Labor v. Capital

We'll Close! Plant Closings, Plant-Closing Threats, Union Organizing and NAFTA

by Kate Bronfenbrenner

Plant-closing threats and actual plant closings are extremely pervasive and effective components of U.S. employer anti-union strategies. From 1993 to 1995, employers threatened to close the plant in 50 percent of all union certification elections and in 52 percent of all instances where the union withdrew from its organizing drive ("withdrawals"). In another 18 percent of the campaigns, the employer threatened to close the plant during the first-contract campaign after the election was won.

Nearly 12 percent of employers followed through on threats made during the organizing campaign and shut down all or part of the plant before the first contract was negotiated. Almost 4 percent of employers closed down the plant before a second contract was reached. This 15 percent shutdown rate within two years of the certification election victory is triple the rate found by researchers who examined post-election plant-closing rates in the late 1980s, before the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. MORE>>

Democracy on Trial: South Korean Workers Resist Labor Law Deform

by C. Jay Ou

Seoul, South Korea -- Ushering in the new year with a bang, television screens worldwide delivered familiar images of demonstrators taking to the streets of South Korea's major cities and industrial zones. Workers and students were seen rallying and battling riot police, while government officials scrambled to mitigate damage to the national economy brought about by a series of nationwide strikes.

At issue in this peninsular nation of some 35 million people are labor laws that threaten to further undermine labor standards and protections for workers, as well as a national security law that would return domestic intelligence capacities to the National Security Planning Agency (NSP), formerly the South Korean CIA. Hanging in the balance is South Korea's reputation as a newly democratic and developed nation -- most recently confirmed by its entry to the "rich nations' club," the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. MORE>>

A Referendum on Union Democracy: Teamsters Vote to Stay the Democratic Course

by Martha Gruelle

On the first day of the vote count for Teamsters international officers in December, Ken Paff says he saw his life pass before his eyes. Paff, international organizer for the reform caucus Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), expected that the TDU-backed candidate Ron Carey, the incumbent Teamsters president, would easily win in Tennessee.

But the votes of the first local unions out of some 600 to be counted over the next five days were from a small Tennessee local that went heavily for Jimmy Hoffa "Junior." Junior is the son of the infamous Teamster president who is well remembered in the union for building a master freight contract and for a web of mob connections. MORE>>

Nike Does It To Vietnam

by Jeff Ballinger

Nike, long in the vanguard of U.S. companies producing in Asia, is now leading Corporate America's charge into Vietnam. Twenty-five thousand young Vietnamese workers currently churn out a million pairs of Nikes every month. The lure of Vietnam is obvious. The country's minimum wage is $42 a month. At that rate, labor for a pair of basketball shoes which retail for $149.50 costs Nike $1.50, 1 percent of the retail price. Vietnamese newspapers report that Nike contractors even cheat many workers out of the paltry minimum wage.

Nike workers in Vietnam are also subject to other labor rights violations. The Vietnamese press contain frequent allegations of verbal, physical and sexual abuse of workers, charges echoed by Thuyen Nguyen of the New York City-based Vietnam Labor Watch. Nguyen also says that Nike contractors require overtime work far in excess of permissible limits. MORE>>

The Bhopal Legacy

An interview with Dr. Rosalie Bertell

Dr. Rosalie Bertell is president of the Toronto-based International Institute of Concern for Public Health. She has a doctorate in biometry, and has researched cancer and birth defects, with specific emphasis on environmental causes, since 1966. Dr. Bertell is a 1986 winner of the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize, and a 1993 UN Environmental Program Global 500 laureate. She recently chaired the International Medical Commission Chernobyl, and directed the International Medical Commission Bhopal. MORE>>