PSAC Social Justice Fund  

“We have many resources, but we are plagued by poverty”  

ORIT – arm of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

The central labour organization representing workers in the Americas (Pan-American Organization of Workers – ORIT) organized a day long seminar on The Role of Trade Unions, Civil Society and Free Trade to coincide with the FTAA Ministerial talks in Miami.  

ORIT started off the day by arguing that the “most powerful nations violate trade rules”, and have created a “democratic deficit” that has failed to defend the dignity of workers”. ORIT pledged to create a permanent forum to develop an alternative to the power groups within the Americas.

Presentations on panels throughout the day painted the FTAA as hemispheric integration that: transcends trade issues; strengthens the transnational corporate sector; undermines workers' rights, human rights, women's rights and consumer rights, erodes women's equality; and is destructive to the environment.

A number of speakers forcefully made the point that the FTAA is more about investment and the protection of intellectual property than it is about trade per se. Others spoke of the “total abject poverty” that exists in many parts of the region because people simply can't “obtain an income”, and argued that the FTAA, like NAFTA before, will make a deplorable situation worse.

Existing free trade agreements, including NAFTA, gave rise to the Maquiladora regions of Mexico. These free trade zones where workers earn as little as two dollars a day and have their rights stripped away, have been exported to other parts of the Americas.   Workers in these countries suffer enormously. In Bolivia, for example, workers are supposed to be paid $8 per week, but the “companies cheat' and pay less.

Others, including federal NDP leader Jack Layton, pointed out that the FTAA is a real and imminent threat to the delivery of public services and the rights of countries to determine their own policies. Layton pointed out that “fundamental to these agreements is the concept of investor rights, a concept that transfers decision making from people to corporations” and ended by labeling the FTAA as a “fundamental assault on democracy”.

“If we're going to have free trade, why not the right to free trade unions?   The only thing we ever hear about is free markets.”  

- Nicaraguan Parliamentarian  

Trade is a Gender Issue Too!  

At the initiative of the International Gender and Trade Network, women from the US, Mexico, Latin America and Canada came together to share stories and talk about the impact of NAFTA, the proposed FTAA and other free trade agreements on their jobs, their families and their communities.    

Several disturbing trends are emerging from the stories.   For women, free trade is linked to increased racism.   Women, including Mexican women working in the US and in maquiladoras, have experienced an increase in domestic violence, harassment on the job and during the immigration process.   Free trade has not led to better jobs and working conditions for women – quite the contrary.   Free trade has led to increased privatization, meaning a loss of good public sector jobs and a serious decrease in public services available to women. 

But women are getting together and fighting back.   One workshop participant told us the story of one American community in which the sudden closure of a Levis plant led to a massive job loss.   Women who lost their jobs got together and started a clothing coop.   Many more stories of struggle and survival are out there.

Participants in this workshop made a commitment to keep in touch, to gather stories of the impact of free trade on women throughout the Americas, and to make sure that the gender dimensions of free trade are on, and stay on, the agenda.