Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 5, 2015)
PAGE 4 | June 5, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership : Meet the ‘partners’ If fast track passes Congress, the first NAFTA-style pact up for approval would be the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed agreement between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Viet- nam. The United States already has trade agreements with Mexico, Canada, Australia, Chile, Peru, and Singapore. Japan and New Zealand are on par with the United States in work- ers’ rights and living standards. But the three others—Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei—are human rights violators where workers lack basic rights. The following is from the most recent an- nual human rights reports from the U.S. State Department. Vietnam Vietnam is an authoritarian one-party state ruled by the Communist Party of Vietnam. Citizens face severe govern- ment restrictions on their political rights. The gov- ernment doesn’t permit human rights organiza- tions to operate. All print, broadcast, and electronic media are controlled by the Communist Party and the government. Foreign journalists are limited in their movements and are sometimes harassed by security offi- cials. Police arrest and detain people for political activities, and sometimes use contract thugs and citizen brigades to harass and beat political activists. The government doesn’t permit polit- ical demonstrations. There are restric- tions on strikes, but they do sometimes ...Fast Track From Page 1 locked and loaded, ready for Congress to pull the trigger. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. It also re- quires that international treaties be approved by a two-thirds ma- jority of the U.S. Senate. Fast track is an end run around those things: It delegates trade treaty negotiations to the president, and lets the president submit im- plementing legislation which must then be voted on within 90 days, with limited debate and no amendments allowed. And the trade deal passes with a simple majority, not the supermajority occur, especially at foreign-invested enterprises. Official Communist Party unions do function as unions in some respects, but the law does not allow workers to organize and join independ- ent unions of their choice. Malaysia Malaysia, ruled by a political coalition in continuous power since 1957, is classed by the U.S. State Department as one of the worst coun- tries in the world for forced labor and human traf- ficking. Its government has failed to comply with the most basic interna- tional requirements to prevent traffick- ing and protect victims. There are also restrictions on freedoms of speech, as- sembly, association, and religion, and restrictions on freedom of the press, in- cluding book banning, censorship, and the denial of printing permits. Malaysia’s legal system punishes more than 60 offenses by caning, in which convicts are sentenced to be struck with a half-inch-thick wooden cane that may cause welts and scarring. In theory, Malaysian workers have the right to organize and bargain collec- tively, and strike. In practice, they face a multitude of legal restrictions that se- verely restrict union rights. Legal re- strictions make it virtually impossible for workers to go on strike lawfully, and union leaders face up to a year in prison for striking unlawfully. Workers in whole industries, such as the elec- tronics sector, are barred from forming independent unions. And foreign workers—who make up a quarter of the workforce—are barred from join- required for a treaty or even for regular legislation under the Senate’s filibuster rule. Under the direction of Presi- dent Barack Obama, the U.S. has been secretly negotiating a new NAFTA-style trade treaty with Pacific Rim nations—for six years. According to the fast track bill, Congress now dictates after the fact, in vague terms, what the president was sup- posed to be bargaining for. Call Congress Dial the AFL-CIO Trade Hot- line to be patched through to your Congressperson: 1-855- 712-8441. Ask your representa- tive to please stand with their constituents and oppose Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Part- nership. ing unions. Foreign workers—preva- lent in plantation agriculture, the fish- ing industry, electronics factories, gar- ment production, construction, restaurants, and domestic house- holds—suffer widespread abuses in- dicative of forced labor, such as re- strictions on movement, deceit and fraud in wages, passport confiscation, and imposition of significant debts by recruitment agents or employers. In many cases where those abuses are re- ported to the authorities, the foreign workers have been arrested and sent to a detention camp for not being in pos- session of a valid travel document. Brunei Brunei, a tiny oil-producing nation on the island of Borneo, is ruled by a hereditary monarch, Sultan Haji Has- sanal Bolkiah, whose family has ruled for more than 600 years. In Brunei, it’s illegal to challenge the royal family’s authority, and the government’s internal security appara- tus uses informants to monitor sus- pected dissidents. According to the U.S. State Department, Brunei limits freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion. Public gatherings of 10 or more persons require a government permit, and police have the authority to stop an unofficial assembly of five or more persons. The government practices censorship of newspapers, and can close newspapers and seize printing presses, and the only TV sta- tion is government owned. There’s no freedom of association. Islam is the state religion. Caning is a mandatory punishment. Muslims are prohibited from joining Rotary, Kiwanis, and the Lions. Unions are allowed, but there’s only one union, in the petroleum sec- tor, and strikes are illegal. DÉJÀ VU? Why claims about the “unprecedented” labor and environmental protections of the Trans-Pacific Partnership sound so familiar “T he North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] is the first agreement that ever really got any teeth in environmental standards, any teeth in what another country had to do with its own workers and its own labor stan- dards… There’s never been anything like this before.” — Bill Clinton, 1993 “C AFTA has the strongest labor and environmental provisions of any trade agreement ever negotiated by the United States. CAFTA is light years ahead of NAFTA, more practical and effective than current law, and is far stronger than earlier agreements.” — Rob Portman, Bush’s trade representative, 2005 “T his [Korea Free Trade] agreement includes groundbreaking protections for workers’ rights and for the environment. In this sense, it’s an example of the kind of fair trade agreement that I will continue to work for as president, in Asia and around the world.” — Barack Obama, 2010 “T his [Trans-Pacific Partnership] will end up being the most progressive trade bill in history. It will have the kinds of labor and environmental and human rights protections that have been absent in previ- ous agreements.” — Barack Obama, 2015 Source: “Broken Promises: Decades of Failure to Enforce Labor Standards in Free Trade Agreements,” prepared by the staff of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, available online at http://bit.ly/1KIEPvn FAST TRACK: How your Senators voted Wyden is up for re-election next year. Corporate funders will re- member his crucial role in pass- ing Fast Track. Will you? Fast Track passed the U.S. Sen- ate 62 to 37 on May 22. Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley voted no, but Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden voted for it, and so did Washington Democrats Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray. Before the fateful vote, sena- tors also voted on a number of amendments aimed at lessening the damage to American work- ers. An amendment by Rob Port- man (R-Ohio) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) would have required future trade agree- ments to have enforceable pro- visions against currency manip- ulation by foreign partners. It failed by 48 to 51. Merkley voted yes. Wyden, Cantwell, and Murray voted no. Instead, the Senate adopted an alternative authored by Wyden and Orrin Hatch (R- Utah)—a non-binding directive calling on the president to hold trading partners accountable for currency manipulation and to use reporting, monitoring and cooperative mechanisms. It passed 62-37. Merkley voted no. Wyden, Cantwell, Murray voted yes. Elizabeth Warren sponsored an amendment that would negate the fast track process for any trade pact that included a so-called Investor State Dispute Settlement process, in which corporations can directly sue governments. It failed 39-60. Merkley, Cantwell and Murray voted yes. Wyden voted no. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D- Ohio), another leader of the Democratic caucus’s “fair- trade” wing, sponsored an amendment to require prior con- gressional approval before other countries, like China, could be added to the group. It failed 47- 52. Wyden, Cantwell, Murray voted no. Merkley voted yes.
