Levin Rejects Bush Administration's Proposal on Labor and Trade

The top U.S. Democratic lawmaker for trade rejected a Bush administration proposal on how to treat labor standards in free-trade agreements with countries such as Peru and Colombia.

A plan by the U.S. Trade Representative's office to allow trade partners to adhere to either international labor standards or U.S. labor law ``misses the point'' of Democrats' long- standing demands, said Representative Sander Levin, chairman of the House trade subcommittee.

If the administration holds to this plan, pending free- trade agreements with Peru, Colombia and Panama won't pass Congress, Levin said. He spoke today at the Center for American Progress, a Washington research group that supports Democratic policies.

Agreement on labor standards between Congress and the administration is crucial to the fate of these agreements as well as any hope of renewing President George W. Bush's ``fast- track'' trade negotiating authority, which expires at the end of June. That authority smoothes the negotiating process by allowing the administration to work out trade agreements that Congress must accept or reject without amendment.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a3gccvd3zM1Y&refer=latin_america

Bush's standards are very likely dead. Even in the heavilly Republican Congress of last year, the Democrats were almost able to add better standards to CAFTA. It may be that Republicans are more willing to insist on standards overseas, but the charge to not require these standards came from the same corporate interests that fight them domesticly. This may be an area where the change of power has real advantages.

When CAFTA was passed, the Finance committee defeated 10 to 10 an AFL/CIO supported John Kerry amendment that would have insisted on labor standards - with the current Congress this would easily have passed out of the committee. (To get 10/10, Kerry had some Republican support.)

Here's a quote from Sweeney's AFL/CIO press statement:
"Senator Kerry (D-Mass.) will introduce an important amendment to the administration’s draft implementing legislation that would address a key failing of agreement by giving workers’ rights the same priority as corporate rights. His amendment would go a long way toward fixing the inadequate workers’ rights provisions in this lopsided trade deal by making protections for core labor standards fully enforceable.

The Kerry amendment would ensure that all the CAFTA countries meet international core workers’ rights standards, a change to the agreement that has been a key demand of workers in both the U.S. and Central America."

Here is a link to that and to other information on the amendment.
http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/cfm/record.cfm?id=238846

The Finance and commerce committees are where many of these issues are dealt with.