American Labor Needs a Revolution : Its survival lies in pursuing worker interests worldwide, not continued U.S. domination.

Just as the end of the Cold War has redefined military questions, it has also opened up the space for organized labor to engage in a soul-searching and potentially wrenching debate questioning its past and future role in the global economy. This moment is enhanced by the fight over the North American Free Trade Agreement. Besides big business, no other sector in American society has as much riding on the debate over NAFTA. Indeed, a tremendous opportunity beckons for a revitalized organized labor movement--not just to defeat NAFTA but to discover where its true interests lie.

For almost half a century, organized labor cherished two fundamentally intertwined ideas: anti-communism and the global dominance of American capitalism. Communism was inimical to the American dream which, courtesy of the triumphant post-war American corporation, would bring about prosperity and higher wages for union members. Moreover, while management and labor were hardly engaged in a love fest, there was, until the early 1980s, a wide acceptance of labor’s role in negotiating pay and working conditions.

That made for good patriotism. It also sowed the seeds of labor’s own destruction. The labor movement zealously dispatched emissaries to many Third World countries to promote U.S. foreign policy, which rested in large part on the acceptance of American business. As a result, American unions found themselves siding with governments--for example, in the Philippines and El Salvador--which were actively abusing workers and suppressing their unions. Indeed, spurred on by anti-communist fervor, a small cadre of American union leaders helped set up phony unions to undermine legitimate unions whose only driving ideological component was economic desperation.

Organized labor tied its interests to the American corporation, not to the people whose lives would soon have such a profound effect on American workers’ jobs. Union leaders fueled the rank-and-file’s view of foreign workers as the enemy. There were some union people who questioned that view, but their voices were few.

While unionists here might find that judgment harsh, this is simple reality to people living outside our borders. In a recent visit to maquiladoras along the U.S.-Mexico border, I found many workers perplexed and somewhat bemused by the U.S. labor movement’s sudden discovery of deplorable conditions in the Third World. “Where were the Americans years ago when I was just as poor?” asked a woman who works for Zenith.

Global integration and the end of communism have created a new dynamic: Multinational corporations have no national allegiance, nor do they find it necessary to appease unions; the postwar labor-business-government accommodation, which defused labor militancy, has evaporated. Instead, corporations can tap into the huge pool of impoverished Third World workers.

In response, the voices of labor have pushed mixed messages, reflecting a divided sensibility on how to cope with the global economy. Some labor people have played a leading role in cross-border links. Mostly, though, the camps split into two critical groups. One supports open trade and defensively rejects protectionism. Others appeal, as Ross Perot does, to the worst nativist instincts, almost screeching at the loss of jobs to Mexico. Rare is the voice with a broader vision, arguing for a just, international development philosophy that replaces the unfettered movement of jobs, capital and goods with democratic, open and sustainable trade policies that guarantee a basic standard of living for every worker in the world.

What should labor’s message be? First, to survive, labor must cut its ties to the Democratic Party, which backslides on the interests of working people and even questions the need for unions. Second, perhaps we have lived too well for too long at the expense of others. Tying American workers’ fortunes to those abroad may be incompatible, at least in the short run, to aggressively pursuing the American Dream. Working people, grasping the remnants of their disintegrating economic future, are ready to consider that their future rests not on beating other people in the world or having more than they do, but by forging a bond and cooperating spirit unheard of in modern times.

However, the biggest challenge is for labor to see that, in a global economy, recapturing its place as a leader of social justice means embracing a new vision for America’s role in the world. As the 21st Century approaches, organized labor should declare that American “greatness” can only come when our national interest rests not on empire but on the absence of domination and exploitation, cultural or economic, over other people in the world.