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Global Campaign Unites Workers, Activists Against Trade Pact
They come from 34 countries from Canada to Chile. Many speak English, many Spanish. Others speak only French or Portuguese. But language hasn’t been a barrier to their common goal.
Indeed there is a single voice, loud and clear, from union members, environmentalists, human rights activists, religious leaders, and indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere who are fighting the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
They have good reason to believe that FTAA will send jobs to the lowest-paying countries with the fewest — if any — labor and pollution standards. That new, cheap, unregulated factories will poison the air and water. That the poor will get poorer, and global corporations will make billions.
After all, that’s the track record of NAFTA, the seven-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico. And now, trade officials representing every Western Hemisphere country but Cuba have agreed to make the even more sweeping FTAA a reality by 2005.
“The FTAA represents a threat to the fragile democracies that make up the Americas,” IUE-CWA President Ed Fire said. “It is protectionism at its worst. It protects property rights over human and labor rights.”
Fire made his comments to a crowd of thousands of marchers in Quebec City on April 21, the day heads of state from all the involved countries met to further FTAA negotiations.
Fire, who was asked to represent the AFL-CIO at the event, implored workers to continue their fight. “We cannot allow greed to win out over humanity,” he said. “We cannot allow FTAA to be imposed in the absence of democratic protections for workers and their unions.”
NAFTA’s Legacy
The impact on Mexico under NAFTA is reason enough to fight FTAA, activists say.
Since NAFTA’s creation in 1994, 8 million Mexicans have been pushed from the middle class into poverty. Many have been forced to leave their homes and families to move to new factory towns, where they live in cramped housing in filthy, polluted communities.
Some 28,000 small businesses in Mexico have been shut down due to competition from multinational giants. A million more Mexicans now work below the minimum wage of $3.40 a day.
In the United States, Fire said more than 760,000 American workers have lost jobs to Mexico. For instance, a General Electric appliance plant recently moved 733 jobs from Bloomington, Ind., to Mexico. In Indiana, workers earned $24 an hour, plus benefits. In Mexico, workers are paid $2 an hour.
“GE wants world trade where it plays by its own rules, not democratic rules,” Fire said in Quebec. “The company made $12 billion in net profits last year, but it still isn’t enough. GE wants to continue its race-to-the-bottom game of global exportation of jobs and global exploitation of workers. And it wants the FTAA to help it achieve that goal. And we’re here today to say no.”
Speaking to 200 IUE-CWA members in Dayton, Ohio, the next day, Fire said FTAA is yet another piece of President George W. Bush’s anti-labor agenda.
“This so-called free-trade agreement is another line in the sand,” he said. “People in our country have got to rise up and say to George W. Bush and to the corporations that support him, ‘Enough is enough’”
Free Trade vs. Fair Trade
Activists opposing FTAA say there’s nothing fair about it. It has been negotiated in extreme secrecy with only government and corporate voices. No labor representatives. No environmental groups. No one representing the people who will be affected.
The only mention of labor rights in the present FTAA draft is contained in a single sentence, according to a summary released earlier this year by the outgoing U.S. trade representative under President Clinton. It says: “Parties must strive to ensure labor laws are not relaxed to attract investment.”
It’s a throwaway sentence with no teeth at all for enforcement, said Carrie Biggs-Adams, CWA representative for international affairs. “‘Strive to ensure’ means nothing,” she said. “It means ‘We will try to be sure that this won’t happen’ and all they have to do is say they’ve tried. They don’t have to do anything.”
The reality, Biggs-Adams said, is that countries will be competing against each other ruthlessly to attract factories and jobs. “When that happens, working families will be the losers as wages are driven down in hopes the factory will come,” she said.
At the end of the Quebec summit, which drew tens of thousands of protestors, heads of state issued a statement saying that countries would have to adopt legislation and policies that reflect the standards of the International Labour Organization and its “Declaration on the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.”
But the language isn’t part of the trade pact and whether it will be remains to be seen, Biggs-Adams said. “They’re saying the right things and it would be lovely if they meant them,” she said. “But given how they’ve failed workers with NAFTA and other trade agreements, we can’t take their words at face value.”
She said pressure from demonstrators in Quebec clearly led the trade representatives to issue the statement. “They’re hoping people will hear the sound bite and say, ‘They’re taking care of workers’ rights’ and stop protesting,” she said. “We’ve got to hold their feet to the fire.”
It’s unclear how the ministers’ statement would affect what is seen by companies as one of FTAA’s fundamental rights: the power to trump individual countries’ laws that govern labor rights and the environment. Corporations who decide their right to make a profit is being infringed upon can sue.
That right has been termed the “heart and soul” of NAFTA, CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen said in a presentation at the union’s Legislative-Political Conference in April.
Cohen noted how Metalclad, a U.S. company, sued the Mexican national government because a Mexican state government refused to let the company reopen a toxic waste dump. The secret NAFTA tribunal that decides such matters ordered Mexico to pay Metalclad $16.7 million for interfering with the company’s “right to make a profit.”
In another case, Ethyl Corp. sued the Canadian government over a ban on a gasoline additive, MMT, which is banned in many countries including the United States. The company sought $250 million but settled out of court for $13 million. And Canada withdrew its MMT ban.
“We can send this back,” Cohen said. “We must send this back.”
No to Fast Track
“They say fast track. We say fight back,” went the chant, one of many at an April 20 demonstration that drew several hundred union members and other activists to the sidewalk outside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building across from the White House.
“Fast track” is also referred to as “trade promotion authority.” It would give Bush the power to negotiate trade pacts without any input from lawmakers. Congress would have a deadline to vote yes or no on the pact, but couldn’t make amendments.
“The president and multinational corporations claim that fast-track is necessary to give us credibility in the negotiating process,” CWA President Morton Bahr said. “They claim that foreign governments might not take us seriously if there is a chance Congress will overrule the president. What a ridiculous claim. Do they really believe that an $8.5 trillion economy isn’t going to be taken seriously by other governments?”
Congress may vote on fast-track legislation in June. CWA members are urged to write their senators and representatives to oppose the legislation and FTAA in general. Letters can be sent via e-mail by going to CWA’s webpage.
The CWA Executive Board has passed a resolution opposing FTAA in its present form, as well as fast track.
“We support fair trade policies throughout the Americas,” Bahr said. “But we don’t support policies that benefit multinational corporations at the expense of workers. That’s what happened with NAFTA, and workers in Mexico, Canada and the United States are paying the price.”
Fighting for Fairness
CWA members, Jobs with Justice activists and IUE-CWA members from Local 201 in Lynn, Mass., were among the throngs of peaceful demonstrators in Quebec. The out-of-control protestors and vandals who caused trouble and were featured prominently on TV news were a small minority of demonstrators, CWA representatives said.
“The reports of what happened tended to obscure what was really going on, who’s really there,” said Simon Greer of Jobs with Justice. “The largest mass of people got no story at all.”
Fire was also disappointed in the coverage. “We had a great march, but the media doesn’t focus on 75,000 of us marching through Quebec,” he said. “They focus on the anarchists.”
The Washington D.C. rally April 20 included more than 60 representatives of Union Network International, who came from 25 countries in Central and South America for a conference. They carried signs that bore their countries’ names, sending a message to Bush and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that they will have a fight throughout the hemisphere, not just in the United States.
Marchers shouted “Human need not corporate greed”" and “You say free trade, we say union made.” Some chants and signs were in Spanish.
“We want a fair deal where workers’ rights are respected,” UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings told the crowd. “No company should have the right to exploit child labor. No company should have the right to pay poverty wages. We have learned the lesson of NAFTA.”
More information about FTAA, links to other sights and details on becoming an “international activitist” are available at ga.cwa-union.org.
Indeed there is a single voice, loud and clear, from union members, environmentalists, human rights activists, religious leaders, and indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere who are fighting the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
They have good reason to believe that FTAA will send jobs to the lowest-paying countries with the fewest — if any — labor and pollution standards. That new, cheap, unregulated factories will poison the air and water. That the poor will get poorer, and global corporations will make billions.
After all, that’s the track record of NAFTA, the seven-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico. And now, trade officials representing every Western Hemisphere country but Cuba have agreed to make the even more sweeping FTAA a reality by 2005.
“The FTAA represents a threat to the fragile democracies that make up the Americas,” IUE-CWA President Ed Fire said. “It is protectionism at its worst. It protects property rights over human and labor rights.”
Fire made his comments to a crowd of thousands of marchers in Quebec City on April 21, the day heads of state from all the involved countries met to further FTAA negotiations.
Fire, who was asked to represent the AFL-CIO at the event, implored workers to continue their fight. “We cannot allow greed to win out over humanity,” he said. “We cannot allow FTAA to be imposed in the absence of democratic protections for workers and their unions.”
NAFTA’s Legacy
The impact on Mexico under NAFTA is reason enough to fight FTAA, activists say.
Since NAFTA’s creation in 1994, 8 million Mexicans have been pushed from the middle class into poverty. Many have been forced to leave their homes and families to move to new factory towns, where they live in cramped housing in filthy, polluted communities.
Some 28,000 small businesses in Mexico have been shut down due to competition from multinational giants. A million more Mexicans now work below the minimum wage of $3.40 a day.
In the United States, Fire said more than 760,000 American workers have lost jobs to Mexico. For instance, a General Electric appliance plant recently moved 733 jobs from Bloomington, Ind., to Mexico. In Indiana, workers earned $24 an hour, plus benefits. In Mexico, workers are paid $2 an hour.
“GE wants world trade where it plays by its own rules, not democratic rules,” Fire said in Quebec. “The company made $12 billion in net profits last year, but it still isn’t enough. GE wants to continue its race-to-the-bottom game of global exportation of jobs and global exploitation of workers. And it wants the FTAA to help it achieve that goal. And we’re here today to say no.”
Speaking to 200 IUE-CWA members in Dayton, Ohio, the next day, Fire said FTAA is yet another piece of President George W. Bush’s anti-labor agenda.
“This so-called free-trade agreement is another line in the sand,” he said. “People in our country have got to rise up and say to George W. Bush and to the corporations that support him, ‘Enough is enough’”
Free Trade vs. Fair Trade
Activists opposing FTAA say there’s nothing fair about it. It has been negotiated in extreme secrecy with only government and corporate voices. No labor representatives. No environmental groups. No one representing the people who will be affected.
The only mention of labor rights in the present FTAA draft is contained in a single sentence, according to a summary released earlier this year by the outgoing U.S. trade representative under President Clinton. It says: “Parties must strive to ensure labor laws are not relaxed to attract investment.”
It’s a throwaway sentence with no teeth at all for enforcement, said Carrie Biggs-Adams, CWA representative for international affairs. “‘Strive to ensure’ means nothing,” she said. “It means ‘We will try to be sure that this won’t happen’ and all they have to do is say they’ve tried. They don’t have to do anything.”
The reality, Biggs-Adams said, is that countries will be competing against each other ruthlessly to attract factories and jobs. “When that happens, working families will be the losers as wages are driven down in hopes the factory will come,” she said.
At the end of the Quebec summit, which drew tens of thousands of protestors, heads of state issued a statement saying that countries would have to adopt legislation and policies that reflect the standards of the International Labour Organization and its “Declaration on the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.”
But the language isn’t part of the trade pact and whether it will be remains to be seen, Biggs-Adams said. “They’re saying the right things and it would be lovely if they meant them,” she said. “But given how they’ve failed workers with NAFTA and other trade agreements, we can’t take their words at face value.”
She said pressure from demonstrators in Quebec clearly led the trade representatives to issue the statement. “They’re hoping people will hear the sound bite and say, ‘They’re taking care of workers’ rights’ and stop protesting,” she said. “We’ve got to hold their feet to the fire.”
It’s unclear how the ministers’ statement would affect what is seen by companies as one of FTAA’s fundamental rights: the power to trump individual countries’ laws that govern labor rights and the environment. Corporations who decide their right to make a profit is being infringed upon can sue.
That right has been termed the “heart and soul” of NAFTA, CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen said in a presentation at the union’s Legislative-Political Conference in April.
Cohen noted how Metalclad, a U.S. company, sued the Mexican national government because a Mexican state government refused to let the company reopen a toxic waste dump. The secret NAFTA tribunal that decides such matters ordered Mexico to pay Metalclad $16.7 million for interfering with the company’s “right to make a profit.”
In another case, Ethyl Corp. sued the Canadian government over a ban on a gasoline additive, MMT, which is banned in many countries including the United States. The company sought $250 million but settled out of court for $13 million. And Canada withdrew its MMT ban.
“We can send this back,” Cohen said. “We must send this back.”
No to Fast Track
“They say fast track. We say fight back,” went the chant, one of many at an April 20 demonstration that drew several hundred union members and other activists to the sidewalk outside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building across from the White House.
“Fast track” is also referred to as “trade promotion authority.” It would give Bush the power to negotiate trade pacts without any input from lawmakers. Congress would have a deadline to vote yes or no on the pact, but couldn’t make amendments.
“The president and multinational corporations claim that fast-track is necessary to give us credibility in the negotiating process,” CWA President Morton Bahr said. “They claim that foreign governments might not take us seriously if there is a chance Congress will overrule the president. What a ridiculous claim. Do they really believe that an $8.5 trillion economy isn’t going to be taken seriously by other governments?”
Congress may vote on fast-track legislation in June. CWA members are urged to write their senators and representatives to oppose the legislation and FTAA in general. Letters can be sent via e-mail by going to CWA’s webpage.
The CWA Executive Board has passed a resolution opposing FTAA in its present form, as well as fast track.
“We support fair trade policies throughout the Americas,” Bahr said. “But we don’t support policies that benefit multinational corporations at the expense of workers. That’s what happened with NAFTA, and workers in Mexico, Canada and the United States are paying the price.”
Fighting for Fairness
CWA members, Jobs with Justice activists and IUE-CWA members from Local 201 in Lynn, Mass., were among the throngs of peaceful demonstrators in Quebec. The out-of-control protestors and vandals who caused trouble and were featured prominently on TV news were a small minority of demonstrators, CWA representatives said.
“The reports of what happened tended to obscure what was really going on, who’s really there,” said Simon Greer of Jobs with Justice. “The largest mass of people got no story at all.”
Fire was also disappointed in the coverage. “We had a great march, but the media doesn’t focus on 75,000 of us marching through Quebec,” he said. “They focus on the anarchists.”
The Washington D.C. rally April 20 included more than 60 representatives of Union Network International, who came from 25 countries in Central and South America for a conference. They carried signs that bore their countries’ names, sending a message to Bush and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that they will have a fight throughout the hemisphere, not just in the United States.
Marchers shouted “Human need not corporate greed”" and “You say free trade, we say union made.” Some chants and signs were in Spanish.
“We want a fair deal where workers’ rights are respected,” UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings told the crowd. “No company should have the right to exploit child labor. No company should have the right to pay poverty wages. We have learned the lesson of NAFTA.”
More information about FTAA, links to other sights and details on becoming an “international activitist” are available at ga.cwa-union.org.