The Free Trade Area of the Americas ministerial meeting in Miami faced protests from U.S. labor unions, joined by labor leaders from other countries south of the U.S. border.
And contrary to the way the media portrayed labor opposition to the FTAA, the overriding position of the AFL-CIO and its member unions was neither nationalist in tone, nor anti-trade. The officially stated position of the AFL-CIO is that the problem with the FTAA negotiations was not that they promoted trade and globalization, but that they did so in a manner that promoted the interests of multinational corporations at the expense of workers on all sides of national borders.
Organized labor's objections to the FTAA can be summarized into a few basic points: (1) the FTAA process is undemocratic because only corporate interests are represented, while labor and environmental and popular voices are ignored; (2) national sovereignty for all nations is compromised by FTAA-style pacts because unelected, unaccountable corporate tribunals can override national legislation to protect workers, the environment or consumers as forbidden "trade barriers"; (3) labor or environmental protections are either left out of these pacts or are included as meaningless unenforceable platitudes while investor and intellectual property rights are strongly written and enforced; and (4) jobs are lost in higher-wage countries and exploitation grows in lower-wage countries as a consequence of the flaws in the pacts and the way they are drafted.
These arguments are not narrowly nationalistic, and the labor movement cannot fairly be accused of being opposed to all forms of trade or globalization for employing them. In fact, the popular perception of "free-traders" supporting the FTAA in conflict with "protectionist" labor unions opposing world commerce is fundamentally wrong. If "free" means "determined under conditions set democratically without coercion," there were probably many more "free-traders" in the streets protesting the FTAA ministerial than there were in the negotiations. And the protections being promoted by the U.S. delegation for investment and intellectual property rights are more "protectionist" than the labor movement's call for mandatory adherence to universally accepted labor rights as defined by the World Labor Organization and the U.N.
Now that the FTAA ministerial week is over, what have we learned about the future of the FTAA and similar pacts? Despite self-congratulatory rhetoric that the ministerial was a success, it is apparent that nothing substantive was accomplished by the negotiators, other than an agreement to disagree. By allowing nations to opt out of whatever clauses they don't like, the ministerial meeting merely ratified a stalemate that made the original FTAA conception impossible.
From the point of view of workers and of labor movements in the Americas, one further prediction can safely be made. Either the voices of labor and environmentalists and their numerous allies in the faith and other communities will be incorporated more fully into future negotiations, or there will continue to be mass protests. Deals that are merely "of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations" and their allied banking interests will not be acceptable to free trade unions.
The best hope for real progress toward expanded trade and commerce among the peoples of the Americas is that trade negotiators will be forced in the future to include the voice of labor, environmentalists and their allies. Then, and only then, will we have increased trade based on equitable principles that benefit everybody.
Bruce Nissen is director of the Research Center for Labor Research and Studies at Florida International University in Miami.
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