No Worker Left Behind

• Author: Frances O’Grady

No Worker Left Behind Finance & Development, December 2016, Vol. 53, No. 4

Frances O’Grady

The right policy mix means good jobs at home and abroad

Britain’s vote to exit the European Union has been widely interpreted as a retreat from globalization. The old political consensus that globalization is good for everyone is undeniably under pressure, with the Brexit result one expression of that. And while the debate in the run-up to the referendum centered on the movement of people through migration, the result brought into focus broader questions about the other two pillars of globalization—movement of goods and money across international borders. Areas of the United Kingdom in which manufacturing jobs have disappeared over the past 30 years overwhelmingly voted to leave the European Union; outside the more prosperous London and the southeast, fewer than one in seven local areas voted to remain.

Across the Atlantic, the impact of international trade on jobs and pay was an important part of the U.S. presidential election debate. So while some puzzle over the rise of anti-globalization, the more relevant question is why there has been relatively little debate about its winners and losers, and whether globalization can be reshaped to deliver for ordinary people.

Trade unionists have an important voice in these debates. We’re instinctive internationalists, with a long tradition of supporting fair trading arrangements and multi-national cooperation. Our values also tell us to assess the strength of any idea, policy, or trend on the basis of its impact on working people’s jobs, pay, and rights.

Assessing globalization first requires us to define it. One feature of the global economy over the past 30 years has been the significant increase in global trade volumes, with 1988–2008 seen as a “heyday of global trade integration,” fueled by the end of the Cold War, the entry of China into global markets, and the reduction of trade barriers around the world (Corlett, 2016).

But not only did the cross-border volume of trade in goods and services increase over that period, there was also a significant increase in the cross-border movement of capital. Many countries reduced or ended controls on capital inflows and outflows in the belief that this would help drive economic growth. So while the increase in the volume of global trade has been seen by many as inevitable—at least after China entered world markets—the increase of financial flows around the world...