UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings told CNN’s Richard Quest in a live interview from the UNI World Congress in Liverpool that workers will lose out in Trump’s trade wars.
Jenning said, “The Trump administration’s trade policies are the wrong answers to the right questions, and his reliance on bombast and brinksmanship shows he’s more interested in winning the day’s headlines than forging trade policies that put working people first.
What will the domino effect be on the global economy if Trump enters into a multi-front trade war? I We fear that workers on all sides will lose, as is often the case in war—whether fought with tanks or tariffs.”
Jennings vehemently disagreed with Quest that all consumers wanted were lower prices, “That is totally wrong. Five years ago more than 1,100 workers died in the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh. This complex of factories was making clothes for high street brands. Do you really think consumers would not have preferred to have paid 5 cents more for those products and have those workers’ safe? The Bangladesh Accord is making those factories safer but an all out trade war could further lead to a race to the bottom.”
Jennings was speaking to CNN via a live link up from the floor of the UNI World Congress which opens tomorrow.
Earlier in the day in an interview with the BBC, Jennings had underlined how former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s words that “there is no society” in the 1980s had laid the foundations for the UK’s current fractured society, set out UNI’s report “The Un-Equal Kingdom” which will be launched at the Congress. Jennings said only unions had the power and the will to help set this right, not only in Britain but around the world.
