Emergency Meeting on Fighting Fast Track for TPP

Rep. Rosa DeLauro sounded the alarm yesterday at an emergency meeting at CWA Headquarters called by the Citizens Trade Campaign: A bill calling on Congress to give up its right to review the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is sure to come early next year.

"I have never voted for fast track; I don't care if it was for a Democrat or a Republican," a defiant DeLauro (D-CT) told activists gathered at CWA yesterday. "I didn't come to Washington to say, here, you take it. I don't want the responsibility."

At CWA headquarters, Reps. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) rally activists in the fight to stop fast track authorizing legislation and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) was equally adamant he would fight fast track. "I have a fundamental aversion to simply handing over congressional authority," he said.

The latest round of TPP negotiations is scheduled for next week, from December 7-12, when all the 12 Pacific Rim nations seeking to be in the partnership will be in Washington, D.C.

"We've seen this movie before and it doesn't have a happy ending," DeLauro said. "NAFTA pitted good American jobs against Mexico's $10-a-day wages. TPP puts us with Vietnam where we're looking at minimum wage that is more like 52 cents an hour. We know that we're going to watch more American jobs vanish."

The TPP, if approved by Congress, will result in increased outsourcing and job losses, especially in the service and manufacturing sectors. The flight of call center jobs is a prime example. After watching scores of call centers close across the U.S. over the last decade, taking thousands of family supporting jobs and moving them to low wage nations, Americans are resisting opening up the job loss spigot even more via the TPP.

DeLauro said she was inspired by the dozens of groups who make up the Citizens Trade Campaign that were represented in the room yesterday, groups such as Sierra Club, Public Citizen and the National Family Farm Coalition.

"This is our moment and we have to win and we can win this," she said. "This is where the strength and the energy is and we need to play off the energy of one another in trying to get this done because you are the engine, you're the glue that puts this coalition together and you make it move forward for all of us, for all the organizations coming together around this issue."