How Fast Track Was Derailed

...levels...

...This argument, of course, ignores a central fact: the Archer provision, which effectively would have prevented any measures to protect labor or the environment...

...But is this coalition fundamentally "nationalist," as Beinart claims, just because a few of its components are...

...FAST TRACK DERAILED By the time Congress returned from its summer recess, the pieces were in place...

...The nation's guardians of opinion might not have been so stunned if they spent more time in places like Jamestown, Kentucky...

...More seriously, there were extended arguments about whether to trust and support any labor-friendly provisions that the administration might include in fast track legislation...

...THE MORNING-AFTER editorials almost unanimously mentioned labor's "arm twisting and horse trading" and denounced unions for corrupting the integrity of the Democratic Party...

...We now have a sort of standoff in Washington," says Thea Lee...

...unions and the Chilean trade-union federation had worked together to draft an acceptable framework for the extension of NAFTA to Chile...

...The struggle at Han Young has highlighted the This article is adapted from an essay that will appear in Not Your Father's Union Movement: Inside the AFL-CIO, edited by Jo-Ann Mort, forthcoming, Verso...

...We've identified serious rank-and-file activists in all of our locals," says Klinefelter...

...Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies, strangled the proposals in their cribs, because then–U.S...

...The less palatable members of this coalition— the narrow nationalists who fly Pat Buchanan's and Ross Perot's flags—were much less prominent in the fast track fight than they had been in the NAFTA wars in 1993...

...The Teamsters had distributed hundreds of copies of a "stop fast track" videotape...

...We had a dozen interns during the fast track fight, and they made an enormous difference," says Klinefelter...

...Throughout the 1997 fast track battle, union spokespeople consistently acknowledged the inevitability and desirability of global economic integration...

...Not petitions, not prepackaged postcards, but handwritten letters...

...for six to ten weeks...

...Those weeks in Washington were one of the most tremendous experiences of my life," he says...

...Like many commentators, he makes much of the strange-bedfellows alliance that has come together under the umbrella of the grassroots Citizens Trade Campaign: the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the AFL-CIO, together with followers of'Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan...

...The anti–fast track mobilization reached its highest pitch during the third week of October, when Sweeney and House minority leader Richard Gephardt addressed a series of rallies in major cities...

...It was partly a matter of luck...

...It was union members who held dozens of rallies and teach-ins on trade...

...emptiness of NAFTA's promises: prosperity continues to elude the working class in Mexico, whose average wages have dropped by 25 percent in real terms since NAFTA was ratified...

...And labor itself was divided about how to proceed...

...But before long, the Clinton administration or its successor is likely to put forward a more moderate bill—perhaps with tepid, NAFTA-style "side agreements" on labor and the environment, perhaps even with provisions that appear truly progressive...

...The real purpose of blocking fast track is to make sure there won't be any new trade pacts coming to Congress in the future...

...Well, it's had plenty of time to do so—it's been together since early 1993, when the NAFTA fight first gathered steam...

...But it also reflected the honest convictions of labor activists...

...But only one major newspaper, USA Today, mentioned that the Republican leaders of the Ways and Means Committee had made an entire conference area in the Capitol building available to corporate lobbyists as a "war room" during the battle's home stretch...

...But Beinart's argument is too quick to paint the entire anti–fast track coalition with the narrow nationalist brush...

...It should be clear by now that the Citizens Trade Campaign is strictly a tactical alliance, albeit an interesting and effective one...

...This choice was, to be sure, partly a matter of political calculation: polling data revealed broader public anxiety about tainted raspberries than about labor rights...

...As early as March, labor staff members had been participating in meetings convened by the staffs of fast track's principal opponents: Gephardt, David Bonior, Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, and Marcy Kaptur...

...By August, the federation had set up an elaborate and detailed "stop fast track" web site...

...Time and again, the nation's editorialists ignored the plain meaning of fast track opponents' words...

...You would not have been told that in 1994 narrow corporate interests squashed an earlier fast track initiative, because they found it too labor-friendly...

...And several unions introduced the tactic of bringing cell phones onto the shop floor, so that workers could call Congress in a coordinated fashion during breaks...

...During the very week of fast track's congressional collapse, the Fruit of the Loom company announced plans to lay off nearly a thousand nonunion workers at its plant there, taking their jobs to Mexico or the Caribbean...

...labor movement demonstrated that it has the passion and the tactical savvy to shatter the elite's policy consensus...

...In those instances, the efforts were scuttled even before legislation was crafted—but not because of opposition from labor...

...This time, it was a serious rank-and-file fight, from the beginning until the end...

...We just have to work to make sure that when the stalemate breaks, it breaks in a progressive direction...

...But, stupefyingly, the day after fast track's collapse the editors of Gephardt's hometown newspaper, the St...

...Back in 1993, before the NAFTA vote, we'd sort of gotten slack...

...In particular, the postmortem editorials on fast track tended to caricature the labor and environmental provisions labor sought...

...But it was labor that did the heavy lifting...

...Why did public opinion prevail this time when it did not in 1993...

...The next step will be to apply that passion to building a new trade framework—a framework that serves the democratic interests of workers in Tijuana and in Jamestown...

...In the long run, it's a loser...

...Did the defeat signal a waning of Vice President Al Gore's presidential prospects and the rise of Gephardt...

...Instead, the Republicans, under pressure from the U.S...

...At some point Congress will take up a more palatable trade proposal, and labor will need to be prepared to respond...

...And the Atlanta JournalConstitution: "If [members of Congress] genuinely thought any new agreements should include measures to protect the environment or laborers in other countries, they could simply vow to vote against agreements that didn't contain such features...

...We fax bulletins to them, they go to the shop floor with messages that bear on our workers' lives, and the response is incredible...

...If you first learned about fast track by reading newspaper editorials on the morning of November 11, you would have been told that labor won the battle by sending its lobbyists to bully and blackmail members of Congress—not that hundreds of thousands of labor activists appealed to their representatives' good judgment and to the public will...

...As it turned out, this last question was moot: the bill contained no labor-friendly provisions...

...Throughout the spring, U.S...

...DISSENT / Fall 1998 n 49 FAST TRACK DERAILED At the Pittsburgh convention, Sweeney rallied labor for the coming battle: "The battle over fast track is important to every union in this room," he told delegates...

...trade negotiators from taking up questions of labor rights, consumer safety, and environmental standards, except in matters "distinctly and directly related to trade...

...DAVID GLENN is associate editor of Dissent...

...Six hundred Steelworkers traveled to Washington by bus to meet with congressional staffs...

...In the days after fast track's defeat, Gephardt, Bonior, and other Democratic leaders often tried to redirect the "dinosaur" label onto fast track's corporate supporters...

...But the nation's editorialists wrote as if the anti–fast track coalition was always and everywhere disingenuous about these questions...

...Union members throughout the country were outraged and anxious at the prospect of an expanded NAFTA and their anger and fear found effective expression in the labor movement's lobbying and grassroots activism...

...All of these efforts—the Teamsters video, the UNITE booklet, the AFL-CIO advertisements— heavily emphasized environmental and consumer safety and human-rights themes...

...An analogous "working group" has also developed among left- and right-wing Capitol Hill staffers and lobbyists...

...Pat Buchanan is not going to embrace a labor movement whose leadership argues—as John Sweeney did in 1997—that "the question is not...

...52 n DISSENT / Fall 1998...

...When you think that workers' voices were heard—that we were able to stymie something that the president of the United States wanted, that the business lobby wanted, that the Republican congressional leadership wanted . . . it was a huge victory for democracy...

...trade representative Charlene Barshefsky worked the halls of Congress, trying to cobble together a politically feasible compromise on the question of labor and environmental standards...

...Louis Post-Dispatch, denounced him as if he had never said any such thing: "Mr...

...The field mobilization department was in contact every day with the affiliates, and with our local and state reps," says Thea Lee, the federation's assistant director for public policy...

...The adminstration has the business community screaming in one ear and progressives in the other...

...Our message was very clear throughout: we wanted a different kind of trade agreement," says Thea Lee...

...The administration's calculus apparently was that Republican support had to be locked in first— and that, as in 1993, just enough Democrats could be bullied and bribed at the last minute to push the bill through...

...But luck was not the entire story: the fast track battle reflected a new level of willpower and skill in the labor movement's institutions...

...whether we are internationalists, but what values our internationalism serves...

...The fast track campaign, for all its success, also revealed two severe challenges that still DISSENT / Fall 1 998 • 47 FAST TRACK DERAILED face the labor movement...

...In the wake of fast track's defeat, the press was quickly filled with howling editorials that generally included the words "protectionism," "dinosaur," and "hysteria...

...I'm a United States citizen, I'm losing my job," one of these workers told a reporter...

...and created a national fax-distribution network, through which the field mobilization staff sent weekly updates and talking points...

...These interns apprentice under the legislative staff, attending coalition meetings and lobbying sessions on Capitol Hill...

...FOR DEMOCRATIC victories to stick, however, they need to be discussed and remembered in intelligent ways...

...Although coverage of labor has improved in recent years, in the case of fast track, the mainstream press often seriously distorted labor's positions and labor's tactics...

...The Pennsylvania state AFL-CIO set up its own toll-free line to the congressional switchboard...

...Far more than in 1993, unions acted as an effective coalition partner with the broad range of activist trade groups...

...Will the worldwide labor movement have the vision, and the political strength, to fight for a worthy internationalism...

...In the wake of fast track's collapse, the public conversation about trade policy and unions' political power took an unfortunate turn...

...It's worth exploring this campaign closely...

...People got up before dawn and worked until almost midnight...

...You would have been told that labor and other selfish Beltway players had scuttled a trade policy that was in the nation's best interest...

...The Archer language meant that the battle would be clean and stark: Congress would be considering one of the least democratic models of economic integration...

...And far more effectively than in 1993, the AFL-CIO provided a general clearinghouse for ideas and resources...

...The global economy is a reality...

...Just before what turned out to be the final weekend, John Sweeney and the presidents of nearly every AFL-CIO affiliate union arrived in Washington to lobby members of Congress personally "The fast track effort was the best work I've ever seen the labor movement do," says Klinefelter...

...There was electricity throughout the campaign...

...Another crucial ally was California Democrat Esteban Torres, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus...

...The economy was far stronger in 1997 than it had been in 1993, with unemployment at twenty-five-year lows— and it was commonly believed that this prosperity would mute public anxiety about trade issues...

...From top to bottom, everyone worked very hard...

...Several affiliates—especially the Teamsters, the Steelworkers, and UNITE—had strong and independent mobilizations...

...They have a script that calls for backward-looking, protectionist trade unionists...

...The failure of Congress to extend presidential fast track negotiating authority— which would next have been used in an attempt to broaden the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to include Chile and other South American countries—came as an enormous shock to the Washington establishment and to the nation's pundits...

...This analysis does capture something important about developments within the Republican Party: of the approximately fifty House Republicans who declared their opposition to fast track, many were first- and second-termers, and some of them spoke in the hypernationalist idiom of Pat Buchanan...

...Congress hasn't exactly centered its attention on the plight of workers in Jamestown—much less on that of workers in Tijuana...

...How will labor reply then...

...At the February 1997 meeting of the AFL-CIO's executive council, a few voices expressed worry about appearing to "betray" President Clinton just months after labor had been a crucial part of his re-election machin48 n DISSENT / Fall 1998 ery...

...The Arizona Republic: "Labor's congressional allies demand more environmental and worker protections...

...But this heartening development was completely ignored in most press accounts of fast track's defeat...

...We had excellent systems in place for keeping tabs on the vote 50 n DISSENT / Fall 1998 counts," says Klinefelter...

...The Steelworkers have also established a Washington internship program, in which rank-and-file members live and work in D.C...

...In nearly every public pronouncement on the issue, Gephardt declared that global economic integration is inevitable and desirable—that the question is under what ground rules it will take place...

...In the fast track fight, the U.S...

...But that would be too easy...

...And a few of them have expressed interest in running for elected office—someday I hope to be lobbying these people...

...Not a single morning-after article—not even the lengthy postmortems in the New York Times and the Washington Post—mentioned the administration's unsuccessful efforts to revive fast track in 1994 and 1995...

...The first is a crisis of communication...

...And the Federation was preparing to broadcast television and radio advertisements in the districts of two dozen undecided members of Congress...

...Those fifty Republican defectors in the House were crucial—but the center of gravity in the fast track fight was with the close allies of Richard Gephardt, whose rhetoric was consistently internationalist...

...Labor staffers participated in weekly strategy meetings of the Citizens' Trade Campaign, the umbrella under which all of these groups came together...

...Fast track renewal, like NAFTA before it, was opposed by a solid majority of U.S...

...The conventional wisdom was that the NAFTA battle had been, as two political scientists wrote in 1996, evidence of "the low and declining electoral power of organized labor...

...Craft, industrial, service, and public unions alike—because trade agreements without worker rights and human rights and environmental standards undermine the wages and jobs of us all just as they damage the communities where we live and work...

...We took certain [Democratic] votes for granted, and we let the top brass of the union do all the work...

...Indeed, the recent congressional arguments over the "African Growth and Opportunity Act," which would require the United States to begin negotiating NAFTA-style agreements with certain subSaharan countries, remind us that trade debates are not going to ebb any time soon...

...This made a huge impression on congressional staff...

...The Steelworkers' efforts, for example, were coordinated by legislative director Bill Klinefelter, a veteran of the National Wildlife Federation...

...Almost every day we would have a national conference call, in which people in the field would raise concerns...

...But after the 1994 elections they realized that that era is dead...

...That is the future...

...By late September, when the AFL-CIO held its convention in Pittsburgh, the campaign was in full gear...

...As late as mid-October, nearly every published commentary predicted that fast track would pass Congress by a comfortable margin...

...You would have been told that the AFL-CIO was cruelly indifferent to the suffering of the working poor in developing nations not that U.S...

...And these Republicans did, of course, play a pivotal role in the scuttling of fast track...

...And David Bonior, appearing on public television the night of November 10, stressed that "What we saw this week . . . was that we are ready to move the trade issue to another level, to include labor standards, environmental standards, and food-safety standards...

...the Clinton administration made several crucial blunders that helped spell fast track's doom...

...Torres had supported NAFTA, but subsequently charged that the Clinton administration betrayed several of the promises it made in 1993...

...The anti– fast track coalition included environmentalists, consumer groups, and human-rights organizations— all of which played crucial roles...

...But the Republicans, whose chief negotiator was House trade subcommittee chair Bill Archer of Texas, insisted that trade agreements must not address such issues...

...In the fast track fight, our members sent over 160,000 handwritten letters to their congressional representatives...

...Predictably, the mainstream press devoted hundreds of column inches to the story's horse-race elements...

...A close relationship between labor and its congressional allies extended throughout the battle...

...But in the fast track battle, these workers' voices were— at least temporarily—heard loud and clear...

...In August, the administration finally agreed to Republican provisions— more restrictive than any that had appeared in earlier fast track legislation—that forbade U.S...

...Was Clinton already a lame duck, only ten months into his second term...

...UNITE had published forty thousand copies of a pocket-sized anti–fast track booklet...

...This is a defeat of an old trade policy that was insisted upon by Newt Gingrich and the Republican majority," Gephardt told CNN...

...In fact, the call was for something far more modest: provisions, to be included in the core language of trade agreements, that would require signatory nations to enforce their own labor and environmental laws effectively and consistently...

...It was union members who made hundreds of visits to congressional district offices and placed over ten thousand phone calls to Congress...

...During October, congressional district offices were bombarded with messages from union members...

...And in the home stretch, as the administration began to offer pork-barrel bribes to undecided members, we were usually able to learn about those deals and embarrass the members out of accepting them...

...We had to remind ourselves how to do legislative business as an outsider, like an environmentalist group...

...citizens...

...During the last three decades, the U.S...

...One 1997 intern, Patrick Saltkill, now serves on the Steelworkers' staff, doing legislative work and field mobilization in Tennessee...

...It was union members who delivered over a hundred thousand postcards to their representatives...

...A more sophisticated, but still seriously DISSENT / Fall 1998 n 51 FAST TRACK DERAILED muddled, account appeared in the New Republic...

...But it is a sham, for they will vote no in any event...

...In that spirit, the Steelworkers have established a national "rapid response" program...

...And, just as predictably, most press accounts did a poor job of exploring the conflict's historical context...

...established a toll-free telephone number to allow union members to call Congress...

...trade representative Mickey Kantor had introduced labor and environmental provisions...

...This threat lent a new edge to labor's efforts during the summer, as the AFL-CIO and its major affiliates began to marshal their forces...

...Regional authorities in Baja have bent the rules in their efforts to deny the Han Young workers their union...

...And corruption of various sorts is still epidemic in the administration of Mexican labor law...

...Beinart himself notes that the coalition "has not broadened beyond [issues of] trade and sovereignty...

...In early November, as the congressional leadership tried to bring the bill toward a vote, the anti–fast track coalition began a roundtheclock lobbying vigil...

...The proposal put forward by Chairman Archer . . . would be a big step backwards from the language included in the inadequate 1988 and 1991 fast track legislation, which listed 'worker rights' among the negotiating objectives, but did not limit their scope...

...THESE TACTICAL innovations extended into labor's inside-the-Beltway operations...

...As John Sweeney put it in testimony before Congress, "To replicate the failed trade policies of the past, to write more rules to protect corporate interests at the expense of everyone else, is simply unacceptable...

...the crucial point, they said, is that integration requires appropriate safeguards for workers, consumers, and the environment...

...We're not part of the Establishment, and no one in Washington wants us to be...

...Gephardt should think twice about trying to ride a protectionist horse to victory in a presidential race...

...And all of this was fueled by the energy of rank-and-file members, who constantly brought forward new ideas...

...The press might also have found it instructive to visit Tijuana, Mexico, where, at the moment of fast track's defeat, workers at a Han Young auto parts plant were fighting for recognition of their independent trade union...

...But most reporters weren't FAST TRACK DERAILED prepared to hear that message...

...How is NAFTA so great...

...In an essay titled "The Nationalist Revolt," Peter Beinart described fast track's collapse as a product of "the growing power of nationalism" in post–cold war America...

...I N EARLY 1997, the prospects for defeating fast track looked grim...

...They don't even do us the courtesy of calling up to make sure their accounts are accurate...

...We're developing the union's next generation of leaders...

...They sometimes asserted that fast track opponents were demanding that developing nations' minimumwage levels be immediately raised to U.S...

...The Steelworkers distributed new fax machines to many of their locals, whose lines were to be dedicated to sending messages from members...

...The second challenge concerns the shape of future trade agreements...

...The 1997 fast track legislation was easy to oppose—it was sculpted by conservative Republicans and embodied a worst-case scenario...

...But it's not clear that labor leaders—much less the rank and file—have a unified or well-developed sense of what these safeguards might look like...

...For many years, it worked for the Steelworkers to lobby on an institutional basis, as major players in the economy," Klinefelter says...

...It had taken almost no action to clean up the Rio Grande basin's severe environmental contamination and had not moved forward with an Inter-American Development Bank...