US trade pacts at risk over business-labor clash
Reuters | Thursday, April 19, 2007
U.S. trade pacts at risk over business-labor clash
By Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Bush administration efforts to reach a deal with the U.S. Congress on trade were thrown into doubt on Thursday as U.S. business and labor groups clashed over the core issue in the talks.
The Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives sternly rebuked a leading U.S. business group for raising concerns about possible challenges to U.S. labor laws.
The National Association of Manufacturers’ letter expressing concern that a Democratic proposal could expose U.S. labor laws to a foreign challenge "is a gross distortion of the facts that does a disservice to the continuing effort to reach a bipartisan consensus on the future of trade policy," Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, said in a statement. Rangel said.
Touching on the central issue in the talks between the administration and Congress, NAM President John Engler wrote that his group supported a "balanced approach" to increasing protections for foreign workers in trade pacts, but could not accept any provision that would expose U.S. labor laws to a foreign challenge.
"If that were the price of obtaining new trade agreements, we would not be able to be supportive," Engler said.
Engler’s reaction was to a proposal Rangel and Rep. Sander Levin, a Michigan Democrat, have made to include a provision in free trade agreements requiring the United States and its trading partner to abide by core International Labor Organization standards, such as the freedom to organize and bargain collectively and freedom from child labor.
The language would affect pending trade agreements with Peru, Colombia and Panama, as well as a fourth pact with South Korea expected to be signed before the end of June.
’UNACCEPTABLE’
"Many of our labor laws, although of very high quality, do not follow ILO standards," Engler said in his letter. "In Michigan, where I served as governor, state law forbids public employees from striking. For state constitutions or laws to be subject to a foreign nation’s challenge would be unacceptable."
Rangel and Levin presented the Bush administration in late March with a detailed proposal for "A New Trade Policy for America," but publicly have released just a one-page description of the plan.
That document, available on the committee’s Web site, "require countries to adopt, maintain, and enforce basic international labor standards in their domestic laws and practices."
In his response to NAM, Rangel made his first public comment on additional details of the Democratic proposal while accusing NAM of spreading inaccuracies about it.
"There is nothing in the policy outline we’ve delivered or the discussions we’ve had to suggest for a minute that we would yield sovereignty," Rangel said.
Under the Democratic proposal, labor issues are subject to challenge only in the specific case where there is an impact on trade between the two nations, Rangel said. Therefore, Engler’s example of state limitations on strikes by public sector employees is erroneous, he said.
Meanwhile, Thea Lee, policy director for the AFL-CIO labor federation, said it would be "hypocritical and unworkable" for the United States to insist developing countries respect core ILO standards, while giving itself a free pass.
"If the business community really would rather have no trade agreement than one that protects worker rights, that’s OK with us. They’re the ones that want the trade agreements," Lee said in an interview.
Lee rejected suggestions that the AFL-CIO wants to use trade pacts to force changes in U.S. labor law, but said it would welcome any challenge that highlights where U.S. law falls short of ILO standards.
"We’ve never considered this as the way we’re going to go about changing U.S. labor laws because it would be a very ineffective way to do that," Lee said.
