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As America’s middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades – against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News – fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of the Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all!

The reason: Canadian regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada’s right-wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.

Canada’s Radio Act requires that “a licenser may not broadcast … any false or misleading news.” The provision has kept Fox News and right-wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage, including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987. (more…)

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
President, Waterkeeper Alliance; Professor, Pace University

As America’s middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades — against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News — fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canada regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada’s right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.

Canada’s Radio Act requires that “a licenser may not broadcast….any false or misleading news.” The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper’s proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, “Sun TV News” which Canadians call “Fox News North.” (more…)

Rapper OB (Mike O’Brien), his band Kill the Autocrat, and the Go Team perform “One Day Longer”  on the picket line in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada the day after a year-long strike by United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6500 against Brazilian-owned Vale ended in July.

It was the longest strike in Sudbury history and the longest against Vale in the multi-national corporation’s 68-year-history. In 2006, Vale bought the Canadian nickel mining and smelting operations from Inco, against which there were nine strikes in Sudbury beginning in 1958, including an 8 ½-month work stoppage from Sept. 15, 1978 until June 7, 1979.

USW workers at Vale’s operations in Voisey’s Bay in northern Labrador remain on strike. Mediated talks between Vale and USW Local 9508, representing 200 workers at the nickel  mine there, broke down last month. That strike, now longer than 14 months, began Aug. 1, 2009.

The rap video is dedicated to the strikers, their families and the community supporters who fought to maintain their dignity and their rights.

One Day Longer – performed by OB and Kill the Autocrat from Stuart Cryer on Vimeo.

Rapper OB (Mike O’Brien) raps “One Day Longer” – on the picket line – the day after the one year strike by United Steelworkers Local 6500 against Brazilian-owned Vale ended in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Behind him are his strike Go Team buddies.

The rap video is dedicated to the strikers, their families and the community supporters who fought to maintain their dignity and their rights.

One Day Longer – by rapper OB, his band, Kill the Autocrat, and the Go Team from Stuart Cryer on Vimeo.

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

Japan, no economic small fry, challenged China last month. The conclusion of the dispute is a cautionary tale for countries confronting China about currency manipulation.

In September, Japan seized a Chinese trawler captain after his boat collided with two Japanese Coast Guard ships near some East China Sea islands claimed by both countries.

Immediately afterward, China “coincidentally” detained four Japanese employees of Fujita Corp., charging them with filming in a restricted military area. When Japan proposed a prisoner swap, China upped the ante instead — halting shipments of rare earth minerals to Japan. China controls 93 percent of the world’s rare earths, which are minerals essential for manufacturing high-tech and energy-efficient products, from cell phones to wind turbines.

Japan caved, releasing the Chinese captain unconditionally. Suddenly, China rescinded its restriction on rare earth exports to Japan and released three of the four imprisoned Japanese nationals, ending the dispute one captive ahead of Japan.

This incident confirmed China as a burly international tyrant. The caution for countries attempting to negotiate with China is to avoid Japan’s mistake, which was single-handedly contesting the giant. For America, that means seeking an end to China’s currency manipulation by simultaneously pursuing every option the United States has, including  formally naming China a currency manipulator,  imposing tariffs on imports from countries that undervalue currency and creating a community of allies to campaign together to combat the illegal trade practice.

Rallying partners should be reasonably easy, as Japan, Brazil and the European Union all have exhorted China in recent weeks to allow the value of its currency to freely float on international markets.

Like the United States, each has acted unilaterally. Last week, EU finance ministers confronted Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at a European-Asian economic summit in Brussels. Wen rejected their demands for China to speed appreciation of the yuan in relationship to the euro.

Also last week, Brazil doubled a tax it charges foreigners who purchase Brazilian bonds.  This was an attempt to slow speculation that has increased the value of its currency, the real, by 39 percent against the dollar over the past 22 months.

A day later, Japan announced it would lower its benchmark interest rate and purchase $60 billion in government bonds and securities, both actions designed to lower the value of the yen, which would cheapen its exports.

The Swiss tried intervening in the market in 2009 to hold down the value of its currency, the franc, but failed. Singapore, Thailand, India and Canada have considered it.

So far, America has just attempted to persuade China to stop undervaluing the yuan – a practice that artificially suppresses the price of Chinese exports while at the same time artificially raising the price of imports into China from America and other nations.  China’s deliberate currency undervaluation accounts for a significant part of America’s massive trade deficit with China.

Last spring, the United States asked China politely to allow the value of its currency to float up. As the United States awaited China’s answer, the U.S. Treasury delayed issuing its semi-annual foreign exchange report in which it could name China as a currency manipulator, then initiate a formal response.

China replied June 19 that it would allow the yuan to float on international currency markets. Treasury then released its report – which, no surprise, failed to list China as a currency manipulator. Since China’s announcement, the yuan has increased in value less than two percent – this for a currency believed by many economists, including the conservative C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, to be undervalued between 25 and 40 percent.

Annoyed with China’s failure to keep its pledge and angry over unfair trade gutting 2 million jobs from the body of the American economy over the past decade, Congress reacted just before its recess. With massive bi-partisan support, the House passed a bill that would allow the Commerce Department to impose tariffs on imports to counter the effects of currency manipulation. If passed by the Senate and signed by President Obama, it would expand the definition of improper government subsidies to include manipulation of currency to gain trade advantages.

Afterward, just nine days before the next Treasury report on currency manipulation is due on Oct. 15, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in a speech at the Brookings Institution, offered thinly veiled criticism of China’s persistent manipulation:

“When large economies with undervalued exchange rates act to keep the currency from appreciating, that encourages other countries to do the same. . . This sets off a dangerous dynamic.”

In rebuffing the European Union’s request for revaluing, the Chinese prime minister claimed allowing the yuan to appreciate too quickly would bankrupt Chinese factories as their prices rose to uncompetitive levels, and the resulting exodus of unemployed workers to the countryside would provoke social unrest.

No one wants that. Workers everywhere applaud the rise of millions of Chinese citizens out of abject poverty. But increasing the value of the yuan will benefit Chinese workers at the same time as it begins to balance currencies worldwide. An appreciated yuan effectively increases Chinese workers’ wages.

By deliberately undervaluing its currency, the government of China is waging a stealth trade war against the rest of the world. Independently, the United States must protect its economy, but to reign in this international outlaw, America also must secure the help of a posse.

***

Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.

 

  

  

  

  

 

 
By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

A business group is honoring Roger Agnelli, the CEO of Vale, one of the largest mining companies in the world, which, coincidentally, is in the midst of its longest ever labor dispute. The award is for exceptional accomplishments in corporate social responsibility.

The Business Council for International Understanding will give Agnelli the Dwight D. Eisenhower Global Citizenship Award, feting him for his corporate behavior five months after he provoked the strike by more than 3,000 miners, mill workers and smelters in my hometown of Sudbury and neighboring Port Colborne, Canada.

The strikers now include 450 Vale nickel and copper workers from Voisey’s Bay, also represented by my union, the United Steelworkers (USW).  

Vale is the Brazilian-based corporation that boasted $13.2 billion in profits last year and reported third-quarter, after-tax earnings of $1.7 billion this year, more than double its second quarter haul. Vale is a highly-profitable corporation demanding workers take concessions. For example, it wants deep cuts to pay supplements workers get only when nickel prices are high.

Cash flush even during the worldwide recession, Vale has engaged in a buying spree for mines and properties worldwide. In 2008, it announced it would spend $2 billion on electrical projects, mostly coal-fired, and by year end reached agreement to spend $300 million on Colombian coal assets. It got permission from the Brazilian government this year to buy iron ore mines for $750 million. It spent $17.8 billion in 2006 for Inco’s nickel mines and smelters in Canada, and as metal prices rose, earned nearly as much from them over the next two years as Inco had in the previous 10. Still, Agnelli insisted the very Canadian workers whose labor helped Vale make that money take cuts to their income – causing the strike.

Workers and their families have struggled since the strike. The towns in Ontario and Newfoundland have suffered as well because many mining supply and service companies temporarily closed, idling untold additional workers. Kari Cusack, a member of Families Supporting the Strikers, talked about it early in November before a family day on the picket line in Sudbury. She told a local newspaper reporter:

 “We see Vale’s attack on Local 6500 as an attack on our entire community, and we want to do our part to fight back against corporate greed.”

 

The Business Council for International Understanding chose that corporate social responsibility to reward.

In Brazil, Agnelli has shown off some of that corporate social responsibility as well. In September, the government fined Vale $20 million for failing to comply with an antitrust order. Last year, Agnelli secured a court injunction in an attempt to block protestors from the country’s largest social activist group, the Landless Rural Workers Movement, rather than negotiate with those complaining that the company’s iron furnaces were polluting their village and that a hydroelectric dam in which Vale is a partner was flooding their homes. Also last year, Brazil’s Office of the Environment fined Vale $3 million for illegal sale of wood.

Workers from Canada and Vale Brazil demonstrated together in August in front of the multi-national’s Rio de Janeiro headquarters. They served pieces of a giant cake commemorating the 30^th day of the USW strike in Ontario. There the Canadian workers learned that Agnelli had forced its Brazilian workers to accept a defined contribution pension plan. Now Agnelli is trying to force the Canadians take the same inferior plan. 

The International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the Botswana Power Corporation Workers Union (BCPWU) and others from around the world have written Agnelli expressing outrage about the strike. Bohithetswe Lentswe, BCPWU General Secretary, wrote:

“We have every reason to believe that Vale is trying to destroy its strongest collective bargaining agreement for the purpose of setting a precedent to weaken other collective bargaining agreements throughout the world. Vale is also attempting to export its anti-worker, anti-union practices in Brazil to the rest of the world.”

Of course. That’s what great CEOs do, as the Business Council for International Understanding will proclaim at its Dec. 3 dinner in the Waldorf=Astoria, New York City. With the cheapest tickets going for $1,000, it’s likely none of those $29-an-hour Vale workers will get a seat. But Agnelli, who is one of six Vale executives who together pulled down $33 million last year, could effortlessly drop $100,000 for an “underwriting level” table of 10 at his award dinner.

Perhaps there the Business Council for International Understanding will detail its reasons for selecting Agnelli for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Global Citizenship Award. It only profiles Vale and Agnelli on its web page, without, for example, providing the kind of insight into Agnelli’s personality that Antonio Regalado did for the Wall Street Journal in 2008 in a story:

“Current and former Vale executives say Mr. Agnelli can be hard on subordinates. Some of them cite what they say is an autocratic style and a table-pounding temper. . . . In internal company surveys, employees complain frequently that they are under too much pressure . . . Marco Dalpozzo, Vale’s head of human resources, doesn’t deny that Mr. Agnelli can be rough on people, “He’s a tough guy,” he says.”

Again: of course. That’s what business groups prize – executives with table-pounding tempers.

The Business Council is, however, a group that claims it was started by the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower and named its prize for him.  It’s not clear, though, that the business values of the current council and Agnelli resemble those of President Eisenhower. For example, here’s what the President wrote in November, 1954:

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt. . ., a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

To let the Business Council know the ways in which you think this award for Agnelli will increase its goal of International Understanding, call 212-490-0460 in New York, 202-595-2668 in Washington or 44-207-225-3561 in London.

LabourStart has created a web page so you can easily write a personal note directly to Agnelli. It’s here. It enables you to quickly drop Agnelli a little note telling him just how much you think he deserves this honor.

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

Just days ago, America celebrated her birthday with fireworks, spontaneous renditions of the Star Spangled Banner and chants of, “We’re Number One!”

In a crucial area, health care, the chant is untrue. Many of us love the individual doctors who may have saved our lives or the lives of loved ones. But the health care system in this country is not top-ranked.  It’s not even close to number two. Its poor quality and excessive expense are sucking the life out of America. For the health of the nation, both physically and economically, we need a system with a public option – that means a government-sponsored and managed alternative. And we need it now.

First, the issue of ranking. In the year 2000, the last time the World Health Organization stacked up countries’ health systems, the United States came in 37^th, behind the likes of Chile, Morocco, Cyprus, even drug war-torn Colombia, to which the U.S. donates hundreds of millions in foreign aid. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pointed out late last year that the U.S. ranked 29^th in the world for infant mortality in 2004, a statistic that steadily worsened since 1960, when the U.S. ranked 12^th. Twenty-two countries’ rates were below 5 deaths per 1,000 live births. The U.S. rate was 6.78 deaths.

Similarly, the U.S. ranks 42^nd for life expectancy, down from 11^th two decades ago. Contributing to that decline is the parallel drop in Americans covered by health insurance, researchers said. While 46 million Americans lack insurance, Canadians and residents of European Union countries benefit from universal health care.

We are 37^th – Yea! We are 29^th – and falling! We are 42^nd — and dying! These are not the chants of proud Americans. These are not the chants of vibrant Americans. In fact, these are not the chants of Americans who could continue financially supporting this sick system even if they wanted to. And they don’t.

The cost of the American system, with its private health insurance industry in the business of profiting off of illness by limiting care, cutting corners and denying access to those with “pre-existing conditions,” is suffocating the U.S. economy. In this one unenviable area – spending — the U.S. is number one. Health care expenditures are a shocking 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (the value of all goods and services produced in a nation in a year), far ahead of the closest competitor. That would be France, where it’s only 11 percent. That’s followed by Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Canada and Austria, where it ranges from 10.8 down to 10.1 percent. These are all countries that provide national health care.

Looking at it another way, the average expenditure per individual, America remains in the undesirable position of most profligate spender. The average for an American was $7,290 in 2007, the latest year for which comparable statistics were available. But the average for the 30 countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development was a mere $2,964, with the closest to the U.S. being Norway at $4,763.

Those costs marginalize U.S. manufacturers as they attempt to do right by their American workers while scrambling to compete in international markets. Here’s how Dr. Atul Gawande put it in his June article, “The Cost Conundrum,” in “The New Yorker:” “Spending on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and the like now consumes more than one of every six dollars we earn. The financial burden has damaged the global competitiveness of American businesses and bankrupted millions of families, even those with insurance . . . By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.”

President Obama warned the American Medical Association, which opposes national health care, about exactly the same thing in June when he said this: “If we do not fix our health care system, America may go the way of G.M.” Would those wealthy physicians bail out the government then?

Clearly these costs don’t contribute to quality since U.S. rates of infant mortality and life expectancy are so relatively poor. And they factor large in personal bankruptcies and delay of care as individuals are unable to keep up with medical care’s morbidly obese costs.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in February found that 53 percent of Americans cut health care because of cost in the previous year. A quarter reported putting off health care they needed such as doctor’s visits and surgery, and twenty percent said they have not filled a prescription. Another part of the poll explains this: “13 percent say they have used up all or most of their savings trying to pay off high medical bills in the past 12 months, and just as many say their medical debt means they have difficulty paying other bills.  A similar proportion (12%) say they have been contacted by a collection agency, while a smaller share (7%) report being unable to pay for basic necessities like food, heat or housing.”

We are Number One? This is cruel. This is wrong. This must stop.

I know that many Americans view my native land, Canada, not as a country, but as an unofficial 51^st state. But the difference between Canada and the 50 states is that Canada has national health care, thanks to Tommy Douglas, the former premier of Saskatchewan, and a party leader. One huge difference between the American system and Canada’s national health care is the extreme cost of administering private insurance in the U.S. A study published in 2003 in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that administrative costs were $1,059 per person in the U.S. but only $307 per person in Canada. That excessive $752 in administration costs paid in the U.S. for each insured person has only grown larger in the ensuing years. The study concluded: “A large sum might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style health care system.”

In 2004, the Canadian Broadcasting Company conducted a poll to determine the country’s greatest citizen. People everywhere could vote, for anyone they wanted, so an actor, like Tommy Douglas’ grandson, Kiefer Sutherland, could have won, or a famous singer like Celine Dion or Shania Twain. But Canadians chose a politician — Tommy Douglas, the father of national health care. That’s how we feel about the national health care system in Canada.

Don’t let the Republican Party-of-No stop this. Don’t let big vested interests like the pharmaceutical, insurance, and for-profit hospital corporations keep America down. In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear they want a public option. They want care as good as Canadians get. They’re paying more than twice the price for it. To ensure that America is Number One, Congress better deliver it before the end of August.

 

By Fred Redmond
USW Vice President Human Affairs

Four hours into the New Year, a political activist who was also a well-known trade unionist was celebrating at a party in the town of Montoso when a political opponent stabbed him numerous times in the chest.

As Adolfo Tique lay dead, his six children fatherless, police interrogated the assassin.

Then they let him go.

By American standards, it’s a shocking story. But in Colombia, where it occurred, it’s not. It’s the kind of story I heard repeatedly, heartrendingly when I visited Colombia last month with a delegation of British Parliamentarians and unionists led by the United Steelworkers and Unite the Union, which together last year formed Workers Uniting, the first transatlantic union.

The visit left us with no reason to believe Colombia suddenly had become worthy of a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., Canada or the European Union.

The fact that Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world for trade unionists seemed to have made the same impression last year on Democratic candidate Barack Obama. In April of 2008, at an AFL-CIO convention, he promised to oppose the proposed Colombia Free Trade Agreement. He said, “The violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.”

This April, however, President Obama stung U.S. unions, which worked hard for his election and the FTA’s defeat. After Obama and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez sat together at lunch and spoke several times at the Fifth Summit of the Americas, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs announced that Obama had asked U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to work on the FTA.

Say it ain’t so, Mr. President! Say you haven’t turned your back on unionists just because you shared a sandwich with another head of state. Tell us you won’t ignore Tique’s six orphans or 2,700 slain unionists over the past 25 years because of Uribe’s charming banter over soup.

Terrible, disquieting signs suggest it is so, however. Uribe bragged that he’d gotten Obama’s autograph with this note: “To President Uribe, with admiration!” And later Kirk would say Obama is a “great admirer” of Uribe and the strides he has made in reducing violence against union officials.

Also, Uribe bragged that he’d explained to Obama how his administration had protected unionists. He said that before he took office in 2002, there were only two convictions for the murders of workers, but since then there have been 184.

The most reliable source of such statistics, however, the Colombian National Labor School, provides radically different numbers.  Luciano Sanin Vasquez, the school’s director, testified before the House Education and Labor Committee Feb. 12, that the number of successful prosecutions was 91.  So either Colombia doubled convictions within the two months’ time between Mr. Sanin’s testimony and the Fifth Summit of the Americas, or Uribe exaggerated his success in beginning to deal with the 40-year blood bath his country has endured as right wing militias fought left wing guerillas with trade unionists and human rights activists and rural populations caught in the cross fire.

And even Uribe’s inflated conviction number is hardly impressive. It still represents a 99 percent impunity rate. Kill a Colombian unionist, and 99 out of 100 times you’ll get away with it – the police may question you, but then they’ll just let you go, like they did in the Tique murder.

At lunch with President Obama, Uribe wrangled himself an invitation to the White House. No big deal, really. Uribe had been to Washington before, and Bush had never been able to persuade Congress to pass the FTA.

But Uribe also persuaded Obama to drop by Bogotá the next time he’s visiting Latin America. This, however, is significant. This is a trip Obama should make.

Having just returned from Colombia, I believe this excursion could make all the difference in the Colombian FTA for President Obama. But only if President Obama makes his own schedule and does not adhere to some sham show tour set up by Uribe’s people.

Obama needs to meet with some of the Colombian people who spoke with my delegation, including peasant farmers, human rights defenders and trade unionists. While I was in Colombia early in April, Hernan Polo Barrera, the head of the teachers trade union, SITRAENAL, was shot dead in front of his house. Because he’d received numerous threats, he’d asked for protection, but the government refused to provide it. He was the 13^th trade unionist killed so far this year.

When Obama goes to Colombia, I want him to speak with Mr. Polo’s 16-year-old daughter, Liseth, who was standing next to her father when he was gunned down and who was wounded in the attack. She was rushed to the hospital as the killers escaped on motorcycles. They have not been caught.

I also want President Obama to spend some time with the six year old son of Arled Samboni Guaca, an active member of the Colombian agricultural workers’ trade union, FENSUAGRO, who had received numerous death threats from Colombian paramilitary groups. Father and son were walking to a shop on Jan 16 when two gunmen approached them and shot Mr. Samboni seven times. The gunmen escaped. The little boy watched his father die.

Then there’s José Jair Valencia Agudelo, an activist in the Colombian teacher’s union EDUCAL. President Obama should speak with this assassination-attempt survivor. He was shot six times Feb. 26 in the town of Filadelfia a week after authorities refused to give him the transfer and protection that he’d sought because he’d received death threats.

President Obama must speak with one more grieving unionist. He is Jorge Caicedo, leader of the health workers trade union ANTHOC in the Colombian region of Narino. Paramilitaries tried to get to him through is wife, Cecilia Montano. They shot her three times in the head in the town of Tumaco on Jan. 5^th.

Before the new president is drawn in by Uribe’s contention that Colombia should be awarded an FTA because fewer trade unionists and human rights activists and rural peasants are murdered each year now, Obama must hear from the victims. And he should remember what Human Rights Watch wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last fall:

“Free trade should be premised on fundamental respect for human rights, especially the rights of the workers producing the goods to be traded. In Colombia, workers cannot exercise their right without fear of being threatened or killed. Without concrete and sustained results in addressing this basic problem, ongoing anti-union violence and impunity would, as President-elect Barack Obama has noted, make a “mockery” of labor protections in the agreement. We believe that Colombia should be in compliance with such protections before the accord takes effect, as has generally been demanded with FTA commercial provisions.”

By Leo W. Gerard
International President
Staking everything
Today, in Las Vegas, a town where jackpots are sought and fortunes are lost, Derek Simpson, general secretary of the UK-based international union, Unite the Union (Amicus Section) and I together staked everything on a worthy cause — working men and women world wide.
We signed an agreement at the USW convention in the Paris-Bally’s Conference Center joining our two great unions, creating the first global one. It is called Workers Uniting, the Global Union because we foresee industrial unions from other continents joining us to face off unregulated multinational corporations that exploit labor worldwide. (more…)

By Ken Neumann
National Director for Canada
United Steelworkers

John McCain apparently thinks Canadians, and perhaps American voters, will be reassured as he brings his Republican presidential campaign north of the border this week and promises to defend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The truth, however, is different. Citizens in both countries, especially workers, could benefit greatly from a thorough rewrite of NAFTA to put their interests first, rather than the interests of corporate investors who alone have reaped the benefits in the 15 years since NAFTA was signed. (more…)