Cesar Chavez, remembered today, was one of the great nonviolent champions of human dignity and worker justice across borders.
The bulk of his work and service came before collapse of the USSR and the explosion of the global “free market,” but he foresaw in the travesty of farmworker exploitation the great harm that the unregulated movement of labor and capital would create, in the absence of strong global standards of justice for workers.
Chavez saw that until solidarity movements achieve regional and international justice, the trafficking of labor and capital across borders would create such job scarcity and degrading labor conditions that workers of different nations would be set against each other, and the common people would be robbed to enrich the already-wealthy: “Who gets the risks? The risks are given to the consumer, the unsuspecting consumer and the poor work force. And who gets the benefits? The benefits are only for the corporations, for the money makers.”
Chavez suffered over how the ongoing Catch-22s of economically-driven immigration play the dual necessities of economic justice and racial justice against one another, and he fought for a vision of international workers united. He saw labor-driven immigration rooted in the creation and smuggling of economic refugees, enacted by captured legislation, transnational profit-seeking, the corporate-backed overthrow of labor-friendly regimes. Chavez also recognized that this system that entices and exploits labor-driven immigrants ensures that any solution will bring (or perpetuate) some measure of suffering or injustice to those with the least access to resources and power.
Chavez recognized that economically-driven immigration has long existed as a paradox. Most immigrants who seek work in healthier economies do so because egregious wealth disparity in their native countries has taken much of the nation’s capital out of circulation, and made it difficult for workers to make a living. Unfortunately, while embrace of greater diversity is always a nation's strength, “underground” hiring undercuts the hard-won pro-labor laws, worker protections and union leverage that make healthy economies a place where wage earners can thrive. Chavez described the problem thus: “When the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers turn to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike… The employers use professional smugglers to recruit and transport human contraband across the Mexican border for the specific act of strikebreaking.”
Chavez celebrated immigration, but argued that hiring “under the table” not only enables corporations to bust unions and keep new ones from forming, it allows employers to skirt wage and overtime laws, unemployment insurance, Social Security, workman’s compensation, payroll taxes, work safety standards, anti-harassment laws, and many other provisions designed to ensure workers’ dignity and financial health, and to keep the wealthy investing in the economy and treasury. He saw these as basic reasons an employer might prefer to make it easy for unauthorized workers to obtain and retain a job, and quietly difficult for more costly citizen-workers to do the same, all public rhetoric to the contrary. It is also why he argued that illegal employers should be held responsible for their illicit participation in the economy.
It is unfortunate that Chavez is not with us help counter the weakening of solidarity movements that has accelerated since the end of the Cold War, as globalizing economic policies have become dominant. The combination of so-called Free Market/Free Trade policies and “underground” hiring in the US has not only decimated the US working class by giving preference to cheaper labor and sending millions of jobs overseas and across the border, both off-shored corporations and domestic companies that hire illegally now manage to pay far less in US taxes. This has cut deeply into revenue for government programs and services, weakening the public sector and its capacity to soften the blow for citizens whose private sector jobs have been underbid or sent offshore.
Meanwhile, American consumers have grown to expect the cheaper prices associated with the combined off-shoring and outsourcing of jobs, and the on-shoring of cheap labor. The feedback-loop of stagnant or falling wages, and domestic jobs becoming increasingly scarce, has made these cheaper prices evermore popular. However, the ultimate public costs associated with those cheap prices have been devastating.
Chavez grounded his work in three assumptions—one, that the more we value diversity—more languages, more traditions, more colors, more faiths, more national and ethnic backgrounds--the more stable, knowledge-wealthy, culturally and spiritually enriched, and moral we become. Two, that economic justice and dignified work conditions require labor-protection policies that maintain some balance between available jobs and available labor. Three, that the best way to ensure the safety, dignity and prosperity of all peoples is to build upon systemic models that support regional nodes of social justice, worker solidarity and environmental sustainability, across borders and the world over.
Chavez argued that the nonviolent resistance and unity among workers across borders should be the first line of defense against exploitation. However, he also saw a vital activist role for consumers. He challenged us to confront our addiction to cheap labor and cheap products. He challenged us to see how the exploitation of migrant labor is our responsibility at the demand level. He urged us to force lawmakers to invest in workers on our own soil, and to divest from domestic practices and foreign campaigns that harm workers abroad.
His legacy challenges us to decide whether to pay up-front for what dignified and sustainable labor costs, or to pay through the back door in domestic unemployment, lost tax revenue and lost spending power of a diminished middle class, expensive wars to protect corporate access to foreign resources, and all the local costs associated with an unemployed citizen working class and huge, marginalized migrant populations surviving on the edge.
Chavez’ plans of action did not anticipate all of the excesses, atrocities and double-binds of a globalized market. But he pointed the way. Pro-labor voices here have argued that meaningful, systemic change would have to involve policies that:
1. Close corporate tax loopholes, bring back basic trade protections, and make it unprofitable for corporations to send their operations overseas or across borders in pursuit of cheap labor.
2. Reward businesses for locating in the US, and for hiring workers at breadwinning wages.
3. Ban the transfer of “remittances” out of the country, to keep money earned locally within the communities that supplied the work.
4. Focus enforcement of labor laws upon the source of demand--illegal employers. Strict and relentless tracking of tax, wage, fee and workplace-condition compliance should be designed to remove all financial and competitive advantages to hiring “under the table.” Making illegal employers pay considerable damages to workers they have enticed and exploited would soften the blow of enforcement upon workers, and would discourage illegal hiring to begin with.
5. End policies that create poverty abroad. Instill policies that help foreign workers to thrive, by:
A. Ceasing to dump subsidized, artificially cheap products onto foreign markets.
B. Scaling back our levels of consumption that require the exploitation of other nations’ resources and people.
C. Withdrawing support from foreign anti-labor regimes, and instead using our leverage as a superpower to bolster foreign governments that respect and care for their own workers, and that allow for the growth of a middle class within their own countries.
D. Supporting international aid organizations like the Heifer Project that help impoverished communities to support themselves locally, sustainably and long-term
E. Buying and investing in Fair Trade products and corporations that pay workers in the US and abroad a living wage.
Final Thoughts
The notion of gearing economic and foreign policy toward supporting regional nodes of sustainable and dignified working conditions characterized by worker organization, fair wages, and environmental stewardship did not begin or end with Chavez. Many historic labor organizations have articulated a similar goal. For example, the International Workers Association traces its roots to the late 19th Century, and aims to unite all workers in their capacity as “wealth creators,” through a reorganization of society into a global system of economic communes and a “system of federated free councils at local, regional, national and global levels.”
Aristocratic and capitalist resistance to the establishment of labor-friendly economies has always been overwhelmingly violent. Oligarchs worldwide have used military coups, assassinations, fraudulent elections, corrupted government leaders and divisive propaganda to undermine systemic justice for workers. Yet, however governments are organized and borders are managed, the most civilized and successful economic experiments have always had regionally sustainable and dignified labor conditions at their foundation. It is this record of success that testifies to what is possible, and points the way out of economic despair.
“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.” –Cesar Chavez