Workers Independent News - NAFTA

CBC: "Canadian diplomats in Chicago had pleaded for a meeting" with Obama's economic advisor; diplomatic cable "misrepresented"

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 09:59:51 -0800

By Jesse Russell

The plot thickens it what has come to be known as "NAFTAgate." The CBC is reporting that what was originally reported by the CTV as a meeting called between Sen. Barack Obama's economic adviser and the Canadian Embassy in Chicago was inaccurate (view the report here)

A few weeks earlier Canadian diplomats in Chicago had pleaded for a meeting with this man, Austan Goolsbee, an adviser to Barack Obama. Later the Canadian diplomats told Ottawa there was no need to worry about NAFTA. Goolsbee, they reported, had said that any anti-NAFTA campaign messages should be viewed as more of a "political positioning" then a clear articulation of policy plans. After the Ohio debate sources suggest that someone in Stephen Harper's government decided to leak their own version of Obama's views.

Unions In Three Nations To File NAFTA Labor Violations Charges Against U.S. - 10/16/06

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:46:35 -0700

By Doug Cunningham

On Tuesday more than two dozen U.S., Canadian and Mexican labor organizations will file a charge against the U.S. and North Carolina under labor provisions of NAFTA. The accusation is that 650,000 public employees in North Carolina are being denied the right to collectively bargain. Dan Kovalik, Associate General Counsel of the United Steelworkers.

[Dan Kovalik 1]: “The allegation is that the failure to allow them their rights to freely organize violates the U.S.’s obligations under NAFTA. States like North Carolina are startin’ to look more and more like Third World countries in terms of people’s ability to organize and in terms of their working conditions.”

Convention Update: AFL-CIO warns Democrats not to vote for CAFTA

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 07:24:55 -0700

By Doug Cunningham

Democrats who vote for CAFTA risk not only the wrath of organized labor but the loss of labor political money and support. That’s the message delivered by AFL-CIO leaders and reiterated here in Chicago by AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Rich Trumka.

[Trumka] : “It’s even a step backwards from NAFTA because of the poor workers rights provisions it contains. That’s why workers here in Central America and here are protesting. We will look at very, very very seriously anybody who vote’s against it. Right now, I can’t tell you that we wouldn’t.
But I can’t imagine us being willing to support anybody that votes against us, because it’s so bad. If you vote for CAFTA, then you’ll vote for anything that ever came up because , this, there are no workers rights, no environmental rights and no human rights protections.”