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U.S.-South Korea Trade Talks End with Arrests of Union Activists |
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Trade talks ended in Seattle over the proposed South Korea-U.S. trade deal this weekend, but not before 15 union activists and allies were arrested as part of a protest against the negotiations, which locked workers and environmentalists out of the talks. The Washington State Labor Council’s Robby Stern and Jeff Johnson, along with several leaders of the South Korean labor movement, were arrested and later released after protesting outside the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) negotiations in Seattle. In an e-mail, Stern said:
I was proud to be arrested alongside my brothers and sisters, these courageous and inspirational labor leaders from South Korea.
In what would be the biggest trade pact since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, the deal would further erode the rights of South Korean workers, many of whom now work long hours in unsafe conditions. With the King County Labor Council spearheading the week of action events, the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions pushed for the KORUS trade agreement to include enforceable workers’ rights clauses and environmental protections.
As Stern told the The Seattle Times, trade deals aren’t just about the interests of multinational corporations:
It’s not about being anti-globalization; globalization is a reality. It’s a matter of globalization closing out the future interests of people and workers and the environment….
Speaking Sept. 6, as the protests got under way outside the KORUS trade talks, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff framed the fight as the start of international labor partnerships that break down racism, xenophobia, militarism, fear and everything that corporate bosses use to divide workers.
Today we begin the sometimes difficult but absolutely critical work of reaching around the world to workers and their unions and federations and allied organizations to build a network and a movement to reassert workers rights and right to organize, to reassert human rights, to fight trade deals that protect the rights of capital, the wealthy and the elites, trade deals that protect intellectual property rights but that don’t protect the rights of men and women to make a living, that don’t protect the freedom to form unions and to freedom of association, that don’t protect children from predatory employers and trade deals that value the obscene wealth of a few—over the dignity of humankind.
In July, 170,000 South Korean union members staged a general strike to protest the trade deal. In June, a unified U.S. and South Korean union movement signed a declaration opposing KORUS.
The declaration—signed by the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU)—says KORUS, like other trade agreements pushed by the Bush White House, fails to protect workers’ rights and the environment and undermines governments’ ability to regulate public services while strongly protecting the investments and profits of multinational corporations.
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