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| IAM members joined labor and community activists to protest Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership outside the Greenbelt, MD office of House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD). |
Ways and Means Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) is pushing to bring Fast Track legislation for the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to a vote in the House. It’s up to us – IAM members, American workers, environmentalists, family farmers, civil rights advocates, consumers, Internet freedom activists, and thousands more – to derail Fast Track and preserve good-paying middle class jobs.
TAKE ACTION: Call your member of Congress at 1-855-712-8441 and tell them to vote NO on Fast Track for the TPP. Then, use the IAM Activist Center to send them a message.
As written, the TPP would force working Americans to compete with horribly-abused sweatshop workers overseas in countries like Vietnam, where the minimum wage is less than 60 cents an hour, and in Malaysia, where up to a third of workers in the country’s export-oriented electronics industry are forced laborers — a euphemism for modern-day slaves.
So-called Fast Track authority would cut off congressional debate for the 12-nation trade deal and only allow for an up-or-down vote on the TPP.
It’s a disastrous deal for American workers, says IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger.
“If a Congressman or Senator can’t support the American people on this, we need to find another candidate to support who will look out for the interests of the American people,” Buffenbarger said recently on America’s Work Force Radio.
American workers have been burned by politicians promising jobs through trade deals before. NAFTA shipped thousands of IAM jobs at a Galesburg, IL Maytag refrigerator factory to Mexico in 2004. An IAM-represented rubber and plastics factory in Watertown, SD recently moved its production to Mexico, where workers make $2.35 an hour.
“The proponents of this deal want to talk about cheaper goods,” said Buffenbarger. “What amazes me about that argument is that if you’re unemployed and have no income, you can’t afford even the cheap goods.”
The time is now to derail Fast Track for the TPP. Call your member of Congress at 1-855-712-8441 and tell them to vote NO on Fast Track for the TPP. Then, use the IAM Activist Center to send them a message.
