In the roll-call of truly horrendous Village transcribers of press releases (formerly known as "journalists") a standout has been Jackie Calmes. And, today, she keeps her reputation intact with a truly awful piece about the Trans Pacific Partnership.
To begin, Calmes has a long and storied career at just gobbling up government nonsense and spitting it out. She wrote a fawning piece about Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of the Catfood Commission, which simply parroted the phony nonsense about the debt and deficit "crisis"--a phony crisis which masks an attack against Social Security (the same Erskine Bowles who, by the way, was recently raising huge dollars for the status quo candidate...not that that's important or anything...), or the really stupid piece she wrote linking Social Security to the debt and deficit crisis (even though Social Security does not contribute one dime to the debt or deficit).
Calmes probably didn't have to move from her chair to write this because it reads as a government propaganda piece:
The Communist government in Vietnam has agreed to American terms to grant potentially far-reaching labor rights to the country’s workers, including the freedom to unionize and to strike, in return for expanded trade between the former adversaries, according to the newly released text of a vast Pacific trade agreement.
Those terms were disclosed early Thursday, along with all 30 chapters and side agreements that make up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact reached a month ago by 12 Pacific Rim nations that would be the largest regional trade accord in history. The agreement would end most tariffs and other trade barriers among countries that account for 40 percent of the global economy.
Why "Communist" is even relevant here is pretty obvious--because it colors the tone of the rest of the nonsense.
It's a fabrication. Nothing much has improved because:
1. There is no such thing as "free trade"...it's a marketing phrase. Because these deals simply protect corporate rights and investment...
2. Enforcement is a joke, an after-thought, a side deal, and not worth the paper these rules are written on.
If you want to read the non-goverment press release in The New York Times, check out Public Citizen:
LABOR CHAPTER:
Vietnam, Malaysia Side Agreements a New Low, Labor Text Does Not Make Significant, Meaningful improvements Over Bush Standards that Have Not Improved Conditions
Firms that can operate in conditions in which ILO core labor standards are not respected drive down wages and working conditions, drawing in additional investment, enabling social dumping of lower-priced goods, and suppressing wages and working conditions in other markets against which producers everywhere are forced to “compete.”
Past trade agreements, even those that contain the so-called “May 10”provisions, failed to
protect labor rights and reverse the race to the bottom.
The TPP Labor Chapter does not make significant, meaningful improvements over the nearly decade old George W. Bush era standard. Rather, the side arrangements made with Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei represent a new low. The “achievements”touted by USTR appear to be of limited value.
The vast majority of the recommendations made by organized labor were completely ignored. A sampling of labor asks omitted from the TPP:
o To improve compliance and enforceability, define the core labor standards, e.g., by referring to ILO Conventions
o To protect workers and raise wages, require that Parties not waive or derogate from
any of their labor laws (laws implementing either ILO Core Conventions or acceptable conditions of work)—regardless of whether the breach occurred inside or outside of a special zone
o To protect workers and raise wages, define “acceptable conditions of work” more broadly to include such concepts as payment of all wages and benefits legally owed and compensation in cases of occupational injuries and illnesses.
o To increase compliance with labor obligations, include commitments aimed at ensuring effective labor inspections
o To increase compliance with labor obligations, allow a petitioner to make a complaint based on a single egregious violation, rather than waiting for a “sustained or recurring course of action” to occur
o To remove requirement that violations must be in a manner affecting trade or investment between the "parties”, which leaves out most public sector workers.
o To prevent abuse of vulnerable workers and a spiral to the bottom in wages and working conditions, ensure migrant workers receive the same rights and remedies as a country’s nationals
o To prevent human trafficking and forced labor, establish enforceable rules for international labor recruiters
o To ensure timely enforcement and reduce unwarranted delays, establish clear, universal timelines for consideration of labor complaints
o To reduce excessive discretion to ignore or delay labor complaints, require that a Party that has received a meritorious complaint will promptly and zealously pursue the case (to avoid years-long delays like those confronted in the Guatemala and Honduras cases)
o To help raise standards across the region, create an independent labor secretariat that researches emerging labor issues and reports on best practices and establish Trans-
Pacific works councils for firms operating in more than one TPP country
Instead, the USTR made minor changes likely to have little impact:
o The commitment to “discourage” trade in goods made with forced labor is not equivalent to a commitment to prohibit trade in such goods. It could be met by hanging a poster, for example.
o The commitment to have laws regarding acceptable conditions of work fails to set standards for such laws. The minimum wage in Brunei could be a penny an hour, for example.
o The commitment not to waive or derogate from laws implementing acceptable conditions of work in an Export Processing Zone leaves most TPP workers unprotected. The commitment is too narrow to be of clear value to workers.
o Too much of the new text (vis a vis “May 10”) relies on legally imprecise language like
“may” and “endeavor to encourage”
Such language, which is aspirational rather than obligatory, does not provide the clear protections workers in the region need to organize, collectively bargain, and raise their wages in a safe and just working environment. Aspirational language will not help build new markets for U.S. products.
Analysis of the country specific plans to follow in the coming days, but we note with great
disappointment the lack of any plan for Mexico,which is and has long been woefully out of
compliance with international labor standards. To be clear, we maintain that no country should get TPP benefits until it complies with all the obligations of the TPP, including its labor standards.
I have written about the phoniness of so-called "free trade" enforcement for more than a decade. And I
wrote something specific recently summing it up for the TPP:
Here’s what the AFL-CIO found in its 2007 report [the emphasis is mine]:
At its current staffing and inspection levels, it would take federal OSHA 133 years to inspect each workplace under its jurisdiction just once. In seven states (Florida, Delaware, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Maryland, and South Dakota), it would take more than 150 years for OSHA to pay a single visit to each workplace. In 18 states, it would take between 100 and 149 years to visit each workplace once. Inspection frequency is better in states with OSHA-approved plans, yet still far from satisfactory. In these states, it would now take the state OSHA’s a combined 62 years to inspect each worksite under state jurisdiction once. The current level of federal and state OSHA inspectors provides one inspector for every 63,670 workers. This compares to a benchmark of one labor inspector for every 10,000 workers recommended by the International Labor Organization for industrialized countries. In the states of Arkansas, Florida, Delaware, Nebraska, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, the ratio of inspectors to employees is greater than 1/100,000 workers.
When the AFL-CIO issued its first report “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect” in 1992, federal OSHA could inspect workplaces under its jurisdiction once every 84 years, compared to once every 133 years at the present time. Since the passage of the OSHAct, the number of workplaces and number of workers under OSHA’s jurisdiction has more than doubled, while at the same time the number of OSHA staff and OSHA inspectors has been reduced. In 1975, federal OSHA had a total of 2,405 staff (inspectors and all other OSHA staff) responsible for the safety and health of 67.8 million workers at more than 3.9 million establishments. In 2005, there were 2,208 federal OSHA staff responsible for the safety and health of more than 131.5 million workers at 8.5 million workplaces.
The OSHA budget proposed for 2008 was 490 million. Yes, that was a Bush budget. But, even in Democratic Administrations, OSHA was underfunded given the task described above. Today, the OSHA budget is just $552 million–and federal enforcement is only $208 million. Today, it’s no better:
At its current staffing and inspection levels, it would take federal OSHA, on average, 140 years to inspect each workplace under its jurisdiction just once. In 10 states (Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia), it would take 150 years or more for OSHA to pay a single visit to each workplace. In 28 states, it would take between 100 and 149 years to visit each workplace once. Inspection frequency generally is better in states with OSHA-approved plans, yet still is far from satisfactory. In these states, it now would take the state OSHA plans a combined 91years to inspect each worksite under state jurisdiction once.[emphasis added]
Back to NAFTA enforcement: It was supposed to have been under the purview of the Commission for Labor Cooperation (CLC). The CLC was supposed to have been funded, partly by the U.S., via a $2 million-a year appropriation, which would have meant that, over the period between 1993 and 2005, the CLC would have had $22 million from the U.S.But, as Public Citizen found:
In another example of the gap between promised authorizations and actual funds appropriated to such programs, the CLC has only been granted $7.2 million of the $22 million it was authorized to receive from the United States as of 2005, or less than a third of the promised amount.
The game was rigged from the beginning. For argument’s sake, let’s say the CLC got the full $22 million? Would that have been sufficient?Of course not.
So, think about that for a moment: we have an entirely inadequate system in this country just to watch over safety and health in the workplace, funded at a miniscule level of several hundred million dollars—and, yet, we even more ludicrously proposed to oversee labor rights enforcement over three countries (the U.S., Mexico and Canada) at a laughingly pathetic and criminal level of a couple of million bucks?
So, why would anyone believe, based on the failed attempt to enforce safety and health--not gross labor violations we are talking about in these dumb trade deals--in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA that you could do that in any country around the world?
But, that all said, the status quo candidate will love this piece. Because after embracing the TPP and virtually every so-called "Free trade" deal since NAFTA, and then fraudulently telling people she now opposed TPP--by the way, totally as a result of the amazing work thousands of activists have done in opposing TPP and turning public opinion against it and forcing a candidate to lie to people about what she actually believes--this article will be waved around and allow her to flip-flop again, and, magically, praise be, find that oh the TPP isn't so bad after all.
And so the lies continue.
TPP=the best argument for a political revolution.
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
ORDER THE ESSENTIAL BERNIE SANDERS AND HIS VISION FOR AMERICA