John Kerry: We Need a New, Common-Sense Approach to Trade
14 June 2005
Late last night, I reported that John Kerry would be offering an amendment to CAFTA today. The AFL-CIO who has strongly opposed CAFTA, supports the Kerry amendment. It should be noted that John Kerry has been opposed to CAFTA, in it’s current form, for over a year. Senator Schumer is a co-sponsor to the amendment.
Below is a statement by Senator John Kerry from the Senate Finance Committee's mark-up this morning of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).
Kerry Amendment Would Give Teeth to Existing Labor Standards
"An Administration's job is to make sure that open markets and robust trade benefit America's workers, consumers, corporations and ultimately our security. This Administration has broken that tradition by negotiating trade deals out of step with the globalized world in which we're living and by refusing to enforce the trade agreements we already have.
"The evidence is clear in what's happening in our manufacturing sector and increasingly our service sector. No small part of that impact is very real hardship for working families. I have listened and learned, and I believe that our trade agreements can and must do a better job protecting American workers and our competitive edge. That's why the Jordan free trade agreement was such an important step forward, and that's why CAFTA fails the new test for trade in a globalized world.
"CAFTA includes two sets of provisions relating to workers: First, it requires that nations uphold their own labor laws, but it makes no stipulation as to what those laws require and includes only token enforcement provisions. Second, it calls on countries to 'strive to' achieve the most basic standards, like the 'elimination of the worst forms of child labor,' but includes absolutely no provisions to enforce these negligible standards. This means that a U.S. worker might well lose his or her job to a facility operating at conditions far, far below what anyone would deem acceptable in the modern economy.
MORE & LINKS to supporting documents -
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=1076