Waking Up the Global Elite

A tide of corporate high-mindedness seems to be sweeping the globe, inspired by last year's ruckus in Seattle and a continuing series of confrontations. One international organization after another has scurried to catch up with the popular rebellions against globalization by announcing "initiatives" to promote human rights, the environment and worker protections. Leading multinationals have been eager to sign up as co-sponsors, since the new codes or compacts are all voluntary and toothless. If corporate declarations of good intent were edible, the world's hungry would be fed.

The purpose obviously is public relations--improving the tarnished images of global corporations and portraying weak-willed international institutions as attentive and relevant to the turmoil of worldwide controversy. But even empty gestures can prove to be meaningful, sometimes far beyond what their authors had in mind. An enduring truth, a wise friend once explained to me, is that important social change nearly always begins in hypocrisy. First, the powerful are persuaded to say the appropriate words, that is, to sign a commitment to higher values and decent behavior. Then social activists must spend the next ten years pounding on them, trying to make them live up to their promises or persuading governments to enact laws that will compel them to do so. In the long struggle for global rules and accountability, this new phase may be understood as essential foreplay.

The United Nations has set up a pretty new website (unglobalcompact.org) that Secretary General Kofi Annan describes as "making a bit of history" because it brings together forty-four multinational corporations and banks, a couple of labor federations and assorted civil-society groups "to launch a joint initiative in support of universal values." Companies that signed up for the UN's Global Compact include some familiar stalwarts from the globalization wars, like Nike and Royal Dutch Shell. All promise to do better by humanity in the future and to report their progress every year on the UN's web page.

In Paris, meanwhile, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has dusted off its long-neglected "Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises" from the seventies and intends to issue an updated version. Some US companies are already grumbling about proposed language suggesting that corporate management has an obligation to consult with labor. The "Sullivan Principles," first promoted by the Rev. Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia during the campaign against apartheid in South Africa, have also been born again. A new, globalized version asks multinationals to subscribe to eight broad principles (no children in factories, no bribery of governments, that sort of thing). The Washington International Business Report, a monthly newsletter that serves US multinationals, dubbed all this action "Return of the Codes." Demands from developing countries in the seventies for a "New International Economic Order," the WIBR suggested, have finally converged with "the new millennial proposals for regulation of rampant globalization by somebody." Only, of course, regulation is exactly what the companies hope to avoid.

Nike seems to be everywhere with its good deeds. In addition to collaborating with the UN, the company has also joined a new "Global Alliance for Workers and Communities" with the World Bank and the International Youth Foundation. Then there's the Fair Labor Association, launched by Bill Clinton to help US firms clean up their sweatshops; Nike is an active participant (when do they find the time to make shoes?). Nike CEO Phil Knight explained that the Global Alliance is surveying workers themselves to find out their needs. "We are finding some consistent themes," Knight reported. "Workers all want better healthcare and more education, as well as specific training on reproductive health and childrearing. They also want help for their families." Could they mean better pay? Knight never mentions wages, an omission consistent with the voluntary codes promoted by the multinationals.

The international flurry of high-level solicitude invites cynicism, since it's clearly intended to reassure the general public (never mind activists) that conscientious firms and institutions are on the case, diligently cleaning up the global system, so there's no need for any intrusive laws from governments. But each self-righteous claim offers a new target for agitation. Every "statement of principles" is a potential public relations disaster for the companies, because the contradictory realities of their global operations may sooner or later bite back.

The establishment, in any case, seems genuinely upset by the rude intrusion of turtles and Teamsters into their political stewardship of the globe. The Federal Reserve System holds a cozy campout for friendly media and economists every summer at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and this year's session was devoted to authoritative handwringing over the backlash. Himself Alan Greenspan acknowledged "a remarkable stall" in the progress of further trade agreements, and he urged fellow central bankers to lobby their governments. "We all need to press very hard on the political process," Greenspan said.

He and other speakers seemed to fear that elected political leaders are losing their stomach for the rigors of globalization, now that they are confronted with active popular opposition. Michael Moore, director-general of the WTO, complained that it will be "extremely difficult" to launch a new round of general trade negotiations (the objective stymied in Seattle). "It will only happen," Moore warned, "if sustained pressure on governments produces the political will needed to adopt flexible positions in sensitive areas." In trade talk, that's code language for brushing aside aroused citizens and doing deals.

From press accounts, the Jackson Hole conferees seemed divided themselves on how much respect they should pay to protesters. Moore himself acknowledged that "those who oppose us are not all fools and frauds." Former Fed vice chairwoman Alice Rivlin referred to the assembled policy thinkers as a "pro-globalization elite" and warned that the critics in the streets were raising many legitimate objections. "We need to have better answers to those questions, even for the kids gathered in the streets," Rivlin said. Others, however, dismissed the dissenters as "youthful and misinformed" and the Seattle movement as "an umbrella for everything that's wrong with the twenty-first century." If the elites are genuinely worried about the popular rebellion, maybe next year the Federal Reserve should invite some real-life turtles and Teamsters to the Jackson Hole campfire.

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