AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, live from the Battle in Seattle. I’m Amy Goodman, here with Juan González. In fact, the music you’re listening to, by Larry Shaw, from a CD, Sold Down the River, and “The Kings of Slow” is a song that has been played on steelworkers’ union trucks that have been going through Seattle. And that is what we’re going to talk about right now.

Thousands of steelworkers marched yesterday in Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization. The steelworkers have been some of the most militant and vocal of all the unions that have converged on Seattle. Today, thousands of labor activists and others are marching here in what’s expected to be one of the largest demonstrations in recent history, what even The Wall Street Journal called “the mother of all protests.” Their actions are expected to shut down the city, may possibly prevent some of the WTO sessions from taking place. The activists will be joined by many local workers, including taxi drivers, longshoremen and postal workers, who will not be going to work in Seattle today.

Last night, all of us were out in the pouring rain for a people of faith hands around the convention center. Actually it was the Kingdome, which was the only place people could go, because the exhibition hall where the WTO black-tie gala was taking place was all roped off by the police. And on the area that I went to, at 2nd Street or 2nd Avenue and Jackson, I joined up with a very wet, but a proud group of steelworkers and had a chance to talk to Bill Klinefelter, who is the assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers of America and legislative and political director of the union in Washington.

We welcome you today to Democracy Now!, Bill.

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: It’s nice to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: So, tell us about the steelworkers’ stance?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Well, the United Steelworkers of America, as you know, we have 750,000 members in the United States and Canada. And we have been in this trade fight since NAFTA back in '92, and right on through the fast-track fights in the Congress, went through a quota bill fight last year, and now we're in Seattle. It’s just one more point on the continuum of our struggle to bring attention to what they’re doing to the global economy and what they’re doing to the American economy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in one of the things that’s been pointed out, that when the crisis, the economic crisis, hit Asia and other parts of the world, that the IMF attempted to pressure many of these governments to basically export their way out of the crisis by beginning to send more and cheaper steel into the U.S. What impact has that had on the steel industry here? And what relationship, if any, does this have to the WTO?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Right. Well, I think you have to set the tone of what this crisis was all about. And the way you do that is to say this. Many people in the United States, I believe, think that there is no basic steel industry in the United States anymore, that we went through these times of troubles in the 1970s and 1980s and that steel was wiped out. So, why not bring steel into the United States? Why not bring it in from the rest of the world? It’s not true. What happened after our crisis in the '80s is that the steel industry in the United States, the companies and the unions, they got together, and they modernized. The industry poured $50 billion into reconstructing itself. We worked with them. We took man hours per ton. People talk about productivity and how Americans have to increase their productivity. We went from 10 man hours per ton, make a ton of steel, down to three. We're an efficient industry. We can compete with anyone in the world, as long as the rules of that playing field are level.

When we got into the crisis in Asia, particularly with Korea, Japan, and I would include Russia in that, and Brazil, our government basically said, “We’re going to give you these IMF loans. But one of the conditions of the IMF loans is you export your way out of this to repay the loans.” Well, one of the commodities that all of these countries have is steel. Korea has a 40-million-ton-a-year steel capacity. And so they began shipping steel into the United States and burying us. In August of 1998, we were up over 4 million tons of steel coming into the United States per year. If that had continued, they would have captured 50% of the American basic steel market, and that would have been the end of basic steel as we know it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the gathering here, it is probably unprecedented, I think, in American history to have not only the labor movement so actively involved, but environmental — the environmental movement, the human rights movement, the — you’ve got an enormous spectrum — the farmers — of the American people, as well as people around the world. How has that developed? And how do you see what that might portend in terms of the future of a popular movement in the United
States?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: My friend, this is a struggle that goes on generation to generation. We’ve had this struggle in the United States ever since working people said, “We want to organize. We want to have rights in the workplace. We want to have safety and health. We want to have clean water. We want to have clean air. We want to have Social Security. We want to have Medicare. We want to have basic rights and basic securities.” And corporations have always said, “No, you shouldn’t have those rights. We want to deny you those rights.”

We fought in the United States with environmentalists. We fought with the consumer groups. We have fought side by side with the public health community on all of the regulations that we have crafted here in the United States that make our lives better. And now all of these people are coming together once again and saying, “What we have fought for here in the United States, you’re not going to snap your fingers in some global context with these bureaucrats over in Geneva, who we didn’t elect, and take what we have earned away.” That’s what this is about.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Bill Klinefelter. He’s assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers of America, legislative and political director of the union, here in Washington state, from Washington, D.C., as part also of a rapid response group of union activists all over the country. And this weekend, they held an all-day conference with Maxine Waters and Senator Paul Wellstone and others. Now, I wanted to ask you a question about that day, Sunday. When you were holding your meeting in Tacoma, the AFL-CIO was holding a meeting along with Michael Moore, the director general of the World Trade Organization. And my colleague Norman Solomon got a chance to ask John Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO, the question of whether or not the AFL-CIO was really caving, the question of weren’t they settling, simply settling, for some kind of labor advisory group here, as opposed to challenging the whole WTO talks. Now, today, there are going to be two separate marches. The AFL-CIO is coming in from one place, and the steelworkers are coming in from another, to converge on the convention center, to close it down. Why two different marches? And what is your stance in relation to the AFL-CIO, of which, of course, you’re a part?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Not two different marches. The steelworkers are part of the AFL-CIO. I think the statements that you have seen from John Sweeney on — recently, on the China deal, were as strong as any statement you could possibly want. The steelworkers and President Becker, the president of the steelworkers, is working arm in arm, hand in hand, with John Sweeney. He’s mad as hell about what’s going on, John Sweeney is, and so is the rest of the AFL-CIO.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the — some of the most critical issues that WTO will be deciding, that affect organized labor, could you give us an idea in terms of some of those?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Well, I think that the most critical issue here in Seattle is, remember, this is what’s going to be on the table for negotiations for the next three or four years, and then they’ll bring it all back to us, of what they’ve decided in these negotiations. They’re trying to decide what’s on the table. What we’re saying is, “You folks say that the world has to become modernized, that countries have to accept a global rule on financial rights, on copyrights, on agriculture, on all of these things.” And we are saying, “If those things are on the table for these negotiations, we believe that core labor rights, the right to organize, the right to collectively bargain, should also be on the table, and those rights should be established as a core part of any trade agreement.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What about the argument that the Clinton administration is being made to appear in a lot of the publicity and the press coverage as the good guys who are trying to bring in Third World governments in other parts of the world who don’t want labor rights? Is this — is this an accurate portrayal here of what’s going on?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Well, the governments in those parts of the world may not want the labor rights, but nobody is asking the workers in those countries whether they want the labor rights. If we take the premise that this world is changing, that we need these global rules, why can’t there be global rules for workers rights, as well?

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to the AFL-CIO and the steelworkers. Where are your differences? I know you say you’re together. But when John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, came out and endorsed the global trade talks, there were a lot of union chiefs, like your own, George Becker, who sounded pretty surprised. What is the difference here?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Well, I don’t think that there is any difference between us and the AFL-CIO in regards to policy. We have an AFL-CIO convention every two years, which sets policy on trade. We all agree to those policies. And I think that we’re going to march in step with the AFL-CIO today. I don’t think there are any differences between George Becker and John Sweeney.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the endorsement of Vice President Gore? You’re talking about a fierce attack on the WTO. The Clinton administration has been, to say the least, extremely supportive, has been the major force within the WTO.

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: The Clinton administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: I will leave it at that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: OK, let me — let me ask you, in terms of the — of how the protests will develop, is the main labor day today, or will there be other activities in terms of unions participating throughout the rest of the week?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Yeah, the main labor march in Seattle is today. But tomorrow, the steelworkers will have a separate march, where we will go to the docks and we will highlight the problem that we have had in terms of steel. And that’s tomorrow afternoon.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what will that entail?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Well, that’ll entail steelworkers and our allies in other sectors of the NGOs going down to the docks and raising the issue of dump steel into the United States.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, let me ask you. One debate that has raised among many of the environmental groups, many of the other civic groups that are here is that there are some who would urge, basically, a reform of the WTO, to make it better and more humane, and those who would advocate that it be abolished and done away with and replaced by some other organism that is more democratically oriented and that is more responsive to the populations of the countries from which the delegates come. What’s your view on what would be the best future for this creation?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Well, and remember, it is a creation. I mean, many times we were told during the steel crisis, “We can’t do that, because it’s not consistent with the WTO.” But this is a creation of human beings, a creation of nations, and it can be changed. It can be reformed. And I think that that’s what people are here in Seattle saying, that not just the elites, not just the corporate entities, but all the people who are affected by trade, affected by these policies, they need a place at the table with a real voice, not an advisory role, but a real voice at the table. And the steelworkers’ slogan here in Seattle is “fix it or nix it.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, there’s going to be a kind of Boston Tea Party, but it’s going to involve steel?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Can we have the website and phone number of the United Steelworkers of America?

WILLIAM KLINEFELTER: Our phone number in Pittsburgh is 412-562-2400, and our website is www.uswa.org.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you very much for being with us. Our guest has been Bill Klinefelter, assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers of America.

And that does it for today’s program, as people descend into the streets throughout the day today and try to close down the convention center, where the WTO ministerial meeting is expected to take place. If you’d like to order a cassette copy of today’s program, you can call 1-800-735-0230. That’s 1-800-735-0230. And we’ve unveiled a new website special for WTO. You can go directly to www.democracynow.org, or you can get to us through the Pacifica website at www.pacifica.org. Democracy Now! is produced by María Carrión and David Love. Jeremy Scahill is our reporter on the streets. Our engineers are Errol Maitland and Mark Torres; our new webmeister, Chris Agee. And thank you to Mike Ortlieb for designing the new website. For information, you can, again, go to www.democracy.org — democracynow.org. From the studios of the Methodist Church in downtown Seattle, where a lot of the activism is taking place, I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks for listening.