2) No. 197 Wednesday October 13, 1999 Page AA-4 ISSN 1523-567X Leading the News International Trade Gephardt Calls for 'a Seat at the Table' For Labor, Environmentalists in WTO Talks LOS ANGELES--The next round of World Trade Organization negotiations should include representatives of organized labor and environmental groups, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) said Oct. 11 at the AFL-CIO's biennial convention. The WTO should have the labor and environmental issues "squarely on the agenda," Gephardt said, to avoid the kind of misery that the North American Free Trade Agreement has produced in Mexico. In a speech to delegates and a press conference afterward, Gephardt endorsed the AFL-CIO's call for a massive rally of workers and their families to coincide with the Nov. 30 WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle. The first step toward getting a place at the negotiating table "is to get out in the street" in Seattle, Gephardt said in response to a reporter's question. In his address, Gephardt said the misery among workers in the "maquiladora" industrial area near the U.S.-Mexican border is now worse than in 1993, just prior to the NAFTA signing, because negotiators refused to heed the calls of organized labor--and Gephardt--to include labor rights and environmental protections in the body of the agreement. Gephardt called for adoption of what he termed "a new path," one that promotes greater international trade, but also establishes protections for human and worker rights and the environment. "It's not the easy way, but it's the right way," he said. He also chided business interests that oppose inclusion of such protections in trade agreements, noting they have no qualms about pushing for similar safeguards for capital flows and intellectual property rights. At the press briefing, Gephardt, who has already endorsed Vice President Al Gore for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, said that if, as expected, the AFL-CIO officially endorsed Gore before the convention's end, Oct. 13, it would be because Gore "earned it on his record" of supporting working families. Gephardt acknowledged that Gore backed the NAFTA treaty that organized labor vehemently opposed. But the vice president is now espousing an approach to global trade much closer to his and the AFL-CIO's, he added. Trumka Echoes Call The core of that approach is including in the WTO basic workers' rights and environmental protections, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told the convention audience shortly after Gephardt's address. Those rights should include freedom of association, the right to organize and bargain, no use of forced or compulsory labor, no child labor and no discrimination, Trumka said. Moreover, the WTO should include strong enforcement procedures, so that membership benefits may be withdrawn quickly from governments that fail to enforce the rules, Trumka added. The AFL-CIO also wants new applicants to the WTO to comply with workers' rights before they are admitted, Trumka said. "If human and workers' rights have no place in China, then China has no place in the WTO," he said. Trumka, who echoed Gephardt's call for "a seat at the table" for unions and other citizens' organizations, also demanded that the WTO establish stronger safeguards so that national action can be taken quickly when import surges threaten domestic industries. AFL-CIO's Broader Attack Trumka's remarks were part of the AFL-CIO's broader attack on what it views as the flawed rules now governing global trade. Those rules have led to huge trade deficits in the United States, the loss of hundreds of thousands of high-paying manufacturing jobs, and "a system of international rules that has undermined domestic measures designed to protect human rights and the environment," according to a resolution on the global economy to be debated at the convention. Trade and investment rules have focused on promoting the mobility of goods, services, and capital across borders, but have failed to adequately address the social impact of such liberalization, the resolution charged. "As a result, American workers have found themselves increasingly in head-to-head competition with workers in other countries who lack basic human rights and legitimate national regulations protecting the environment," it added. To combat this situation, the resolution calls for the AFL-CIO to push for strengthening workers' rights provisions in existing U.S. trade laws and a renegotiation of NAFTA to correct "serious flaws in a number of areas, including investment rules, safeguard measures, and cross-border trucking access. The labor and environmental side agreements need to be strengthened and made enforceable." The resolution also calls for development of a comprehensive national policy on the transfer of technology, production, and production techniques that makes the rights and interests of U.S. workers a priority. By Tom Gilroy Copyright � 1999 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Washington D.C. ------- en
