Volume 74, Issue #1 | Spring 2014

When ordinary Americans learn more about ?fast track? authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they recognize it as a bad deal for workers? jobs and wages, small business, food safety and the environment. This trade deal has been negotiated in secret for nearly four years. Now, as the multinational corporations and trade negotiators are closing in on the final round, they?re pushing for ?fast track? authority, which would block Congress from amending or improving the deal in any way. The House and Senate would be limited to an up-or-down vote on the entire package.

The global economy doesn?t have to mean stagnant real wages, no bargaining rights and no voice on the job. In fact, in most other democracies, collective bargaining rights are expanding.

America needs a raise. Productivity, profits, executive pay and the stock market keep going up, but the incomes of working and middle class families keep going down. The gap between the rich and the rest of us is growing, and that makes it harder for families to maintain a middle class standard of living.