http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon87.htm


DEMOCRATS DEAL BLOW TO C.A.F.T.A.


By Jon Christian Ryter

May 13, 2005

NewsWithViews.com

The Bush Administration was dealt a major political setback to win Congressional approval for the Central America Free Trade Agreement [CAFTA] after a group of pro-free trade Democratic allies in the House of Representatives suddenly backed out of the deal. Surprising, it had nothing to do with the battle being waged in the US Senate over judicial nominees. It has to do with the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council protecting the collective bargaining rights of Central American workers. After all, someone has to watch out of for the jobs of tomorrow's consumers.

It would seem that if the AFL-CIO had not sold out to the globalists for a seat at the feast-laden table of the New World Order in 1993, between 2.5 to 4 million jobs would have remained in the United States. And the American labor unions would have continued to represent the American workers. The American worker was sacrificed as much by their labor unions as industry when the North American Free Trade Agreement was pushed through Congress by the Clinton Administration. If you recall, in 1994, the Democrats were rewarded for NAFTA by losing control of both the House and Senate. It would do the Republican Party good to keep that thought in mind when CAFTA comes up for a vote since America now understands that CAFTA, like NAFTA, was never a jobs for Americans proposition, it has always been a jobs transfer bill that was specifically designed to place income in the hands of tomorrow's consumers in the third world at the expense of Americans.

The House New Deal Coalition, which traditionally supports trade deals announced that it was withdrawing its support because the AFL-CIO said that the terms of the trade agreement did not put sufficient pressure on the Central American governments to create American-style collective bargaining rights for the workers that were guaranteed by the respective governments of Central America and, if necessary, backed up with troops to support the workers' rights to strike.

Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher [D-CA], chair of the New Democrat Coalition, said: "We are ardent supporters of free trade, but this deal reduces our ability to enforce labor standards." It seems to me that, in reality, the only people the New Democrats really want to protect are the labor unions themselves who discovered their "right" to unionize all of the jobs going to Mexico did not mean much without collective bargaining laws that favored them. Tauscher, who has signed on as a willing partner of the continued American jobs drainâ€â€