CAFTA Is Bad for America
Kucinich gave the following speech in Congress on July 26, 2005:
"Mr. Speaker, the North American Free Trade Agreement caused 5.6 million well-paying jobs to leave the United States. If they were replaced at all, they were replaced by insecure, low-wage employment paying 77 percent less.
"CAFTA, modeled after the North American Free Trade Agreement, will hurt workers in the United States and Central America. Under CAFTA workers are much more likely to lose their jobs than find better ones, especially if they work in U.S. manufacturing or Central American agriculture, small business or government.
"U.S. workers will have to compete in a race to the bottom with sweatshop wages and low standards in Central America reinforced by the weak labor provisions in CAFTA. Provisions that will stay in effect are those like those in El Salvador where they fail to provide for reinstatement of workers fired because of antiunion discrimination; as in Guatemala, where the labor code mandates that unions obtain permission from the labor unions to strike; as in Honduras, where the law prohibits the formation of more than one trade union in a single enterprise.
"CAFTA will result in lower wages for the people in this country. It will result in the loss of jobs in this country, and it should be defeated."
[Ed. note: At 12:03 a.m. on July 28, H.R. 3045 passed in an extended recorded vote: 217 - 215 (Roll No. 443) and cleared for the White House.]
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