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By Art Foeste
Imagine negotiations among the National Football League brass, NCAA officials and high school football coaches on an agreement that would compel them to compete against each other. Sound impossible, if not ridiculous?
Well, in a very real sense, that’s exactly what the World Trade Organization (WTO) is doing—rewriting the rules of international commerce to facilitate the trade of goods and services among its economically and culturally diverse 150 member nations.
It’s a daunting task based on countless hypotheticals, including one that purports to give economic gains to developing countries by providing them access to markets in other countries and employment opportunities for their citizens.
The trade-off is that these developing nations also have to open their markets to multinational corporations that are all too eager to shift production to developing countries where wages are exponentially cheaper, widening their profit margins and possibly expanding their market share.
Despite aggressive lobbying by the international labor movement, including the AFT, the WTO rejected requests to include language in the pact (which by its very nature is a work in progress) that would bind WTO member nations to core labor standards, including the freedom to associate, the right to organize and bargain collectively, and the freedom from forced labor.
As far as the trade ministers are concerned, who, by the way, negotiate the agreements by consensus for the WTO member nations, all rules are off the table when it comes to workers’ rights.
The risks for workers at home, and the gravity of the situation abroad, didn’t become as clear to me until December, when I attended the WTO’s ministerial meeting in Hong Kong. I was there as an AFT representative, joining hundreds of international trade unionists from both the private and public sectors, to monitor the negotiations and lobby trade representatives, mindful of how they will affect workers and worker rights in general.
What I learned is that there is a lot more that these trade agreements take off the table, including workers’ rights, than we stand to gain. And the cumulative effects stand to not only undermine workers’ prosperity but our nation’s representative democracy.
Point in fact: To facilitate trade in services in the global marketplace, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) prohibits what it calls excessive or burdensome regulation, including quality standards and professional licensing requirements.
In our country, elected officials at every level of government still make policy, including regulations, licensure and qualification requirements, all of which could be challenged within the WTO. Disputes between and among member nations are settled by trade lawyers in Geneva, Switzerland, who likely have little understanding of the context in which our nation’s rules and regulations have been made.
At least by U.S. citizens’ standards, GATS places an effective moratorium on federal, state or local government regulation to facilitate trade in services in the global marketplace.
Moreover, the distinction between public services and private services is very murky under GATS, which should cause concern for every public employee. In order for a public service to be off limits to the global market, the government effectively has to have a monopoly on it.
By that definition, the bulk of our work in the public sector—at all levels of government—are services that are open for global competition and vulnerable to privatization and more contracting out.
Some of us in the public sector have gotten a taste of globalization. We have colleagues who have been displaced by or are working alongside H-1B visa workers who are employed by government contractors, or our very own governments.
Through WTO talks, trade representatives from developing countries are pressing the U.S. trade representative (USTR) to significantly increase the number of guest worker visas issued to migrant professionals and loosen eligibility requirements. But in our country, Congress makes that determination—not the USTR.
The U.S. visa program is just one example of an increasing number of areas addressed by the WTO that inherently conflict with our nation’s representative democracy.
So when the NFL, NCAA and high school coaches get together to negotiate, how will they even the playing field? Will the NFL and NCAA agree to a flag game instead of a tackle game? Will college and high school players be paid? Who knows? What we do know, however, is that the financial stakes are higher for NFL owners and the NCAA—and that the players will never be a party in the talks.
Art Foeste is chair of AFT-Wisconsin’s state employee council. He also is a member of the AFT Public Employees program and policy council. Foeste is a corporate tax field auditor.
