Bernie is pretty damned good at using the truth as a sledge hammer. He's absolutely right about every previous free trade agreement - and I'm fairly confident that he's right about the TPP. My job is in the service sector. Previously I worked in hospitality - a front desk hotel clerk earning eight dollars an hour in Northern Maine. After a year at that particular job, I asked for a fifty cent an hour raise - and was told by the millionaire hotel owner that he couldn't afford it - that his income was below the poverty level.
Now I work in retail, for a small convenience store up here in the County. 8.75 is definitely somewhat better than making 8 - but the work is much harder, there is a lot more to do, and I am frequently tired, have back pain, sprained ankles, pulled muscles, whatever. Forty hours a week at this place often feels like 80. It's not one of those places where you simply stand behind the register and punch in numbers (though that's part of it) but there is a lot, a whole lot of work to do. More than I ever would have imagined retail required.
I don't know how they could outsource my job short of sending over a Chinese robot - but I have also worked for call centers, which paid minimum wage or slightly better - and those are considered great, high paying jobs for lots of people up here. If they are outsourced... the area I live in is already so economically torn, in the last decade we have lost thousands and thousands of workers, residents and more. Bases have been closed, factories and mills have been closed. People who once earned a decent living through skilled labor now have jobs more like mine.
I don't know what needs to be done, what the ultimate solution is to unfucking the American worker - but it sure as hell isn't sending MORE of our jobs over seas. Not just manufacturing this time, but service industry jobs. Get ready for yet MORE telemarketing calls from India and Pakistan and who knows where the hell else.
I'm an American worker, I'm full time, low wage, without benefits. I work hard for a living. Most of us do. Our productivity is undeniably high. Our dedication, our work ethic... so many of us are breaking our bodies right now to keep barely getting by. These politicians and corporations tell us to support these free trade agreements... so that THEY can make more money while we make less? They can have another private jet, another mansion, another fleet of them for all I know. All they have to do is, essentially, move our jobs to Countries with poor environmental regulations, low wage workers and so on.
I'm tired. If we keep up with these disastrous policies, I expect to be more tired. I expect that jobs will become fewer in number, even up here in northern Maine. I expect I will have to compete harder, even work harder, in order to keep barely getting by.
I will not support this kind of free trade - and I can't think of a single logical reason (given the immense cost of these agreements) that anyone who isn't already a millionaire should.
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