Great idea.

We need internationally recognized standards in the trades, professions and enviroment.  We need to make our elected officials accountable for seeing them enacted.

I think it is a great concept and would do wonders for all workers. The corporations have had it all going their way,since saint reagan.Let us not forget the republican disdain for unionization.

American History is full of examples of fledgling labor unions fighting for living wages and safe working conditions while battling corporate goons and ‘legal law enforcement’ organizations.
Corporations are constantly torn between forcing wages down and leaving wages high enough for consumers to continue to consume. Any objection by citizens to the arrangement of multi national corporations running the world by fixing wages and prices are met by corporate accusations of ‘class warefare’, which is supposed to be a bad thing, while corporations commit ‘class warefare’ on a daily basis by shipping work out of America and other 1st world economies to the lowest labor bidder abroad.                            The link below is to a May 2, 07 interview of Noam Chomsky by Dennis Ott.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=12475
I am including a couple of interesting snippets from the interview but certainly reccomend that all read this fascinating interview in full.
“The inferiors must not be bled so much that they can no longer consume. They must survive as consumers.” Hans-Martin Buhlmann Allianz AG major shareholder.
“The 1916 case of the Dodge Bros vs Henry Ford in which Dodge brothers (large shareholders in Ford but not yet owners of their own auto company) took Ford to court and sued on the grounds that Ford was costing them money (in stock dividends) by building longer lasting autos and paying too high wages. Fords contention was that he wanted to pay higher wages so that Ford employees could afford Ford autos and he also wanted to force other employers to pay enough wages so that their emploees could afford Ford autos. Ford lost the case.”
“Corporations have been granted the rights of persons but they are pathological persons. The courts have ruled that a corporation has the duty to its stockholders to only do whatever will maximize the benefit to its shareholders, except that, another court decision urges corporations to carry out benevolent activities but only if it increases their profits by increasing their humanitarian image. Or else, an aroused public might figure out what corporations are up to and take away their privilages. Because, after all, they are just granted by the government. There’s nothing in the constitution regarding corporations, there’s no legal basis for them, they are a radical violation of classical liberal principals and free market principals.”
If you read Zinn’s History of the American People you will find that it is full of cases of the ‘little people’ fighting the wealthy elite and later on corporations. Now, try to imagine small, under financed unions trying to organize on a global scale to attempt to gain living wages and safe working conditions from multi billion dollar multi national corporations with their legions of the best and most well paid lawyers. It will truly be a David vs Goliath battle.

It’s about time!!

Power comes from unity, good luck to all of them!!!

Yes, regime change at home is vital (though unlikely). International unions are the only way we in the working class can have any leverage because the companys we work for are increasingly multi-national and operate in a global market. I hope setting international labor standards is unltimately on their agenda. As the still timely slogan goes; Workers of All Countries Unite!

Are you a human?

In the U.S., corporations want to have all the rights and privleges of humans, but none of the responsibilities. Business as usual, even when corporate behavior causes the death of real humans.  There should be capital punishment for corporations.

http://pwp.surfglobal.net/butterfield/CapitalPunishmentForCorporations.html

The realization is finally sinking in, that trans-nationals have evolved beyond the ability of national governments, even strong ones such as ours, to regulate effectively. As such, they are fundamentally an anti-democratic force in the world today.

The environmental movement, and the human rights movement, no less than the labor movement reported in this blog, must move beyond national boundaries, and make common cause with progressive governments of the South to combat this fifty-years young, anti-democratic scourge.

Nice concept. Anything that can give the working stiffs leverage against the “new world global rulers” is a good thing, although the unions will have to jump a lot of hurdles to be successful.As an American, I would much rather we have a regime change here at home so that we can rein in the outsourcing tax-dodging corporations that are bringing the U.S. to its economic knees. However, a global union is still a great idea which I can wholeheartedly support.