New Congress likely to vote on trade deals, pipeline construction

The Republican-run 114th Congress is likely to push through “fast track” trade promotion authority in the early weeks of the 2015 session. Action also is expected on the Keystone pipeline, education and postal “reform.”

Republicans, who took control of the U.S. Senate in the November elections while holding onto their majority in the U.S. House, will have the opportunity to push through many of the items on their agenda. In the case of “fast track,” which allows the administration to ram through free trade deals without any changes, they’ll have the support of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Fast-track’s adoption would grease the wheels for passage of three trade deals proposed by Obama, led by the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other Pacific Rim nations. Neither TPP – nor the other deals proposed with Europe and covering trade in services – include meaningful protections for workers, consumers or the environment.

Labor’s strategy to battle fast-track will be “to pick key congressional districts” where unions and their allies, notably in the environmental movement, “will mobilize for fair trade,” Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen told a recent conference call of union activists. He expects votes by the end of February.  

Other issues on the agenda for the Congress that convened Tuesday:

The Keystone pipeline
New Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says one of the first Senate votes this month will be on legislation ordering Obama to approve construction of the northern segment of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from the Canada-Montana border to Guthrie, Okla. The southern segment, from Guthrie to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, has been already built – under a Project Labor Agreement – and is operating.

The PLA, which Keystone’s sponsor, TransCanada, signed with the Operating Engineers, the Laborers, the Teamsters and other construction unions six years ago, mandates the firm employ union construction workers to erect the pipeline. That cause has united U.S. construction unions, who cite a State Department study of the project in saying it would create tens of thousands of jobs.

But other unions, led by National Nurses United, oppose Keystone. They dispute that same study’s findings that Keystone would have little to no environmental impact even though it would carry 800,000 barrels daily of “dirty” oil from Albertan tar sands to the Gulf Coast.

Production of that oil would increase gases that lead to global warming, the opposing unions state. And once the pipeline is built, they add, it would require only a few dozen workers to permanently run it.

Immigration
Under pressure from some members, the GOP majorities may shelve comprehensive immigration reform. But if they don’t, immigration and fast-track “are intertwined,” says Communications Workers Legislative Director Shane Larson.

“Corporate ‘free trade’ deals accelerate the pace of migration to the U.S.” by workers in other countries, notably in Latin America, who lose their jobs, farms and livelihoods as a result, he explains. The TPP would particularly encourage another wave of migrants: Latin American residents now toiling in factories that moved from the U.S. after prior “free trade” pacts would suffer when their employers pack up and decamp for Vietnam, Brunei and other even-cheaper, more-repressive TPP nations.

“We have to deal with the root causes of the migration” of undocumented workers to the U.S. – the economic impact of the free-trade pacts – adds Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “And when they come here, they’re pitted against the native workers, and that lowers the living standards of all.”

Weakening the NLRB and worker rights
New Senate Labor Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., will reintroduce his legislation to weaken the National Labor Relations Board. He would convert it to a politically evenly split (3-3) six-person board, mandate that four votes are needed to approve any action, and would give companies further opportunities to slow down and challenge union representation elections. McConnell is Alexander’s co-sponsor, signaling their cause will be a prime goal of Senate Republicans.

Another Labor Committee member, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., will try to curb powers of the NLRB’s general counsel, the board’s top enforcement officer. Specifically, Burr objects to current General Counsel Richard Griffin’s decision that, in many cases, big franchise chains such as McDonald’s and their local franchise-holders are joint employers. That means, Griffin says, they are also responsible for jointly obeying, or in many cases breaking, labor law. Burr wants to negate Griffin’s initiative, legislatively.

Rewriting No Child Left Behind
Both the Republicans and teachers unions dislike the George W. Bush administration’s 14-year-old signature education law, but for different reasons. The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association say NCLB puts too much emphasis on “teach to the test,” and was written to make it easier to “flunk” public schools – especially majority-minority schools – and transfer their federal aid to private, usually religious schools. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and Right Wingers say NCLB exerts too much federal control of local schools.

Postal “reform”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who will chair the Senate panel dealing with postal legislation, is expected to push “reform” of U.S. Postal Service finances, allegedly ridding it of its red ink, by letting USPS management declare “bankruptcy” and void union contracts.

But where’s the red ink?  USPS earned more than $1 billion in profits on operations last year, Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando notes. The only reason for the deficit was a 2006 “reform” law from a prior GOP-run Congress ordering the agency to pre-fund 75 years’ worth of future retiree health care benefits in 10 years. That costs USPS $5.5 billion yearly.

Postal Workers President Mark Dimondstein adds that GOP postal “reform” plans, unlike those postal unionists back to increase USPS revenues and services, are thinly veiled attempts at privatization. The GOP, with Obama agreeing, would also eliminate Saturday service and individual mailboxes, among other services.

The four postal unions – the Letter Carriers, the Postal Workers, the Rural Letter Carriers and the Mail Handlers/Laborers – have joined together in an unprecedented coalition to both mobilize the public against so-called “reforms” that would destroy their jobs and the USPS and for the alternative legislation. The unions stopped an unsatisfactory “reform” bill in the last Congress, pushed by a bipartisan Senate coalition led by then-committee chairman Tom Carper, D-Del.