Unions, environmental groups brace for lame-duck fight over Trans Pacific pact

October 27, 2016 by

call-congress-today-to-stop-tpp_blog_post_fullwidthOn the night of the third presidential debate, a small group of activists gathered inside a union hall in Minneapolis, but their focus was not on the outcome of the 2016 election. It was on what might happen between Nov. 8 and the inauguration, specifically when it comes to trade.

President Obama is expected to make one last-ditch attempt to push the sprawling, NAFTA-style Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement through Congress during the “lame-duck” session, possibly as soon as this month.

If that happens, fair-trade activists will be ready to push back.

Already, more than 90 organizations, including the AFL-CIO, are planning to flood the congressional switchboard Nov. 16 with phone calls in opposition to the TPP. Two weeks later, unions and labor federations from across the country will lobby together in Washington, D.C., making their final case against the deal, which “would be incredibly devastating to working people here and across the globe,” Kayla Berg of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition told activists.

The meeting in Minneapolis, sponsored by the state’s Industrial Union Council, drew representatives of environmental and student groups, offering a glimpse of the broad-based opposition to the TPP, which was negotiated in secret by 12 member nations with Pacific borders.

Six of those 12 countries – Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Vietnam, Chile and Brunei – have low-wage economies. Labor unions have expressed concern that the agreement will only hasten the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and further the exploitation of workers in developing countries.

Unions also point to weak – or nonexistent – protections for workers who seek to organize in several TPP countries. It’s a complaint echoed by the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations, which point to equally weak environmental regulations.

Another shared concern: Extra- judicial “corporate courts” created by the TPP would empower global firms to fight local or state regulations they view as “barriers to trade,” including consumer protection laws, land-use regulations or buy-local procurement practices.

In fact, if TPP passes, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies would be forced to treat bidders from every TPP country as if they were U.S. bidders when making purchasing decisions.

It’s no surprise so many citizen groups are taking on the fight against the TPP, Machinists union representative Rick Ryan said. The only question, he said, is whether activists can ensure a victory that kills the TPP and, potentially, changes the way future trade deals are negotiated.

“We need to bring these groups together to build the power to stop TPP,” Ryan said. “Instead of fighting individual fights, we need to fight one big fight.”

For more information on the TPP, go to www.citizen.org/TPP.

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Kaela Berg: Trans-Pacific Partnership a threat to U.S. jobs

March 24, 2016 by
web.fasttrack-KaelaBerg

Kaela Berg is director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition.

Trade. It may not be at the front of your mind today, or even most days, but it should be. After 20 years of living with the disastrous impacts of NAFTA and every trade agreement since, we are now faced with the largest free trade agreement we’ve yet seen, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Often touted as “NAFTA on Steroids,” the TPP will affect 40 percent of the world economy and continue the hemorrhaging of American jobs – jobs that we can ill afford to lose. The TPP already has been signed by representatives of all 12 countries involved, and it now awaits ratification by the various governing bodies of each participating nation.

The images of shuttered factories in once-thriving cities of industry are all too familiar in recent history. The lack of manufacturing that breeds a strong and steady economy in this country is astounding, and it leaves far too many able workers with few options. Working families today, are struggling to make ends meet, to send their children to college and to have the ability to retire not only to enjoy the fruits of so many years of labor, but to rest when their bodies need it most.

The effects of trade are woven into the fabric of our lives – in the quality of the air we breathe, the food we eat and the jobs we may or may not have.

The current and irresponsible way that giant corporations and governments negotiate international treaties will always result in dire consequences for the most vulnerable. I saw that firsthand during my two trips to Colombia last year.

The labor rights, human rights and environmental justice violations in Colombia were both alarming and a direct result of U.S. trade policy. The Labor Action Plan, which is a mechanism put in place supposedly to ensure the protection of workers under the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, is ineffective in its practical application. That’s no surprise, given the provision never had any “teeth” in its genesis. Even NAFTA had an outline that seemingly provided some protections for workers, but in fruition such protections were negligible.

Simply put, free trade agreements do not work for workers. Not here at home, and not in the countries in which we already trade. The TPP promises more of the same: more American jobs lost, more stagnant wages and more cheap and illegal goods flooding our markets. It keeps the scales tipped firmly in favor of the multinationals and keeps American workers participating in an involuntary race to the bottom.

Whether it’s picketing in response to being locked out of steel mills in Pennsylvania for months at a time or standing up for miners on the Iron Range, as workers we must do what we do best: Stand Up, Fight Back! We cannot allow another trade agreement to continue the rampant eradication of our jobs, the stagnation of our wages and the theft of our opportunity to offer our children a better way of life.

In a world where globalization is inevitable and also an amazing opportunity, we must be mindful of creating a path for fair trade if we are to nourish and grow an economy that works for all people. There is something that each of us can do. This election season I urge you to reach out to your lawmakers and initiate a dialogue asking them to vote against the TPP. A vote against the TPP is a vote for working families!

– Kaela Berg is director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition. Founded in 1991, the organization unites family farmers, unions and environmental groups to promote and support fair trade policy and global justice.

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Photos: Workers keep up fight to #StopTPP

October 2, 2015 by

Workers haven’t given up the fight to stop the latest – and largest – free-trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

As diplomats from 12 Pacific Rim countries gathered in Atlanta yesterday for negotiations on the sprawling, NAFTA-style trade pact, fair-trade advocates across the country took to the streets, warning the public about what’s at stake in the secretive talks.

Locally, members of the Communications Workers of America and the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition raised awareness with a banner strung across the I-94 Hamline Avenue bridge during rush hour, and they distributed fliers to commuters focusing on the threat TPP poses to food safety and labeling laws.

Cars zip past CWA Local 7250 members Charli Haataja (L) and Chad Perkins on Hamline Avenue.
Activists hand out hundreds of fliers on the Hamline Avenue bridge.
Doug Paul of CWA Local 7250 holds the sign, while Doug Williams of the same local passes out fliers.
IUE-CWA Local 1140 members Dale Foster and Howard Terry hoist a banner over I-94 urging commuters to take note of risks posed by the TPP.
Zach Tussler, a member of IUE-CWA Local 1140, offers informational fliers to commuters warning about food safety risks posed by the TPP.

“The TPP would require us to allow food imports if the exporting country’s safety regime is deemed ‘equivalent’ to our own, even if it violates our food safety laws,” the flier says. “These rules would effectively outsource domestic food inspection to other countries.

“Under the TPP, any U.S. food safety rule on pesticides, labeling or additives that is higher than international standards would be subject to challenge as ‘illegal trade barriers.’ The U.S. could be required to eliminate these rules and allow in the unsafe food under threat of trade sanctions.”

For more information on the TPP: facebook.com/fairtradenow.

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St. Paul City Council takes stance against ‘poor trade policies,’ including fast track

April 24, 2015 by

fb_fasttrack_call2The St. Paul City Council took up the fight to stop fast track Wednesday, when members unanimously approved a resolution “opposing the extension of bad trade policies.”

“The people of the City of Saint Paul have the best chance to benefit from pending trade and investment agreements only if the process by which they are negotiated undergoes a transformation to make the process open, fair and inclusive,” the resolution says.

Click here to read the full text.

Congress is considering a new fast track bill that, like previous versions, would force members to approve or reject – but not amend – trade agreements negotiated by the president’s trade ambassadors, like the 1,000-page Trans-Pacific Partnership.

By passing the resolution, members of the council joined union members, environmentalists, faith leaders and others across the country speaking out against fast track – and calling on their members of Congress to vote down the bill.

Locally, those lobbying efforts have focused on Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Rep. Betty McCollum, whose district includes the St. Paul, is on record opposing fast track.

Bobby Kasper, president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, said council members showed their commitment to democracy, transparency and fairness for working people by passing the resolution.

“Fast track paves the road for trade agreements that do more than set tariffs and trade,” Kasper said. “Current proposals in the TPP would allow multinational corporations to challenge local ordinances governing food safety, setting wage and lending standards or establishing ‘buy-local’ procurement policies.

Council Member Chris Tolbert

Council Member Chris Tolbert

“We’re fortunate to have City Council members in St. Paul who share our opposition to fast track, and we’re hopeful other elected officials at the local level will follow their lead.”

Kasper credited Council Member Chris Tolbert for bringing the resolution before the council.

“I am grateful for the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation’s leadership in the fight against fast track, and my colleagues and I were proud to be able to join labor by unanimously supporting opposition to this legislation,” Tolbert said. “This legislation will hurt working families across the country by outsourcing more jobs overseas – good paying jobs that are important for keeping a strong middle class in St. Paul and across the country.”

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Not So Fast: Unions ramp up pressure on Congress to stop fast track

April 21, 2015 by
Fair trade activists handed out fliers outside Target Field Saturday.

Fair trade activists handed out fliers outside Target Field Saturday.

More than a year after sending proponents of fast track back to the drawing board, Congress is poised to consider a modified version of the trade measure this spring.

But unions and their allies in the fair-trade movement say the “new” fast track bill amounts to little more than lipstick on a pig. Like previous versions, they warn, it would put too much power in the hands of the president, his trade ambassadors and their corporate “advisors.”

“We have realized it’s almost exactly the same,” Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition Director Kaela Berg said. “There’s really nothing new.”

Introduced last week as the “Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015,” fast track is an essential step in the Obama administration’s push to enter the U.S. into new NAFTA-style free trade agreements like the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.

In granting the president fast track authority, Congress relinquishes its constitutional authority to review and amend trade pacts, forcing members into an up-or-down vote on complex agreements like the TPP, which has 29 chapters and 1,000 pages of provisions. It’s a perilous method for setting trade policy, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, especially given the secrecy surrounding TPP negotiations.

“Trade deals have wide-ranging impacts and shouldn’t be negotiated behind closed doors and then rubber-stamped,” Trumka said. “The current Trans-Pacific Partnership deal under discussion would cover 40 percent of the world’s GDP. A deal this big should be debated in a full and open manner like every other piece of legislation.”

[Click here to urge your representatives in Congress to oppose fast track for the TPP.]

Mindful that no trade deal – regardless of how devastating it was for U.S. jobs, family farmers or the environment – has ever been turned down by Congress under fast track rules, labor is intensifying its efforts to defeat the measure and stave off the TPP.

In March the AFL-CIO announced it would freeze all contributions to federal lawmakers’ Political Action Committees and, instead, direct those resources to the battle over trade policy. Since then, union members and fair-trade activists across the country have dialed up the pressure on undecided members of Congress with rallies, phone banks and other outreach initiatives.

web.FastTrack-kieranLocally, the campaign has focused on Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a labor-endorsed DFLer who has not yet publicly opposed the new fast track bill, according to Berg. Other members of the DFL delegation, including Sen. Al Franken, are believed to be on board, she added.

“We’ve been in Sen. Klobuchar’s office,” Berg said. “We’ve delivered oversized postcards with signatures from her constituents asking her to oppose fast track. We’ve sent letters to her Washington office.

“She knows where we stand. We just really want to hold her accountable.”

The Fair Trade Coalition, founded by labor, family-farm, faith and non-profit groups that opposed NAFTA nearly 25 years ago, took to the streets Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis. Volunteers handed out fliers to fans making their way into the Twins game, asking for calls to Klobuchar’s office.

Julie Fergus, one of about 20 volunteers, said she opposes fast track because previous free trade agreements have “given more power to the big businesses and taken power away from regular people here and in other countries.”

“I think a lot of people have no idea what fast track is, and maybe they don’t really want to know,” Fergus added. “People don’t realize some of the stuff they’re putting in these agreements, but if we can slow it down, people might realize how dangerous some of this is.”

Mike Zagaros, president of Minneapolis-based Branch 9 of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the bottom line is fast track “is obviously not for us.”

“Something as big as the TPP should be talked about in front of God and everybody,” he said. “Fast track prevents that.”

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A Model for Disaster: Report details NAFTA’s impact over 20 years

May 1, 2014 by
NAFTA drew protests in Minnesota before its implementation (left), but debate surrounding the model for trade it established 20 years ago continues with the TPP today (right).

NAFTA drew protests in Minnesota before its implementation (left), but debate surrounding the model for trade it established 20 years ago continues today with the TPP (right).

In the early 1990s, Doug Williams was serving as president of Local 1140 of the International Union of Electrical Workers, an industrial union that has since folded into the Communications Workers. Williams and other union activists, particularly in the industrial sector, were in full campaign mode at the time, handing out fliers during shift changes, staging public rallies and demonstrating in the streets.

But it was neither an election nor a strike that had them fired up. Rather, it was a looming trade pact – the first of its kind – with Mexico and Canada. The agreement would do away with most tariffs and economic protections.

“What little we knew about the trade agreement at the time, it did not appear to be something that was going to be of benefit to folks who had to work for a living,” Williams, now on staff with the IUE-CWA, remembered. “We were doing our best to stop what appeared to be a corporate power grab.”

Unions like the IUE joined a broad coalition of environmental, family-farm and other community organizations urging Congress to stop the trade deal. They “tried to engage people around the state,” Williams said, and even worked in collaboration with allies in Mexico and Canada. “Anybody who was willing to participate, we were looking to work with.”

Despite the protests – and over warnings from economists that it would depress wages, uproot jobs and drive farmers off their land – the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect Jan. 1, 1994.

What’s happened in the 20 years since is the subject of a report released in March by the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation. “NAFTA at 20” finds the fears surrounding NAFTA shared by Williams and other trade unionists 20 years ago were largely warranted, and they’ve played out with disastrous implications for workers’ rights, income inequality and democracy in all three nations.

But equally damaging, according to both the AFL-CIO report and trade watchdogs based in Minnesota, is the model for expanded corporate power that NAFTA established – one the U.S. would copy and “enhance” in global trade negotiations over the next two decades. NAFTA remains the template negotiators are working off of in talks for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the latest – and largest – attempted free-trade deal to date.

“There is no success story for workers to be found in North America 20 years after NAFTA,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. “The NAFTA model focuses on lifting corporations out of reach of democratic governance, rather than solely reducing tariffs. This report should serve as a cautionary tale to the Obama Administration and Congress as they consider negotiating and implementing new trade deals.”

Activists in Northfield protested NAFTA more than 20 years ago in this Union Advocate file photo.

Activists in Northfield protested NAFTA more than 20 years ago in this Union Advocate file photo.

Fears came true

Proponents of NAFTA 20 years ago – like those who defend the agreement today – argued that by reducing tariffs and other barriers to trade, NAFTA would increase trade among the three North American countries. Increased trade, it followed, would result in job growth throughout the free-trade zone. While lobbying Congress to approve the pact, President Bill Clinton claimed NAFTA would create 200,000 new jobs per year in the U.S. alone.

In hindsight, Clinton and other NAFTA backers were only half right.

The volume trade flowing among the U.S., Canada and Mexico surged from $291 billion in 1993, the year before NAFTA went into effect, to $1.1 trillion in 2012. Trade patterns, however, shifted dramatically and unequally, with disastrous ramifications for workers in all three countries.

Before NAFTA, the U.S. actually had a small trade surplus with Mexico – meaning it exported more goods than it imported. But that changed quickly after 1994, as the U.S. trade deficit with its NAFTA partners has ballooned to $181 billion.

According to the AFL-CIO report, NAFTA allowed companies to move labor-intensive components of their operations to locations with weak labor laws and lax enforcement of wage, environmental and other standards. Manufacturers took advantage, displacing an estimated 682,900 U.S. jobs to Mexico.

Minnesota has lost about 14,000 jobs to Mexico in the last two decades, Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition Director Josh Wise said.

“And it’s still happening,” Wise added. “A company in Mankato called Midwest Electric just moved last summer. This practice of outsourcing over the last 20 years is actually still happening at a fairly rapid pace.”

Challenge to collective bargaining

With the job losses came a new wave of challenges for unions, which saw their membership rolls decline sharply, as manufacturing has been a traditional base of strength for organized labor.

Rick Ryan, a business representative for District 77 of the International Association of Machinists, can point to several employers that have outsourced Machinists’ jobs to Mexico, including the Danish company Nilfisk, which manufactures industrial floor-cleaning equipment at a facility in Plymouth.

Machinists Local Lodge 1037 used to represent more than 500 Nilfisk workers, Ryan said. After several rounds of outsourcing, only about 80 Machinists are left working in the facility.

“We built a lot of the components for the machines there – we’d take raw sheet metal, form it, bend it, weld it and make the components,” Ryan said. “Now they’ve outsourced all that work to wherever, and they’ve taken and outsourced the assembly of all but the very biggest of these machines down to Mexico.”

The IUE, Williams said, represented workers at 21 facilities in Minnesota before NAFTA; that number is down to 16 today. “They’ve all been impacted by the trade issue,” he said.

Even when employers didn’t pick up and move, they were sure to let workers know it was an option – especially during contract negotiations.

“It has been very difficult to get anywhere near a raise that might get anywhere close to keeping up with the cost of living, and it’s because of this constant threat that if we ask for too much or get too much, they’re going to shut ‘er down and go to wherever – name your country,” Ryan said. “That has put a real hard pressure on wages for our bargaining units.

“I hear it from the members when you talk to them. They want more money, but they’re afraid – the unspoken threat is always there. It’s always in their mind.”

When unions are constantly negotiating concessions – or negotiating severance packages for workers who’ve lost their jobs to trade – it also makes organizing a tough sell, Ryan added

“’Well those union guys, they couldn’t stop the company from moving.’ That’s the kind of thing you hear,” Ryan said. “And when you try to organize, workers say, ‘If we organize they’ll shut it down, they’ll move production.’ And they’re told that by management.”

By weakening the power of unions and incentivizing low wages, NAFTA has contributed to growing income inequality in all three partner countries – despite consistent gains in worker productivity, the AFL-CIO report finds.

web.nafta-streetsCorporate power grab

While workers saw their rights attacked and wages stagnate under NAFTA, corporations saw their powers expand and their profits soar – thanks to the free-trade model established 20 years ago.

Beyond reducing tariffs, NAFTA created new privileges and protections for corporations that allow them to challenge local laws, government regulations or other “barriers to trade” that could interfere with their actual or potential profits. NAFTA established unelected international panels – “unaccountable to the public,” the AFL-CIO report points out – to hear these complaints and award monetary compensation.

It’s called investor-to-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, and according to the AFL-CIO report, it may be NAFTA’s most enduring and troubling legacy, as the practice has been included – and expanded upon – in subsequent free-trade agreements.

“NAFTA set a precedent for how corporations could gain control over writing trade laws,” Wise said. “They realized they could achieve a whole host of deregulation and other legislative victories through trade negotiations that they couldn’t achieve through Congress, and it’s really accelerated the global race to the bottom.”

ISDS empowers foreign investors – mostly multinational corporations – to challenge “buy-local” laws, living-wage provisions and regulations designed to protect consumers, patent holders and the environment.

Exxon Mobil won $60 million from the Canadian government two years ago, arguing that local regulations requiring oil companies to fund research and development in Canada’s poorest provinces constituted a barrier to trade. Mexico had to pay Cargill for laws regulating high-fructose corn syrup.

And who’s on the hook for these monetary damages? The taxpayers. In all, NAFTA governments have paid at least $340 million to “investors” since the agreement took effect.

Of course, similar protections for workers – say, the right to sue a country for establishing barriers to union organizing – are not part of the NAFTA model.

“Unlike the procedures that protect investor rights, the complaint procedures for violations of labor or environmental standards are exceedingly slow and cumbersome, and provide no reasonable possibility of sanctions being imposed for noncompliance,” the AFL-CIO report reads.

Fight for fair trade continues

Frighteningly, the ISDS language written into NAFTA seems tame in comparison to what’s in the Obama administration’s top trade priority, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It expands ISDS protections from traditional goods and services to intellectual property and financial services.

But fair-trade activists celebrated a big victory when Congress refused to grant Obama “fast-track” authority for the TPP and other trade deals – a sign, they hope, that increased public awareness about ISDS and the damaging effects of the NAFTA model are yielding increased public outrage.

Twenty years after taking to the streets to fight NAFTA, labor unions are continuing to partner in the struggle for fair trade.

“When folks are made aware of what’s going on, they seem to be universally opposed to the idea of the TPP,” Williams said. “Labor’s challenge is to recognize it’s going to take more than labor; it requires community partners. We all need to work together to produce a framework for trade that members of the public can see themselves included in.”

web.nafta-penny

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Union members urge Klobuchar to take a stand against Fast Track

January 31, 2014 by
CWA Minnesota State Council President Mona Meyer speaks at a trade demonstration outside Sen. Amy Klobuchar's offices in Minneapolis.

CWA Minnesota State Council President Mona Meyer speaks at a trade demonstration outside Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s offices in Minneapolis.

Union members today called on U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar to take a stand against efforts in Congress to put job-killing free-trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on the fast track.

Members of the Communications Workers of America marked a worldwide day of action against the TPP – the NAFTA-style trade agreement being negotiated in secret by 12 countries in Asia and the Americas – by leading a demonstration outside Klobuchar’s office in Minneapolis.

“We are not against trade, we are against free trade,” CWA State Council President Mona Meyer told more than a dozen activists who joined the demonstration. “Under the TPP more American jobs would be offshored. Internet freedom would be a joke. Developing countries would lose access to life-saving medicines. Unsafe foods and products would pour into our country.

“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

[Click here to learn how you can take action against the job-killing TPP free trade agreement.]

CWA members targeted their message at Klobuchar, Meyer said, because the senator voted in favor of free trade agreements with Korea and Panama that “have decimated jobs in America.” Klobuchar also has not taken a stance against the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act, introduced in the U.S. House earlier this month and better known as “Fast Track authorization.”

Unions are part of a broad coalition of groups, including environmental and family-farm organizations, urging members of Congress to reject Fast Track, which would force Congress to take an up-or-down vote on trade agreements without offering amendments.

The complexity of modern trade agreements, Meyer said, requires more – not less – congressional oversight.

“We voted for Sen. Klobuchar to work for us,” Meyer said. “One of her job responsibilities is to negotiate trade agreements, not give up her vote.”

Klobuchar’s Minnesota colleague, Al Franken, was one of 12 senators who signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressing concern that Fast Track shirks the responsibility placed on Congress by the Constitution to oversee trade policy.

Reid appears to have heeded their advice, announcing yesterday that he is opposed to Fast Track. Now it’s time for Klobuchar to do the same, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper said.

“We need Sen. Klobuchar to speak out and oppose Fast Track and this bad trade deal for workers, farmers and jobs,” he said.

CWA members deliver a letter to Klobuchar's office urging her to take a stand against Fast Track trade authorization.

CWA members deliver a letter to Klobuchar’s office urging her to take a stand against Fast Track trade authorization.

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Josh Wise: Trade Promotion Authority puts U.S. on fast track to more job losses

November 21, 2013 by
mug-wise

Josh Wise is director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition.

When are Keith Ellison and Michele Bachmann on the same side of an issue? When it comes to standing up for separation of powers and Congress’ ability to oversee trade policy that has a massive effect on us as constituents.

In separate letters released Nov. 13, Rep. Bachmann and all five Democratic house members from Minnesota expressed their opposition to a legislative maneuver known recently as Trade Promotion Authority, but more commonly referred to as “fast track.” Fast track means that instead of going through the normal legislative process, new trade agreements would not be amendable, debate would be limited and the U.S. House would be forced to vote on them within 60 days of submission – and the White House gets to write all of the implementing legislation. Although a fast-track bill would also include Congress’ priorities for trade agreements, the administration would not have to abide by them.

Fast track essentially turns the government into a dictatorship when it comes to trade policy. And it’s no surprise the administration wants to ram this through Congress without debate, as drafts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership – the massive free-trade agreement currently being negotiated in secret – leaked into the public view are not pretty.

[Click here to sign a petition demanding the administration release the draft TPP text to the public!]

After NAFTA, good union jobs went to Mexico, where the average factory wage is now about $2.50 an hour. Now even those Mexican jobs are going to get shipped to Vietnam, where the average factory wage is $2.50 a day! The U.S. is expected to lose over half a million jobs in the textile sector alone. And it’s not just jobs. TPP gives more protections and deregulations to big corporations, everything from banking laws to limiting our access to medicine and allowing corporations to monitor our internet use, a huge violation of privacy. And say goodbye to knowing where your food comes from. Under TPP it would be illegal to know whether your shrimp comes from Louisiana or the South China Sea.

Minnesota has always been on the losing end of these deals. The Economic Policy Institute estimates the state has lost nearly 14,000 jobs due to NAFTA and over 72,000 jobs to China since it was granted permanent normal trade relations in 2000.

The good news is no fast-track bill has been introduced yet despite the Obama administration’s requests. We had expected to see a bill introduced over the summer, but the building opposition and Congressional gridlock pushed back the corporate trade agenda. If we can keep fast track in the public light and make it a campaign issue, we’ll be in a strong position, as I can guarantee no politician is going to campaign on giving up their constitutional responsibility in order to outsource jobs! So we need to thank our representatives and pressure our Senators until Minnesota becomes the strongest bastion for fair trade in the country. The Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition is leading the way on this, when we’re united and work together, we win!

– Josh Wise is executvie director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, with more than 40 member organizations statewide.

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Franken takes the lead in Senate effort to sway Trans-Pacific trade negotiations

December 6, 2012 by
U.S. Sen. Al Franken, shown here at a union rally in St. Paul, co-authored a letter to President Obama urging enforceable protections for workers' rights in the TPP.

U.S. Sen. Al Franken, shown here at a union rally in St. Paul, co-authored a letter to President Obama urging enforceable protections for workers’ rights in the TPP.

As negotiations on the latest U.S.-backed free-trade agreement resumed in Australia this week, U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota led a bipartisan appeal to President Obama, urging his administration to craft an deal that protects American jobs and workers’ rights worldwide.

Franken, a DFLer, joined Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine in authoring a letter to Obama on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed free-trade agreement currently encompassing 11 countries and reaching all corners of the Pacific Ocean.

The senators want Obama to ensure the new free-trade agreement is “crafted to maximize good job creation and market expansion while minimizing the incentives for further off-shoring of middle class jobs,” according to the letter (click to download as pdf).

Twenty-two other senators, including Minnesota DFLer Amy Klobuchar, signed onto the letter.

The senators voice specific concern in the letter about including enforceable protections for labor rights in the TPP – a provision that has been lacking in previous free-trade agreements entered into by the U.S.

“A country that denies these rights to workers is providing a hidden subsidy that keeps wages artificially lower than they otherwise would be if workers were free to organize and bargain – a subsidy that makes U.S.-based producers less cost-competitive,” the letter says. “The free exercise of fundamental labor rights is key to improving the standards of living and expanding export markets while labor suppression merely ensures that middle classes – and export markets – will be smaller than they otherwise would be.”

Congress has been mostly shut out of TPP negotiations, now in their 15th round. As a result, letters like Franken’s are as close as federal lawmakers can come to influencing the talks before the TPP lands in Congress for a ratification vote.

Josh Wise, director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, which is closely monitoring TPP negotiations, equated the senators’ letter to the committee hearing that takes place before a bill reaches the Senate floor.

Members of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition protested outside Cargill's offices in Hopkins last July, targeting the company for its involvement in secretive TPP negotiations.

Members of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition protested outside Cargill’s offices in Hopkins last July, targeting the company for its involvement in secretive TPP negotiations.

Wise praised Minnesota’s senators for taking a “strong stand for the rights of workers in Minnesota and around the globe.”

Countries currently engaged in TPP talks with the U.S. are Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam and Brunei.

Although members of Congress – and the media – have been shut out of negotiations, a handful of multinational corporations like Cargill have been included in the talks – a big reason why it is critical for lawmakers like Franken and Klobuchar to speak out, Wise added.

“With countries such as Vietnam, which has been referred to as the ‘low cost labor alternative to China,’ being party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is vitally important that our elected officials do everything in their power to ensure that this massive free-trade deal does not repeat the results of NAFTA and create a race to the bottom for wages and working conditions,” Wise said.

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Fair trade activists to Cargill: What’s the big secret?

July 20, 2012 by

Members of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition protest outside Cargill’s offices in Hopkins.

If free-trade agreements like the forthcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership are in the public interest, then why are they negotiated in private?

That’s the question supporters of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition asked during a July 9 rally in Hopkins. The coalition of labor, environmental and agricultural organizations is mounting a public campaign to pressure the Obama administration into opening Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations to public scrutiny.

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership is an 11-country free-trade deal that could eventually encompass half of the world,” coalition director Josh Wise told a crowd of about 50 demonstrators. “It’s huge. It’s big. And the public is being entirely shut out.”

So, too, are journalists and members of Congress. The agreement could create legally binding policies regarding agriculture, workers’ rights and intellectual-property rights – without any input from U.S. lawmakers during negotiations.

Not surprisingly, 132 members of Congress have signed a complaint, addressed to the Obama administration’s chief trade negotiator, that Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations have not been sufficiently open to public or congressional scrutiny. Protesters in Hopkins echoed those concerns.

Protesters line the sidewalk outside Cargill, protesting the company’s influence on Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, which are closed to the public.

“We could say that transparency is synonymous with truth,” Colombian fair-trade activist Gerardo Cajamarca told the crowd via a translator. “When we’re demanding transparency, we’re also demanding truth and justice.”

Cajamarca and other demonstrators gathered outside offices of Cargill, the multinational food- and agriculture-based corporation headquartered in the Twin Cities. Cargill is one of a handful of companies granted access to – and influence on – Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.

That multinational corporations have been granted access to the trade talks worries fair-trade activists, who suspect the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be written to benefit companies like Cargill at the expense of workers, small farmers and the environment.

“It is lies that companies like Cargill use to impose free-trade agreements,” Cajamarca said. “They have told the world that free-trade agreements are going to bring prosperity and progress and development to the rest of the world. This is false.”

Indeed, the track record of existing free-trade agreements – NAFTA, CAFTA and the Korea Free Trade Agreement, among others – has not been good, particularly for manufacturing workers in the U.S.

Bob Ryan, a representative with the United Steelworkers union, said companies already are flooding the American market with cheap products, made by low-wage workers overseas. Free-trade agreements only make that process easier, and that’s bad news for American workers.

Ryan offered this example: The Korea Free Trade Agreement, he said, enables automakers like Nissan to build cars with cheaply made auto parts and export them to the U.S., where they compete with cars built in the U.S. by Ford and General Motors.

“Ninety-five percent of every car that’s made in the United States, the Steelworkers represent the workers who make those parts,” Ryan explained. “Every car that comes into the United States (from Korea) is one less job for us.

“Companies like Cargill, they’re just out for their pockets – nobody else’s. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t care what they do to workers. That’s why we’re here today; we’ve got to stop these rotten trade agreements.

“We should keep these jobs in America.”

For more information on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or to get involved in the struggle for fair trade, visit the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition’s website.

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