[CTC] Labor: We won’t be fooled again on trade

[Arthur Stamoulis]

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/labor-we-wont-be-fooled-again-on-trade-117029.html
Labor: We won’t be fooled again on trade

By Brian Mahoney and Victoria Guida 

4/15/15 9:03 PM EDT
Organized labor’s unified message against President Barack Obama’s free-trade agenda is simple: No thanks, we’ve been here before.

Obama’s expansive proposed trade deal in the Asia-Pacific, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, already obligates countries to provide basic labor rights for their citizens, allowing, at least in theory, the U.S. government to launch legal arbitration with any of its trading partners who don’t meet those obligations.

But those requirements won’t be enough to dampen labor’s vociferous opposition to the deal, which has grown even louder this week as lawmakers get close to introducing a bill that would help ease the passage of the agreement. The reasons for labor’s stance have as much to do with the past as they do with the present. Previous side deals to protect workers’ rights in a raft of trade agreements simply haven’t worked and have made it easier for foreign countries to outcompete American industry, the groups and their advocates in Congress say.

“We keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again,” Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) told POLITICO at a rally Wednesday by labor groups and other opponents of the president’s trade agenda. “I was standing on those steps when NAFTA passed and they told us, ‘Guess what? We have all these service sector jobs, we’re not going to lose those.’”

But the agreement led to the closing of numerous call centers around the country, including in her district, she said: “And we’re just not going to fall for that again.”

Last week marked the fourth anniversary of another deal to protect workers in Colombia. To appease U.S. union opposition to a trade agreement the Obama administration was negotiating bilaterally with the South American country — infamous for paramilitary violence against union organizers — the White House pledged to hold Bogotá more accountable for improving worker protections in the country.

The two countries agreed to a “labor <https://ustr.gov/uscolombiatpa/labor> action  <https://ustr.gov/uscolombiatpa/labor>plan <https://ustr.gov/uscolombiatpa/labor>” in April 2011, with specific benchmarks that the Colombian government had to meet before the end of the year. Colombia made enough progress for the Obama administration to certify Bogotá had fulfilled the obligations of the plan, thereby allowing it to receive trade benefits under the trade deal starting May 15, 2012.

Union groups like the AFL-CIO have emphasized that while Colombia was making progress on labor rights before receiving the benefits of the trade deal, the U.S. essentially lost all leverage once those benefits took effect.

“In the first year of the labor action plan, before the treaty enters into force, there is will, there is political will to make improvements and changes, and as soon as it enters into force, that will disappears,” José Luciano Sanin Vasquez, a director at the National Union School, a Colombian labor group, told POLITICO.

To highlight ways the Colombia labor plan hasn’t met its goals, the AFL-CIO on April 7 cited <http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Global-Action/Despite-Labor-Action-Plan-Colombian-Unionists-Still-Targeted-for-Death> a new Spanish language report from National Union School saying Colombian workers have experienced nearly 2,000 threats and acts of violence and 105 union activists have been assassinated since the plan was instituted, the AFL-CIO said.

Citing agreements like the one with Colombia, the AFL-CIO has called for countries like Vietnam and Mexico to meet the standards of the TPP before Congress votes on the deal, which might help to prevent the administration from, in the minds of the labor federation’s leaders, once again squandering its leverage.

“One of the things that we’re pointing out to the administration is, unless you have the labor pieces actually connected to the trade agreement, if it’s just a side agreement, there’s no teeth,” said Cathy Feingold, director of international affairs for the AFL-CIO.

The reality of the failed side deals of the past is a major obstacle for Obama’s push for trade promotion authority, which would put trade deals to a simple up-or-down vote in Congress, without amendments, and the TPP. During his presidential campaign, Obama voiced his opposition to trade deals that degrade labor standards. Nonetheless, he led the way on many of the trade agreements that labor groups now cite as evidence against proceeding with the Asia-Pacific pact.

Worse from the perspective of labor groups is that agreements like the Colombia labor action plan <https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCQQFjAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fustr.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2FColombia%2520Labor%2520Action%2520Plan%2520update%2520final-April2014.pdf&ei=3_EuVfzIE5HlsATj34CYBw&usg=AFQjCNFcvRjCrrHZHd9mmGjA_ZVMouIHqg&cad=rja> actually went further to protect workers’ rights than previous deals with countries that have low labor standards, notably the North American Free Trade Agreement, which had a labor side agreement in lieu of any standards in the actual deal.

NAFTA, in fact, ushered in a new model of free-trade agreement that directly addressed, for the first time, labor and environmental concerns. But the AFL-CIO says the labor provisions have little force because there was no effective enforcement mechanism. “It was pretty ineffective from our perspective,” Feingold said.

The Obama administration has acknowledged the documented shortcomings <http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/6211.pdf> of the labor provisions in NAFTA and other free-trade deals. In a recent interview <https://www.politicopro.com/story/trade/?id=46026> with POLITICO, Labor Secretary Tom Perez called the worker protections in NAFTA and the Central American Free Trade Agreement “woefully insufficient.” He acknowledged that labor obligations must be included in the main text — as they have been in the most recent free-trade agreements — and be coupled with sanctions if countries don’t comply.

“I totally agree with the proposition that we have to do a better job of enforcement,” Perez said. “We have to bring cases with greater alacrity. Historically, we’ve taken too long to bring cases.” So now, he said, the administration will launch a dispute as soon as an investigation turns up enough evidence to do so.

The U.S. and Vietnam have been in bilateral negotiations since last year — including meeting in Washington last week — on one of the hardest points yet to be settled: what exactly Vietnam needs to do before receiving any benefits under the deal.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a recent interview <https://www.politicopro.com/story/trade/?id=46026> that the two sides were in “more or less constant dialogue” in working out the details. “That’s a conversation we’re having with Vietnam and the other parties about what needs to be done,” he said.

But labor has adopted a presumption against any side deals that the Obama administration may negotiate. In essence, they say, the administration’s old tricks of appeasement on issues affecting foreign or U.S. workers won’t play this time around.

“It’s one thing to try out an idea and fail,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) told POLITICO. “It’s another thing to go forward with policies that have failed, failed and failed again and cost us millions of jobs. … This is a fundamentally flawed agreement, a part of a history of flawed agreements.”
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