As unions mobilize members to protest the negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle on Nov. 30, there is bitter disagreement in labor over what it will take to solve the problem of "free trade," or even who the enemy is. PNS associate editor David Bacon writes widely on issues of labor and immigration. A longer version of this article also appears in the LA Weekly.

LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood a Rustbelt?

That's what studio workers are beginning to call it. Clinton administration trade policies are coming home to Los Angeles with a vengeance, they claim, affecting workers far removed from heavy metal industries. According to Michael Everett, of the Hollywood Fair Trade Campaign, even the city's crown jewel, the motion picture industry itself, is on the chopping block.

"Our own political leaders have arranged a system of trade agreements designed to enhance corporate profits by shipping our jobs offshore," Everett says. "In exchange for NAFTA-sanctioned subsidies from Canada and elsewhere, the studios have turned their backs on their own community and engaged in the wholesale destruction of the Hollywood jobs base."

There's not much disagreement among U.S. unions nationally that Hollywood has a problem, or that it's shared with millions of other workers in dozens of industries. No one argues that trade policies have a profound effect on jobs. But as thousands of union members prepare to go to Seattle to demonstrate in the streets against what they see as the most important set of trade negotiations this century, there is increasingly bitter disagreement in labor over what it will take to solve the problem, or even who the enemy is.

Unions are mobilizing their members to protest the negotiations of the World Trade Organization set up five years ago to enforce the increasing number of free trade agreements which set the rules for the global economy. Those rules, unions say, are negotiated by governments to increase the ability of multinational corporations to earn profits around the world.

Ron Judd, head of Seattle's central labor council, predicts that as many as 50,000 labor, social justice and community activists will pour into the city's streets as the WTO meeting begins on November 30. "This demonstration is intended to send a message that the rules as they're written do not work for workers and communities, and that they undermine environmental and health standards. Something has to change."

The AFL-CIO believes that future trade agreements can be written in such a way that they protect workers rights and the environment, much as existing agreements protect corporate profits. The union federation is calling on the WTO to incorporate five international labor conventions into the text of future treaties. These five agreements, written by the International Labor Organization, would guarantee workers everywhere the right to organize unions and to bargain collectively with employers, and would restrict child labor, prohibit forced labor, and outlaw discrimination. They would be enforced by the WTO, which already uses the threat of vast financial consequences against governments which violate existing trade rules.

Juan Somavia, the ILO's general secretary, says his organization is "putting in place the social ground rules of the global economy."

A number of unions inside the AFL-CIO, however, don't think it's possible to make the WTO enforce workers' rights. "It's like asking the fox to guard the henhouse," says Brian McWilliams, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. "There has to be another mechanism outside the WTO to police workers' rights worldwide."

George Becker, president of the steelworkers union, is more emphatic, calling the WTO and the trade structure fundamentally flawed. "It's not for workers...It's not our law. Scrap it."

While unions that oppose the WTO process are often called protectionist, McWilliams retorts that his union owes its existence to trade. "We're not against fair trade, we're against free trade," he explains. "If workers aren't going to find dignity and justice in the workplace along this road to corporate prosperity, we're going to resist it."

These differences surfaced in October at the AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles where a number of unions, including the ILWU, the Auto Workers and the Teamsters, abstained from endorsing Vice President Al Gore in his quest for the presidency, citing his support for free trade. These same differences grew sharper when AFL-CIO President John Sweeney signed onto a letter from the President's Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations, endorsing the administration's goals for the WTO talks.

The move stunned many union leaders. Teamsters President James Hoffa announced his opposition to Sweeney's move, as did the Canadian Labour Congress.

Behind the official statements are obvious concerns by AFL-CIO leaders over the potential fallout from a big battle with the Clinton administration over trade policy. On the one hand, the AFL-CIO is going all out to mobilize union members to Seattle to demonstrate against free trade, but at the same time, federation leaders face an uphill battle to get those same members to vote for the very politicians who support free trade, especially Al Gore.

Hollywood's Michael Everett is probably their worst nightmare. "Hollywood workers won't roll over for policies that export our jobs," he announced. "We won't give endorsements, we won't walk precincts, we won't give money and we won't vote for ANY politicians of any party who support trade agreements that export our jobs."

The two sides may find common ground in denouncing China, however. In contrast to his conciliatory stance towards the administration, Sweeney denounced China at a Washington, D.C. press conference, alongside veteran China critic Harry Wu. Wu, now a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, figured prominently at the 1995 AFL-CIO convention when he blamed China, rather than NAFTA, for U.S. job loss.

Wu's reappearance in the WTO debate in the AFL-CIO could signal a similar effort to make China the enemy, rather than Clinton's negotiating stance at the WTO.

Whether super-heated anti-China rhetoric becomes a big ingredient in Seattle or not, the primary source of the loss of Los Angeles jobs remains closer to home. Hollywood studios move production to Canada and Rosarito. The San Fernando Valley's Price Pfister plant moved to Mexicali two years ago.

"Only a united front of labor will break NAFTA," Everett concludes, "and stop the WTO from destroying our livelihoods, our communities, and our children's future."