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Stop CAFTA (The Central American Free Trade Agreement)!

April 16, 2005

When workers from the U.S., several Central American countries and the Dominican Republic say that they don’t like CAFTA, a new trade agreement that is subject to approval by the U.S. Congress, there could be a couple of explanations.

First, one could argue that these workers really don’t know what’s good for them. Second, one could conclude that the trade deal on the table, supported by President Bush, will benefit corporations and the wealthy and hurt the average worker.

CAFTA, covering Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua does not include protections for workers’ rights to form a union or to enjoy safe working conditions on the job. These facts, alone, make it a pretty good bet that workers in the Americas know what they are talking about.

In fact, many of them are experts. In 1995, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was approved, its supporters said that it would open up markets in Canada and Mexico for U.S. firms and raise the standard of living in Mexico.

Ten years later, after 879,280 jobs, including many good-paying jobs at IBEW plants, have moved to Mexico, and others have left Mexico for China and other parts of Asia, workers on both sides of the border know the truth. Coupled with the job losses has been a decline in Mexican wages and disastrous environmental pollution by runaway employers.

CAFTA would intensify this global "race to the bottom," further exploiting workers in Central America, 40 percent of whom earn less than two U.S. dollars a day. The pact would set the table for passage the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would eliminate tariffs from 34 countries with a population of more than 800 million.

That is the reason that thousands of Guatemalans took to the streets to oppose CAFTA, facing brutal police repression, including the killing of a protester and the injuring of 11. The opposition to CAFTA within the U.S. is growing, too, as the Senate Finance Committee prepares for hearings on the agreement. The Bush Administration is pushing for passage by Memorial Day.

Groups opposed to CAFTA are expressing the following concerns:

• It does not include adequate enforcement for violations of internationally recognized labor and environmental standards.
   
• It includes rules that promote privatization and deregulation of services including education, health care, postal service, construction, transportation and water supply. Such policies have proved particularly devastating for families living in poverty.
   
• If passed, CAFTA will threaten the livelihoods of millions of small farmers in Central America and the Dominican Republic, while increasing domination by agricultural monopolies and hurting U.S. family farmers.
   
• It threatens to prevent access to affordable life saving medicines in a region where half the population lives in poverty.
   
• It will prohibit governments in the region from ensuring that foreign investment serves national development goals, and has a provision like NAFTA’s Chapter 11 that would allow foreign corporations to sue governments that pass strong labor, public health or environmental laws.
   
• CAFTA will pave the way for more trade agreements such as the Andean Free Trade Agreement and the FTAA that would extend this flawed model to the whole Western Hemisphere.

President Edwin D. Hill urges IBEW members to contact their Congressional representatives and urge them to oppose CAFTA. "While workers in other nations of the Americas are risking their lives to speak out against this dangerous free trade agreement," says Hill, "it is a small price for us to pay to make a phone call, write a letter or send an e-mail message asking our elected leaders to stand up for justice for workers and our communities by rejecting CAFTA."