Leo Gerard’s obsession

By Dick Miller

 

WE.CONNECT.DOTS:   No one is more focused on fair trade than Leo W. Gerard, president of United Steelworkers of America.

If the United States ever gets weaned off trade agreements where we lose more jobs than we gain, Gerard should get credit.

That is unlikely to happen in the near future.

On the Democrat side, a majority of the delegates attending the convention in Philadelphia oppose the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership.  They claim entering into that agreement will result in the loss of more good jobs in the U.S.  Presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton has waffled on the subject because her husband, former President Bill Clinton began the Democrat trek to promote so called “free trade.”

In addition, Democrats will not include opposition to TPP in their platform out of courtesy to President Obama who supports it.  The issue will be a test of the influence of candidate Bernie Sanders, who opposes TPP.

On the Republican side, establishment party members support TPP, but Donald Trump does not.  Stay with us, please.

President of the largest industrial union in North America (about 860,000) for 15 years, Gerard has waxed eloquent before Congressional committees, presidents of both political persuasion, members at the district and local level, business and community groups, just about anyone who he believes can do something about fair trade.

“These trade deals allow corporations to do an analysis of where is the place where they can work where they can pay the least wages with the least economic interferences,” Gerard said two months ago.

Were it not that simple, the matter might not be an issue.  Economists believe the deplorable lack of creation and maintaining good paying factory jobs is a direct result of American manufacturing’s ability to move elsewhere and take tax breaks from both the U.S. and its new factory country.

The skids have been greased by Republican lawmakers and leadership since the Reagan era.  Enough Democrats sold out their working constituency or were too dumb to stop the onslaught.

Organized labor got caught twice during that period.  Both times they supported successful Democrat candidates for President who then proceeded to ditch labor early.  President Bill Clinton for example nominated people to labor boards who were opposed by Labor.  Then he took a lead position on NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) despite strong Democrat opposition.  The treaty passed and has been blamed for the loss of hundreds of thousands of good jobs.

In President Obama’s administration the President has been a vocal proponent of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership which extends some of the same rules and practices to the Far East that NAFTA made possible in the northern hemisphere.

So called “fair trade” is anything but, according to its detractors.  This has led to an unusual alliance between Democrat Presidents and establishment Republicans and international business interests.

On the outside looking in are organized labor, social service groups pushing for further income equalization, social-minded lawmakers and some religious groups.

Who wins most often?  Since 1970, the income gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has expanded in every state every year.  The Department of Labor announced last week the same results for 2015.

This entire shift in wealth was based on “trickle-down economics” from the Reagan administration.  Their economists contend that cutting taxes for rich people would concentrate wealth in hands of those who could produce jobs.

Even if the theory could have worked, we entered into the next phase of shaping our economy – yet to be formally named – where the goal is to automate as much production as possible.  By those standards we have been successful.  Productivity mostly expanded every year with less hours worked.

Stated another way, with artificial intelligence expanding we will need less workers to keep up in the future.

This is why politicians who promise job creation are not truthful.

Even as it is, the economy rebounds in a cruel manner.  Job statistics are explained in multiple methods, manipulated by Presidents and Governors to suit their purpose of getting re-elected.

Some statistics point to a recovery that President Obama and every governor of every state with good stats takes credit for.  The problem is that recovery does not necessarily happen in regions that have been decimated by job losses.

For example, good-paying steelmaking jobs have been lost forever in Western PA.  New jobs are being created in the Golden Triangle, Silicon Valley and overseas.   To fully correct the economy, we need 50-year old Steelworkers to develop new skills and then move to where these jobs are.

Bottom Line: This is where Steelworker President Leo Gerard comes back into the picture.  Jobless members no longer pay dues but Gerard sees his role getting steel production back on their turf.

In a recent edition of “USW@Work,” the Steelworkers quarterly membership magazine, 12 pages of a total 28 are devoted to fair trade issues where Gerard’s USW battles in Washington to limit imports.  Sixteen stories detail how foreign governments unlawfully subsidize steel, tires, paper and other goods to U.S. markets.