GLOBALIZATION VS. LOCAL CONTROL

by Jerry Brown

The recent International Forum on Globalization emphasized how human beings are pushed and shoved and dominated by the new global arrangement of corporate power. Moving stuff across borders occupies an almost sacred position in the minds of those who run things, whether in business or government, and it affects layoffs, changes in the economy, the increasing inequality, stratification by class, loss of sovereignty, disruption and hollowing out of American communities. So we have to find points of vulnerability. We have to try to construct a local economy, a self-starting initiative action.

How does the workplace fit into patterns of globalization? The Levi Straus Company makes its apparel in 60 countries; the average of other major garment manufacturers is 40 countries. Any time a company wants to push up the wages, they can just pull out. Manufacturers went to the South where the unions were weak; then they went off to Japan, then to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and then those countries themselves were replaced as other nations got on the bandwagon of low wages.

Consequently, today there are workers in Vietnam making 12¢ an hour, 22¢ in Haiti. There is always "that other place"-the Bangladesh, the China, the Vietnam--that cheaper place where people will work for a fraction of what was paid in the previous location. That economic imperative pushes against local communities, pushes against any kind of ethical norm recognizing a living wage, because there is a global capacity to manage the work in many countries all at once.

The impact in this country is to push wages down locally. That has happened to factory workers, to office workers, to farmworkers. The welfare "reform" signed last year is now releasing several million potential workers, driving down even further the wages of those who might have been kept off the wage market. This is a competitive situation. If there are five workers for one job, that moves the wage down.

What makes this topic relevant is that the AFL-CIO and the UFW held a very large rally in Watsonville, the strawberry capital of the Valley, with a focus on raising the wages of farm workers--none too soon because the wages of farmworkers are going down from $7 to below $5.20. Unions have been struggling to fight back. The Watsonville march wasn't a call for a boycott of strawberries; it wasn't a call for a strike; it wasn't even a call for a union representation election; it is still in the "education" mode. There are 30,000 people standing behind the farmworkers, and yet it is not a decisive, direct action to change the nature of the relationship between the employer and the employee.

At the same time, in Washington the administration announced the new "Workplace Code of Conduct." Nike and other garment makers are taking advantage of the very cheap labor conditions in other countries. Now, because of the heat they got, they are getting the protective mantle of the government in the Workplace Code of Conduct.

In that code, the monitors of the workplace will be hired by the companies. They will go to the different operations around the world, checking to see that the minimum wage of that country is being paid, that there is no sexual harassment, that no young children are working in the factories, and that there is no forced or prison labor. Well, good luck! This code of conduct isn't stopping prison labor in China. The world is just too big to police at that level. One of the key weaknesses in the Workplace Code of Conduct, besides the fact that the inspectors are going to be paid and therefore they will be controlled by the corporations, is the provision that only the minimum wage as determined by the country will be enforced. That living wage in Haiti and Vietnam is not a living wage. You can't even subsist on it.

What representatives of unions and workers groups wanted was a code of conduct requiring that a living wage be paid to a fulltime worker. But that was too radical, too contrary to the existing ethos of the time! Yes, the Workplace Code of Conduct may be a step forward, but it may also be a certain perfume sprayed over the horror of so many human beings sweating and struggling in exploitative situations to provide the T-shirts and shoes and fashions for Europe, Japan, and the United States.

At the same time, no one is able to cite a person in government willing to stand against globalization in a powerful way, to put a social tariff on Vietnamese or Chinese "hot cargo"--products made under inhumane conditions, a concept that organized labor is aware of and was able to enact into various laws in the 1930s and 40s. Politicians are getting money for their campaigns from China, Indonesia, and other countries, so of course they are not going to do anything. Right now the Chinese are unloading goods at the major harbors in both the Pacific and East Coast. Nothing is stopping that.

Corporate entities have no allegiance other than to their own profit appetites and desires and no limit contained in their nature. Business people don't want global restrictions. Once they get their hands on money in the form of lower wages and therefore a higher return on their investment, they don't want to see that taken away. Unions aren't enough. It takes a tremendous amount of pressure by people. It takes consumers, consumer awareness, and probably direct action against the most egregious violators-child labor, prison labor.

There are two sides to it. There are the exploited people in Indonesia and China and Vietnam and other countries, and there are the rest of us buying all the stuff to keep it going. That is the power of the system, that you are disconnected from the consequences of your own action. I hope that we can smell it, feel it, sense it, see it, and then reorient ourselves, unhook and unplug from that system.

What is driving all this is the demand of fashion--not our needs--things bought out of peer pressure to keep up with the Joneses, to make sure that we're current, to engage in conspicuous consumption, just buying to buy, buying to keep up with the market. Many fashion outlets change what they have to sell every four months to keep the game going. If people are geared, programed, brainwashed into the global economy, this makes it very difficult for local enterprise, craft stores, to provide an alternative.

We're caught in a bind of conspicuous consumption, based on rapid obsolescence of fashion, fueled by cheap prices and exploited people who live where the majority of us never have a chance to see or encounter them. That's the evil, that's the vice of the modern world of progress and celebration of prosperity-that so many of us don't see the other side of the supply line.

Nike, Reebok--the prize possessions of so many young Americans based on the visual ads on TV of individuals like Michael Jordan-contribute to the lengthening of that supply line weaving from the United States all across the world to Indonesia where young ladies work, sometimes as young as 12 or 13, ten or twelve-hour days for pennies an hour, under abysmal conditions. And if there is any effort to unionize, the response is brutal and swift. That's the dark shadow of this progress. But we can do something about it. We can get at this issue where we can control it-by controlling ourselves.

Try to buy a pair of good running shoes that aren't made in faraway places, often under prison labor or oppressive conditions. Mobilize the understanding and the political resistance to get off the addiction of oppression that people like basketball stars can whitewash in the dreamy imagery of glitzy television ads. That is a propaganda of a power that totalitarian countries barely know. In totalitarian countries people are taught that the government lies. In this country, we're taught that the government is a bunch of fools but the marketplace has all the goodies. And the goodies are what we think we need.

This global economy first and foremost exists inside our mind, inside our will, inside of the demented desires that are fomented, fashioned, and constructed by the world around us. Because they are only mental, they can be changed by our own act of will, by our becoming aware of how we are participating, how we are an inextricable link in this whole process of exploitation. We can find out the sources of what we are wearing, what we are eating, and while we can't cut off 100% from the system of exploitation, we can begin to make real inroads. As people engage in their own self-limitation, they are learning to live in a more responsible way--from the cup of coffee they have or don't have in the morning, to the pair of shoes or gasoline they buy or don't buy. All of that is part of a consciousness that can be part of the change.

Vandana Shiva in India feels that the relevance of Gandhi was never so strong as it is right now. Gandhi preached the spinning wheel, self-reliance, a power in the local community, direct action, an unarmed power of truth. These are all available without waiting for Washington or campaign reform or some new anti-GATT treaty to be put into place, and they will come in their own good time if the spirit of change is ignited in each of us. The spinning wheel had an impact on breaking the monopoly of the British textile hold on India. Can you imagine anything in 1997 that would be an equivalent symbol of self-reliance?

How do we go local when going global is so much easier, cheaper, and familiar? If we put a large task before us, we do nothing. Gandhi said that a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. A lot of people are taking their small steps. Individuals are linking together to fight back. Neighborhoods, communities are working together this way.

In India farmers are resisting the inroads of a corporate/owner patenting seeds and ownership of the very basics of farming itself--an ownership enabling the few to control what has been the prerogative of literally hundreds of millions of farmers.

Right here at We The People, a number of individuals have been helping to put a vegetable garden on the roof, building planter boxes and bringing soil and making compost and tending and being part of it all. That's very impressive. Some of the people have come from Bosnia, do not speak English really, yet they're all pulling together. Yes, it's small, but it's an example. If you get enough people doing things like that, you've got a revolutionary change.

Here in Oakland there is a bakery, a collective, a producer-cooperative, owned by the people who are working it, that is going to be making fresh bread every day and employing owner-workers. That local enterprise, locally owned and controlled, is a major step. People can do that. They can work together, open an enterprise that satisfies a need. There is also the Farmer's Market, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where farmers can actually deliver on a regular basis to those who subscribe.

Between what we're doing amid the waste and embrace of obsolescent fashion and the true hubris of our own indulgent behavior, there is a lot of space for real movement, for revolutionary change. We have to keep focused on concrete steps to take. Yes, talk is cheap and it is extremely difficult for a business to provide for the needs of people. That is precisely why it is easier to have a McDonalds show up on a corner instead of a restaurant that is operated and owned locally. From every conceivable outlet, the forces of globalization are emerging and dominating because they have mastered the capital, the advertising, the training, and the rationale.

In a place like the U.S. there are lots of resources for change. What's needed is the mental focus and the ability to work with others to make it happen. At some point the ships that are carrying these containers of hot cargo--products made by prisoners or young children--ought to be stopped, ought to be identified and stopped. Laurie Wallach from the Trade Campaign from Public Citizen, says there are people at the National AFL-CIO headquarters with information on where this prison-made material is coming from--and where it's going--so there's scope here for real action.

At some point there will be backlash, there will be organization. It's like the phenomenon of a frog that they put in a pot and very slowly turn up the temperature until the frog is boiled to death. We are being slowly boiled. The slower the temperature rises is, the less you notice it, but it is happening, and there is a growing awareness--a backlash, at a certain level--to this growing heat and pressure on so many hundreds of millions of people.

There may be a pessimism of the intellect but it has to be matched by an optimism of the will. Through will and action and commitment, we can move mountains. We must increasingly resort to forms of direct action, but right along with it people have to be willing to embark upon enterprises that they themselves own, enterprises that are part of the fabric of local society.

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