New Orleans, LAIn one of the largest manufacturing contract negotiations this year, unions representing 40,000 workers at General Electric are bargaining with an employer determined to squeeze workers and communities worldwide while it pursues a strategy to globalize all aspects of the company. The 14 unions bargain jointly as the Coordinated Bargaining Committee of GE unions. GE's tactics affect far more than the 40,000 workers covered by this agreement, in sectors beyond manufacturing. GE is seeking not only to reinvent itself but to divest itself of its union workforce and its U.S. base, but the CBC and the AFL-CIO are determined to show GE and other corporations which may seek to emulate these tactics that they cannot succeed. GE is one of the nation's most successful corporations, with profits last year of $11 billion. But workers aren't sharing in those record profits. In fact, GE workers continued to pay into a pension plan that is so overfunded that $1 billion of GE's operating profits last year were generated from pension fund earnings. Meanwhile, retirees haven't had a pension increase in four years, and the average pension, now less than $700 a month, continues to fall behind the cost of living. GE is one of the largest players in the global economy, with plants outside the United States employing 45 percent of the company's workforce, although GE has predicted that by the end of this year most of its employees will work in countries other than the United States. GE employs some 160,000 persons in the United States today, in such key areas as aviation, consumer appliances, electronics, lighting and defense. Over the past 15 years, more than 150,000 GE jobs in the United States have been slashed. The company's global strategy is not only to move jobs from the United States to Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia and other areas, as has been happening since the early 1980s, but to be able to move from country to country, anytime it finds the level of environmental, labor or other regulations to be undesirable. CEO Jack Welsh has boasted that "ideally, you would have every plant you own on a barge," to allow the company to do just that. Let's be clear about what Jack Welsh means: he's talking not about moving work from the United States to Thailand, for example, but about moving work from Mexico to South Korea, or anywhere else GE decides it would rather do business. GE wants to become a virtual company by contracting-out operations and forcing suppliers to move to Mexico and other locations where production has been transferred. But this means that the workers and communities who have built GE into one of the world's most recognized brands will be left far behind. Workers and governments in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, where GE is operating, can't expect any more loyalty; GE has made it clear that its push for profits drives everything. Lately there have been some disturbing reports regarding GE's transfer of critical defense work to overseas production facilities. GE has been shifting work funded by the U.S. military—along with key technology— to South Korea for some time. Now, GE has determined that a portion of the F414 engine should be produced in Sweden. This is the most advanced fighter engine currently in production in the United States; it is not sold abroad, but it will be produced abroad. This simply continues a pattern that GE has been following, shifting work to Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia. GE was awarded $800 million to develop the F414; yet U.S. funds are being used to send technology and jobs abroad even though the capacity and trained workforce is available in the United States. GE also has been pressuring many of its suppliers to move to Mexico as the price for continuing to do business with GE. This harms not only U.S. workers who lose their jobs but communities and businesses. Since GE is pursuing its global strategy, the labor movement must continue to respond with its own global network. The huge public response at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle demonstrates that people are concerned about plans by companies like GE to evade worldwide accountability. The AFL-CIO is committed to full support of the CBC and the GE workers' fight. In the United States, the AFL-CIO, through its mobilization program and state and local AFL-CIOs, is supporting community and workplace demonstrations to spotlight GE's unwillingness to provide a fair share of profits to those who helped build the company. Internationally, the CBC unions have been working with GE unions worldwide, and along with the AFL-CIO, will continue to build alliances and work toward three major goals; the establishment of programs to coordinate bargaining across national borders; support for organizing and recognition campaigns in countries of all levels of economic development; and to fight for internationally recognized labor standards in all countries in which GE operates.