Wipro's Azim Premji - 'The man who wants to take your jobs'

[Bob Keyes]

[part 2]

We've become dependant on foreign oil, foreign manufactured goods, and now
are seeing our intellectual products threatened.

And it is because we're too reluctant to be the lowest-cost provider,
because of the misery it creates. Certain business interests and their
elected employees want this country to emulate the conditions of these
squalid countries, in order to keep costs down. They say it's the only way
to keep costs down.

I refuse. I refuse to work a eighty hours a week in a dangerous mill for a
pittance and no benefits, to see the land ravaged with waste and disease.
We should all refuse. But in order to refuse successfully, we need to
quit the Junk Habit.

The Junk is all that stuff we buy as though it were a commodity, when it
is not. Not all DVD players are equal; not all machine tools,
motherboards, capacitors, or video codecs are equal. The consumer needs to
judge on quality, the consumer needs to be educated to do so.

We need to re-evaluate this countries trading partners. I believe that
certain other countries are responsible enough to trade with in a low-
tarrif manner. These countries are Canada, much of Western Europe
(possibly eastern as well), Austrialia and New Zealand, and that's about
it. Japan could be evaluated. It is not saying the every policy has to be
equalized; there are certainly disagreements about specifics. But all of
these countries have the will and the means to create sustainable, humane
economic environments.

So junk NAFTA. Drop China and India both, and make sure some other
cesspool doesn't fill in the gap.


Call it protectionism. Call it isolationism. These are all labels that
have become villified in the past several decades. But I think of it as
something else: a new labor movement.

The labor movement has failed us. Their leaders have become fattened on
increasing contributions from a lower number of richer members. We need is
a sort of pan-unionism. Worker protection with solid philosophical
foundations from which to make decisions and demands based not only on the
needs of its members, but justifiable in terms of the greater good.

It's time for a New Labor. Chuck out the old bastards in the existing
unions, expand unions to industries and workplaces, and align forces to
have an irresistable influence in national and international policies.