John McCain and Colombia

By Joel Wendland

John McCain is campaigning in Colombia. He is there advocating free trade deals without preconditions – that is worker and environmental protections.

Free trade deals have cost US workers hundreds of thousands of jobs and a race to the bottom in wages, benefits, and workers rights. (See here for example.)

John McCain's enthusiasm for just such an arrangement with Colombia, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, prompted AFL-CIO President John Sweeney to say:

The business leaders McCain will talk to on this visit have done very well under these deals, not surprisingly. However, working people in Canada, Mexico, and Colombia have borne the brunt of these failed corporate trade policies – just like workers here in the United States.

The issue goes beyond trade agreements. We need a global economic framework that works for ordinary people. Working people around the world are clamoring for real change, not agreements that benefit the corporate elite at the expense of working families.

Sweeney also discussed the Colombia government's poor human rights record when it comes to unions.

A recent statement by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs adds:

Colombia, touted by many, including the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, as a bastion of conservative democratic ideals in a region quickly succumbing to the democratic left, is currently experiencing a major crisis which exposes the flimsy nature of the country’s institutions. With fully one-fifth of the country’s legislators accused of connections to illegal armed groups and the legitimacy of Uribe’s current presidential term being called into question by a recent Supreme Court decision, McCain’s unquestioning support of the current administration is just one more example of his ill-advised and ill-informed makeshift regional policy. Moreover, the Arizona senator’s offerings on Latin America, merely a repetition of the Bush administration’s policies that vacillate between neglect of the region and unwarranted villainization of leftist governments, is scheduled to offer nothing new to the US regional foreign policy dialogue.

Nothing new. Just a third Bush term.

John McCain Gives Working Families the Finger

By Joel Wendland

Yesterday John McCain held a town hall meeting at Worth & Co. in Bucks County, PA. The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry has investigated that company for intentionally refusing to pay workers the minimum wage. Pennsylvania officials say the company underpaid workers by more than $140,000. There is no doubt that McCain's actions yesterday were a deliberate statement on how he feels about working people and their rights.

Here's a brief run-down on McCain's record on working-class issues – just in case you're still in the dark:

helped block minimum wage hike in 2005

voted to filibuster minimum wage hike in 2007

compared unions to monopolies

voted to block the Employee Free Choice Act in 2007, allowing workers to form unions

opposed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2008, which would have made it easier for women workers to sue for equal pay

McCain also failed to show up to vote last week on a measure that would have extended unemployment benefits for workers.

But McCain did pander to Big Oil on offshore drilling, and promised the most profitable companies in the country billions in new tax cuts.

By contrast, Obama backs the Fair Pay Act, for equal pay for women, would sign the Employee Free Choice Act, has proposed indexing the minimum wage to inflation, and would appoint NLRB members who would protect workers rights, wages, health and safety and so on.

John McCain favors free trade at all costs, especially to the rights of working people and the environment. He told Midwest workers that he has given up on bringing back manufacturing jobs and that more jobs would be lost under his administration.

Obama believes environmental protections and workers rights (to join unions, health and safety protections, and basic wage rights) should be central features of any international trade agreement. He voted against CAFTA and opposed the Colombia Free Trade Agreement for those reasons.

Trade is a key workers' rights issue, because if agreements prioritize trade over workers and the environment, those agreements will make it cheaper for companies to super-exploit workers and the environment in other countries, causing job losses here and the drive to bottom everywhere.

If workers are protected in all countries, however, companies have no reason to go.

On creating new jobs, McCain has offered contradictory and incoherent plans on the most important new areas staked out for job growth: green energy and green jobs.

While he is offering prizes to the biggest polluters and proposes to tie the economy forever to oil with new plans to drill offshore and in protected Arctic regions, Obama plans real investments in research and development of renewable energy alternatives, green infrastructure growth, and alternative energies.

Though John McCain has tried to lie about and hide his support for privatizing Social Security and his plans to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits, Obama opposes privatization and has offered plans to improve the financial security of the program by raising the income cap on the Social Security payroll tax to ensure that the very wealthiest Americans pay their fair share into the system.

The list on the clear and meaningful differences on working-class issues between McCain and Obama is much longer, but you get the idea.

Working people simply can't afford the risk of John McCain in the White House. In fact, we can't afford not spending every effort to work for his defeat, on ensuring an Obama victory, and on strengthening pro-worker Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress.

Tell Congress: Support the TRADE Act

From Change to Win:

The time has come for a new trade and globalization model - one that ensures economic security here at home while offering opportunities for sustainable development in countries around the world.

The TRADE Act is a new bill just introduced in Congress that would make this a reality by moving from the broken, discredited "free" trade model to a more equitable fair trade system. It would articulate the outcomes that any future trade deals will be expected to produce, and require that existing trade deals be renegotiated to remove their inequities.

Tell your Members of Congress to support the TRADE Act by signing on as co-sponsors today!

Discontent with Bush-McCain Policies on the Rise

A new poll by CBS/ NY Times shows that 81% of Americans see the country as on the wrong track.

A majority, about 7 in 10, identified the Iraq war, the economy, health care, and the energy crisis as the most pressing issues. Most said the government needs to play a larger role in the economy to help homeowners and to stem the loss of jobs rather than big banks. About 2 out of 3 people identified "free trade" as a problem for the country.

Only about 28% approve of the job of George W. Bush.

These poll numbers do not bode well for Republican nominee John McCain who has so closely identified himself with staying the course on George W. Bush's policies that a McCain presidency would be little more than a third Bush term.

On the major issues, McCain offers no new course in Iraq and prefers an extended occupation. He rejected any government role in the reversing the economic crash course toward recession and essentially blamed homeowners for the subprime mortgage crisis.

His health care plan is nothing more than a scheme to raise taxes on working families by requiring that health care benefits be taxed as income. In fact, he declined to meet with workers in Jacksonville, Florida who wanted to discuss their problems with the health care system. Perhaps if they had been wealthy lobbyists for the health care industry like his campaign strategist Thomas Loeffler who works for the McCain campaign and the pahrmaceutical lobby, he wouldn't have blown them off.

He is a staunch supporter of free trade and even stated that losing more jobs to free trade is alright with him.

NAFTA-gate – Some clarification please!

By Joel Wendland

A Canadian news report this week revealed that Hillary Clinton's campaign called Canadian diplomats to warn them that her own campaign posturing about NAFTA was to be "taken with a grain of salt."

In the days before the March 4th primary, Hillary Clinton scored some points with Ohio voters, who understand that NAFTA has decimated their manufacturing economy, when an illegally leaked Canadian government memo appeared to indicate that Barack Obama's pledge to revisit NAFTA was not sincere.

What didn't make it into Clinton campaign memos or much of the media punditry that swiftly followed was that memo also described Obama's commitment to renegotiating the trade agreement on the issue of jobs and the environment and making them "core principles" of the agreement, something labor and environmental activists failed to win under the Clinton administration in the 1990s.

A report in the Washington Post, Mar. 4, quoted the Canadian memo as saying, that Obama is "in favour of strengthening/clarifying language on labour mobility and environment and trying to establish these as more 'core' principles of the agreement."

Yesterday, Mar. 5, the Canadian-based Globe and Mail, reporting on the Canadian government's internal investigation of the illegal leak of the memo, revealed that, according to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Chief of Staff Ian Brodie, the Clinton campaign called Canadian diplomats to ease their worries about their own denunciations of NAFTA:

Quoting The Globe and Mail:

Mr. Brodie, apparently seeking to play down the potential impact on Canada, told the reporters the threat was not serious, and that someone from Ms. Clinton's campaign had even contacted Canadian diplomats to tell them not to worry because the NAFTA threats were mostly political posturing.

The Canadian Press cited an unnamed source last night as saying that several people overheard the remark.

The news agency quoted that source as saying that Mr. Brodie said that someone from Ms. Clinton's campaign called and was "telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt."

In other words, while ranting and raving about perceived misstatements by an Obama campaign adviser, the Clinton campaign had done the very thing she had denounced.

So let's get some clarification. On one of the most crucial issues facing working families – how trade affects jobs – we are getting a muddy picture. We need clear outlines on how job growth will be promoted, what kinds of policies will rebuild the manufacturing sector with good unions jobs?

The question of jobs and the economy are so important, now is not the time to play games. NAFTA is no joke, and working families are coming to understand that because the agreement failed to include real protections for jobs and the environment back when the Clinton administration pushed so strongly for its passage, it helped move jobs out of the country by making exports to the US cheap.

We know that the John McCain alternative is to accept job losses and to push more corporate loopholes and tax breaks that will move more jobs out of the economy. McCain told Ohio voters during a campaign stop there that they are just going to have to get used to it. "Have people lost jobs?" he said. "Yes, they have, and they're gonna lose jobs."

So to the Democratic candidates: no more games.