March 2001

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Global Fairness and the FTAA

AFL-CIO Executive Council Statement, Los Angeles, CA, February 14, 2001

The AFL-CIO joins with our brothers and sisters of the hemisphere in demanding an end to the secrecy and exclusivity of the FTAA negotiations. We join their call for a rejection of the current FTAA and for a new direction in the negotiations away from the failed NAFTA model of corporate privilege and toward a new hemispheric model that prioritizes equitable, democratic, and sustainable development. We call on our members to make their voices heard in Quebec City as part of the international actions, and join in activities to "Localize the Movement for Global Justice" in partnership with Jobs With Justice and other allies in communities across the country.

The FTAA negotiations have been carried out in excessive secrecy, and the negotiators have granted privileged access and consideration to corporate representatives to the exclusion of more representative groups. While labor unions, environmentalists, and other progressive activists in the hemisphere have made repeated efforts to communicate their concerns and views to the negotiators and to their own governments, there is no evidence that any of these concerns have been addressed in the negotiations to date.

Demonstrators at meeting of the Organization of American States, Windsor, Ontario, June 2000 © Langelle/ACERCA

Instead, by all indications, the FTAA is being modeled on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a model that, in our view, has utterly failed to deliver the promised benefits to ordinary citizens in any of the three North American countries. NAFTA's main outcome has been to strengthen the clout and bargaining power of multinational corporations, to limit the scope of governments to regulate in the public interest, and to force workers into more direct competition with each other--reinforcing the downward pressure on their living standards, while assuring them fewer rights and protections.

In order to provide a new progressive model of trade and development policy, a hemispheric agreement must incorporate:

enforceable workers' rights and environmental standards in its core. For workers in the hemisphere to share the benefits of increased trade and investment, they must be able to exercise their core workers' rights, which the International Labor Organization's 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work identifies as freedom of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, and the right to be free from child labor, forced labor, and discrimination in employment;

• protection under national law and international treaty obligations for the rights of migrant workers throughout the hemisphere, regardless of their legal status;
• measures to ensure that countries retain the ability to regulate the flow of speculative capital in order to protect their economies from excessive volatility;
• debt relief measures to improve the ability of the developing countries to fund education, health care, and infrastructure needs, thereby contributing to closing the gap between rich and poor nations, and reducing inequality within nations;
• compliance with the "revised drug strategy" adopted by the World Health Organization, which says that public health should be paramount in trade disputes;
• equitable and transparent market access rules that allow for effective protection against import surges; and
• a truly transparent, inclusive, and democratic process, both for the negotiation of the FTAA and for the implementation of any regional agreement.

In addition, if there are to be hemispheric negotiations on investment, services, government procurement, and intellectual property rights, any resulting agreement must not undermine the ability of governments (at all levels--federal, state, and local) to enact and enforce legitimate regulations in the public interest:

• investment rules should not discipline so-called indirect expropriations, should rely on government-to-government rather than investor-to-state dispute resolution, and should preserve the ability of governments to regulate corporate behavior to protect the economic, social, and health and safety interests of their citizens;
• services rules must be negotiated sector by sector, must not apply to public services or air transport and related services, must not undercut regulation of services in the public interest, and must not include commitments on temporary work visas until these visa programs are revised to protect the rights of all workers;
• government procurement rules must allow federal, state, and local preferences for domestic purchases to continue and must give governments scope to serve important public policy aims such as environmental protection, economic development and social justice, and respect for human and workers' rights; and
• intellectual property provisions must allow governments to limit patent protection in order to protect public health and safety, especially patents on life-saving medicines and life forms.

An acceptable hemispheric agreement must not simply replicate the failed trade policies of the past, but must incorporate what we have learned about the problems and weaknesses of the current rules. The success or failure of any hemispheric trade and investment agreement will hinge on governments' willingness and ability to develop an economic integration agreement that appropriately addresses all of the social, economic, and political dimensions of trade and investment, not just those of concern to corporations.

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