Why progressives should rescue the TPP trade deal

[think]

33. US Labor has been the only one trying to enforce the labor relations in these trade agreements

Union leaders are being murdered in other countries and there is no protection

AFL-CIO’s Trumka: USTR Told Us Murder Isn’t A Violation Under U.S. Trade Deals

By Michael McAuliff - 04/22/2015 07:32 am ET | Updated Apr 22, 2015

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. It appears to be the first time anyone has revealed such a stance on the part of a U.S. government that has been touting its efforts to improve wages and working conditions among its trading partners, relying in part on trade agreements.

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“To substantiate our case we documented five or six murders of Guatemalan trade unionists that the government had failed to effectively investigate or prosecute,” Lee said. “The USTR told us that the murders of trade unionists or violence against trade unionists was not a violation of the labor chapter because it was a rule of law problem.

“We certainly made the argument that if a worker is murdered in the course of trying to exercise a legal right to freedom of association or to organize and bargain collectively, then the government is failing to effectively enforce its laws, and the USTR disagreed with that interpretation,” Lee said. “If there is a climate of terror against trade unionists who effectively are prevented from exercising their rights under the law, then our government ought to take this at least as seriously as a failure to send a labor inspector to a factory.”

Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/22/fast-track-trade_n_7113412.html

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Global-Action/Despite-Labor-Action-Plan-Colombian-Unionists-Still-Targeted-for-Death