ISDS Case Map
labour | workers' rights
According to media reports, India wants up to 50,000 extra visas a year spread across EU's 27 member-States under the proposed India-EU free trade agreement with Britain said to be under pressure to cough up 20,000 of these.
Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa, in a break from the Obama administration and the United Auto Workers union, opposes the Korea free trade agreement. "The last thing America’s middle class needs right now is ’Son of NAFTA,’ " Hoffa said.
This week, people across the United States and Canada will demonstrate at Mexican consulates and embassies in protest of violations of the right to organize in Mexico. Of particular concern to protesters will be the bitter strikes and repression of unions representing miners and electrical workers, and the escalating practice of government and corporate entities forcibly installing company unions known there as “protection unions.”
The International Trade Commission even predicts that the US service sector will be a net loser as a result of the US-Korea pact.
Congress should delay the proposed US-Colombia "free trade" agreement until a key Colombian law that leads to workers' oppression changes and law enforcement there improves, a top Colombian union leader says.
On both sides of the Pacific, unions are raising their voices against this rotten deal. The AFL-CIO has come out against it, along with the Steelworkers, Machinists, Communication workers, United Electrical workers and International Longshore Workers while the KMWU, the KCTU and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions remain steadfastly opposed
"The labor movement is not opposed to trade or globalization ― but our country cannot continue to negotiate trade agreements that favor corporate profits over people," says AFL-CIO
The AFL-CIO, the largest US union group, and the United Steelworkers oppose the Obama administration’s trade agreement with South Korea, splitting with unions representing auto and farm workers.
UAW sources suggest King felt he had to back the trade deal as payback to Obama for pumping billions into failing automakers in 2009—although the bailout of Chrysler and GM laid off tens of thousands of workers and cut pay—in half—for future auto workers.
An unusual split in the US labor movement has developed over President Obama’s proposed free-trade pact with South Korea, with two powerful unions backing the deal — a development that experts say will make Congressional ratification far more likely.
