[CTC] Labor Will Keep Up Trade Pressure on Democrats

[Arthur Stamoulis]

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/2015/09/01/labor-will-keep-up-trade-pressure-democrats

Labor Will Keep Up Trade Pressure on Democrats

AFL-CIO’s Trumka promises “intense” campaign against Pacific trade deal,
criticizes Obama’s record.

The National Journal

By Alex Brown

September 14, 2015

Two months after the pas­sage of con­tro­ver­sial trade le­gis­la­tion that
stirred ten­sions with­in the Demo­crat­ic Party, AFL-CIO Pres­id­ent
Richard Trumka said or­gan­ized labor has no plans to back down when it
comes time for Con­gress to rat­i­fy pas­sage of a sweep­ing Pa­cific trade
deal.

Asked if his group would ap­ply pres­sure to Demo­crats on the is­sue—even
if it came up close to the elec­tion—Trumka replied, “Yes.” Asked to
elab­or­ate, he said: “You asked me if I was plan­ning to run a cam­paign
against [the Trans-Pa­cific Part­ner­ship]? Yes. Is it gonna be in­tense?
Yes. Is it go­ing to roll out everything we have? Yes.”

Trumka made his re­marks at a break­fast event Tues­day hos­ted by The
Chris­ti­an Sci­ence Mon­it­or.

The AFL-CIO stoked cri­ti­cism earli­er this year with ef­forts to kill
Trade Pro­mo­tion Au­thor­ity, a bill that lim­its Con­gress’s abil­ity to
in­flu­ence trade agree­ments and was seen as an es­sen­tial step to
earn­ing pas­sage of TPP. The group shut down its cam­paign dona­tions to
Demo­crats dur­ing the de­bate in or­der to up the pres­sure, and sev­er­al
TPA sup­port­ers said the group threatened to spend big in primary
cam­paigns to oust them. Ul­ti­mately, the meas­ure passed with the
sup­port of 28 Demo­crats in the House and 13 in the Sen­ate.

Many in the House, in­clud­ing TPA op­pon­ents, said the ac­tions of the
AFL-CIO and oth­er out­side groups only served to di­vide the party at a
time when it is deeply en­trenched in the minor­ity and in need of a
uni­fied ef­fort to de­feat Re­pub­lic­ans.

Trumka said he will con­tin­ue to mon­it­or the TPP, among the biggest of
Pres­id­ent Obama’s re­main­ing pri­or­it­ies, and push for stronger
meas­ures on is­sues like cur­rency ma­nip­u­la­tion, rules of ori­gin, and
pro­cure­ment. But he’s not op­tim­ist­ic the com­pleted deal will be a
pro-work­er pack­age the AFL-CIO can sup­port. “I sus­pect that it will be
a cam­paign to de­feat it, be­cause what we’ve seen so far is not very
ex­cit­ing for work­ers,” he said.

While he offered mostly praise for Obama and the Demo­crat­ic can­did­ates
vy­ing to re­place him, Trumka didn’t hes­it­ate to pin some of their
struggles on their po­s­i­tions on TPP. Asked about Obama’s fall­ing poll
num­bers among labor work­ers, Trumka noted that the pres­id­ent still
en­joyed the sup­port of a ma­jor­ity but offered an ex­plan­a­tion on why
that mar­gin is slip­ping.

“He hasn’t done everything we agree with,” he said. “I think what you’re
see­ing is the re­sid­uals of TPP. Our mem­bers un­der­stand the
im­port­ance of good free-trade agree­ments.”

Trumka also took pres­id­en­tial hope­ful Hil­lary Clin­ton to task for
keep­ing her trade po­s­i­tion vague. “Can­did­ates that try to skirt the
is­sues—not talk­ing about where you are on TPP hurts you when it comes to
ac­tiv­at­ing the mem­ber­ship and the gen­er­al popu­lace,” he said. “They
want to know where people are. Even if they dis­agree with you, they want
to know where you are. … Her nar­rat­ive right now—when you say, ‘I don’t
know wheth­er TPP is good or bad,’ and then you don’t ar­tic­u­late what
good would be, I think that lessens the en­ergy.”

Clin­ton’s chal­lenge, he said, is to “fig­ure out a way to en­er­gize
work­ers—and that’s come up with a nar­rat­ive that, one, she be­lieves in,
and, two, she’s will­ing to fight for.” Trumka ad­ded that she has been
held to an un­fair stand­ard throughout her ca­reer, simply due to her
gender: “Hil­lary Clin­ton has to do A-plus work to get a C. Why? Be­cause
she’s a wo­man.”

Still, he noted that it’s still early in the cam­paign pro­cess, and
can­did­ates have plenty of time to ar­tic­u­late a plat­form that can
ap­peal to work­ers. Both Clin­ton and Vice Pres­id­ent Joe Biden—with whom
Trumka re­cently met—would make good pres­id­ents, he said, and he praised
Sen. Bernie Sanders’s abil­ity to con­nect with people in a “unique and
genu­ine” way.

The AFL-CIO’s en­dorse­ment will come after thor­ough con­sulta­tion with
its mem­bers, he ad­ded, an an­nounce­ment that likely won’t be made un­til
after Iowa and New Hamp­shire cast their bal­lots.

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826
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