Buzz speaks out
On uniting workers and farmers to give globalization balance
Dear Guy Ryder, General Secretary, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions;
I have to start by admitting that entire branches of the Angus family tree are rolling over in their graves because one of their kin is writing a nice letter to a trade unionist. Nothing personal, it’s just that generations of down-home Canadian conservative roots are hard to overcome.
The times are a changing, and even us prairie conservatives have to adapt to survive. If desperate times call for desperate measures and necessity is the mother of invention, we farmers and workers are in one mother of a desperate necessity. Union leaders and farmers must move beyond the petty, getting-my-slice-of-the-pie politics that have dominated our movements since the Second World War. We must join forces to break the stranglehold big business has on the global economy the same way we fought together against fascism in the ’30s.
The name of your organization threw me for a bit of a loop at first. Like most folks, the whole idea of a free-trade union seemed so wrong. Fortunately, the persistence I inherited from my maternal grandmother made me delve further into your organization – far enough to discover that your organization’s name pre-dates the evil connotations that come with the term "free trade" these days (or, as my cribbage partner Einar calls it, "pay-for-free-trade"), and that you have the same concerns about globalization as many of the agricultural producers here in Central Alberta.
I go to the grocery store and watch the price of bread, eggs, meat and produce go up every year and I shake my head. I wonder where the extra money goes as the prices farmers receive for their produce runs downhill. I see the cost of everything from razors to lawn tractors go up, and I wonder why the average wage falls further behind the cost of living.
We both know the answer: too few companies are in charge of the economy. Farmers have been reduced to raw material producers for the food industry. Labour has been reduced to a raw material that companies search for and extract wherever it is cheap to do so.
Trade unions were some of the first proponents of globalization, but you lost your head start to the capitalists and corporations. Farmers, I must say, have had our heads in the furrows for too long. Together, we must fight for balance in globalization by bringing together producers and labour to expand the concept beyond free rein for corporations. It is a timely cause that can attract public sympathy the way our fight against fascists did 70 years ago.
You see, I’m not one of those Saskatoon-pie-in-sky folks who believe all globalization is bad and we should go back to some mythical time when there was no international trade in goods and ideas. I think globalization can be a fine thing as long as it has some balance that reflects the nature of human society. I see what your organization is trying to do, such as negotiating with companies to adopt voluntary codes of conduct for their labour practices throughout the world, and I see the same attitude.
I know it’s tough getting our message heard when the big businesses we hope to take down a notch own all the media. The time is right for a renewed effort. Capitalism is doing its best to blow its public image to pieces, so the public might be a bit more open to hearing that there are, in fact, alternatives out there. There are groups with ideas that can make economies around the world more open, transparent, responsible, fair and competitive, and they do not work or write for a corporation or media empire.
Sadly, we face an opposition to this important work from our own peers. There are still farmers out there so fiercely independent they cannot see that they will be crushed in the cogs of industry if they stand alone, and I know there are many in the union movement who refuse to accept any initiative or idea that is not entrenched in a collective bargaining agreement.
That is to be expected. As wise Machiavelli said, those who fight for change must overcome not only those who will be harmed by the change but those who will sit on the fence until the fight is won even if the change will help them.
Yours in the mighty struggle comrade,
Buzz Angus
Sidebar:
· www.icftu.org – International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. News and views on the labour movement around the world. Specific critiques of globalization policies and labour-friendly alternatives.
· www.ifap.org – International Federation of Agricultural Producers. Includes data on corporate control of food production.
· www.civilsoc.org – Links to the thousands of organizations crossing boundaries to bring balance to globalization. |
