Welcome everyone to the kick off CWA s action for International Customer Service Month.

Transcription

1 Welcome everyone to the kick off CWA s action for International Customer Service Month. This year we are doing things a little differently. This year, we are using the month to mobilize call center workers to defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Here is the plan: Call center jobs are trade-able. For most of us at CWA, bargaining for improved living standards and job security in a sector that can shift work overseas with the flip of a switch has been an enormous challenge. While technology and globalization may have created this challenge, deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership will exacerbate our struggle. This short presentation will show why. At the end, I hope you will join in the action to protect our jobs. 0

2 The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been called the largest and most dangerous trade agreement you ve never heard of. Never heard of because the talks have been held in secret, and even though the talks have been going on for about three years, not a word of the text of the agreement has been released. What we do know about the TPP has been leaked to the media. Dangerous because our particular concern is about jobs. Our jobs are already threatened by offshoring, we believe the TPP will only make worse. Why are the trade talks secret? Senator Elizabeth Warren told a group that she actually had supporters of the deal say to her that the talks have to be kept secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed. It is possible that legislation will be introduced in the lame duck session of Congress, after the elections, to fast track the TPP and other trade agreements. That is why we must begin now to tell our Members of Congress that the TPP is not good for our jobs and to demand that they say no to fast tracking the TPP. 1

3 We can look at other trade agreements and make an educated guess about what might happen under the TPP. Let s take NAFTA the North American Free Trade Agreement enacted under the Clinton administration. We were promised jobs and prosperity on both sides of the border. But what actually happened? Before NAFTA, the U.S. had a trade surplus with Mexico of $1.6 billion. In other words, we were exporting more goods to Mexico than we were importing from them. This surplus supported an estimated 29,400 jobs. After NAFTA, as of 2013, the U.S. ran a trade deficit with Mexico and we lost 700,000 jobs. What happened to Mexico? U.S. corporations flooded across the border to set up new manufacturing and agricultural businesses. As a result, more than 5 million Mexican farmers were displaced. Many of them became seasonal, low wage agricultural workers. But there was a net loss of about 2 million jobs in Mexico. And living standards were not improved real wages are no different today than they were in And 14 million more people are living in poverty than there were before NAFTA. 2

4 NAFTA was not good for the U.S., but it involved only Mexico and Canada. The TPP is much bigger than NAFTA and therefore we can anticipate that the impact will be much greater. The countries involved in the TPP negotiations currently include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan and the United States. Together these countries account for almost 40% of the world s economy and 26% of the world s trade. Other countries can also join now or in the future. The Philippines, for example, has expressed interest in joining the pact. 3

5 Not only is the TPP big in terms of the number of countries involved, but it is big in terms of the number of issues it covers -- many not normally associated with trade. Traditionally, trade agreements dealt with goods exports and imports and how the prices for the goods are set. Instead, the TPP covers issues related to agriculture, the environment, labor, financial services, government procurement, intellectual property rights, and much more. This is a huge intervention in our economy. The next few slides deal with what the TPP might mean for some important jobs and consumer programs. 4

6 The TPP undermine policies of federal, state and local governments that give preference to purchasing local or U.S. produced products and services. Firms from TPP countries would be given equal standing with U.S. based firms and could underbid domestic firms due to low wages alone. So, our ability to use government as a means to stimulate US job creation will be constrained and subject to challenge. 5

7 Our food safety standards would be at risk. For example, the Food and Drug Administration has already detained hundreds of seafood imports from TPP countries due to salmonella, e-coli, mercury and other residues. We have higher standards for food processing and food handling than some of these other countries. Under the TPP, some food inspection processes would be sped up and foreign corporations could challenge our policies if they believe our standards would prevent them from making a profit. So our food standards, labeling programs and other food and pesticide regulations, would be subject to challenge and our standards may have to be lowered. 6

8 The TPP will raise the cost of prescription drugs The TPP would make the approval process more difficult for generic drug makers and extend protections for biologic medicines. CWA, the AFL-CIO and other health advocates have campaigned for years to help bring down the price of life saving medications by bringing generics to the market more quickly. The TPP could actually increase the price of drugs by delaying the entry of generics. In addition, public health programs like Medicaid and the VA use their purchasing power to obtain discounts from drug manufacturers. And, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has a process to shrink the donut hole in the Medicare Prescription Drug program by getting discounts from the pharmaceutical companies. Under the TPP, foreign-owned pharmaceutical companies could challenge these policies in a special court. How could companies challenge our laws and regulations? It s because of what s called the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision. 7

9 The TPP would Allow foreign corporations to sue governments over nearly any law or policy that a corporation argues would limit their expected future profits. These cases are called investor-state dispute cases because investors, meaning corporations, are allowed to bring the states meaning the governments that are signatories to the trade pact to court. Cases are heard not in domestic courts but in private international tribunals composed of three private lawyers from the signatory countries. The domestic court systems are completely by-passed. Big corporations such as Exxon Mobil and Dow Chemical have launched more than 450 cases against 89 governments through similar provisions in other trade pacts, like NAFTA. For example: increase. -- A French company, Veolia, has challenged Egypt s minimum wage -- Philip Morris, has challenged Australia s cigarette packaging law requiring warning labels. 8

10 For call center workers, it would mean the end of the Call Center Bill introduced by Tim Bishop. That bill would allow consumers to request a U.S. based customer service agent instead of one working out of a foreign call center. You can imagine the suits that bill would attract from foreign call center companies. 8

11 We all know that our jobs are already at risk. The Department of Labor has identified 160 service sector jobs that it considers trade-able able to be offshored. There are 30 million workers in those 160 jobs about a quarter of the entire U.S. service sector. DOL identified customer service representative as one of the most vulnerable jobs. Other firms have made projections: The Bureau of Labor Statistics has data that shows 200,000 U.S. call center jobs have already been lost between 2006 and Forrester Research projects that 3.4 million jobs would be offshored between 2003 and The Hackett Group estimates that over one million IT, HR, finance and purchasing jobs in large U.S. companies will be offshored between 2002 and The bottom line our jobs are already trade-able. 9

12 The TPP will make a bad situation worse. Rather than boosting our living standards or making our jobs more secure, the TPP includes a number of incentives for corporations to offshore jobs. One section of the TPP, about investment, expands corporate rights making it safer to invest offshore in low-wage countries. Another section of the TPP would prohibit countries from requiring that a foreign firm set up a domestic operation in order to provide services. So foreign firms could provide services without employing U.S. workers. Both these provisions are tailor-made to facilitate offshoring of call center work. 10

13 Here is legislative process as we currently understand it. Negotiation with TPP participating countries are ongoing. There are still some serious hang-ups among the countries most recently between Japan and the U.S. Japan wants to retain protections for its agriculture sector and the U.S. wants into their markets. Next, we will see some request for Fast Track authority. Trade deals have to be legislated under special rules because the deals are made among the trading partners. The Fast Track legislation sets out the special rules. Basically, it will set a time line for debate and consideration, establish that Congress will have no authority to change or amend the agreement, and require a yes or no, up or down vote. That could happen as early as November in the lame duck session, but perhaps in the early days of the new Congress, in January. The vote on Fast Track is critical. It will grease the skids for passage of the TPP and other trade deals. The vote on the actual trade deal will depend on the terms of the fast track legislation. 11

14 All in all, the Trans-Pacific partnership is not good for workers or consumers. It is good for Wall Street but bad for Main Street. It gives foreign corporations the power to challenge our democratically enacted policies. It will open the door to further offshoring of call center jobs. Call Center workers need to fight back. 12

15 The action is simple. Sign a Post Card or make a call to your Representative. Let him or her know they should stop the TPP and vote against Fast Track. It is about saving our jobs. 13