How, Exactly, Does Trade Bring Prosperity?
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This is a cross-post from Huffington Post by Stan Sorscher, labor representative for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace/IFPTE Local 2001 (SPEEA/IFPTE).
I work for a labor union in the aerospace industry. We are 100 percent in favor of trade. We make products the rest of the world wants to buy.
With increased trade we expect more prosperity. Instead, we see the American economy de-industrializing and job security at historic lows. So, what’s going wrong?
[The chart above] tells the story. Since the [North American Free Trade Agreement] (NAFTA) and [the World Trade Organization] (WTO) took effect around 1995, our trade deficit has widened steadily, except for the 2008 crash, which cut imports more than exports.
Next Up in Trade Agreements: Trans-Pacific Partnership
Celeste Drake in the AFL-CIO Legislative Department sends us this.
When the recent APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit convened in Honolulu, Hawaii, Nov. 8-14, the 21-member organization released the “Outline of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement” (TPP), a proposed pact that would include nine APEC members: the United States, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Peru, Chile, New Zealand and Australia.
The agreement is President Obama’s first opportunity to negotiate a brand-new trade agreement that’s not based on the model of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), one that would provide jobs and opportunities for working families rather than solely benefiting global corporations.
Mexican Leaders Call for Solidarity Against Injustices
Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this report.
Mexican independent union leaders traveled to Washington, D.C., to brief, educate and express urgency to congressional leaders on the labor struggles and issues they’re currently facing in Mexico. Members of the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME) have remained in Mexico City’s main square (Zocalo) for the past six months, demanding justice over the administration’s war on unions. The government fired the SME’s 44,000 members in October 2009 and over the past two years, the fight over the privatization of electricity and the repression of one of Mexico’s oldest and most democratic unions has escalated. The briefing shed light on this ongoing struggle and the need for U.S. solidarity.
Sponsored by the United Steelworkers (USW), the AFL-CIO and Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) on behalf of the Congressional Labor Caucus and International Worker Rights Caucus, the briefing focused on cross-border economic, social and family ties that bind the United States and Mexico. Mexican workers shared stories of how workers’ rights in Mexico have diminished since the approval of NAFTA. With the pending Colombia, Panama and Korea trade agreements in mind, workers emphasized that NAFTA and free trade agreements lower living standards for both U.S. and Mexican workers and have increased violence.
Report: NAFTA Has Cost 683,000 Jobs—and Counting
To date, 682,900 U.S. jobs have been lost or displaced since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994, a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study finds. The main reason for the job loss is a $97.2 billion trade deficit with Mexico. In 1993, one year before NAFTA was implemented, the United States had a $1.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico that supported nearly 30,000 U.S. jobs.
All 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have seen jobs lost or displaced to Mexico in the past 17 years, says Robert Scott, EPI’s senior international economist and author of “Heading South: U.S.-Mexico trade and job displacement after NAFTA.”
U.S. Now Lags China in Production; Newt Says Create Jobs in Mexico
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Two recent items on the economy struck home in the past few days. One, the United States no longer is the world’s major goods producer. Our nation has now been eclipsed by China, which ended the United States’ 110-year run as the largest goods producer.
The response by the U.S. Council on Competitiveness to this little-reported shift is as wrongheaded as it is dangerous. Said Deborah Wince-Smith, chief executive of the business lobby:
This shows the need for the U.S. to compete in the future not on the basis of commodity manufacturing but on innovation and new kinds of services that are driven by production industries.
AFL-CIO-Mexico Action Plan Focuses on Economy, Labor Rights
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The AFL-CIO and the major independent Mexican labor federation, Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT), have agreed on a joint action plan to bring economic and social development to both countries.
The plan, signed by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and the three co-presidents of UNT, calls for the two federations to work jointly to rebuild the industrial base in the United States and Mexico. They will work together across industries to ensure that jobs in these industries are good jobs and workers are represented by unions and to coordinate bargaining across borders.
Anti-Union, Far-Right Groups Push and Pay for Republican Agenda
They come with patriotic-, populist- and even progressive-sounding names and deep, deep pockets. But Americans for Job Security, FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity and other groups whose election ads are strangling the airwaves are part of a far-right, anti-union, special-interest group cadre trying to buy the election.
These organizations—nothing more, really, than a hit team for corporate and extreme conservative Republican interests—are spending tens and tens of millions of dollars to enact an agenda that would set working families back by decades:
- Attacking collective bargaining rights and opposing the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
- Enacting job-killing “free” trade deals like NAFTA and CAFTA.
- Cutting taxes for millionaires while leaving the rest of us behind.
A new report by American Rights at Work lifts the curtains and shines the spotlight on who is really behind these groups, how much they are spending, their track records and corporate connections.
Beware: Job Killer Candidates Lurk in Ohio
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Andy Richards, AFL-CIO Field Communications assistant in Ohio, sends us this report.
Beware of the Ohio Job Killers lurking among us. Outsourcing our jobs have been their agenda for years. And now, they are asking voters to disregard their job-killing record and put them in charge of some of Ohio’s most important political positions. Who are these job killers?
Job Killer #1: John Kasich: “If it’s in the Yellow Pages, outsource it.” This is the mantra of gubernatorial candidate and former Lehman Brothers executive John Kasich. But it doesn’t end there. There is no doubt John Kasich interests lie with Wall Street. Kasich worked for years as a managing director at Lehman Brothers, one of the Wall Street firms that helped create the economic crisis that caused the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in Ohio.
During his time there, he helped to move Ohio pension fund investments to Lehman Brothers. Lehman went bankrupt in 2008 and, as a result, the Ohio pension fund lost hundreds of millions of dollars. For his work at Lehman, Kasich was paid more than $1 million in salary and bonuses in 2008 alone. Click here for videos on Kasich’s job-killing record.
Ohio’s Kasich has Long Record as Job Killer
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It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich wants to outsource and privatize state government jobs (click here for more from Labor 2010 in Ohio). While he was in Congress, Kasich voted to send tens of thousands American jobs overseas.
Kasich voted for NAFTA and trade deals with China that, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), cost more than 140,000 Ohio jobs. But when Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland was in Congress, he voted to no on those bills because as he said: “I felt they take jobs out of Ohio and America.”
Just as devastating to the workers who saw their jobs outsourced, Kasich, while a member of the board of directors at Invacare, signed off in 2006 on sending 225 Elyria jobs to China and Mexico.
Check out more on the Invacare job loss here .
Trumka: Immigration Reform Crucial For New Economy
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The United States needs a new economic strategy to replace the failed model of the past 30 years–one that focuses on developing a workforce with world class skills and world class rights and trade policies that serve the interests of the American people, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the City Club of Cleveland today.
But we cannot talk about any meaningful workforce strategy without confronting our own “contradictions, hypocrisy and history on immigration,” he said. In a dynamic global economy in the 21st century,
we simply cannot afford to have millions of hard-working people without legal protections, without meaningful access to higher education, shut off from the high-wage, high-productivity economy.
It is just too costly to waste all that talent and strength and drive.
(Trumka will be live on “America’s Workforce” radio show on WERE Radio 1490 AM at 4 p.m. EDT. Click here to hear the broadcast.)
