Obama's White House says don't worry - they're including labor standards in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that will protect workers.
It may be true that "some standards are better than no standards," but they're setting the bar mighty low:
WASHINGTON -- Defenders of the White House push for sweeping trade deals argue they include tough enforcement of labor standards. But a top union leader scoffed at such claims Tuesday, revealing that administration officials have said privately that they don’t consider even the killings of labor organizers to be violations of those pacts.
Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, testified to that claim at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on legislation to grant President Barack Obama so-called fast-track authority to cut at least two new enormous trade agreements with Pacific Rim nations and the European Union....
“When you say, ‘Oh these are some standards, they’re better than no standards,’ we were told by by the [United States Trade Representative] general counsel that murdering a trade unionist doesn’t violate these standards, that perpetuating violence against a trade unionist doesn’t violate these agreements,” Trumka said....
Trumka pointed specifically to the Colombia trade pact that was signed in 2006, but passed by Congress in 2011. Trumka said that even after the Obama administration crafted an agreement to tighten labor protections four years ago, some 105 labor organizers have been killed, and more than 1,300 have been threatened with death.
“Excuse me. Excuse me if I’m not willing to accept that standard.” Trumka said....
[T]he AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff [said] that USTR officials said in at least two meetings where she was present that killing and brutalizing organizers would not be considered interfering with labor rights under the terms of the trade measures....
A spokesman for the USTR, Andrew Bates, didn't explicitly deny Trumka's interpretation. But he noted that....the U.S. has been pressing Colombian authorities under the trade agreement to reduce attacks on labor organizers there.
So the labor standards being negotiated don't even protect workers to the most basic provision of protecting their lives from anti-union violence. But trade deals like the TPP are better than nothing, supporters claim, because they're a basis on which to "seek" such protections, at some indefinite time in the future.
Anyone who supports these trade deals really needs to ask themselves what value they offer to workers. Clearly the answer is none. The TPP not only won't protect your job, it won't even protect your life if you're a labor organizer in a hostile labor environment.
Some labor standards. Some deal.
(via)