Labor urges Congress to pump the brakes on fast track

February 23, 2015 by
U.S. Reps. Keith Ellison and Rick Nolan host a field hearing on trade at Richfield City Hall.

U.S. Reps. Keith Ellison and Rick Nolan host a field hearing on trade at Richfield City Hall.

Unions are joining a national day of action to stop fast track March 4, and two members of Congress from Minnesota got an earful as to why last week at a field hearing in Richfield.

DFL Reps. Keith Ellison and Rick Nolan heard testimony from trade experts, union leaders, business owners and advocates for family farmers, who passionately exhorted the representatives to resist President Obama’s push for fast-track authority to enter trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership.

The Obama administration, looking for ever-elusive common ground with Republicans who took over Congress this year, has moved fast track and the TPP to the top of its agenda. And the president has plenty of powerful allies in that effort, Nolan warned.

“Not only the administration, but the multinational (corporations) are putting a full-court press on this thing,” the 8th District Congressman said. “Every member is getting collared and called and pushed and urged.”

Ellison wryly noted that White House representatives reached out to him as he was leaving Washington to return to the 5th District, letting him know they were aware of the field hearing – and less than pleased with it.

But testimony at the hearing raised several concerns with fast track and the TPP, a looming NAFTA-style trade agreement among 12 nations on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.

An undemocratic notion

By passing fast track, also known as “trade promotion authority,” Congress would limit its own ability to influence trade policy, forcing members to take an up-or-down votes on 1,000-page trade agreements like TPP without offering amendments.

“That’s clearly an abdication of responsibility on the part of the Congress of the United States,” Nolan said.

Worse, members of Congress are severely limited in their ability to monitor or influence the TPP negotiations, Nolan added. Draft agreements and transcripts of the talks are shielded from the media.

“We’re not allowed to even sit in on the negotiations,” Nolan said. “Now, finally, they’re saying they’ll let us look at some of the transcripts, but all the names and all the essential elements are eliminated. It’s kind of like reading the newspaper with a third of every article being eliminated. So it’s not really time very well spent.”

Machinists union representative Rick Ryan (R) testified before a field hearing on fast track and the Trans Pacific Partnership last month. Ryan appeared on a panel with CWA Minnesota State Council President Mona Meyer and Bob Ryan of the United Steelworkers.

Machinists union representative Rick Ryan (R) testifies before a field hearing on fast track and the Trans Pacific Partnership. Ryan appeared on a panel with CWA Minnesota State Council President Mona Meyer and Bob Ryan of the United Steelworkers.

Profits over people

Leaked drafts of the TPP hint at why Obama’s trade negotiators and hundreds of cleared “advisors” – most of whom represent multinational corporations – might not want the public to see their proposals. Like NAFTA and other free-trade agreements of the last 20 years, TPP appears to give corporations more power over the global economy.

These multinationals have dictated U.S. trade policies at the expense of middle-class wages and jobs for too long, said Mona Meyer, president of the Communications Workers of America’s Minnesota State Council. Look no further than the annual trade deficit of $476 billion.

“The promoters of TPP are again promising job gains,” Meyer said. “But we can do the math, and any job growth with be dwarfed by the flood of jobs that go offshore.”

Trade agreements put manufacturing jobs, in particular, at risk. About 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs and 60,000 factories have been lost since 2001.

Nilfisk, a company that manufactures industrial floor-cleaning equipment, employed 500 members of the Machinists union at a facility in Plymouth before NAFTA passed. After several rounds of outsourcing, Machinists District 77 representative Rick Ryan said, about 70 workers are left at the plant.

But Ryan warned the TPP goes beyond tariffs and trade.

‘Why are we not at the table?’

“It will affect all sectors of our economy, our courts, our intellectual property rights, labor standards, environmental standards and more – done at the bidding of the world’s largest multinational corporations, further benefiting the 0.1 percent at the expense of the 99.9 percent worldwide,” Ryan said.

How? Dave Levine, CEO of the American Sustainable Business Council, said TPP language could empower corporations to sue local governments that pass “buy local” laws – a school district looking to serve food from area farmers at lunch, for example. It’s one reason the council’s 225,000 member companies oppose fast track and the TPP.

“None of them got a call to be at the table,” he said. “If it’s good for business, why are we not at the table to bring our interests to the proceedings?”

Josh Wise, director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, noted that the TPP and other trade agreements create extrajudicial trade tribunals, presided over by judges with deep ties to multinationals, that have jurisdiction over local courts.

Lone Pine Resources, an energy company suing the government of Quebec over its ban on fracking, maintains its headquarters outside Canada “for the sole purpose of being able to challenge the fracking ban via the trade court rather than the judicial system,” Wise said.

Fair trade, not free trade

Ellison and Nolan entered the hearing already opposed to fast track and the TPP. Both insisted they were not against trade, but favored trade policies that strengthen labor and human rights, protect U.S. families us from unsafe imports and promote the export of goods instead of jobs.

“We built this economy with rules and regulations on health and safety, wages and benefits,” Nolan said. “To say that we’re going to allow anyone and everyone to come in here and dump their products on us without any countervailing measures … is to really destroy the essence of who we are and what we’re all about.”

Ellison added, “I believe American workers can compete with any workers in the world” if given a level playing field.

“I know that you guys will fight for democracy,” Wise told the members of Congress. “I wish you the best of luck in convincing your colleagues to do the same.”

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Income on the rise in Dayton’s Minnesota, falling in Walker’s Wisconsin

October 30, 2014 by

UA layout_UA layoutJeff Johnson, the Republican nominee for governor, provided a glimpse of his leadership style May 15, telling a Tea Party group he would “go all Scott Walker on Minnesota” if elected Nov. 4. So what is it about Walker’s Wisconsin that Johnson believes is worth replicating?

To answer that question – and to get a sense of what a Johnson administration might mean for union families – we’re analyzing the different approaches taken by Walker and labor-endorsed Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton on four key issues over the last four years:

[Related: A governor who will ‘go all Scott Walker’ on Minnesota? No thanks, unions say.]

Wages and Economic Security. Dayton and DFL legislators earlier this year raised Minnesota’s minimum wage for the first time in a decade, and they passed the Women’s Economic Security Act, a nation-leading initiative to eliminate the gap between what women and men earn for doing comparable work.

Johnson has sent mixed messages about whether, if elected, he would move to block scheduled increases in Minnesota’s minimum wage in 2015 and 2016. But he has pledged to roll back a provision of the law that would trigger automatic increases, tied to the rate of inflation, beginning in 2018.

That stance puts Johnson in line with Walker’s Wisconsin, where median household income has fallen in each of the last four years – and by 5.1 percent since 2009, according to the American Community Survey. Data released last month by the Census Bureau shows Wisconsin’s median household income fell by 0.4 percent between 2012 and 2013, to $51,467.

Minnesota, meanwhile, saw a 1.6 percent increase in household income between 2012 and 2013, to $60,702. It marked the state’s second consecutive year of significant income growth.

Given the growing disparities between the two states, it’s no surprise workers in Wisconsin are looking west with envy.

“Wisconsin is dead last in the Midwest in job growth,” Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt said. “Wisconsin is missing out on economic opportunities and growth because Gov. Walker refuses to raise the minimum wage for workers or accept federal funds to expand health care access. Wisconsin workers make $5,000 less a year than Minnesota workers. Wisconsin workers can’t afford four more years of Gov. Walker.”

And Minnesota workers can’t afford a governor who will use Wisconsin as a model.

“Democrats know that valuing hard work, education and fairness creates shared prosperity,” said Eliot Seide, director of the state’s largest union of public employees, AFSCME Council 5. “Let’s give them a chance to continue moving Minnesota forward. Our blue state is a beacon of hope in the Midwest, but we still have a lot of hard work to do.”

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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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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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