With hearings on the controversial Central American Free Trade Agreement expected just after Congress returns from its Easter recess, unionists nationwide turned up the heat by lobbying lawmakers against the trade treaty.

And they were aided by GOP disunity--and virtually unanimous Democratic opposition--to the job-losing pro-business pact.

Hearings in rural Minnesota and other farm areas showed that agricultural interests, a key backer of previous trade pacts, are dubious at best about CAFTA's benefits.

That's because CAFTA would remove virtually all Central American and U.S. tariffs on farm products, including several heavily subsidized U.S. goods, notably sugar. NAFTA had fewer such threats because there was little farm-good competition.

Farmers' doubts are leading some congressional Republicans to question CAFTA, which is modeled on NAFTA, the controversial job-losing 10-year-old U.S.-Canada-Mexico "free trade" treaty that President Clinton pushed through over labor opposition.

Meanwhile, House Democrats, listening to their constituents, also realize that even if they back GOP President Bush on CAFTA, he'd pull every political track in the book to beat them next year, have decided it isn't worth it to support his trade pact.

"Bush negotiated an agreement that will utterly fail to create good jobs at home or promote equitable and sustainable development in Central America," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said when Bush signed CAFTA--but did not send it to the GOP-run Congress--last year. "This agreement will leave workers, family farmers, the environment, and communities more vulnerable, while enriching and empowering corporate elites.

"CAFTA would reward companies that ship jobs overseas with greater access to the U.S. market, more freedom to violate workers' rights with impunity, and the ability to challenge government regulations enacted in the public interest," he added.

It "contains no effective new protections for workers' rights and actually removes existing protections, leaving the interests of ordinary working men and women out in the cold."

Workers made those same points in their meetings with lawmakers during the congressional recess, the AFL-CIO reported.

"If CAFTA is anything like NAFTA, we can't afford it," Susan Morley, who lost her job when cookware maker Mirro Co. moved production from Manitowoc, Wis., to Mexico and China in September 2003, putting some 850 workers out of work, told the federation. "NAFTA should have been rescinded and we shouldn?t sign any more of these. After a while, we won't make anything and we won?t be able to earn enough to support a family."

Though Bush calls CAFTA a good deal for workers, the Labor Advisory Committee to his own U.S. Trade Representative says otherwise. The USTR's office claims its advisory committees back CAFTA, but its own 46-member labor panel, chaired by former USWA President George Becker, was harshly critical of Bush's CAFTA.

"CAFTA neither fully meets the negotiating objectives laid out by Congress, nor promotes the economic interest of the United States," the group said. "The agreement clearly fails to meet some congressional negotiating objectives, and it barely complies with others. It repeats many of the same mistakes of NAFTA, and is likely to lead to the same deteriorating trade balances, lost jobs, and workers' rights violations NAFTA created."

The administration, however, did not listen to the panel--or to the workers who are talking with their lawmakers.

"Nearly 80 percent of Central American products already enter the U.S. duty-free," the USTR office says. "America's market is already open. CAFTA opens the region's markets to goods, services, and farm products from the United States."

"Labor provisions of CAFTA will not protect the core rights of workers in any of the six countries in the agreement, and it represents a huge step backwards from the Jordan FTA and our unilateral trade preference programs," the labor committee responded. CAFTA's "enforcement procedures completely exclude obligations for governments to meet international standards on workers' rights.

"Our trade policy must improve economic growth, create jobs, raise wages and benefits, and allow all workers to exercise their rights in the workplace. Too many trade agreements had exactly the opposite result," added the group, which includes representatives from the AFL-CIO, USWA, IBEW, UNITE, the Teamsters and many other unions.

"We believe workers must be able to participate meaningfully in the decisions our government makes on trade, based on a process that is open, democratic, and fair. CAFTA fails to meet these basic goals. Like NAFTA, CAFTA will most likely lead to bigger deficits and fewer jobs. CAFTA would reward companies that destroy American jobs by providing companies with greater access for their goods and services back into the U.S., (and) more freedom to violate workers' rights with impunity."

This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

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