United Steelworkers: Fast Tracking Democracy to Hell

[think]

A United Steelworkers editorial lays out the basic reasons the TPP in it's current form is a bad deal for the American worker.

Fast Tracking Democracy to Hell

Leo W. Gerard - International President, United Steelworkers
Posted: 04/20/2015 7:38 am EDT Updated: 04/20/2015 8:59 am EDT

Free traders in Congress formally proposed last week that lawmakers relax, put their feet up and neglect the rigor of legislative review for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade scheme.

The TPP is a secret deal among 12 Pacific Rim nations that was covertly negotiated by unelected officials and corporate bosses. It’s so clandestine that lawmakers elected to represent the American people were refused access to the deliberations. It would expand secret trade tribunals that corporations use to sue governments over democratically established laws and win compensation from taxpayers.

~Snip~

KORUS is the same sad story. Free traders pledged three years ago that the deal with South Korea would produce tons more exports that would, of course, create lots of new American jobs. Instead, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea grew 84 percent, excluding the value of foreign-made goods that pass unaltered through the United States on their way to Korea.

Calculating with the trade-to-jobs formula that free traders used when they were promoting KORUS, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea translates into the loss of nearly 85,000 U.S. jobs – in just three years.

This does not engender trust.

~Snip~

Full Editorial:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-w-gerard/fast-tracking-democracy-t_b_7095828.html

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Here's the IBEW take on it.

Electrical Worker Online

along with their NAFTA graphic

Job results from NAFTA ('93-'02)

[SamKnause]

2. K&R

I posted the stats on the South Korea trade deal several

times yesterday.

Thank you.

Please keep spreading the word.

[JayhawkSD]

3. Interesting which two unions represented.

I worked for 20 years in various steel plants but was never a member of the Steelworkers. I was a member of the IBEW. Not as wierd as it sounds, since I was a maintenance electrician.

I was a member of the Teamsters for a while when I worked as a machine operator but when I drove a truck, which I did on a relief basis while being a maintenance electrician, I was not a Teamster, I was still in the IBEW.