Stop the Southward NAFTA Expansion:

No to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
.

Since 1994, trade representatives from throughout the western hemisphere
have been meeting to negotiate a "Free Trade Area of the Americas" (FTAA).
Their goal is to remove all social and environmental impediments to trade in
the Americas. Their plan promises to benefit multinational corporations,
while destroying good jobs, weakening unions, devastating national
economies, sending people into deeper poverty and destroying the
environment.

The FTAA is an expansion of the 1994 NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement). The FTAA intends to bind 34 countries in the western hemisphere
to further remove restrictions on the free movement of capital, goods, and
services. Like the attempted Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), the
FTAA will extend the implications of NAFTA, while eliminating its
environmental and labor side agreements. The FTAA plans to broaden
definitions of investment, eradicating the distinctions between short- and
long-term investment, thus promoting socially irresponsible financial
speculation.

Such "quick buck" speculation, encouraged by recently liberalized
international trade policy, was largely responsible for the 1995 peso crash
and the more recent economic crisis in Southeast Asia. If the FTAA continues
in the direction of NAFTA and the MAI, the affected nations will also be
prohibited from distinguishing between domestic and foreign investment.
Thus, Latin American countries will be forced to allow foreign companies to
take advantage of and extend low environmental and labor standards, while
providing little benefit to their local economies. As for direct effects to
North America, jobs will disappear as companies continue to move south. The
recent moves to liberalize trade have created worldwide social and economic
disaster.

The trade ministers of the FTAA fear an interruption in the negotiations
could halt the entire process. Tens of thousands of working people and their
allies in the student, farm, environmental and human rights movements
succeeded in halting the "Millennium Round" of negotiations at the World
Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last November. In April, one hundred
thousand people, including a spirited UE delegation, participated in a week
of action protesting the anti-worker policies of the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank in Washington, DC. We do have the power to stop the
FTAA. The next summit of the FTAA negotiators will be held in April 2001 in
Quebec City, Quebec, and trade unionists and others in Quebec and throughout
the Americas are planning a counter-summit and protest.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 65TH UE CONVENTION:

Demands that Congress act to suspend U.S. participation in the FTAA
negotiations until the negotiations are re-directed to the primary purpose
of increasing labor standards throughout the region and restricting
corporations’ ability to exploit workers;
Encourages all UE locals to educate their members and communities on
the potentially disastrous consequences of these negotiations;
Endorses the non-violent action and protests against the FTAA
planned for the April 2001 meeting in Quebec City, and encourages UE members
to participate in them.