New York Times
April 26, 2001
By Steven Greenhouse

WASHINGTON, April 26 -- The nation's labor unions are joining with their international counterparts in an escalating campaign to fight President Bush's efforts to create a free trade zone throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Over the past week, American labor leaders held protest rallies in five cities and met with Latin American union officials to battle the proposed trade zone, saying it would encourage corporations to move operations to areas with the worst wages and working conditions.

Calling the proposal "a Nafta clone," the A.F.L.-C.I.O. said it would urge millions of union members nationwide to join a campaign against the trade zone like those labor mounted against the China trade deal and the North American Free Trade Agreement. The labor federation's leaders voiced confidence that, working with environmental groups, they could persuade Congress to deny Mr. Bush the expedited negotiating authority he has said he needs to negotiate a hemispheric free trade agreement.

Last weekend in Quebec, Mr. Bush and the heads of 33 other countries pledged to set up the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would eliminate tariffs from the Canadian Arctic to the tip of South America.

"The Free Trade Area of the Americas looks to us as if it is modeled after Nafta," said Thea Lee, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s chief international economist. "We will oppose it vigorously if it continues along the same lines. As far as we can see, there appears to be a total absence of worker rights and environment standards."

Labor leaders from 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere met in Washington this week with John Sweeney, the federation's president, to map plans to fight the new free trade zone. That group, the Inter- American Regional Organization of Workers, issued a statement criticizing the trade zone, saying it would promote "a race to the bottom" in which corporations seek out countries that pay the lowest wages and have the worst working conditions.

Several members of Congress predicted that Mr. Bush would have as hard a time as President Bill Clinton did in gaining fast-track negotiating authority. That authority, which the Bush administration has called "trade promotion authority," makes it easier for presidents to negotiate trade accords because it bars Congress from amending them, allowing it only to vote up or down.

Largely because of labor's opposition, Mr. Clinton repeatedly failed to gain fast-track authority after 1994.

Representative Robert T. Matsui, a California Democrat who has often opposed organized labor on Nafta and fast track, said: "My read is that fast track is going to be extremely difficult to pass. I don't think much has changed since 1994. You still have the fundamental problem of how do you gather 218 votes in the House."

Administration officials said they would work hard to obtain fast-track authority. An official in the United States Trade Representative's Office said: "President Bush has made it clear that trade promotion authority is a priority for the administration. We are working to develop a broad coalition in support."

A big obstacle is that many Republicans from the Northeast and Midwest appear likely to oppose fast track. Predicting that at least two dozen Congressional Republicans would vote against it, Jack Quinn, a Republican from Buffalo who heads a coalition of union-friendly House Republicans, said: "To me, F.T.A.A. is an extension of Nafta, and in my opinion Nafta has been a failure."

Union officials vowed to do their utmost to block fast track and the proposed free trade zone unless President Bush agrees to incorporate strong labor and environmental protections in any trade accord. They said they doubted he would, and predicted that other countries would block such protections even if the President insisted on them.

Specifically, union leaders want the United States to be able to bring trade sanctions if a trading partner does not enforce its labor laws, like a minimum wage, or basic labor rights, like the right to form a union.

"The F.T.A.A., as it is presently drafted, is a disaster," Mr. Sweeney said. "From what we're seeing, it doesn't do anything meaningful on core labor standards and environmental concerns."

Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, said in Quebec that Mr. Bush wanted to try to improve labor standards and environmental conditions. "We're willing to consider a whole host of ways to do so," he said.

Mr. Zoellick has said that if labor rights are included in trade accords, labor violations should be punished with monetary penalties and not with trade sanctions, which he has suggested could be used for protectionist purposes. But labor federation officials argue that protections of labor rights will not have teeth unless countries face trade sanctions.