Brown, Ryan urge voting, organizing to fight unfair TPP trade agreement

LORDSTOWN

Members of United Auto Workers Local 1112 crowded into their union hall Saturday to hear their congressional representatives blast a trade agreement they say is unfair and on a fast track for passage.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, argue U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13th, needs more scrutiny before Congress votes on it.

No one can possibly know everything that’s in the agreement, which is hundreds of pages long and kept in a secure room, Brown told the crowd.

Brown said, he has seen the damage done by unfair trade agreements, citing NAFTA as one,.

Fast-tracking TPP, he said, will lead to another bad agreement.

Brown said that five years after NAFTA, he flew to the Mexican border and crossed to neighborhoods where Mexican auto workers lived.

“Their homes were constructed of packing material and cardboard boxes,” he said.

“A ditch behind the neighborhood was full of industrial waste.”

“I went to an auto plant. It was clean and modern.”

“There was one difference. There was no parking lot. They couldn’t afford to buy the cars they were making.”

It isn’t only people, but communities that can suffer when a plant shuts down, Ryan pointed out.

“What happens when you lose a plant?” he said. “What happens to cities’ budgets?”

“What happens to the mental health levy, the school levy, the library levy, the 20 bucks you throw in the basket at church? That all goes away.”

He urged union members to encourage membership among younger people and to vote.

“We have to start organizing again,” he said.

Read more of their and others' remarks in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.