National AFL-CIO president blasts trade pacts

By DAVID SKOLNICK

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The North American Free Trade Agreement has hurt working Americans, and the proposed update to the deal isn’t much better, said Richard Trumka, national president of the AFL-CIO during a Youngstown visit.

Trumka called the USMCA [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement] “NAFTA light. We want a rewrite that works for the American people.”

On Tuesday, Trumka had a roundtable discussion with 20 current and former local labor leaders at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry & Labor. Trumka leads the 12.5 million-member AFL-CIO, the nation’s large labor organization. He’s on a three-day tour to discuss the USMCA that started Monday with a stop in Pittsburgh. In addition to Youngstown, he was in Ak ron and Cleveland on Tuesday and will be in Toledo and

Detroit today.

“This agreement isn’t good enough the way it is now,” he said in Youngstown. “We want to fix it. I want to get rid of NAFTA,” which went into effect January 1994.

Trumka said his main concerns with the USMCA are it doesn’t end outsourcing of American jobs to Mexico and other low-wage countries; isn’t enforceable because Mexico hasn’t allowed the formation of real unions or negotiated better wages and made labor reforms for its workers; and the deal provides a monopoly for 10 years for certain pharmaceuticals, which would drive up the cost of health care.

“The agreement falls short without enforcement,” he said. “I don’t care how good the agreement is, how wonderful it is, it’s useless” without enforcement.

While the heads of the three nations signed the treaty in November 2018, it faces a challenge in Congress, particularly the Democratic-led U.S. House.

Trumka said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “is in lock-step” with organized labor to not approve the deal without the improvements being sought.

“That treaty can’t come up for a vote without the approval of Nancy Pelosi and she said she will not schedule a vote until it’s worthy of the American people,” Trumka said. “Right now, it’s not worthy of the American people.”

Dave Green, president of the United Auto Workers Local 1112 at the idled General Motors complex in Lordstown, said: “I don’t think people recognize that we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in at Lordstown [because of] NAFTA.”

He added: “We have to get better labor laws.”

Some at the roundtable brought up what they called the failure of the 2016 presidential campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton to talk about jobs.

Gary Steinbeck, former district director of the United Steelworkers, said he met with Clinton officials before the election and told them the main issues were “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

He added: “I don’t know what happened with it because that message wasn’t conveyed [by Clinton] during the campaign.”

Jose Arroyo, a USW district representative, said of Clinton: “Her message on trade was horrible.”

Meanwhile, also on Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat, joined four other Democratic senators in reintroducing the Outsourcing Accountability Act that would help identify businesses that send jobs to foreign countries by requiring publicly-traded companies to publish reports detailing the number of employees per location, including by state and country.