The SEIU reaches out to Chipotle workers in 2011.
The SEIU reaches out to Chipotle workers in 2011.

 

Free trade globalization has had largely negative impacts on workers by driving down wages and allowing capital to move when workers organize and demand better pay and working conditions. Free trade agreements like NAFTA have also destroyed local industries and hurt farmers in the global South who cannot compete with cheap products from the U.S.

Global trade also creates new possibilities for the workers of the world to unite. Transnational organizing campaigns targeted at multinational companies and global union federations have made concrete gains, helping workers improve working conditions and build working-class power.
Even in sweatshops and among immigrants in precarious jobs, workers are finding new ways of organizing. Workers in the global South are protesting and unionizing in factories that make consumer goods, despite state repression and the power of multi-national corporations. Migrant workers in the informal sectors of the U.S. are getting around the barriers of labor law to organize outside traditional unions.

Read May Day Part I: The U.S. and Inequality