After years of working against the FTAs, KORUS, Colombia and Panama passed both Houses.. Reps. Carnahan, Clay, Cleaver, Costello(IL) voted no on all three. The rest of the regional delegation voted yes. Sen. McCaskill voted no on Colombia. She voted yes on KORUS and Panama. Sen. Blunt voted yes on all three.

It all comes down to this Wednesday….

CALL 800-718-1008 (Click here and scroll down for a list of talking points!)or

Stop these Trade Deals! Create Jobs for America!

Contact Your U.S. Senators & Representative TODAY!

Support Family Farmers—STOP Bad Free Trade Agreements!

Congressmen Clay and Carnahan will vote no — call the others!                                         The Senators need your call

(see contact information below)

With the economy of Rural America at stake, please urge your elected officials to reject the Free Trade Agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.

 The House is expected to vote tomorrow and the Senate soon after–

Call your U.S. Senators and Representative Today!!!

 Rural communities across America are being devastated and these three new trade agreements will only accelerate corporate greed at the expense of family farmers and rural economies.

• The Trade Agreements do not contain rules that require products to come from livestock actually produced in the exporting country, which could result in agricultural products coming from other countries such as China.
• None of the Trade Agreements contain adequate safeguards to protect US livestock farmers and ranchers from import surges.
• These Trade Agreements expose US consumers to food not produced under health and safety standards identical to U.S. standards.
• The Korea Trade Agreement alone will displace 159,000 American jobs in the first seven years.

Many of our leaders in Washington — both Democrats and Republicans — are siding with corporate lobbyists instead of learning from the experience of family farmers and working Americans.

Stop these trade deals that replicate the failed policies of the past!

• 300,000 family farms have been lost since NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and the WTO (World Trade Organization) went into effect.
• Over $71 billion in food goods are imported annually – this is double the value imported before NAFTA and WTO.
• The United States has become a net food importer with NAFTA and other Free Trade Agreement countries.
• In 2010, our trade deficit in cattle and beef exceeded $2 billion with the 17 countries who have Free Trade Agreements with the U.S.–The cumulative 22-year deficit was $41 billion.

We Were Sold a Bill of Goods—STOP THESE FAILED TRADE POLICIES!!

 MO U.S. Senators—

Senator Blunt:               202-224-5721      Click HERE for Email

Senator McCaskill:        202-224-6154      Click HERE for Email

MO U.S. Representatives—

Representative Clay (D – 01):                     202-225-2406      Click HERE for Email

Representative Akin (R – 02):                     202-225-2561      Click HERE for Email

Representative Carnahan (D – 03):             202-225-2671      Click HERE for Email

Representative Hartzler (R – 04):                202-225-2876      Click HERE for Email

Representative Cleaver (D – 05):                 202-225-4535      Click HERE for Email

Representative Graves (R – 06):                  202-225-7041      Click HERE for Email

Representative Long (R – 07):                     202-225-6536      Click HERE for Email

Representative Emerson (R – 08):               202-225-4404      Click HERE for Email

Representative Luetkemeyer (R – 09):         202-225-2956      Click HERE for Email

Missouri Rural Crisis Center

(573) 449-1336

Will you join our final push to make sure your members of Congress do the right thing?

Despite opposition from hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of activists like you, President Obama has submitted the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to Congress. Debate is expected to begin as early as Tuesday night and the House vote on the bill—now called H.R. 3078—is scheduled for Wednesday.

But it’s not too late to take action to defeat this harmful trade deal. Tell your members of Congress that you expect them to vote NO:

•      Make a phone call. For instructions on how to call your representative and senators, click here. If you want to amplify your voice, invite friends and family over for a phone bank, or order pizza at lunchtime and ask your coworkers to make calls in exchange for a slice. It’s always easier to make a call when everyone around you is doing it.

•      Send an email. Click here to use our two-minute form to email your members of Congress and then forward the link to everyone you know!

•      Read and share our Huffington Post article. This past week, we outlined the key reasons why we think this FTA will be a bad deal for human rights. Click here to read, “like,” and use this piece to educate your community.

Also, tonight our partners will host a virtual town hall with actor Danny Glover and Representative Emmanuel Cleaver to talk about why they are opposing all three FTAs. To attend this exciting event, click here.

This has been a long, hard battle, but we’re going to keep pushing until the very end because we have heard the voices of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, human rights defenders, union members, small-scale farmers, and the many others who will be devastated by this trade deal. Every day they face threats and attacks because of their work for peace and human rights, but they haven’t given up, so neither are we.

Please do what you can to take a stand for human rights and economic justice in these last crucial days!

In solidarity,

Lisa Haugaard and Vanessa Kritzer, LAWG’s Colombia Team

P.S. If you want to organize a vigil or do any other creative actions to draw media attention, click here and we’ll help you make it happen!

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by Dan Kovalik, Senior Counsel for the United Steel Workers.  This article reprinted from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette ( http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11283/1180951-109-0.stm )

On March 10, 2010, former President Bill Clinton made this stunning confession to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding his free trade policies in Haiti:

It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. I had to live every day with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.

Even more surprisingly, Mr. Clinton, one of the founding fathers of the modern free trade agreement, admitted that this type of trade policy “failed everywhere it’s been tried … .” Truer words have never been spoken. And yet, even in the face of such a confession, and in the face of incontrovertible facts, the U.S. Congress is poised to pass not just one, but three new free trade agreements — with Colombia, South Korea and Panama — of the very type that Mr. Clinton now loses sleep over.

So, what are the facts?

Let’s start with the mother of all free trade agreements — the North American Free Trade Agreement — the one which Mr. Clinton had promised would create jobs in the United States but which presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ran from in 2008, claiming that it needed fixing. And fixing it surely needs. According to the Economic Policy Institute, nearly 900,000 (mostly high-paying) U.S. jobs were lost to NAFTA between 1993 and 2002 alone.

Meanwhile, Mexico has fared even worse. Indeed, the same devastation Mr. Clinton’s policies wrought in Haiti have been experienced in Mexico. Thus, the agricultural provisions of NAFTA — almost identical to those contained in the Colombia Free Trade Agreement now being considered — cost the livelihood and land of 1.3 million small farmers in Mexico.

Where did these small farmers go? Many are being forced to emigrate to the United States. Indeed, while small farmers make up a relatively small percentage of the Mexican population, they make up around 40 percent of Mexicans immigrating into the United States. Still others have been pushed into the illicit drug trade — the very drug trade the United States purports to fight there.

Meanwhile, the good industrial jobs lost in the United States under NAFTA never translated into good jobs in Mexico. Rather, NAFTA created low-paying, dangerous and environmentally damaging industries on the other side of the border which have devastated Mexican workers and their communities. One only need look at Juarez, Mexico — the city that was to be a model of development under NAFTA and which instead is experiencing violence at wartime levels, with 4,300 civilians murdered in the last two years out of a population of 2 million.

Again, it was NAFTA and the “free trade” principles it embodied which have done this, which have transformed Mexico into the near failed state it is today.

This now brings us to the Colombia FTA — the one I know most about and which represents the biggest concern for labor and human rights advocates.

When running for office, President Obama took a principled stance against the Colombia FTA, echoing the concerns of labor that we shouldn’t enter into a free trade agreement with Colombia in light of its abysmal labor and human rights situation. As Mr. Obama explained, “We have to stand for human rights and we have to make sure that violence isn’t being perpetrated against workers who are just trying to organize for their rights.”

The rationale behind this stance continues to this day, with 51 unionists killed in Colombia in 2010 and 23 killed so far this year, allowing Colombia to retain its dubious distinction as the most dangerous country in the world in which to be a trade unionist. In addition to unionists, human rights defenders, indigenous and Afro-Colombian leaders, and Catholic priests defending the poor are also targeted in Colombia. This year alone, six Catholic priests have been murdered in Colombia.

Meanwhile, according to Colombia’s own prosecutor general, right-wing paramilitaries aligned with the Colombian state have murdered more than 170,000 civilians over the past 15 years. Of these, around 50,000 have “disappeared.” Yet this is a country to which the United States may give special trade preferences.

The Colombia FTA, while costing the United States an estimated 55,000 net jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute, would wreak further havoc in Colombia. The agricultural policies that devastated Haiti and Mexico — those allowing the United States to dump cheap, subsidized food into those countries — would be applied to Colombia. This would lead to the impoverishment and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of small farmers in Colombia, many of whom would join the ranks of the 5 million internally displaced persons in Colombia — the largest internally displaced population in the world.

In short, free trade has never worked as promised and it will not work now. But sadly, like the false prophets of a bad religion, those holding the reins of power in the United States continue to push “free trade” policies despite all the evidence that they have failed. These false prophets exhort us to believe in the magical force of the “invisible hand” of the “free market” to save us, all the while giving real and visible aid to corporations and Wall Street banks even as they tell working people to keep tightening their belts. It is time that these lies and these bad economic and trade policies be rejected.

————UNION STATEMENTS AND TOOL KIT

Immediate Release:

Contact:  Chuck Porcari, 202-434-1347, cporcari@cwa-union.org

October 7, 2011

CWA Releases Report On Avancia Airlines As Debate on Colombian Trade Deal Heats Up
Case Study Finds Labor Action Plan ineffective, worker abuse continues

Washington, DC— The Communications Workers of America today released “As Goes Avianca: How One Company Represents the Problems and Challenges of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement & the Action Plan on Labor Rights.”  The case study outlines the challenges that go unaddressed by the proposed agreement’s Labor Action Plan by looking at the actions of the Colombian-based airline as they relate to it.

Avianca has to great lengths to prevent new employees from joining unions, including forcing them to sign into a voluntary benefits plan, or PBV, that prohibits union membership — before they are permitted to sign employment contracts. Further, new non-union employees are awarded health and nutritional stipends that union members at the airline are not eligible for.

American and Colombian workers should be alarmed, with American carriers like Spirit Airlines already pursuing a plan to expand service to Colombia, and use that nation and its weak labor laws as part of a hub to expand service to South American destinations.  Real meaningful reform is critical, and the Avianca example raises larger questions about Colombia’s continued hostility to worker protections and basic rights, as well as questions about the enforceability of the Action Plan.

“CWA will continue its work with telephone workers, public workers, journalists, flight attendants and others who are fighting for employee status and a voice in their workplaces. The fact is, despite the Action Plan, the situation in Colombia has not changed, and therefore, should not be rewarded with a Free Trade Agreement,” said George Kohl, CWA Senior Director.

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The following alert was originally drafted by the AFL-CIO. Please see the action component below.

Your representative in Congress is considering three dangerous new free trade agreements, with Colombia,

Korea and Panama. With more than 25 million Americans desperately searching for full-time jobs, the last

thing our leaders should focus on is trade deals that are unlikely to create jobs or help working families.

GET THE FACTS:

• The Korea agreement is the largest offshoring deal of its kind since NAFTA. If enacted, it likely will displace 159,000 U.S. jobs, mostly in manufacturing. And its glaring loopholes would allow unscrupulous businesses to import illegally labeled goods from China and possibly even from sweatshops in North Korea—potentially without any tariffs at all.

• In Colombia, one trade unionist is murdered almost every week and almost none of the murderers is brought to justice. In 2010, 51 trade unionists were assassinated in Colombia—more than in the rest of the world combined. So far in 2011, another 22 have been killed, despite Colombia’s heralded “Labor Action Plan.” Would we reward a country where 51 CEOs were killed last year?

• And the Panama agreement has many of the problems of the other two deals, like deregulating big banks and letting foreign investors bypass U.S. health, safety, labor and environmental laws. Panama is also a tax haven: a place where tax-dodging, money-laundering millionaires and billionaires hide their money.

• America has a jobs crisis that Congress should address immediately, starting with passage of President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act. Tell your representative in Congress to get to work for working families—don’t reward job exporters, governments that fail to protect workers and tax dodgers.

On Tuesday, Oct. 4, join the national call-in day to tell your U.S. representative to STOP these trade deals.

CALL 800-718-1008

From AFL-CIO

Sisters and Brothers,

Very soon, free trade agreements with Korea, Columbia, and Panama are likely to come up for a vote. If history tells us anything, we know that so called “free-trade” agreements cost American workers jobs. Tomorrow, October 4th (Tuesday), there will be a national call in day for you to voice your opinion on these job-killing deals.

Let’s also make sure that our Representatives know that we support a real jobs plan that will have results. President Obama has put forward a plan, the “American Jobs Act,” that would invest significant resources into rebuilding our nation’s infastructure, and creating good paying jobs in the process.

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4th, 2011

Call the Capitol Switchboard at 866-311-1889, be sure to ask for your US Representative, and tell them you are their constituent and that you:

1) Oppose free trade deals with Korea, Columbia, and Panama.

2) Also remember to let them know that we need to get the American Jobs Act passed so that we can start creating secure, good paying jobs for Americans.

Thanks for taking action and standing up for American jobs.

In Solidarity,

Hugh McVey, President

Herb Johnson, Secretary Treasurer

Missouri AFL-CIO

PS: Once you’ve made your call, let us know on Twitter, by sending a tweet @MOAFLCIO or post on our Facebook Page.

——–Tool Kit to stop the Free Trade Agreements

Use This Tool Kit to Stop the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and All FTAs!

Congress has returned to Capitol Hill and pressure is mounting for passage of a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia as well as South Korea and Panama–ASAP! President Santos of Colombia says the agreement will pass by the end of September.

We Know Free Trade Kills Jobs

IT IS CRITICAL THAT THESE BILLS ARE NOT INTRODUCED!

…and yet President Obama is still pushing forward the three pending free trade agreements. In his speech on jobs he cleverly slipped in a nod to the pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, saying:

“Now it’s time to clear the way for a series of trade agreements that would make it easier for American companies to sell their products in Panama and Colombia and South Korea, while also helping the workers whose jobs have been affected by global competition.”

He made it sound as if these trade agreements would be creating jobs, but we know this isn’t the case! Average Americans need to hear the truth about these job-killing free trade pacts. Write your local paper today with letters to the editor demanding that these massively significant free trade bills be debated publicly, rather slyly pushed through.

These agreements will be voted on soon! Help us get the word out on the damage they will do by writing a letter to the editor today!

Why the rush? Because they all know that FTAs are unpopular with their bases on the Right and on the Left. They want to pass these bad accords soon because if they delay, they fear a backlash in the elections.

While all three FTAs are bad, the one with Colombia is especially troubling. It would reward those who are most responsible for human rights abuses and would consolidate the gains made by those who profit from repression and war.

Now more than ever is the time for us to step forward and beat these FTAs. We’re going to be hearing a number of calls to action by progressive organizations about how you can oppose the FTAs. AFGJ supports all of these, barring some overriding reason. As one of our contributions, we have put together a “tool kit” that you can use as you write your letters, make your calls and raise the issue at appearances by Congress persons and candidates for office.

We especially urge people to print out and mail or personally hand your Congressperson a copy of the “Word of Advice to Congress”. It starts out saying, “Your vote for pending Free Trade Agreements would put my vote for you at risk.” That may be the single most important message your Congress persons need to hear. You can also email the text or use it as a phone script.

We can beat these agreements. But we will have to do so the same way we have every time we’ve beaten them in the past–by diligent, in the trenches struggle. Let’s roll up our sleeves and go to work!

TOOL NUMBER ONE: The Hammer of the Vote!

While Congress is just getting back in session! Let’s hit them with our message before they’re even settled in! No FTA with Colombia! No to All the Pending FTAs!

Please print out and either mail this or hand deliver it to your Congressperson! An alternative would be to call the offices of Representatives and Senators at the Congressional switchboard: 202-224-2131 and to use this as a script.

GO TO http://afgj.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/FTAflyer-Full-Sheet.pdf for “A Word of Advice to Current and Would-Be Members of Congress about the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement”

TOOL NUMBER TWO: Wall Paper, Wheat Paste and a Megaphone–Take the Struggle to the Street with these Eye-Catching Flyers and Calls to Action!

Below is a link to a poster/hand-out made by Raquel Mogollón that informs people about the Colombia FTA and urges them to take action! These are great for posting in public places or passing out at political (and other!) events. Don’t just preach to the choir–print one out and put it in a laundromat, on the bulletin board at your work or school or hand them out and post them out on the street! There are all kinds of ways to use these to spread the word! The link below prints well in both color and black and white. However, as an alternative, you can write to james@afgj.org and request a pdf file of either a color or black and white version.

GO TO http://afgj.org/?p=1605 for Anti-FTA Poster and Call to Action

TOOL NUMBER THREE: Nails! Nail Down a Victory with These Post Cards!

Print out or order postcards against the FTA with Colombia and get people to fill them out at demonstrations, street fairs, tabling at your school and elsewhere. You can order a set of postcards by sending an email to james@afgj.org — and be sure to say how many you want and where to send them. Or, you can print out your own copies by going to the link below:

TO DOWNLOAD POST CARDS AGAINST THE COLOMBIA FTA GO TO http://afgj.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/colFTApostcard.pdf

TOOL NUMBER FOUR: The Sharp Blades of Analysis Wielded with Elbow Grease and Brain Power!

There is no more important tool we have than word of mouth in this struggle. The super-rich in Congress and the corporations may well have a lot more money and resources than we do in this fight, but there’s one thing we have that they don’t: they don’t have our friendships and family and personal connections to our communities–and to grass roots voters. We should be well-informed as we step up to this struggle, both for talking to our friends and also for questioning and making comments to elected officials and candidates as they make their rounds of public appearances. Below are two links that will give you some in depth analysis, one specifically in regards to the many false claims being made to support the US-Colombia FTA; the other is a concise and easy to understand discussion of why FTAs, in general, are bad for the US public.

GO TO http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3205-the-pending-us-colombia-free-trade-agreement-false-claims-versus-hard-realities for: False Claims Versus Hard Realities: The Pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia

GO TO http://afgj.org/?p=1446 for: 5 Reasons Americans Should Oppose Free Trade

KOREA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: KORUS

Background Information

KORUS is highly controversial in both South Korea and the US, and has been the source of major demonstrations in South Korea. Despite the positive spin some members of both parties are trying to put on the agreement, Americans have not been fooled.

There are a number of particularly troublesome parts of the measure. The labor community has largely rejected the agreement due to its poor standards. Environmentalists are appalled at the US efforts to lower environmental and safety standards. Oddly, one of the only reasons many Democrats had hesitated to pass the agreement was due to “non-tariff barriers to trade.” In this case that actually meant that South Korea had too high of standards for car and food safety, as well as miles per gallon auto standards for the US to compete. Now that the Obama administration has negotiated for South Korea to lower its car safety and emissions standards for US automobiles, the administration is ready to push the bill through. Clearly, this agreement is another example of a labor and environmental race to the bottom.

We should all be irate over clauses allowing the World Bank and UN tribunals to allow South Korean companies to sue to the US government (or US companies to sue South Korea) for “lost profits,” should local regulations impede their financial gains. This bill will actually create a net job loss in the US, where we are already suffering from staggering unemployment rates. The US International Trade Commission (one of free trade’s biggest cheerleaders) says that the agreement will increase the trade deficit with SK (meaning a net loss of jobs.) Cumulatively, the Economic Policy Institute estimates that it will costs the US 159,000 jobs in the next 5 years as a net loss. Moreover, the jobs lost will mostly be in high end manufacturing and electronics, while the jobs gained will be in low paying sectors such as cattle production.

The KORUS FTA is detrimental to US and Korean workers. It forces South Korea to lower its environmental and safety standards, and exposes our tax-payers to possibly having to pay claims in United Nations or World Bank tribunals by Korean companies alleging “lost profits” based on our environmental or labor laws. Moreover, the U. S. International Trade Commission has predicted that KORUS will actually increase the US trade deficit. The Economic Policy Institute maintains that KORUS will make the US trade deficit with Korea twice as bad, up to $26.9 billion annually within seven years. This will result in 888,000 jobs lost as a result of Korean imports. If one figures in employment created by increased US exports and jobs lost because of the already existing deficit with South Korea, there are some 200,000 jobs that will be lost.

The administration has failed to live up to its promises for true reform. Instead they have framed this detrimental agreement as a victory. The majority of us, however, do not see this agreement in that light. We are tired of failed NAFTA-style trade agreements that have cost us so many jobs, and will continue to do so in these tough economic times.

GO TO http://www.epi.org/publication/free_trade_agreement_with_korea_will_cost_u-s-_jobs/ to learn about job loss

“If we look at the ‘winners and losers’ it appears that low-paying industries are projected to do well, while higher-paying jobs will do worse. So-called winners would be sheep, cattle, beef-packing plants, etc. These workers are paid less than the national average per hour. Losers would be electronics, vehicles, vehicle parts (higher paying “jobs of the future,” potentially including trains, green jobs, etc.) These workers make +/- 4x the national average at around $30 per hour.”

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TAA (Trade Adjustment Agreement) which is proposed before a vote on the FTAs go to http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/

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