Unions Step up Demand for Fair Trade

Manufacturing plants close. Telecom call center jobs go to low-wage countries. Even newspaper editorial and administrative jobs move overseas. Every CWA sector has been hit by job loss, stagnant wages and threats to workers' health benefits because of the failed trade policies of the Bush administration.

Fighting to reverse this trend, CWA and the AFL-CIO have testified in a series of congressional hearings, urging lawmakers to vote against treaties that do not provide adequate protection for workers and seeking to close tax-loopholes that actually encourage companies to move operations overseas.

CWA and the federation also are urging a 25 percent value added tax on imported goods to reduce the trade deficit.

But, said CWA President Larry Cohen, "By far the most important thing we can do is to elect a majority to the U.S. Senate and elect a president who will promote fair trade, not free trade, to raise the living standards of workers here and abroad."

Already, CWA's Executive Board has written to each of the candidates of both major parties, asking them to state what they would do as president to cut the trade deficit and help spur the retention and growth of jobs in the U.S., as well as push for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and universal health care. CWA will post their answers on a special election website.

The current trade situation is dismal. The U.S. trade deficit — the value of goods and services we import in excess of those we export — hit a staggering $764 billion in 2006 and the U.S. international debt now exceeds $3 trillion.

According to Robert Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO's Industrial Union Council, the United States has lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. He cites estimates of 14 million to 42 million service sector jobs that could be subject to offshoring over the next decade.

Globally, labor costs are skewed because offshore employers for the most part do not pay the high costs of workers' health care as in the United States. And U.S. corporations are rewarded through a provision in the tax laws that allows them for one year to bring profits earned abroad back into the United States where they are taxed at a mere 5.25 percent as opposed to the usual 35 percent. A more recent concern has been currency manipulation by countries like China to make the trade gap appear less severe.

Unions began to make a difference on trade in 2006 by helping elect 22 new members of Congress, including outspoken trade critic Rep. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who campaigned on promoting "fair trade" rather than "free trade."   Going into the 2008 races, the issue remains at the top of labor's agenda.