to get worse, thanks to "bi-partisanship".

I can almost guarantee--if I was a pollster, I'd use a fancy chart and put the certainty of this happening at 99 percent--that, in searching for areas of "bi-partisanship", to show the voters and the country that the two parties have "heard" the message of the election, that so-called "free trade" will be one of the first things on the cooperation agenda. I would not be surprised to hear that declared within the next few weeks.

Here is my long-held view: our so-called "free trade" agreements are directly connected to the decline in wages--both because they encourage the movement of high-wage jobs to lower-wage countries (though, let's be clear that such movement can happen without these trade deals--the deals just make it easier) AND because so-called "free trade" is based on the fundamental principle of the race to the bottom on wages.

The world of trade today is not based on the best product. It is based on wage and regulation arbitrage. That is, worldwide corporations are simply looking for the places to do business where they can get the cheapest wages and the lowest level of regulation possible (as in lax environmental standards, no labor standards and no protection for anything--except for capital and corporate intellectual property right). And they are clear: they do not care about creating jobs here.

And, simply on the question of do they work, Public Citizen destroyed the idea that so-called "free trade" agreements live up to their claims of increasing trade. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=15016

[glitch]

1. Bi-partisan is a euphemism when one side never budges and the other always capitulates.

As is "consensus-building".

[stillwaiting]

2. k & r

[shanti]

3. and the rich get richer

:( "they" decided that american wages were much too high, now look what we've got.