MAINE LABOR UPDATE
July 4, 2007

 FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK
Ed Gorham
President
Maine AFL-CIO

"FAST TRACK" DIES - TRADE ISSUES LIVE
Struggle Against Detrimental Trade Pacts Continues
Trade Will Be a Top 2008 Election Issue

    "Fast Track" expired at the end of June. Labor unions everywhere celebrated and all believe that we should drive a stake into its heart so it never rises again to cost workers millions of jobs and lead to trillions of dollars more in national debt.

    It has been a long and difficult five years but now we have the opportunity to strike off in a new direction when it comes to trade
 

Yes or No Vote

   The Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), also known as "fast track" trade legislation, allows the White House to negotiate trade deals that Congress must approve or reject without making changes.
    Fast Track delegated away Congress' exclusive constitutional authority over trade - allowing the executive branch alone to choose trading partners, set the substantive terms of trade policy, and even sign trade agreements, all before Congress ever voted.
    The controversial delegation mechanism allowed Congress only a yes or no vote on trade agreements after they had been negotiated and signed. By its very design Fast Track shut out public and congressional oversight.

One Way Street

    In a 2002 power grab George W. Bush, struggled through a two-year, high pressure campaign that featured a one-vote margin that unleashed Fast Track again.
            Fast Track and the trade agreements reached under it have been a one-way street to the bottom for all workers in Maine and the nation.
    Misguided trade policies have exacerbated stagnant wages and growing job insecurity in the United States. The nation has  lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001, many to offshore outsourcing, while an increasing number of white-collar service-sector jobs are also at risk. At the same time, our trade deficit has ballooned to nearly $800 billion.

Maine Jobs Lost
    Thousands of these lost jobs have been in Maine.
    From January 1993 through June 2005 there were 145 Maine companies certified under the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program trade act. It is estimated that 18,800 jobs were lost in these companies.
     This does not cover all trade related layoffs during this time. The TAA program only includes manufacturing and not service jobs, despite the fact that offshoring of services has increased in Maine.
     Also, upstream and downstream suppliers and customers of manufacturing plants were not eligible for TAA until 2002 and many have not applied for TAA assistance. Other jobs that have been lost due to the impact of manufacturing jobs leaving our communities are not included.
 

Ship Jobs Overseas

    Since 2000, corporations have shipped more than 525,000 white-collar overseas, according to the AFL-CIO department of professional employees.  Some estimates say up to 14 million middle-class jobs could be exported out of America in the next 10 years.
    Accountants, software engineers—even X-ray technicians—are losing their jobs as corporations look for low-wage workers in countries such as India and China.
    At the same time, 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since the Bush took office, many of them because corporations have shipped them to countries such as China, which is creating a booming manufacturing industry on the backs of its poorly-paid workers.

New Jobs - Low Wages
    Meanwhile, the jobs being created in the United States often are low-wage jobs that don’t offer health coverage or ensure retirement security. Nearly one-quarter of the nation’s workers labor in jobs that generally pay less than the $8.85 hourly wage the U.S. government says it takes to keep a family of four out of poverty. Sixty percent of such workers are women, and many are people of color.
    In the past many white collar workers have felt that the combination of higher education and specialized skills has protected them from the massive job losses caused by factory closings and corporate moves to nations that pay workers pennies per hour and avoid all types of worker benefits and environmental controls. They need to wake up and realize the rapid growth of "off shoring" of high skill work.
            To give just one example: While the manufacturing sector lost 15% of its jobs from March 2001 to March 2004, the software-producing industries lost an even-higher 16% share of their jobs. Moreover, jobs in software occupations within the manufacturing sector shrank even faster than overall manufacturing jobs. Many questions about the trend to "off shore" top jobs are answered by the Economic Policy Institute report at: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issueguide_offshoring_faq

Impact to Come
            The expiration of Fast Track may be celebrated but its impact will be felt for some time to come.

            Fast Track's legacy includes millions of peasant farmers who have been displaced by fast-tracked trade deals, workers whose wages have remained stagnant since Fast Track's hatching in the mid-70's, millions of Americans made ill by fast-tracked trade deals that required food imports not meeting U.S. safety standards, the evisceration of the U.S. manufacturing base, and much more damage.
    Even with Fast Track’s death, it will have an afterlife of sorts.
    Trade agreements signed before it expired June 30—including Colombia, Korea, Peru and Panama—will fall under Fast Track rules.

    National AFL-CIO President John Sweeney made clear that the AFL-CIO will vigorously oppose the flawed deals with Colombia and Korea if they come before Congress. 

    In Colombia, trade unionists continue to be murdered and threatened with alarming regularity, and their murderers operate with impunity. Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for union members. Some 2,300 union leaders have been killed there since 1991 and only 37 people have been convicted in the murders.

    The Colombian government must show workers and the international community that it has both the capacity and the will to tackle impunity and end the violence before we even consider signing a free trade agreement.

Bad Korea Deal

    The proposed trade agreement with Korea is one-sided and decidedly against the interests of manufacturers and workers in the U.S. Our battered manufacturing sector simply cannot withstand another flawed trade deal that purports to open foreign markets, while instead serving to exacerbate the current imbalanced and unequal trading relationship. If the president sends this flawed deal to Congress, it should be rejected.

    In March, the AFL-CIO Executive Council adopted a statement outlining the principles that should be include in trade policy, including strong and enforceable labor and human standards and environmental protections. Click here to read the full statement.

Big Election Issue
    It is clear that the legacy of Fast Track, the upcoming proposed new trade agreements, the trade actions of Congress and the trade positions of the various presidential candidates will play a strong role in the 2008 elections.
    Thirty-nine new House Democrats have sent a letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) stressing their “vocal stand against the administration’s misguided trade agenda” had been vital to their electoral success. In fact, the exporting of U.S. jobs and bad trade deals are among the issues working families say prompted them to go to the polls and make major changes Nov. 7.

            We have made some progress but there is a lot of hard work ahead of us before we achieve organized labor's goal of assuring that working families in Maine and the nation enjoy their fair share of the benefits of the global economy.

Trade Solutions
            The issue of trade is both emotional and complicated but it is not without solutions - concrete steps that can be taken to benefit the United States and American workers.
            The destruction of U.S. jobs is not occurring on a level playing field resulting from neutral policies. Rather, a broad range of state and federal policies allow, facilitate and even reward the destruction of U.S. jobs. Government policies lavish tax breaks, government contracts, and easy access to the U.S. market on companies that destroy good jobs and exploit lax workers’ rights to produce overseas. These misguided policies hurt America’s working families and fail to promote equitable economic development in other countries.
    Among the biggest changes needed are those in the area of taxes and trade agreements.

Corporate Tax Breaks
    Current law allows companies to defer paying taxes on their overseas income indefinitely while deducting many of the expenses associated with moving offshore – this provides a double subsidy to U.S. companies that ship work overseas, effectively penalizing those companies that keep jobs in the U.S. Ending overseas tax breaks would generate an additional $7 to 12 billion a year in tax revenue and eliminate the perverse incentive to move work abroad to avoid paying taxes.

Trade Agreements
    Trade deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), create new rights but no responsibilities, for companies that ship jobs overseas. NAFTA contains strong legal protections for companies investing abroad and guaranteed access for their products into the U.S. market. But NAFTA provides no comparable protections for the rights of workers and the environment, allowing companies to escape their international obligations by shipping work overseas. We must fundamentally reform flawed trade rules to hold companies accountable for respecting workers’ rights no matter where they produce.

            As we move toward the 2008 election we should be aware of these and other policy solutions, discuss them with candidates and demand that they take clear positions on the issue of trade.

            A complete list of the policy solutions to this broad problem is available. Click here for the AFL-CIO suggested Policy Solutions to Shipping Jobs Overseas.

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