The G-20 Summit and Labor

UK's National Union of Teachers one-day strike, April 24, 2008

The Nation's lead article today is a very good one by Max Fraser, called: Global Labor's G-20 Agenda. The international trade union movement is speaking out strongly about how they see the crisis. They want the world to join America in providing stimulus to the world's economy equivalent to 2% of the world's GDP, and they believe that stimulus should focus on job creation, green technology, renewable energy and similar efforts to grow the economy in a forward-looking and sustainable way. They want much stronger regulation, global recognition of workers' rights and environmental issues in trade agreements, and much greater emphasis on nationalizing troubled corporate and financial entities in order to distribute risk and reward in a fairer manner.

At some point, isn't it time to note that, if we're truly honest with ourselves, we're doing this all wrong? The world is focused on solutions to this crisis, and all of us know that the world's financial leaders are still too focused on retaining much of the system that created this mess in the first place. The iron is hot for some really fundamental changes in direction, but the majority of voices are still too dim to be heard. Labor will have its say at the G-20 summit, but in too many ways it will simply be heard politely. The depressing outcome may well be more years of depression as a system the majority have ceased to believe in is coaxed into creaking along on life support. All in all, it's hard to feel hopeful about the near term. The world seems resigned to living a lie long after it's been exposed, and it will not go well for most of its inhabitants, I'm afraid.

It's not for me to say what we should do. It makes me sad, though. I really believe it's when things get loose at the seams like this, it's one of our very few golden opportunities in the history of civilization, and once the gears are set in place to move forward in one direction, it may be a very long time before that chance appears again. This time, that direction may be a very hard one indeed for most of the world's inhabitants.

As I write this, it seems I've drawn an even bleaker picture than I'd feared. I do feel there's a very good chance we're destined for years of hard times if things continue the way they're headed, despite many good moves by Obama's administration. You can argue that there's not much time to debate while the fire is burning, and the task at hand is simply to put it out, but I don't think that analogy captures every aspect of this complex crisis. Once the flames subside, what will we see as we survey the battered landscape? There will still be initiatives to resolve the problems, but they will appear in a climate of reduced expectations, and the internal workings of the economic machinery that now lie so nakedly exposed will once again be withdrawn into opaque containers, visible to only a fortunate few. That reality will have become the new normal, where fewer still are left with resources enough to rebuild, while most are left to wander the charred remains.