GLOBALIZATION AND THE NORTH AMERICAN WORKER.(Statistical Data Included)

Introduction

This paper examines the impact of the process of globalization on workers and their families in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Globalization is based on the ideology of neoliberalism, which is promoted by the most powerful economic and political actors in the world, and includes the deregulation of financial transactions and the promotion of free trade. Globalization and neoliberalism have brought tremendous profits to transnational corporations (TNCs) and international financial institutions (IFIs), and accelerated the accumulation of wealth to a small, powerful elite in all countries involved.

At the same time, globalization has led to economic decline for workers, massive impoverishment, and growing income inequality worldwide. These effects have appeared, albeit to differing degrees, in both developed and developing economies. Once again workers are forced to pay the price of political and economic change but, this time, on a truly global scale. This paper is part of a long-standing research project initiated by the authors to uncover the meaning of globalization, to describe its critical policy components, to empirically analyze its impacts, and, finally, to propose educational and action strategies for workers and unions in response to it.

Globalization: Competing Interpretations

Globalization studies have become an academic/journalistic growth industry. Hundreds of books and thousands of academic and newspaper articles have been written about globalization since the end of the Cold War. As expected, the definitions of globalization vary, the assumptions made about what is changing in international political economy are different, and judgments about whether it is a good or bad thing are also a matter of dispute.(1)

Surveying some of the vast literature on the field, one can find celebrants of globalization, who see the process as largely an advance for humankind in economic, political, and cultural terms. Others argue that we are in a new global age the benefits of which will only be achieved if nations and peoples adapt to the requirements of change and thus accept globalization. Still others see the new developments as an unmitigated disaster for humankind: globalization breeds inequality, poverty, violence, hatred, and the destruction of cultures. Finally, there are writers who see globalization primarily as a continuation of the long history of capitalist development.

Uncritical adoption of globalization is dangerous for several reasons. We have found that there are new developments in the global political economy that warrant attention, that certain sectors of the global economy, particularly finance, are changing radically. Significant changes in international economics require workers to reeducate themselves and to develop new tactics and strategies to defend their rights. However, at the same time that changes in the global economy are recognized, it is critical to understand that this is still happening in a capitalist economy and is the by-product of a 500-year process of evolution, adaptation, conflict, and struggle.