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Workshop Talks by Htun Lin
News & Letters, June 2001
Fatal trade secrets
A muckraking documentary, Bill Moyers' "Trade Secrets," exposes the
chemical industry's "behind-closed-doors" modus operandi and the
decades-long conspiracy to keep critical information about its products'
toxicity hidden from workers and consumers. After their cover-up scheme was
exposed, an industry executive arrogantly testified at a city council
hearing that the industry has not only provided "better living through
chemistry" but also economic and job benefits to workers. To this, a worker
suffering from job-related illness replied, his voice shaking in anger, "I
can get another job. I can't get another life!"
"Trade Secrets" ends with the "victory" of consumer advocacy for
"disclosure" by winning Proposition 65 in California, where individuals
gained the right to be notified of harmful chemicals in their surroundings,
at work or other public places. Moyers explained, "it put the fear of God"
in these companies that they would be liable for huge damages, if sued for
lack of "disclosure." So public advisory posters went up around gas
stations, hospitals, and other public facilities. That "fear of God," the
right to sue, is what is absent in President Bush's proposal for a
"patients' bill of rights."
Ironically, "Trade Secrets" ends with the statement that, despite this
pressure, the industry continues to churn out new chemicals at many times
its previous rate and the toxicity of most remain untested. We have only
been awarded the "right to know" that more harmful chemicals are on the
way.
One worker said he was told by a factory production manager, "Go ahead and
leave if you think this is dangerous to your health; I have three other
guys already waiting to take your job." The worker chose to stay on because
he had a wife and three kids to support.
The arena for worker replacement is now the entire globe. With the ongoing
global capitalist restructuring and consolidation, as manifested by WTO,
NAFTA, and FTAA, the anti-democratic nature of "free trade" has become an
open dirty secret. Not only is this no news to us workers in production,
but this attitude of secrecy also infects the labor movement. That's our
dirty little secret.
Capitalists can still get around new restrictions when they are allowed to
self-police and production essentially remains in their control. That's why
HMO executives like David Lawrence are busily crafting an
industry-sponsored plan to self-regulate HMO conduct while keeping at bay
governmental or worker control of shop floor management.
But it was revealed in 1998 that Lawrence's own Kaiser HMO, in order to cut
costs, had accounting executives order the director of cardiology services
to downsize its heart disease screening protocol, even when it was proven
to have saved lives, and despite several wrongful death suits Kaiser faced
from its patients and the Texas Attorney General. In the end, Kaiser simply
closed shop and abandoned the Texas market, thus effectively ending those
challenges against its low quality and restructuring methods, and leaving
its membership and workers holding the bag.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the California Nurses Association won
landmark contractual language giving nurses some control over "quality of
care." They won this despite the sabotage from the AFL-CIO's president John
Sweeney entering into a partnership (secretly negotiated), which enabled
Kaiser management to continue its cost-cutting restructuring. Not only were
services cut back, but many regular nursing positions have steadily
disappeared since they have been re-engineered into cheaper less skilled
service jobs, allowing management to erode the power gained in the nurses'
contract over "quality of care."
No contractual language, no patients' "bill of rights," no consumer "right
to know" proposition can rein in capital's inherent drive for an
undemocratic domination over the workplace. Our struggle for democracy has
to begin with our everyday work lives. Nothing fundamental will change so
long as our own labor power itself remains a commodity, to be bought and
sold. Beyond labor power as a commodity, Marx envisioned an open democratic
free association of workers. The bourgeois version of democracy is obsessed
with the absolute freedom of things-"free trade" and "open
markets"-negotiated behind closed doors, surrounded by barbed wire fences.
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