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محتوى الصفحة: Home > مجلة النقل الدولي "Transport International" > Issue 18 January 2005 > Comment: frontlines in US
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The US election result in November 2004 was a bitter blow to American trade unions, who mounted an extraordinary mobilisation campaign to get voters to the polling booths. Sadly the impetus for change they undoubtedly helped to create was matched by the momentum of those anxious to retain the ultra-conservative agenda represented by the Bush administration.
This agenda, carried by an administration with a new mandate is extremely worrying for the American labour movement, and for the labour and social justice movements worldwide. As the Bush team’s free market wagon bulldozes into every corner of American life and beyond, the repercussions are seen in the attack on labour and social standards.
Bush has been fighting an undisguised war of attrition against the trade union rights of working Americans. Indeed his government seems at times to regard the war on labour as an extension of its “war on terror”. In 2002 the government cited the interests of national security when it required the ports to be opened during the West Coast ports dispute and lock out.. The Homeland Security Act of the same year, brought the trade union centre AFL-CIO out in protest against its draconian provisions.
Bush acted in his first term to strip union rights and protections from new categories of workers. Now unions are expecting further provisions to allow union de-recognition in more workplaces and tie up the operations of recognised unions in red tape.
Organised labour in the US is seen first and foremost as an obstacle to free markets and this is the message disseminated globally by the most influential player in the globalised marketplace. A US-based company can export its ethos to any country keen to welcome its investment. A company touting for business in the US had better show it can compete without any social thorns in its side.
The new aggressiveness of the anti-labour push by the Bush administration will further accelerate the well-documented hostility shown towards unions in countries seeking foreign direct investment.
As trade unionists begin a new year of campaigning to protect working people from the excesses of neo-liberalism, one certainty is that US unions are now on the front line of the battleground.
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Issue 18 January 2005
صفحات أخرى لـ Issue 18 January 2005:
Economics of HIV | Presumed Guilty | Bus Driver Blues | Picket Notebook | Cargo in the Wrong Hands | New Pollution Charge | Keeping Going | The Global Reporting Initiative | Commentary: Let them ashore | Commentary: Low cost at any price | In a Man's World | Working Life: Our struggles with Maersk | Reflections: Readers thoughts on HIV/AIDS
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