Do Free Trade Agreements Really Hurt  Workers?

Since implementation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the US trade deficit has ballooned. The deficit in goods has grown by 600 percent in the past ten years, resulting in the loss of 3 million actual and potential jobs. While NAFTA promoters promised the creation of 200,000 jobs per year, after nine years, NAFTA has cost the US 766,000 actual and potential jobs.

Our Most Vital Services are Impacted

• Save Our Services Series: Backgrounder, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
• Save Our Services: #1 Retirement and Health Insurance, GTW
• Save Our Services: #2 Protecting Our Environment, GTW
• Save Our Services: #3 Working Families, GTW
• Save Our Services: #4 Water Services, GTW
• Save Our Services: #5 Corporate Accountability, GTW

And Few Employment Sectors Escape Harm

• Trade Deals and Construction Workers
• Trade Deals and Postal Workers
• Trade Deals and Public Sector Workers
• Save Our Services: #4 Water Services, GTW
• Communications Workers -- CWA Talking Trade, Taking a Stand for Justice

Job Loss Continues

• Our Jobs Matter: Job Security and Trade, UNITE! Union
• Nuestros Trabajos Son Importantes: La Estabilidad del Empleo y el Comercio, UNITE! Union
• Executive Council statement on the crisis in manufacturing.
• NAFTA Has Cost Ohio 45,734 Jobs Lost Since 1995, Study Says, Columbus Dispatch, February 19, 2004

And Worker’s Rights are Trampled

• CAFTA and Worker's Rights
• Save Our Services: #3 Working Families, GTW
• Trade Rules Put the Prevailing Wage at Risk, ASJE
• NAFTA Ten Years Later: Why the Labour Side Agreement Doesn't Work for Workers, Maquila Solidarity Network, June 2004
• Another multinational company has slammed its doors on American workers, Read the editorial by United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, January 20, 2004
• Workers Pay the Price for 'Free Trade', The Progressive Populist, December 2003
• Trading Away Rights: The Unfulfilled Promise of NAFTA's Labor Side Agreement, Human Rights Watch, April 2001
• NAFTA at Seven: Its Impact on Workers in all Three Nations, Economic Policy Institute, April 2001
• Impact of NAFTA Trucking Provisions, Teamsters
• NAFTA’s Seven Year Itch, AFL-CIO
• Uneasy Terrain: The Impact of Capital Mobility on Workers, Wages and Union Organizing, Dr. Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research, Cornell University, September 6, 2000
• More Articles on how trade policies affect Labor

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