UAW President Bob King breaks with labor colleagues over new U.S. free trade pact.
On the eve of President Barack Obama’s visit to a General Motors Assembly plant outside Detroit to sign a new free trade pact with South Korea, the United Auto Workers broke with other unions by endorsing the new agreement.
“The UAW is pleased with congressional approval of the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement,” the UAW said in a statement issued on the eve of the President’s visit to the Detroit area. The Orion plant was apparently selected for the signing ceremony because it is building a car that had been imported into the U.S. from South Korea up until this summer.
“The revised agreement,” said UAW President Bob King, “creates significantly greater market access for American auto exports and contains strong, auto-specific safeguards to protect our domestic markets from potentially harmful surges of Korean automotive imports.”
The UAW has been critical of U.S. trade policy and practices for more than 30 years but King said he is satisfied with provisions of the new deal with Korea.
Under the provisions of the renegotiated agreement, the 2.5% U.S. tariff on automobiles will stay in place until the fifth year after implementation of the agreement, and the 25% tariff on light trucks remains until the eighth year, when it starts to be phased down. Moreover, Korea will immediately reduce its electric car tariffs from 8% to 4%, and will phase out the tariff by the fifth year of the agreement, King said
King said the agreement also includes standards for the protection of worker rights, including obligations for South Korea to respect core International Labor Organization labor rights and to effectively enforce labor laws designed to ensure a level playing field for American workers to compete.
“One of the reasons we felt comfortable supporting the (agreement) is that South Korea has a strong and vibrant trade union movement, particularly in the automotive sector,” said King. “We believe the revised (pact) will improve our economic relationship with South Korea and provide UAW members with the opportunity to make products for export to Asia,” King said.
Earlier in the week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka had denounced the new trade pacts with Korea, Columbia and Panama in no uncertain terms. “Working people know what too many politicians apparently do not—these deals will be bad for jobs, workers’ rights and our economy, Trumka said, after Congress voted to approve the trade deals.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, the Korea trade deal will cost 159,000 net U.S. jobs while Panama routinely tramples workers’ rights and shelters money launderers and tax dodgers.
EPI says the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) should serve as warning about the job loss threat of these three trade deals.
(Click Here for a state-by-state NAFTA job-loss map.)