NOV. 20, 2009:NWLP
Inside
11/17/09
9:47 AM
Page 1
MEETING NOTICES
See
Page 4
Volume 110
Number 22
November 20, 2009
Portland, Oregon
WTO — 10 years later
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
en years ago on Nov. 30, 50,000
people protested a meeting of
the World Trade Organization
(WTO) in Seattle, Washington. The
protests succeeded in delaying the
summit’s opening day, and contributed
to the collapse of plans for a new round
of trade negotiations. It was one of
those rare moments in history when or-
dinary people rise up and can no longer
be ignored. It was the week of protest,
and a coming-out party for a broad-
based movement to oppose the “busi-
ness-first” model of globalization.
In Portland, Seattle, and elsewhere,
union, environmental and community
activists will take time in the coming
weeks to remember the protests and
strategize how to carry forward the
“spirit of Seattle.”
Before the Seattle protests, few peo-
ple had ever heard of the WTO, a se-
cretive organization that promotes and
enforces multi-national trade agree-
ments. But the world public was in-
creasingly aware that growth in world-
wide trade was not benefiting workers
or the environment.
WTO didn’t create the offshoring of
U.S. manufacturing jobs. Trade bal-
T
Photos courtesy of
David Groves
ances were tilting in China’s direction
long before that country joined the
WTO, for example. And Mexico had
begun creating duty-fee “maquiladora”
export-processing zones in the 1960s.
But the WTO served to “grease the
skids,” by lowering tariff and “non-tar-
iff” barriers to trade.
“The WTO is like a slow motion
coup d’état,” Lori Wallach, director of
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
division, told the Labor Press. “It’s the
main delivery mechanism for the
model of corporate globalization we’ve
seen implemented in the last couple
decades. And it imposes policies that
go way beyond trade: deregulation, pri-
vatization, and promotion of offshoring
to countries with the lowest wages.”
Since 1947, nations had committed,
in the multilateral agreement known as
the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT), to gradually lower tar-
iffs and quotas for manufactured goods
and some commodities. [Tariffs —
taxes on imports — are a tool countries
use to protect domestic industries from
foreign competition.] At a meeting in
Uruguay in 1986, GATT-signatory na-
tions began negotiating an agreement
(Turn to Page 6)
The face of unions grows more diverse over last 25 years
A new study has found that the face of the labor movement has
changed dramatically over the past 25 years.
In 1983, more than half of all union workers were white men, few
union workers had a college degree and nearly one-third were in
manufacturing. Today, almost half are women, more than one-third
have college degrees, and only one in 10 work in manufacturing.
“The Changing Face of Labor, 1983-2008,” released this month
by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), shows the
union movement is more diverse than 25 years ago. The makeup of
union members reflects similar shifts in the overall workforce.
“The view that the typical union worker is a white male manu-
facturing worker may have been correct a quarter of a century ago,
but it’s not an accurate description of those in today’s labor move-
ment,” said CEPR senior economist John Schmitt, one of the re-
port’s authors. “The unionized workforce is changing with the coun-
try. The fastest growing groups in the overall economy are also the
fastest growing groups in the labor movement.”
The AFL-CIO’s new leadership team has made a priority of
reaching out to the new faces of workers. Speaking at the AFL-CIO
National Summit on Diversity in Pittsburgh in September, AFL-
CIO President Richard Trumka said the federation’s commitment to
diversity is on its way to becoming a reality.
“I’m here to tell you that we must change,” Trumka said. “That
is why we’re seeking out and encouraging young people, people of
color, people of all backgrounds and beliefs and sexual orientation.
These are the labor leaders of tomorrow.”
According to the study, the typical union member is 45 years
old, compared with 41 for the typical American worker. That’s
seven years older than a quarter-century ago. The most heavily
unionized group was workers 55 to 64 —18.4 percent of them were
in unions. The least unionized age group was 16- to 24-year-olds
(5.7 percent were in unions.)
Women now make up more than 45 percent of unionized work-
ers, up from just 35 percent in 1983. By 2020, women will be the
majority of union workers.
Liz Shuler, the newly elected secretary-treasurer of the AFL-
CIO, told the New York Times that the rise in female membership
was encouraging. “It shows that the diversity initiatives we’ve been
pushing have made a difference. Unions have been pushing hard to
open their doors,” said Shuler, 39, a member of Portland-based
IBEW Local 125 and the first woman elected to a top post of the
AFL-CIO.
Among other findings in the CEPR study:
• More than one-third of union workers have a four-year college
degree or more, up from only one in five in 1983. Nearly half of
union women have at least a four-year college degree.
• A little more than half (52 percent) of union members are pro-
fessional and technical workers.
• Just under half (48.9 percent) of unionized workers are in the
public sector, up from slightly more than one-third (34.4 percent) in
1983. Some 61 percent of unionized women are in the public sector,
compared to 38 percent for men.
• Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in the union move-
ment. In 2008, they represented 12.2 percent of the union work-
force, up from 5.8 percent in 1983.
• Asian Americans make up 4.6 percent of the union workforce
in 2008, an increase from 2.5 percent in 1989.
• African American workers are about 13 percent of the total
unionized workforce, a share that has held fairly steady since 1983.
Over the last quarter century, unionization rates have fallen across
every part of the country. However, in recent years, Schmitt and co-
author Kris Warner found moderate growth in union membership in
the Pacific states — Oregon, Washington, Alaska, California and
Hawaii (up from 17.6 percent in 2006 to 19.9 percent in 2008).
In 2008, unionization rates were highest in the Northeast at 20.3
percent. The Midwest, after experiencing the largest regional drop in
unionization in percentage-point terms since 1983, had a 15.5 per-
cent unionization rate in 2008. The unionization rate was substan-
tially lower in the West (10.7 percent) and the South (7.2 percent).