The reason behind the Mayor's precipitous concern about Ontario's laid off IQT workers?

Mayor Karl Dean received a letter from Ontario's Minister of Labour that we have not heard anything about here in Nashville:

To his credit Labour Minister Charles Sousa is tackling the problem from a couple of angles. The ministry is investigating IQT’s shutdown as a priority and it is helping hundreds of workers file claims with the ministry for unpaid wages.

At the same time, Sousa has kicked up a fuss in Nashville, Tennessee, where the company had planned to collect $1.6 million in city incentives to open a call centre there. “It is important for all governments to send a clear and strong message to companies . . . that we expect compliance with legal obligations,” he wrote in a letter to Nashville’s mayor. He specifically mentioned unpaid wages, severance and other issues.

Sousa also told Mayor Dean that he intends to make sure that the rights of workers unpaid for their labor are protected. At least somebody has kicked up a fuss with the Mayor's Office. It has generally been no fuss, no muss for Karl Dean's first term.

Dude. Sousa is member of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. I cannot even imagine a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce advocating compliance and worker rights. I bet it threw Hizzoner off his game.

The radiation catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi and Mayor Karl Dean's "essential" travel

Since I last posted on Mayor Dean's trip to Japan on Friday in the immediate wake of earthquakes and tsunamis, things continue to get more critical for the island nation with the number of Japanese missing or dead topping 5,000. Tonight at a nuclear power plant 135 miles from Tokyo (where Mayor Dean and his family are staying) plant workers and news media have been ordered to evacuate because radiation has reached 400 times the legal limit. To compound the disaster, winds are reportedly blowing from the leaking plant toward Tokyo, and Geiger counter readings in Tokyo rose to "worrisome" levels at one point.

As the situation gets more and more grave in Japan's crisis, the questions a handful of us have been asking about the wisdom of Karl Dean's mission to Japan become even more poignant.

I am not the only blogger raising these issues. Catherine McTamaney blogged an impressive list of reasons why Mayor Karl Dean's trip to Japan right now is outrageous. They are all worth a read, but I particularly wanted to draw your attention to her point that Japan's cultural code of honor would have obligated Mayor Dean's hosts to say "yes" if he had asked whether he and his family should have come to Japan last Friday in the wake the quakes. The ball really was more in the Mayor's court to take the initiative and postpone this ill-advised trip while assuring Japanese officials of support during these catatrophes.

More Free Trade Servitude to Wealthy American Interests

A private placement contractor, Universal Placement International, which markets itself as "zero-risk" to client firms, conned Filipino teachers to put up thousands of dollars to teach in America and coerced them into virtual isolation and servitude in Louisiana schools. UPI also used the catastrophes of Hurricanes Katrina and Gustaf to pimp their "competitive advantage" in "entrepreneurial" education.

Another international corporation that puts the "free" in "free trade."

Is It Too Late for Governor Bredesen's China Office to Score Us Some of That Corrosive Chinese Drywall?

Phil Bredesen's 2007 opening of the Tennessee China Development Center may have been just behind the building supply curve that brought noxious and corrosive Chinese drywall to housing starts from Louisiana to Florida from 2003 to 2007. I'm sure there are other toxic products that the Chinese (or is that the Germans?) could still bring us through the Governor's trade initiative. But as it stands homes and families elsewhere are being destroyed by sulphur-laden "free"-trade drywall. Just another "benefit" brought home to you by the untrammelled global economy.

When It Comes to Automotive Competition, Purity is a Premium Nobody Purchases

Senate Republicans who killed the automotive bailout bill haven't been entirely forthcoming about the subsidies that non-union foreign carmakers get from foreign governments:

As the U.S. considers a lifeline for its automakers, officials in Europe, Canada and Asia are considering their own aid packages -- even as the European Union threatens to lodge a complaint against any U.S. bailout to protect manufacturers from Renault SA in France to Fiat SpA in Italy.

China also may complain, though the government is considering helping SAIC Motor Corp. and Guangzhou Automobile Group Co.

Any World Trade Organization complaints may open a Pandora's Box, bringing to a head a long-simmering dispute over policies that U.S.-based General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC say unfairly aid rivals, including state- financed health-care and retirement benefits, and currency policies.

"Frankly, it's stones and glass houses,"' said Garel Rhys, professor of automotive economics at Cardiff Business School in Wales. "Everybody has been at this game for their own interests; nobody is pure."

So much for the high-horse.

Journalists or Ad Lackeys?

There is a reason journalists nowadays get hired to be politicians' press handlers and communication lackeys.  It's because they write promotional material in place of hard nosed, critical copy. Tennessee's Fourth Estate lately belongs U.S. Senator Bob Corker. The rest of us just consume it.

It's white collar sport to imagine a world without labor unions. How come the press never imagines a world without trade and lobby associations or ownership groups? If even the media won't acknowledge that workers have to form associations to protect their interests in an age of "global free trade" sweatshops, minuscule salaries, and lax regulations, then who might they suggest fight for worker interests? Journalists?

People have been making the whole "there was a time in America when unions were needed" argument for as long as I've been alive.  My mama was making the same argument around about the time that Norma Rae was at the picture shows.

Critics, especially in "right to work" states, always claim that there was a time when unions were needed, even though unions have always faced stiff opposition in the very states the critics occupy. From their founding, unions (which are not perfect) have been accused of dragging down America industry. So, posing the argument as if there was actually a time when unions were needed is disingenuous.

Owners have always been given a pass because their money buys them more rights than those in their employ. But reforms in the workplace, including an 8-hour-workday, worker safety, paid time off, fair trade wages, etc. have always been the result of the workers collectively bargaining to leverage those reforms. The result has been practically Tocquevillian, given that unions have contributed not just themselves but to the common good. Yet, this cabal of media and southern Republicans (with a few Blue Dog Democrats thrown in for good measure) make unions sound more Machiavellian, as if expedience and cunning weren't always already requisites of this power game.

But why should workers have to apologize for fighting for their own interests when owners and trade groups work together to advance their own interests, when the corporate media coalesces to pander to ownership and big money to advance its own interest? Why single out unions? Why, unless you're just guarding your own interests?

Doomed to Repeat Them

The Pulitzer Prize winning economist connects the dots of history:

In the aftermath of the Great Depression, we redesigned the machine so that we did understand it, well enough at any rate to avoid big disasters. Banks, the piece of the system that malfunctioned so badly in the 1930s, were placed under tight regulation and supported by a strong safety net. Meanwhile, international movements of capital, which played a disruptive role in the 1930s, were also limited. The financial system became a little boring but much safer.

Then things got interesting and dangerous again. Growing international capital flows set the stage for devastating currency crises in the 1990s and for a globalized financial crisis in 2008. The growth of the shadow banking system, without any corresponding extension of regulation, set the stage for latter-day bank runs on a massive scale. These runs involved frantic mouse clicks rather than frantic mobs outside locked bank doors, but they were no less devastating.

What we're going to have to do, clearly, is relearn the lessons our grandfathers were taught by the Great Depression. I won't try to lay out the details of a new regulatory regime, but the basic principle should be clear: anything that has to be rescued during a financial crisis, because it plays an essential role in the financial mechanism, should be regulated when there isn't a crisis so that it doesn't take excessive risks.

Krugman intimates in this passage a point he drives strongly home about financial globalization later: that it comes at great risk and calls for long-term restrictions and regulation. That is a point that free traders should take to heart, rather than placing blind faith in a somewhat contrived notion of freedom in globalized markets. The notion that any market can operate with no responsibilities other than those it defines itself completely bewilders me.

Iceland Now Bankrupt Due to Globalization and Deregulation

In what has to be a cautionary tale about he arbitrary and capricious global market place and the price of failing to regulate, once prosperous and privatized Iceland does not have enough foreign exchange to import food for its people (it cannot grow its own).  It has also been branded a terrorist nation by the British for defaulting on its British bank loans.  Isn't "free trade" great for foreign countries?  Isn't "free market reform" a panacea?

Fallout on the Low End of Free Trade

Italy would make Tennessee a nuclear waste receptacle. Since the materials would eventually be dumped in Utah, does that mean transport would come via interstates through Nashville? If so, we've been down a similar road before with respect to the risk to urban neighborhoods before.

Restoration Math Could Only Mean Slave Wages

If outsourcing their furniture production to China would lower Restoration Hardware's expenses but not he quality of the product "one bit," then isn't someone in China going to work for slave wages to produce it?

Don't Tank Me, Bro!

I may have missed my chance to get a shirt that "captures" the true Olympic spirit:

"Free trade" may have already ended sales.

HT: Armchair Generalist

UPDATE: Cafepress shut the shirt down, so the designer is encouraging others to use his design have shirts printed for themselves and then to donate $10 to Amnesty International.

The Neighborhood Effect and May Town Center

The NY Times article on readjusting globalization that I quoted earlier today referenced the economist idea of "the neighborhood effect," which is reducing transportation costs by moving industry closer to component suppliers and to target consumers.

That idea got me to wondering about how these shifts in globalization and the probable movements of American companies closer to home will change the supply and demand equation for development in Nashville. It seems to me that American companies no longer have the luxury of telling Nashville leaders that they get what they want or they go any where else they want. If they're going to be targeting cost effective locations between suppliers and consumers, then it seems to me that the companies are going to be looking at least more regionally, and perhaps even narrowly at specific communities.  They probably will be coming to Nashville because of low transportation costs rather than other factors (like a "campus" of at least 50 acres).

Given the transitional phase of global business, is it really wise to rush Tony Giarratana's May Town Center concept given that the risk of losing Bells Bend may be too high in such an unstable economic condition?

Fuel-Intensive "Free Trade"

This morning's NYTimes has some sobering cold-water-to-the-face for those progressives who have sold out to the trickle-down concept of "free" trade, which looks like a relic-in-waiting:

Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.

"Free" trade apologists rely on oversimple arguments about "sharing American wealth" with people of other countries, and they seem to plug their ears to opposing sides that say that wealth doesn't get shared with anyone but the sliver of the global population that controls the marketplace.  Now they have to deal with the brutal realities of supply and demand rather than dishing naive ideas about "sharing" in a world where little has usually been shared with the lower rungs of the class pecking order.

As bad as globalization has been for lower-rung American workers, it is going to get worse for cents-on-the-dollar-wage workers in other countries as unfettered corporates abandon them to move closer to home to save on fuel costs.  Assuming that we haven't passed an eco-tipping point, that may help the environment, but not the international labor force.  The rocking motion of "free" trade divides and conquers work forces worldwide while keeping them reeling and pacified.  Likewise, the political left will be both placated by the lowered environmental risk and torn on the ramifications for labor.

"Free" Trade Shrimp Results in Bondage a "Little Short of Medieval"

80% of the shrimp consumed by Americans is imported despite both the productive local industries and the huge carbon footprint caused by transporting Asian shrimp halfway around the world to American tables.

Worse than the damage to local industry and the environment are the slave-like conditions that Asian workers face thanks to "free" trade:

Workers told Thai police who raided one factory in September 2006 “that if they made a mistake on the shrimp peeling line, asked for sick leave, or tried to escape, they could expect to be beaten, sexually molested, or publicly tortured,” ....

The plant, Ranya Paew, “was more like a fortress than a factory, with 16-foot-high barbed-wire capped walls, an armed guard force, and an extensive internal closed-circuit television system,” the Solidarity Center alleged, citing Thai police reports.

“Behind the walls, the police found a scene that one report described as ‘little short of medieval,’ with hundreds of workers literally trapped inside the compound, living in squalid conditions, forced to work long hours, and subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual intimidation and abuse. Workers who angered the employer were often ‘put to shame’ in front of others by having their hair cut or shaved in patches. Women and girls were stripped naked and publicly beaten as a form of discipline.”

The report says the owner of the factory, who was charged with some offenses, received little in the way of punishment.

“Despite widespread worker rights abuses, including child labor and human trafficking, the owner was charged only with employing children under 15 and failing to provide holidays and time off. Though these charges are serious, they were treated as first-time labor code violations. The owner initially only paid a fine of about $2,100 and has returned to work.”

The report, “The Degradation of Work: The True Cost of Shrimp,” also contains information from interviews with workers in Thailand and Bangladesh. The labor rights organization did not name the workers, saying they could suffer retaliation from employers if their identities were not protected.

“In April 2007, workers at a factory owned by a major Thai shrimp processing company spoke with Solidarity Center partners, alleging hazardous working conditions as well as an intimidating and discriminatory work environment. Workers complained of forced overtime and nonpayment of wages if production quotas were missed. They also claimed regular exposure to harsh chemicals, lack of access to first aid or health care, and poor air and drinking water quality.

“They additionally alleged that they had unexplained deductions from their pay, that they worked without a written contract, and that native Thais and migrant workers were segregated by the use of colorcoded uniforms.”

Obama's Wall Street Economic Team May Give the Campaign a Media-Friendly Crisis Mentality about Social Security, "Free" Trade

As much as he would like to see Barack Obama set a progressive economic agenda, economist Dean Baker acknowledges the political realities partly dictated by the mainstream media. He sees more Wall Street than Main Street in Obama's team. And that mentality plays into the dominant media bias and half-truths.

Social Security is a case in point:

They have trumpeted the Social Security "crisis" for more than a quarter century, convincing the bulk of the public that the program is on the edge of bankruptcy. While proponents of the crisis view are all over the news, editorial pages, and pundit shows, the basic facts about the program's finances are almost never mentioned.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the program can pay all scheduled benefits for nearly 40 years with no changes whatsoever. And even if nothing is ever changed, Social Security will always be able to pay future retirees a higher benefit (adjusted for inflation) than current retirees receive. Where's the crisis?

And the media does its best to avoid talking about the failings of the Wall Street agenda. Did you see that great piece about how awful retirees would have fared if we had put their Social Security money in the stock market in the late 90s as the privatizers advocated? I missed that one too.

Baker also cites the false dichotomies of "free trade" vs. protectionism in the Wall Street/media mentality, which also ignores the inequities in the market that already generate selective protectionism under the guise of a "free market."

You cannot have a serious debate with the Wall Street mentality, because the sky is falling, and if you dare question market inequities, then you get labeled as a xenophobic, Lou Dobbs clone. It's all hysteria and adhominems and unquestioned dogma.

Clinton in Cozy Financial Relationship with Chinese Internet Firm Involved in Tibet Crackdown on Human Rights

Further evidence that money has a way of displacing basic human decency. I wonder how many of these duplicitous Chinese firms are being courted by the State of Tennessee's Department of Economic Development from their new office in China? Would Governor Bredesen give us the same standard justification that running with devils is necessary if we are going to compete in "free" trade? Why should anyone have to choose between freedom and "free" trade?

HT: The Swamp

If You're Going to San Francisco, Summertime Will Be a "Free Speech Zone" There

"Free Speech Zones" are just about a perfect match for "Free Trade," and today's San Francisco looks more like a redneck mother and less like some cradle of hippie love:

The city known worldwide for its spirit of protest and dissent has denied permits for demonstrators and plans to restrict them to "free-speech zones." People critical of China's human-rights record and spurred by the recent uprising and subsequent crackdown in Tibet are organizing alternative torch run events and rallies and, despite the restrictions, plan to line the route ....

city officials coordinating the main torch relay event plan to designate areas for people to protest the Chinese government or other issues. The designated "free-speech zones" have been used at large events in other cities but have not had a significant presence in San Francisco.

There's just something fundamentally wrong about San Francisco putting barricades around social protest.

Chinese Pig Guts with That Blood Thinner: Further Evidence that "Free" Trade Means "Hazarardous" Trade

The Chicago Tribune reports today that allergic reactions and deaths from those taking a prescribed blood thinner may be due to possible tampering with the drug in the unregulated supply chain in China.

That's the catch-22 with "free" trade. It primarily means "free" from regulations designed to protect the general welfare.

"Free Trade" Becomes the New "Slave Trade" in the "New South"

Bizgrrl makes the catch.

Some progressives will suggest you shouldn't muckrake free trade, lest you set your own locks on liberalism. Their Orwellian argument: free trade is progress. I'm sure that some early 19th century liberals argued the same thing about chattel slavery. Just ignore what's happening down in Mississippi in 2008. It bears no resemblance to anything that has ever happened in history. Everything is different now. I'm sure Upton Sinclair would agree.


UPDATE: C-squared has his own observations, drawing parallels with black market sexploitation. It should make the "free" traders spit the bit.

While Tennessee Sucks Up to China, Tibet Will Not

Surprise, surprise. China is having internal human rights problems:

Oooo. That's going to cost Tibet some free trade money. Wait. There are some things more important than money?