International Vice President Tom Conway delivered the USW’s 2015 Bernard Kleiman Lecture, warning of the dangers industrial workers face from ruthless international competitors and anti-union forces at home.
Conway also spoke of seeing encouraging signs for labor, including promising new international alliances to confront corporate globalization and young union workers increasingly stepping up to challenges.
The July 11 event, named for the late USW general counsel and master negotiator Kleiman, was held in Homestead, Pa., infamous for a bloody 1892 battle between locked-out steelworkers and Carnegie Steel’s private army of Pinkerton agents.
Conway spoke in stark terms about the continuing threat of unchecked and unfairly traded imports on domestic industrial production, resulting in fewer job opportunities and pressure on those workers who would seek improvements.
He shared his vision of an economy where the interests of working families and their communities are protected, and imported products are checked at all borders with tariffs in place to make up for unfair advantages.
Corporate competitors, frequently from China, have increasingly used espionage, patent and technology theft, threats, deception, and illegal subsidies from their governments to steal American markets and jobs, Conway said.
He outlined the complex and frequently ineffectual trade rules now in place, and blasted U.S. government officials for repeatedly failing to safeguard the livelihoods of millions of American citizens. The massive “hemorrhaging” of decent-paying jobs in the United States, he said, is the result of “man-made laws, not an unobstructed free market.”
Even with the pressures facing working people and their unions, Conway pointed to many helpful and positive developments. He said young workers are proving themselves to be capable and determined leaders as witnessed in this year’s oil industry strike, where a new generation took command on the picket lines.
The labor movement as a whole is “holding together” with demands for immediate action for fair trade, opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and insisting on a level playing field, he said.
Labor, Conway said, has identified and gained many strong new political allies in recent fights. And with corporations and banks expanding from nation to nation, he spoke optimistically about the growing bonds between American unions and unions in countries around the world in a common cause.