labor

Don't Make a Bad Deal Worse: UE Statement on Renegotiating NAFTA

UE General Executive Board United Electrical Workers Union (UE)
UE's General Executive Board denounced Trump's racist and jingoistic proposals for a renegotion of NAFTA and instead called for a new set of trade policies that prioritize workers common interests and relies on international solidarity as its cornerstone. Any renegotiation of NAFTA must be oriented around the improvement of workers’ lives and protection of the environment focused on those regions of the continent where conditions are the most desperate.

labor

Rebuild Collective Power of Working People Around the Globe

Richard L. Trumka AFL-CIO
The OECD should be in the business of helping people build democratic institutions that give them economic and political voice—guardians of equality and democracy. The alternative to addressing wage stagnation and the status of working people in the global economy is not more of the same elite dominated globalization. The alternative is an escalating crisis where the false promises of authoritarianism and racism threaten to overwhelm the democratic ideal.

labor

It Is Rigged…and We Must Revolt

Guy Standing Working-Class Perspectives
The system is rigged — by an evolving form of capitalism that undermines genuine ‘free trade’. Rising inequality is fomenting anger and desperation. A revolt is coming, but its direction is uncertain. Some fall prey to neo-fascist appeals of Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen. They will not be stopped by scorn alone. We need a progressive alternative focused on building a new income distribution system for the citizenry, not for the oligarchy.

El Salvador Lessons for the TPP Fight

Robin Broad and John Cavanagh Inequality.org
Although the people of El Salvador won a victory when a ruling denied a company compensation for a mine that popular opposition preventing a mine from operating on their land, they should never had to go through this seven-year legal battle in the first place. Such “investor rights” are the most extreme example of excessive power granted to corporations through trade agreements and are the reason the TPP must be defeated.

labor

Free Trade Winners and Losers

Gary Herman Union Solidarity International
The Canada-European Union "Free" Trade Pact, due to be signed on October 27, like other such agreements, favors corporate power and profits at the expense of working people. Dock workers action last July shows resistance is possible.

labor

Being a Mexican Migrant Worker and Female: A Recipe for Double Discrimination

Emilio Godoy Equal Times
The Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc. (CDM – Migrant Rights Centre), accuses Canada of discrimination in hiring and the allocation of work, the general exclusion of women from the temporary work programmes and the failure to ensure compliance with laws against discrimination in employment.

Tidbits - July 14, 2016 - Reader Comments: U.S. "Inequality Trap"; Police Brutality and Racial Terror; Sanders and Democratic Party; Brexit; Tair Kaminer; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: U.S. Stuck in an "Inequality Trap"; New Wave of Police Brutality and Racial Terror; Photo That Should Be Seen Around the World; Sanders Delivered Most Progressive Platform for Democrats, Ever - Yet Still a Long Way to Go on War and Military Policy, and Trade Policy Still Needs to be Changed; About Demonstrations at GOP Convention; Brexit; James Green; Tair Kaminer; Austrian elections; Remembering Donald Jelinek; Save the Georg Lukacs Archive...

From Brexit to the Future

Joseph E. Stiglitz Project Syndicate
On both sides of the Atlantic, citizens are seizing upon trade agreements as a source of their woes. While this is an over-simplification, it is understandable. Today's trade agreements are negotiated in secret, with corporate interests well represented, but ordinary citizens or workers completely shut out. Not surprisingly, the results have been one-sided: workers' bargaining position has been weakened further, compounding the effects of legislation undermining unions.
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