Otherwise known at the Colombian Free Trade Agreement:
After weeks of intense negotiations, the United States and Colombia have reached a deal on a free trade pact that the White House says is a vital part of President Barack Obama's economic agenda.
A vital part of its economic agenda? That's a little scary considering the bill is miniscule measured against the size of the economy. Miniscule but not benign.
This a NAFTA-style corporate trade deal. Like NAFTA and its various spawn, this bill would be bad for workers. It would be especially bad for workers in Colombia, doing roughly to that country what NAFTA did to Mexico. And agricultural workers there would be devastated.
The FTA would be devastating to rural agricultural laborers, who constitute 20 percent of the country’s employment, provide 40 percent of its domestic food consumptionand generate 8 percent of Colombia’s GDP. By tearing down barriers to U.S. agricultural products, the FTA would put Colombia’s farmers in competition with giant U.S. agri-business firms subsidized by tax dollars. It is widely expected that thousands of rural workers would be displaced as cheap U.S. farm products — particularly rice, corn and beans — flood Colombia. Oxfam Colombia estimates that at least 15,000 rural jobs will be lost and small farmers’ incomes, which average less than $3.90 per day, will be reduced by almost half.
But it's not just another NAFTA-style deal. It's a NAFTA style deal with a country where some 3000 trade unionists have been murdered in the last 25 years. (Some estimates are as high as 4000.). It's the most dangerous country for unionists. In fact, more have been murdered in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined.
To deal with uncomfortable fact, the Obama administration and the Colombian government have worked out an "action plan." Marcy Wheeler is calling these benchmarks assassination stress tests.
But among the steps the Colombia must take, actually reducing the number of murders of unionists isn't among them. And of course you can't in three months solve an ingrained societal ill that's been years in the making. And why three months? Because the GOP has set June as the deadline for trying to pass all three free trade deals (Colombia, Panama, and S. Korea.) The assassination stress tests are about politics, not trying to protect workers.
Richard Trumka is having none of it:
Colombia remains the most deadly nation in the world in which to be a trade unionist. In the past 25 years, more than 2,850 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia. Last year alone, 51 trade unionists were murdered, an increase over 2009. Six trade unionists have been murdered so far this year, including two in the past week. The conviction rate for union murders and other violence is in the single digits, and even where prosecutions have occurred, many perpetrators have been charged in absentia and are still on the loose. Union density in Colombia is below 5 percent, and even fewer workers can exercise their right to bargain collectively. We have no doubt that if 51 CEOs had been murdered in Colombia last year, this deal would be on a very slow track indeed.
This won't create jobs in the United States: as Paul Krugman pointed out in the context of the South Korean FTA, "trade does not equal jobs." Nor will it increase exports, despite claims to the contrary. According to Public Citizen, the United States has a $192 billion trade deficit with our FTA partner countries. But even if it would do all sorts of good things for the economy, it would still be wrong given the murderous climate for unionists in Colombia.
As for the politics -- yeesh. This is going to cause a major rift within the party, with unions and their Congressional supporters opposing it, and Obama, corporate Dems, and Republicans supporting it. Oh, and there's a little battle involving unions going on in Wisconsin. Is now really the time to be pushing an anti-labor bill?