WHERE IS AN INTERNATIONAL
LABOR MOVEMENT NOW
THAT WE NEED IT MOST?
Written by Henry Foner to
The New York Times, December 13, 2006.

To the Editor:
Thomas Friedman’s op-ed piece, (“Learning to Keep Learning,” Dec. 13, 2006) proves at least one truth: You can always get the answer you want by posing the question your way.

“Why,” he asks, “should any employer anywhere in the world pay Americans to do highly skilled work—if other people, just as well educated, are available in less developed countries for half our wages?” He could have posed the question this way: “Why shouldn’t workers in less developed countries be able to receive the same wages as workers here—or reasonably close to them—so that there is no advantage for an employer to outsource his work to less developed countries where wages are half of ours?” Friedman’s formula—that every American worker become at least a candidate for a Ph.D.— is music to the ears of the international corporations (like Goodyear) who find it much more profitable to have their work done overseas at sweatshop wages. Why? Because it takes our workers’ minds off the need to use the old-fashioned weapon of international working-class solidarity to help their brothers and sisters overseas achieve livable wages and conditions of work. That’s an idea that has a distinguished history in our own country’s struggle to end slavery, when British workers, dependent on the Southern cotton fields and mills for their livelihoods, still were ready to sacrifice to help the cause of human freedom here.

—Henry Foner
—Retired President, Fur, Leather & —Machine Workers’ Union
—Brooklyn, NY