PAGE 8 | November 20, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...TPP LABOR CHAPTER: Political cover for a corporate power grab
From Page 1
protesting the tpp: Knowing
that staff representatives of Wash-
ington U.S. Senators Patty Murray
and Maria Cantwell would be at-
tending their monthly meeting Nov.
4, delegates to the Southwest Wash-
ington Central Labor Council staged
a protest against the proposed
Trans-Pacific Partnership. Nearly 100
people turned out to air their con-
cerns about the trade agreement.
Earlier this year, Murray and
Cantwell – along with fellow Demo-
crat Ron Wyden of Oregon – rigged
the rules in favor of the TPP by vot-
ing to give upcoming trade deals
“Fast Track” treatment.
like Japan, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, and the United
States to human rights abusers
like Vietnam, Malaysia, and
Brunei, where workers can’t
unionize.
“TPP has the strongest
protections for workers
of any trade agreement
in history.”
— Official statement of the
Obama administration
TPP has a chapter on labor
rights commitments, and Lee
says it’s true that it goes farther
than any previous U.S. trade
agreement. But that’s not saying
much: In past agreements like
the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) and the
Central America Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA), countries
merely promise to enforce their
own labor laws, and when they
fail to do even that, enforcement
mechanisms under those agree-
ments have been time-consum-
ing and toothless. Of the dozens
of NAFTA cases brought against
Mexico for failing to enforce its
labor laws, only one got a favor-
able ruling from an international
tribunal; it resulted in a meeting
Lee calls “a ministerial cup of
coffee,” plus an official govern-
ment seminar on labor rights,
held in Tijuana, at which union
activists were attacked by thugs.
And an AFL-CIO complaint
against Guatemala under
CAFTA — for failing to enforce
its own labor laws or take action
to prevent violence against trade
unionists — has dragged on
seven years with no result.
CAFTA and later trade agree-
trAde, AmericAn-style: At the Portland Terminal 6, over 2 million Hyundai vehicles have entered since 1990.
ments with Panama, Korea, and
Colombia were also touted as
the best-ever on labor rights.
The reason: Democrats took
back the U.S. House in 2007,
and in what is known as the
“May 10 agreement,” they got
President Bush to agree to add
language to several trade agree-
ments saying that failure to
abide by core international labor
standards could result in trade
sanctions. TPP makes three in-
significant additions to that:
■ Countries must have laws setting
a minimum wage and maximum
hours. Though Brunei currently lacks
such laws, even a penny an hour or a
24-hour daily limit would satisfy the
requirement.
Why unions oppose the TPP
■ TPP countries would be considered
“American” for purpose of “Buy
America” requirements in
government contracts. That waters
down the ability to use government
procurement policies to stimulate the
economy. Bidders from other TPP
countries would have access to U.S.
goods, services, and construction
contracts at 93 government agencies,
including Department of
Transportation, Department of
Defense, and the General Services
Administration.
■ Weak rules of origin mean goods
from China and other non-TPP
countries come in tariff-free.TPP
gives tariff-free access to goods from
Japan, Vietnam, and so on. But what
does it mean that a car, for example, is
Japanese? To be tariff-free under
NAFTA, 62.5 percent of a Mexican
product had to come from Mexico.
Under TPP, just 45 percent of a good’s
content, by value, must come from TPP
nations. In other words, an auto with
55 percent Chinese content could be
considered to be Made in the TPP.
■ Countries can’t weaken labor laws
in export processing zones in order
to increase trade or investment.
“That’s underwhelming,” Lee says. “Why
would you limit it to export processing
zones?”
■ Countries must take steps to
discourage imports of goods made
with forced labor.“Really vague and
really weak,” Lee says: “It could be
posting a notice or making a speech.”
“We kind of thought, maybe
it was crazy to think this, that
because we had a Democrat in
the White House we would re-
ally build on that labor chapter
and do something much more
far-reaching,” Lee said. “We
had a lot of ideas that we gave
the Administration, virtually all
of which were ignored.”
Besides the labor chapter,
TPP also comes with bilateral
side agreements known as “la-
bor consistency plans” between
the United States and Vietnam,
Malaysia, and Brunei. The plans
lay out how the countries are go-
ing to bring their labor laws into
compliance with the TPP’s labor
chapter.
“They didn’t share with us
one single word of the consis-
tency agreements prior to [re-
lease],” Lee said. “And we
asked for it about a thousand
times.”
Taken at face value, the com-
mitments are significant. Viet-
“Once you read the TPP text, you see
why they kept it hidden for so long.”
— Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the
labor-backed Citizens Trade Campaign
■ It gives foreign investors the right
to sue governments if new
regulations lessen their expected
profits. This so-called Investor-State
Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process
undermines democracy and
governments’ ability to regulate in the
public interest. It also gives foreign
firms greater rights than domestic
firms under U.S. law and in U.S. courts.
If TPP is ratified, more than 1,000
corporations in TPP nations, with more
than 9,200 subsidiaries in the United
States, could launch ISDS cases against
the U.S. government. The suits would
be handled in special tribunals staffed
nam, for example, says it will al-
low free and independent unions
for the first time. But the plan
gives Vietnam five years to do
that. And if it fails, there would
be up to two years of consulta-
tions. Only then could there be
trade sanctions — and that’s if
the U.S. president wanted to en-
force the commitment. Thus
TPP gives Vietnam and the oth-
ers seven years of tariff-free ac-
cess to the U.S. market with no
enforceable commitment to al-
low workers to unionize.
“We didn’t think Vietnam
was a great candidate to be in a
free trade agreement with the
United States,” Lee said. “You
can’t drop independent and
democratic unions into a non-
democratic country.… We’ve
been saying to the government
all along: Listen, we understand
Vietnam is pretty far away from
being able to comply with the
[labor] standards,” Lee said. “In
that case Vietnam should not get
the full benefits of the agree-
ment until it is able to come into
compliance.” The Obama Ad-
ministration didn’t heed that.
Was it worth it — serving on
a labor advisory panel for an ad-
ministration that didn’t take la-
bor’s advice? Lee won’t burn
any bridges, but says the whole
process was incredibly frustrat-
ing: “Even compared to past ad-
ministrations, this administra-
tion was not very forthcoming
with cleared advisers. We did
not get useful timely informa-
tion.” Lee and the other labor
advisers got access to the initial
U.S. negotiating positions — on
trade in services or investment
rules, or labor commitments, for
example — but years would go
by and they never got access to
the updated negotiating texts as
other countries came in with
their positions.
by three private sector attorneys, with
none of the transparency or due
process standards of the regular court
system.
■ TPP is a “dock on” agreement.TPP
is an open-ended agreement which
other countries can join at almost any
time. So it could be infinitely
expandable, whatever its weaknesses.
And it isn’t clear whether Congress
would vote on each new entrant, or
whether the president could decree it.
During the Fast Track debate, an
amendment that would have specified
a Congressional vote failed.