Carrol writes: > The impact of the "race to the bottom" on u.s. conditions is > "economic" > only indirectly, and for that reason economic statistics can > not really > identify that impact. That is in part because what affects labor > resistance is the _belief_ in runaway jobs. If the workers in a given > enterprise (manufacturing, back-office, whathaveyou) _believe_ that > their jobs can disappear to Mexico or Singapore, that puts them at a > disadvantage against management whether or not there is a > real danger of > such a flight. The largest manufacturing firm locally, > Eureka, did move > to Mexico, and some years before the move tried to blackmail the local > work force into taking deep wage cuts. The workers refused, and kept > their jobs (at decent pay) for a few more years.
Also, it's a mistake to focus just on "globalization" alone. Other forces include deregulation (as in trucking and airlines) and anti-trust, both of which put unionized workers in greater competition with nonunion workers. And privatization, though that plays a smaller role in the US than elsewhere because not much had been statized. And the anti-worker tilt of the (US) National Labor Relations Board and the courts. The high dollar exchange rate of the 1980s hit unionized workers in manufacturing, as did the recent surge of the exchange rate (though the blue-collar middle class had largely disappeared already). The rise of "big box" non-union employers such as Wal-Mart have been a result of several of these trends and has also encouraged them to continue and deepen. if we have to summarize this, I wouldn't use the word "globalization." It's the neo-liberal policy revolution that was the ruling-class response to the "time of troubles" of the 1970s. In the US, it's been both the GOPsters and the Democrats who embrace this policy change. Jim
