Chicago, IL
The American people are uneasy about the direction of the global economy, with the vast majority deeply concerned about corporate America’s rush to outsource good-paying jobs. It is also becoming increasingly clear that our domestic economy is heading in the wrong direction: real incomes and wages are stagnating or falling, inequality is growing, more people are in poverty, and debt is growing faster than income – even as the economy grows and overall inflation remains relatively low. Over half of Americans say that they personally know someone who was laid off in the last six months, and many now believe that their children will fare worse than they did.
Unfair trade policies, and the massive and unsustainable trade deficits that have resulted, are a key contributing factor to the job loss, destroyed communities, and falling wages and benefits that American workers are facing today. Polls show that Americans believe that protecting jobs should be a high national priority and that good paying jobs are more important than cheaper prices.
U.S. trade agreements, such as the U.S.- Jordan Free Trade Agreement, are supposed to protect basic workers’ rights. However, according to recent reports from the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center and the National Labor Committee, egregious violations of workers’ rights are widespread in Jordan today, because the labor rights provisions in the agreement have not been enforced by either the Jordanian government or the Bush Administration.
Tragically, these abuses are not limited to Jordan. Around the world, hundreds of thousands of workers are illegally trafficked to work in sweatshops, making products for export to the U.S. Many of these workers have their passports confiscated and are forced to work inhumane hours for pittance wages, sometimes even going months without a paycheck. These workers are too often denied their basic human rights at the workplace, especially the right to organize and bargain collectively, even while they make products for some of the largest and richest corporations in the world, including Wal-Mart. If corporations can demand – and win – strong, enforceable laws, backed up by sanctions, to protect their products and intellectual property, we should demand – and win – laws to protect the rights of the workers who make these products.
In response to the horrific treatment of workers in the global economy, Senator Byron Dorgan and Representative Sherrod Brown have introduced the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act (S. 3485 and H.R. 5635). This legislation would ban the import or sale of sweatshop goods in the U.S., e.g. goods that are made under conditions violating the core international labor standards, including the right to organize independent unions and to bargain collectively.
This legislation is based on existing law, and contains meaningful enforcement provisions to compel corporations to respect workers’ rights. It offers a positive, proactive alternative to the current race to the bottom in the global sweatshop economy, one based on full respect for workers’ human rights. Our goal is to create economic incentives for both corporations and governments to raise standards and protect workers’ rights around the world, as well as here in the United States, where workers struggle every day to exercise their rights at the workplace.
This legislation gives working Americans a powerful vehicle to launch a massive popular education, outreach and mobilization campaign to take back our economy. For that reason, the AFL-CIO fully supports this bill and will work to secure support for the legislation among members of Congress. We will engage in education campaigns and take other necessary action to work towards passage of this critical legislation.