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AMY GOODMAN:
We return to my interview with Ralph Nader. I asked him about labor unions today, how they can regain their momentum and power at one of their lowest points in history.
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RALPH NADER:
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One is they’ve got to mount an assault on the WTO and NAFTA. WTO and NAFTA are basically an albatross around the neck of workers, of consumers and of clean environments, to begin with. They are an end run around our courts and regulatory agencies. We couldn’t have gotten airbags under WTO, because that would have been considered a unilateral move under this global trade agreement and a non-tariff trade barrier. It would have been considered too high a standard imposed on importing cars, even though it’s the same standard on domestically produced cars. What WTO does, it prevents us from being first in the world. It pulls down our standards so our workers have to compete with brutalized child labor in third world countries. It makes this impossible to prohibit the importation of products from child labor -- that’s a violation of the WTO -- even though you can’t buy a product here in the US made from child labor in the US. It is the greatest loss of sovereignty -- local, state and national -- in American history. And it’s an autocratic system with secret courts and secret equivalency procedures. I mean, it’s just a total contradiction in subversion of our democratic society. So that’s the first thing that has to be done, to invoke the six-month notice of withdraw and renegotiate pull-up trade agreements, where we pull up the rest of the world and our standards, instead of pull-down trade agreements that subordinate health and safety to trade agreements. That’s the first time that’s ever been done. Trade usually stuck to trade, trade agreements. Now, they’ve become very imperialist, and they subordinate health and safety, consumer, environmental, and worker rights.
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The second that has to be done is something no Democratic politician will ever utter, except maybe for Dennis Kucinich. Not one Democratic politician will say, “We should repeal the notorious anti-worker Taft-Hartley law of 1947.”
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^#9AMY GOODMAN:
> Explain what it is.



RALPH NADER: Which basically obstructs the organization of unions, which transfers control of union pension funds to management. With all these trillions of dollars, imagine the power that workers could have. They would own a third of the New York Stock Exchange. They would be able to put real muscle in investor ownership. And it prevents workers from helping one another, called secondary boycotts, among many other notorious provisions.

AMY GOODMAN: We return to my interview with Ralph Nader. I asked him about labor unions today, how they can regain their momentum and power at one of their lowest points in history.

RALPH NADER: One is they’ve got to mount an assault on the WTO and NAFTA. WTO and NAFTA are basically an albatross around the neck of workers, of consumers and of clean environments, to begin with. They are an end run around our courts and regulatory agencies. We couldn’t have gotten airbags under WTO, because that would have been considered a unilateral move under this global trade agreement and a non-tariff trade barrier. It would have been considered too high a standard imposed on importing cars, even though it’s the same standard on domestically produced cars. What WTO does, it prevents us from being first in the world. It pulls down our standards so our workers have to compete with brutalized child labor in third world countries. It makes this impossible to prohibit the importation of products from child labor -- that’s a violation of the WTO -- even though you can’t buy a product here in the US made from child labor in the US. It is the greatest loss of sovereignty -- local, state and national -- in American history. And it’s an autocratic system with secret courts and secret equivalency procedures. I mean, it’s just a total contradiction in subversion of our democratic society. So that’s the first thing that has to be done, to invoke the six-month notice of withdraw and renegotiate pull-up trade agreements, where we pull up the rest of the world and our standards, instead of pull-down trade agreements that subordinate health and safety to trade agreements. That’s the first time that’s ever been done. Trade usually stuck to trade, trade agreements. Now, they’ve become very imperialist, and they subordinate health and safety, consumer, environmental, and worker rights.



The second that has to be done is something no Democratic politician will ever utter, except maybe for Dennis Kucinich. Not one Democratic politician will say, “We should repeal the notorious anti-worker Taft-Hartley law of 1947.”



AMY GOODMAN: Explain what it is.



RALPH NADER: Which basically obstructs the organization of unions, which transfers control of union pension funds to management. With all these trillions of dollars, imagine the power that workers could have. They would own a third of the New York Stock Exchange. They would be able to put real muscle in investor ownership. And it prevents workers from helping one another, called secondary boycotts, among many other notorious provisions.