"NAFTA on Steroids"

Workers Join Forces Internationally to Fight New Trade Agreement

Citing the failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement to protect American jobs and workers’ rights, labor leaders in the United States are joining with workers throughout the Western Hemisphere to try to block a larger free trade pact now being proposed.

The Free Trade Area of the Americas — FTAA — would create a free trade zone among 34 countries in North, South and Central America, as well as all Caribbean islands except Cuba.

“IUE-CWA, like all manufacturing unions, is well aware of the threat so-called ‘free trade’ holds for workers,” IUE-CWA President Ed Fire said. “Our union has lost tens of thousands of jobs as corporations look only at bottom lines and stock prices in deciding where to build plants and make products. FTAA represents another step in that slippery slope reducing our members’ standard of living and devastating communities.”

The AFL-CIO Executive Council recently denounced the pending agreement and the secrecy of its negotiations over the past six years.

“We . . . call for a rejection of the current FTAA and for a new direction in the negotiations — away from the failed NAFTA model of corporate privilege and toward a new hemispheric model that prioritizes equitable, democratic and sustainable development,” the board said in a joint statement.

NAFTA was approved seven years ago, lifting trade restrictions between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Its supporters claimed it would better the lives of workers in all three countries, but workers’ advocates say that isn’t the case.

More than a half million American jobs have gone south to Mexico, where corporations pay miniscule wages and are polluting the air and water in the absence of environmental regulations, activists say.

While NAFTA had some, largely impotent, protections for workers and the environment, FTAA appears to have none, said Carrie Biggs-Adams, CWA representative for international affairs.

"Corporate Dream Come True"
“FTAA is best described as NAFTA on steroids,” Biggs-Adams said. “It is designed to increase the already obscene profits of multinational corporations. It is about their ability to move money across borders, to open and close plants without obligations to the people of the area, to pollute at will and to be compensated if a country’s regulations stand in the way of profits. It is a corporation’s dream come true.”

What labor and environmental activists know about the agreement comes primarily from a summary released by the U.S. trade representative. The full text of FTAA remains a secret except to the trade ministries and businesses involved in crafting it.

The AFL-CIO board said the negotiations have “been carried out in excessive secrecy,” designed to exclude workers’ representatives. “While labor unions, environmentalists and other progressive activists in the hemisphere have made repeated efforts to communicate their concerns and views to the negotiators and to their own governments, there is no evidence that any of these concerns have been addressed in the negotiations to date,” the board said.

The FTAA agreement will be discussed among Western trade ministers and heads of state April 4 in Buenos Aires and again at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in mid-April.

Trade unionists, students, farmers, environmentalists, religious leaders and other community members are expected to stage demonstrations and teach-ins outside the meetings. They will demand that a hemispheric trade agreement include:

• Enforceable workers’ rights, including the right to organize and bargain collectively and a ban on child labor and employment discrimination.
  
• Enforceable environmental standards.
  
• Protection under national law and international treaties for the rights of migrant workers throughout the hemisphere, regardless of their legal status.
  
• Debt-relief measures to help developing countries fund education, health care and infrastructure.
  
• A truly transparent, inclusive and democratic process for negotiating and implementing any regional free trade agreement.

FTAA supporters are hoping to push the agreement through quickly. The U.S. trade representative is backing “Fast Track” legislation that would give the president Congress’ blessing to negotiate trade agreements. Congress would still vote on the agreement but would have to do so within 60 days and couldn’t make amendments. "They would only be able to vote 'yes' or 'no,'" Biggs-Adams said.

But FTAA backers should expect a battle, Fire said. “Unlike with NAFTA, the public is more in tune to the negative consequences,” he said. “By building on the momentum we started with spotlighting General Electric’s ‘plant on a barge’ concept at the Seattle WTO meetings, IUE-CWA, CWA and our coalition partners have a much better chance to demand labor and environmental protections in any trade agreement. We will be on the streets and everywhere else, mounting a forceful display of strength, to ensure that free trade is really fair trade."

More information about FTAA and how to get involved is available on CWA and Jobs with Justice websites. Go to ga.cwa-union.org to play “FTAA Jeopardy.” Contact senators and representatives by e-mail at www.cwa-legis-pol.org, and read about demonstrations and teach-ins at www.jwj.org.