What is the FTAA?

Fact sheet The FTAA, or Free Trade Area of the Americas, is an effort by corporations and governments throughout the Western Hemisphere to create a giant trade region, from Alaska to Chile, that would encourage corporate expansion and "free trade." The details of the agreement have so far not been revealed. Representatives will meet in Quebec City, Canada on April 17-22 to wine and dine and work out the proposal.

It will be based on the 3-way Canada-Mexico NAFTA model, and will be fully compliant with the World Trade Organization. In other words, it will effectively give  corporations the privilege to make super-profits at the expense of worker's rights and the  environment. Below are some thing you should know about the FTAA. Corporate Greed. The FTAA will create an $11 trillion dollar per year trade block.

Over 500 corporate representatives have security clearance to participate in the FTAA discussions and have access to documents restricted to everyone else. Based on  public statements and previous discussions we can assume several things about what corporations are pushing for. Businesses see environmental regulations and worker's rights as interfering with their "right" to make money.<

So, first of all, they want "barriers" lowered, and, secondly, they want the right to sue any government whose safety, health, or environmental regulations cut into their profits. In addition they are eager to "liberalize services," which means the opportunity to buy and run government institutions for a profit. Such fundamental services as education, health care, energy and utilities, prisons and the postal service
could all be up for sale.

Worker's Rights. No real labor standards are expected to be included  in the FTAA agreement. We can expect current trends in the hemisphere  to continue. Since NAFTA went into effect, over one million more Mexicans work for less than the minimum wage of $3.40 per day, eight million have fallen from the middle class into poverty.

In the US it is estimated that over one million workers have lost their jobs. Their new jobs average about three-quarters of the pay of their previous job. Throughout the hemisphere sweatshops and maquiladoras abound. Although these have created employment, it is bare survival in the most dangerous and degrading of conditions, especially for women.

And the most basic right to organize is desperately lacking throughout the region, including in the US. The effect of trade agreements on groups of workers is to create a competitive "race to the bottom," where corporations seek lower and lower wages and higher and higher profits. Environment and Health. The increase of unregulated industry has led  to a marked decrease in health and environmental  conditions. Along the US-Mexico border hepatitis is two to three times the national average due to lack of sewage treatment and safe drinking water.

NAFTA bylaws forced Canada to pay US-based Ethyl Corporation $13 million dollars in damages because Canadian law banned the gasoline additive MMT. The ban has been dropped and Canadian gas is now free to contain MMT, a known toxin that attacks the human nervous system.

Immigration and Borders. People hoping to escape horrible working conditions attempt to move to other countries. But trade agreements allow money and employment to cross borders while  at the same time restricting the movement of workers. Increasingly militarized borders have forced people to cross a more and more dangerous places resulting in hundreds of deaths.

When immigrants arrive they often get abused and exploited by companies in their new place of residence. Restaurant workers in Los Angeles can make less than $2.50 per hour, and worse cases, such as the Thai garment workers discovered working in virtual slavery in El Monte, California a few years ago, show the lengths to which employers will go.

Land and Indigenous communities. Indigenous communities have been especially hard hit by global trade agreements. To implement NAFTA Mexico repealed one of the articles of its constitution. Without Article 27 rural growers have no guaranteed access to land. In addition, a flood of cheap, heavily subsidized US corn going into Mexico has wrecked the market for Mexican corn, and has driven whole regions into even deeper poverty.

Displaced indigenous people have been exploited as cheap labor and face the threat of the loss of their cultures. In San Quentin, Mexico, people who lost their land in the South, now work on giant agricultural plantations, live in cardboard shacks on company owned land, and buy supplies in a company owned store.

Often they can't afford food, even though they supply food for millions of people in the US.