David Sirota

The United States Senate has become corporate-owned territory - a place that doesn’t even pretend to care about ordinary citizens. Today’s evidence of this reality came in the form of the Oman Free Trade Agreement, where to the delight of Washington’s army of corporate lobbyists, Senators of both parties joined hands to pass this pact and once again screw over American and foreign workers.

More than 400 labor, environmental and human rights groups wrote to Congress asking it not to sellout and instead reject this disastrous accord. The concerns about this pact - which has virtually no labor, human rights, environmental or workplace protections - are many. Here are just a few:

- Citizens Trade Campaign notes: “Omani labor law does not meet core International Labor Organization labor standards which call for workers to be able to form their own organizations, free of interference from employers or government. Omani labor law gives the government an entirely inappropriate level of oversight and control over the activities, meetings, finances, and selection of representatives of the national and industrial “worker representative committees.” It fails to explicitly protect workers who participate in these committees or who engage in strikes from anti-union discrimination…All workers in Oman are denied basic labor rights…The State Department has found both forced labor and Human trafficking in Oman.”

- The Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health notes: “The Oman FTA was negotiated without representation from health care and public health. Industries sitting on Advisory Committees to the U.S. Trade Representative include tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, health insurance, and processed foods. Not surprisingly, the Oman FTA strengthens ‘intellectual property’ rules that preempt the production
and humanitarian distribution of affordable lifesaving medicines. In its Advisory Committee report, the pharmaceutical industry and allies hailed the Oman agreement for including rules that extend the length of time drugs are covered by patent protections, and that preclude fair market competition from generic companies that could lower prices.”

- The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and Friends of the Earth note: “Like CAFTA, the agreements fail to clearly require either country to maintain and effectively enforce a set of basic environmental laws and regulations. There are no binding obligations for countries to comply with their existing commitments under international environmental agreements and no penalty for countries that do not enforce these obligations.”

So to sum up, this was a trade pact that included protectionist provisions to keep pharmaceutical industry profits high, but made sure to have no basic protections for workers and the environment so as to provide yet another government-sponsored incentive for companies to ship American jobs overseas - all while rewarding yet another undemocratic dictatorship. In other words, this is a trade pact that America’s bought-and-paid-for Congress has become comfortable passing.

So who were the key sellouts that voted for this pact? First and foremost, every Republican other than Burr, Dole, Coburn, Snowe, Collins, Chafee and Gregg. The GOPer who is likely to get hit hardest for this at home is Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH). He’s running against populist Congressman Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who has been one of the few courageous champions in Congress fighting both parties’ complicity in these kinds of sellout trade policies.

Sadly, there were also 10 Democrats who sold out and voted for this trade pact. They were Baucus, Cantwell, Clinton, Kerry, Landrieu, Lieberman, Nelson (FL), Nelson (NE), Obama and Salazar. I was surprised to see Kerry among those - he had recently pledged to get more serious about reforming our trade policy. Hillary Clinton - well, let’s just keep these kinds of votes in mind when she runs for President.

Then there is Lieberman - a guy who has consistently voted to sellout American workers. I hope Ned Lamont hammers him for this latest sellout - and reminds Connecticut voters that Lieberman is so out of step that even Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) voted against this thing.

Finally, Obama. What can I say? He told me in my interview with him that he was serious about demanding stronger labor, environmental and human rights protections in trade deals. But in his speech that attempted to justify his vote, he simply said that “I have been informed by the State Department that Oman has been a valuable partner for the United States.” Put another way, he’s telling us because the Bush political hacks at the State Department ignored that agency’s own damning reports about Oman’s record and told him to vote for the pact, he did. Sad.

The bill now moves to the House, where I’m hopeful there will be more unity among Democrats to stop this atrocity. But that can’t happen without public pressure. Get in touch with your Congressman today and tell him/her to reject the corporate money, reject the pressure from K Street lobbyists, reject the impulse to blindly sell out American workers - and vote no on the Oman Free Trade Agreement.

Sirotablog

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Both Parties Join Hands to Sell Out America…Again