"Significant shortfalls in fundamental skills are hampering manufacturers' ability to maintain the high productivity levels that are the prerequisite for success in the global economy," says NAM President Jerry Jasinowski.

The NAM report acknowledges that "manufacturing investments in information technology training over the last several years have helped close the technology skills gap…."(A point that seems to rebut the argument often made in business circles that only more hiring from abroad can meet the need.) The report also re-emphasizes NAM's "call for employers to invest at least three percent of payroll in employee education and training" – a proposition that can be useful to trade unionists and corporate human relations officers alike.

Energy Debate: Unions Step Forward

The energy debate is where concern about terrorism meets worry about economic recovery. The Persian Gulf, whose sands and waters cover some 65% of the world's known oil reserves, is an unpredictable place. Stable energy prices are crucial for reviving America's economic growth. Suddenly everyone is talking about energy policy.

Many environmentalists argue that we should raise vehicle mileage standards and use more solar, wind and hydropower. [See John Podesta, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16222-2002Jan21.html

President Bush recently went to a union meeting at the Teamster's Washington headquarters and then on to West Virginia to make his case for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. (He spoke in front of a giant banner that read "Coal Keeps the Lights On!")

One key group everyone is watching as this debate unfolds is the labor movement. Will they stay close to the environmentalists, their long-time allies on such issues as trade and occupational safety and health? Or will they break away to make common cause with business and the Republicans, in the hope of preserving jobs and reviving growth?

An organization has emerged with the view that labor needs more informed and distinctive voices of its own in this debate: it's called Unions for Jobs and the Environment. http://www.ujae.org/

Unions that make up the UJAE broke ranks with the environmentalists to lobby Congress in support of ANWR drilling and to oppose increasing gas mileage standards for light trucks and SUVs. They have pressed the AFL-CIO to stick with its opposition to the Kyoto climate change accords on the grounds that any agreement that does not bind developing nations such as China and India will have little effect on greenhouse gas levels, but harmful impact on the American economy.

But UJAE President Bill Cunningham is also looking for ways to cooperate with environmentalists when that suits labor's interests. He argues that government should press ahead in the development of environmental technologies. He notes that, because of technological innovations, vehicle miles driven in America have increased over the past 20 years by 140%, and coal consumption has increased by 100%, while key air pollutants have actually been reduced by over 30%. http://ujae.org/ujae2/airquality/airintro.htm ,click on "Air Quality Trends"]

Cunningham is hoping that unions will develop their own position in the coming Congressional clash over air pollution rules. Environmental groups are gathering in support of restrictive regulations being proposed by Senator James Jeffords (I-VT), while industry and the White House are drawn to a much milder position being developed by Senator George Voinovich (R-OH). Cunningham is circulating a proposal to unions that he believes can go a long way toward meeting the environmentalists' goals on some pollutants, without disrupting industry and employment. http://ujae.org/ujae2/airquality/presentation%20on%204%20emissions%20for%20web%20jan8%202002.pdf

UJAE has attracted membership from important mining, construction, and transportation unions. It is based on the premise that working people have deep concerns for a healthy environment, but that these have to be balanced against their concerns about jobs and a strong economy. Some might call it “Third Way" environmentalism: neither a return to the state of nature, nor a surrender to whatever may be convenient for industry.

Globalization Debate Re-Awakens

World Bank economists David Dollar and Aart Kraay have fired off a volley at critics of their institution and economic globalization in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs. Their article, "Spreading the Wealth," contends that countries that are integrating into the global economy not only show more rapid economic growth, but also show a trend toward greater equality of incomes. Most of this is a result of rapid growth in the biggest and once the poorest countries, China and India. They provide some interesting evidence. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/Dollar0102.html

These authors go on to argue against global environmental and labor standards, and for greater freedom of immigration, on grounds that the best remedy for the problems of globalization is more free-wheeling globalization.

Former chief World Bank economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz presents a different perspective in a special Winter Issue of The American Prospect. He acknowledges that globalization can be beneficial, even to a broad spectrum of a country's population. But he argues that this is most likely to occur when national governments take a firm hand in shaping the methods and tempo of their country's engagement. He believes that government has a specially important role in managing financial ebbs and flows that often wreak havoc on small countries. http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/1/stiglitz-j.html

Stiglitz makes the point that a large democratic country like the United States has its own capacities for making responsible decisions about monetary and fiscal policies, while smaller, more dependent countries can be forced to toe an ideological line laid down from afar by the IMF and its overseers in the world financial community.

[Stiglitz might also have noted that the IMF developed many of its doctrinaire preconceptions in a time when many of its client states had governments that were not accountable to anyone but a narrow ruling group. Hence the temptation -– and in some measure the justification-– for its highhandedness. But the spread of democracy has made many more governments responsible to their own people for their economic policies. This provides reason for the IMF to lighten up, and for the international community to do more to strengthen democratic governance in the developing world.]

Another interesting contribution to the globalization debate appeared last week in The Strait's Times of Singapore, written by Edward Gresser, a former Clinton trade advisor now on the staff of Washington's Progressive Policy Institute. Gresser argues that the anti-globalization movement in the United States is now dead. http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/analysis/story/0,1870,97340-1011391140,00.html

The immediate cause of its demise may have been the terrorist attacks of September 11. This brought a shock to American labor and other mainstream groups that, in Gresser's view, had been drawn into strange bedfellowship with an assortment of extremists. But Gresser argues the breakup ultimately had a deeper cause: the anti-globalization movement was grounded on an ascetic distaste for modern prosperity. Such an affront to human nature was bound to fail.

Maybe. But other reasons can be advanced for uneasiness about globalization: the turmoil, loss of identity, and feelings of disenfranchisement that so often attend it. Gresser's predictions about the demise of the anti-globalization protest may go too far. For a bracing alternative view, look at a piece by former Undersecretary of Commerce David Rothkopf in last Sunday's Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6840-2002Jan19.html

Rothkopf contends that political and economic conflict on a grand scale is not over: the world is too unsettled. "We must create stakeholders in globalization, in capitalism and democracy,” he contends, "by reforming local systems so that the disenfranchised have access to the capital, education, legal, institutional, market efficiencies and other benefits that can only come when the grasp of the elites on limited national assets is loosened and the opportunity to build and own wealth is genuinely offered."

About NEIS's E-Bulletin

This E-Bulletin is published by the New Economy Information Service (NEIS), a project of the Foundation for Democratic Education. NEIS provides information and reviews debate on the impact globalization and technological change has on democracy at home and abroad. Current interest focuses on how American workers can be equipped with the skills they need for decent employment and economic security, and on how the globalization of the economy and the expansion of democracy can strengthen one another.

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