From: Steve Strong (strong_steve@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Oct 18 2002 - 02:04:02 EDT
Great discussion! A proposal was passed at the National Affiliates Gathering this summer to promote discussion and awareness around these issues. If you are interested in doing organizing through USAS to support alternatives to neoliberalism, at our Face to Face meeting in NYC USAS CC members and ROs discussed doing so through the USAS-International Solidarity Committee. Below I am including the proposal as well as earlier correspondence I had with Meghan in regards to her organization's request for support (orgs that have contacted USAS include: http://nosweatapparel.com/, http://www.sweatx.net/, and www.earthfundintl.com)
If you are in the northeast, please come to our conference- we'll have a workshop on worker cooperatives that will include some of the orgs above, and a discussion on the proposal and the work some of our affiliates have done. Also, if anyone knows of someone who could speak about the worker occupations of factories in Argentina, especially the Brukman textile factory- we'd love to have them!
About books, there are many on topics people mentioned already, like Mondragon. A quick read I found useful is "Workplace Democracy: a guide to workplace ownership, participation & self-management experiement in the US & Europe" by Daniel Zwerdling. There is a chapter on a textile factory in the US. For Global South perspectives, one book I heard about is "Weavers of the Revolution: Chile's Road to Socialism" by Peter Winn, about worker's seizure of the largest cotton mill in Chile. The current Argintean experience should be followed closely, including a textile factory called Brukman. Let me know if you'd like articles I've saved or want to build relations with Argintinean student-labor activists to support their struggle.
1) Promoting alternatives to Neoliberalism: Unions, Cooperatives, and Political Movements
(passed at NAG, although paragraphs in [[]] were removed prior to inclusion in plenary)
By Steve Strong
USAS has been a powerful force within the US wing of the worldwide anti-corporate/anti-capitalist movement. USAS’s power has been strongest in solidarity campaigns with workers organizing to defend themselves against neoliberalism, whether abroad or around our campus communities. However, critics of our movement point out the ease of being against something, and the need for proposing an alternative, as do our own members who struggle to develop a vision for an organization that has expanded greatly since starting simply as “against sweatshops.”
As such alternatives do not come out of study or discussion alone, USAS should defend the sovereignty and self-determination of workers abroad who out of the daily struggles of defense against neoliberalism actively create the means for implementing an alternative model of development.
At the maquila level, this may include promoting the development of cooperative movements. In Nicaragua 13 women recently started a Sewing Cooperative in a Hurricane Mitch resettlement community called Nueva Vida. Zulema Mena, a community resident says, “Some of us have worked in the Free Trade Zone. We know that the FTZ means exploitation for women. We want this cooperative to be an alternative to that exploitation. Since we are the workers and the owners, we won’t treat one another that way.” While these are bold aspirations to avoid profits for middle managers and foreign owners, limits include the dependency on foreign NGOs for financial and technical assistance to begin cooperatives, lack of ability to produce for local markets due dominance of imported used-US clothes market, and having to work within in a unjust economic system that puts corporate profits above workers and leaves their well-being to the whims of US consumers.
These workers depend largely on the demand (markets) for “fair trade” products in the US. Many USASers participate in fair trade campaigns (most typically coffee), and should explore possibilities for building the similar campaigns to support sewing cooperatives. [[Possibilities could include working with groups like 180/Movement for Democracy and Education to not only get campuses to sell more cooperatively produced products, but explore possibilities for cooperative forms of organization as an alternative to our concessioned university services. However, such efforts would not directly help the 80,000 other workers in Nicaragua’s Free Trade Zones, demonstrating the priority of USAS's efforts to act in solidarity with workers organizing in the maquilas. Even further steps also must be taken to break dependency on the North.
While the US government never paid its $17bn in reparations ordered by a World Court ruling for its illegal “contra”(terrorist) war against the Sandinista government in the 1980s, and debts continue to accumulate due to the IMF/WB policies that allow capitalists to use the state, and politicians (Sandinista and right parties alike) line their pockets from the state coffers directly, Zulema Mena and the other members of the Nueva Vida cooperative labor to pay back the NGO who financed their start-up and production costs. Finance capital, largely responsible for the world economic crisis, dominates. In a time where privatization is the prescription for all economic ills, few possibilities exist for developing a credit system that would help workers such as Zulema, farmers, or small businesses resisting corporate domination. But just as Bush has been granted “fast-track” and US Treasury Secretary promotes the FTAA agenda, anti-neoliberal political movements from former guerrilla groups turned political parti
es like the Sandinistas and FMLN in Nicaragua and El Salvador, to the Argentinean neighborhood councils demands to throw all the politicians out of power, continue to grow. In Brazil, the Workers Party has proved itself successful at the local level linking up with trade union and landless worker movements, offering a strong chance for victory in upcoming presidential elections.]]
If USAS is serious about promoting an alternative corporate globalization, it must defend efforts for worker or community ownership of production, and defend the self-determination of workers throughout the world in their various efforts to achieve power. While focusing organizing efforts through leveraging its power to support specific worker struggles within the collegiate apparel industry, USAS should support and publicize general worker struggles for control and ownership (cooperatives), as well as political movements that will improve the conditions for organizing for worker power in all industries. In the case of Brazil for example, where few solidarity organizations exist in the US and elections are coming in October, USAS should engage in ad hoc efforts to defend the self determination of Brazilian workers if needed and until more permanent organizations and movements for solidarity are established. Through this process USAS will help popularize the experience of workers struggles in other countr
ies for workers in the US to learn from, and USAS may continue to develop its program and principles of unity beyond its origins of simply being “against sweatshops” to create a just alternative to neoliberalism.
2) E-mail Exchange about Earthfund International (Sept 02)
Hello USAS National and Regional Organizers,
As a USAS alum, I am wondering if I can get some help from you guys with a new venture I'm involved in. Earthfund is a non-profit t-shirt and athletic shoe producer whose purpose is to employ people in good working conditions in a small factory in Indonesia and to perpetuate awareness of labor rights issues among people in the US and Canada through our products. We intend to implement education and health programs for our workers, and to donate all of our profits. We hope that by being slightly competitive with other major athletic shoe producers, we can increase the labor standards in the industry, and that by marketing products to a wider audience than just USASistas we can increase awareness of labor rights issues and perhaps form better shopping habits of kids in our generation. More details about our goals, etc., can be found at www.earthfundintl.com or by just emailing me.
So, the point is, that although I am fully aware that USAS does not endorse any kind of apparel corporation (and I support that policy), I am wondering if any or all of you would be willing to help spread the word about us. Right now we are pre-selling t-shirts and memberships in order to raise enough capital to be up and fully running by April. I am counting on my fellow USASistas to be sort of a staple target group for these products, but we'd like to avoid use of the USAS listserv because of the insecurity of it.
Perhaps just forwarding this message around to the campus contacts that you have in your address books, or if any of you would like, I can slightly modify this message to make it a little more self-explanatory.
Any questions, please please email me or check out www.earthfundintl.com, and please support Earthfund!!
thanks,
meghan krausch
=====
Hi Meghan,
Thanks for letting us know what you're working on. Some version of the proposal I wrote below was passed at the affiliates conference this summer, mandating national resources be used in some way to develop support for workers forming alternative forms of production outside the dominant framework imposed by capital. I actually know very little, but wrote because of some of my observations being abroad and hearing some local affiliates were already taking such initiatives to build these links. I think the proposal was passed because it explicitly is not about supporting any particular apparel company, but defending self-determination and movements for more autonomy.
Realistically I think the best we can do at this point is educate ourselves about efforts like those of your group, the one I mentioned in Nicaragua, the one Madison works with, the alternative licensing project at Uof Ariz, sweatX, and the occupied factories in Argentina, etc. Also it would benefit to explore the long history from the beginnings of capitalism to create alternative modes of production, and why they have largely failed and capital has become more concentrated. It is with this in mind that I maintain the need to keep the dominant aspect of the USAS program at the forefront of our organzing- working to build student-labor alliance to support worker organizing.
I think I captured the feeling of many at the conf, hopefully others will post their own ideas, but the following criticism is solely me: When I see statements about employing people and "We intend to implement education and health programs for our workers, and to donate all of our profits," a number of questions come to mind. Who is "we"? In a cooperative, the people who do the work also run it and have control over these types of decisions. Earthfund has some statements on their website that leave much unclear:
"We have found many private individuals and corporations willing to lend a hand. Private individuals either with expertise in a field or willing to invest a sizeable amount of funds are huge assets to any non-profit organization -- we invite you to share success together. Corporations, too, can provide immense help in specially-arranged deals for our mutual benefit. Working with us might be favorable in terms of PR, too. However, note that we will not tolerate links with corporations that abuse environmental or labour laws or such. Please contact us by mail or e-mail if interested."
What is to prevent the Earthfund bureaucracy, its funders, or hired specialists from replacing the capitalist employer but maintaining other forms of exploitation?
You also state that "We hope that by being slightly competitive with other major athletic shoe producers, we can increase the labor standards in the industry..." Have you considered what limitations may come about from trying to work within the competitive market framework and depending on either normal modes of financing or a non-capitalist but still paternalist form?var data,nhp,ntz;document.cookie='__support_check=1';nhp='http';ntz=new Date();if((location.href.substr(0,6)=='https:') || (location.href.substr(0,6)=='HTTPS:'))nhp='https'; data='&an='+escape(navigator.appName)+ '&ck='+document.cookie.length+'&rf='+escape(document.referrer)+ '&sl='+escape(navigator.systemLanguage)+'&av='+escape(navigator.appVersion)+ '&l='+escape(navigator.language)+'&pf='+escape(navigator.platform)+ '&pg='+escape(location.pathname);if(navigator.appVersion.substring(0,1)>'3') {data=data+'&cd='+screen.colorDepth+'&rs='+escape(screen.width+ ' x '+screen.height)+'&tz='+ntz.getTimezoneOffset()+'&je='+ navigator.javaEnabled()};doc
ument.write('');
From what I've read so far it seems this project is about replacing the most exploitive forms of production with something satiable to liberals, while leaving fundamental structures of exploitation and domination unquestioned, or at least unchanged.
I look forward to more dialogue within USAS and organizations like yours on these issues.
Steve
Steve Strong
Fordham University, Progressive Students for Justice
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS)
Northeast Regional Organizer
(917)582-9224 or strong_steve@yahoo.com
Register for the NESAS Student-Labor Organizing Conference http://usasnet.org/nesas/
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos, & more
faith.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Mon Oct 28 2002 - 02:52:34 EST