UNIONS SPLIT ON NEW U.S.-KOREA TRADE PACT
WASHINGTON (PAI)—The Auto Workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers may be in the minority among top U.S. unions in backing the revised U.S.-Korea “Free Trade” agreement. Other players said the new pact negotiated by Democratic President Barack Obama falls short.
Ironically, the split could help the U.S.-Korea FTA pass Capitol Hill, most likely during the new, more-Republican 112th Congress that opens in January.
UAW said the new pact will help U.S. car and part exports to Korea, while UFCW hailed the pact for opening the Korean beef market. Thousands of its members work in meat-processing plants. UFCW called the pact “a small but not insignificant step forward” in battling for fair trade.
Obama announced the revised deal in early December. It keeps U.S. tariffs on Korean cars and trucks for years, while giving more entry for U.S. cars and machinery into the Korean market, he said. If lawmakers approve legislation to implement the pact – they can’t vote on the pact itself and can’t change it – it would be the biggest U.S. trade deal since the jobs-losing NAFTA treaty of 1993.
UAW, which said Kirk consulted it during the bargaining, praised the deal for opening the Korean market to U.S. cars and trucks. So did two top lawmakers who deal with trade: Reps. Sander Levin, D-Mich., chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Dave Camp, R-Mich., who will succeed Levin in that job. So did the only “Detroit 3” car company that opposed the original U.S.-Korea FTA, Ford.
“The Korean agreement will create over 20,000 jobs in the U.S. meat export producing sectors that employ hundreds of thousands of UFCW members,” that union said in a statement.
“All U.S. global trade agreements should seek primarily to assure the U.S. remains a leader on fair global trade, to restore manufacturing, and to get American workers back on the job. This proposed agreement makes improvements on each of those fronts. Looking ahead, we must work for a fairer global trade structure that benefits workers as much as business,” UFCW added.
But AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and the Communications Workers all said that despite the Koreans’ concessions on cars and trucks, the revised pact still doesn’t protect U.S. workers.
“Labor has consistently argued the investment and government procurement provisions in the Korea deal will encourage off-shoring,” Trumka explained. “Despite progress in improving the labor chapter in 2007, it is clear that in both the United States
and South Korea, workers continue to face repeated challenges to their exercise of fundamental human rights on the job – especially freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively. This deal does nothing to improve or strengthen” labor provisions inserted by former GOP President George W. Bush, he added.
Gerard said USW was also part of the talks with the administration and praised it for moving away from Bush’s original FTA. But USW said its board “carefully reviewed” the revised pact, deciding it fell short in allowing outsourcing of U.S. jobs and in letting Korea import goods from China for transshipment to the U.S., among other failings.
“The auto sector is of vital importance to our members who make the glass, tires, steel, plastics and countless other products that are part of the supply chain in the auto and auto parts sector,” Gerard explained. The union worked with Obama to prepare “a negotiating approach in the auto sector that we could support. Regrettably, the South Koreans showed little willingness to move off of their positions at those talks.
“The final agreement will result in increased access to the U.S. market for Korean producers with insufficient assurance the closed South Korean market will sufficiently open up to our auto exports and other manufactured goods, such as steel. Provisions were not included in the FTA to reduce the flood of products that could be shipped from China and other countries to Korea to be assembled into South Korean exports that will benefit from the terms of the FTA. The lack of strong rule of origin provisions...will directly and adversely impact USW members in a number of industrial sectors.”
CWA said the new U.S.-Korea FTA fails on worker rights and gives multi-national corporations too much leeway. “This agreement gives investment and legal protections to large multi-national corporations which shift jobs offshore in search of the lowest labor and environmental costs and highest profits. With no counter balance, multi-national corporations whipsaw workers and nations to prevent and eliminate bargaining rights,” the union said. ###
