U.S. Representative Sandy Levin
12th District of Michigan

(Washington D.C.)- U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, today spoke on the House floor in support of the Bahrain Free Trade Agreement – HR 4340 US/Bahrain Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act – which won approval with a vote of 327 to 95.

Mr. Levin’s floor comments as delivered are below:

“Workers’ rights matter to the rules of competition negotiated in trade agreements.

“In order to make globalization work, its benefits must flow broadly among the majority of population, not flow to the top and merely trickle down to the rest.

“To spread the benefits of globalization, workers must have internationally recognized core labor rights – including prohibitions on child labor, forced labor, discrimination and importantly the right of workers to associate and bargain collectively – so they can advance their economic interests.

“This is not a pro vs. anti trade view. 

“It is a view of how to expand trade in a way to spread its benefits among the population, stimulate – where it does not exist – a strong middle class necessary for a nation’s stability and development of democracy, provide U.S. workers with a more level playing field, and create markets of consumers with the income to buy our products.

“Each trade agreement presents its own challenges and opportunities.  Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has insisted on using a misguided cookie-cutter approach as to the basic standard on worker rights, saying to our trading partners simply “enforce your own laws.”

“Where internationally-recognized standards of workers rights were well established in law, in practice, in a nation’s history so there was unlikely retreat , many of us, we voted YES: Chile, Singapore, Morocco.  We always warned that “enforce your own laws” as a standard was –  fundamentally – an inappropriate approach and would be subject to mis-use and abuse if adopted in the future under very different circumstances.   

“That was vividly true in CAFTA when regarding the rights and position of workers there were major gaps in the laws, in actual practices and in the socio-economic dynamic of the Central American nations.  So we in the Democratic Party overwhelmingly voted NO.

“We insisted that an unbalanced framework for expanded globalization would in Central America lead to further poverty, further insecurity and hinder democratic development.

“When the Administration began to negotiate a FTA with Bahrain, it was clear that there existed issues unrelated to economic globalization, which if negotiated effectively would militate in favor of approval of the FTA

“These included the end of the boycott of Israel and its impact on the movement toward security and potential peace in the Middle East, and American diplomatic relations with a nation moving faster than many in the Middle East toward democratic processes. 

“Also, Bahrain had taken the first steps a few years before to reform their labor code toward providing workers with their basic international rights. 

“While the code was more advanced than in many Middle East nations, it still fell short in several important respects. 

“So in view of all of these circumstances, a number of us chose to work with and press the Bahrainian government to bring their laws up to basic international standards.

“That started an intensive process – where the negotiating parties worked in good faith and where at a Ways and Means Hearing it was agreed, across party lines, that promises were not enough but that there must be concrete action on major gaps. 

“The Bahrainian government has now introduced concrete legislation to fill these gaps in their labor code.  They will apply to both citizens and to the foreign workers, there in large numbers. 

“Bahrain is a small nation of 667,238 (including 235,108 non-nationals), with a per capita income far higher than is true in other nations where the majority of citizens in these nations live in poverty and with a constitutional monarchy whose written support of these reforms give confidence that the formally introduced reforms will become law. 

“When all of these particular circumstances are taken into account, those of us on the Democratic side of the Ways and Means Committee who have actively worked on the matter decided to support the Bahrain FTA.

“Our experience here does not diminish, but only reinforces, our insistence that as we face far different circumstances –  when achieving a positive result from expanded globalization confronts very different dynamics –  our nation must do for the rights of workers what it does for all other provisions.  It must negotiate to place them squarely in the body of the trade agreement with enforcement. 

“Only then can we be confident that globalization will help workers in other nations uplift themselves, create a vital middle class in those nations, move toward international competition so that trade, as now increasingly verbalized by President Bush, is both free and fair. 

“Only then can we be confident that competition with our workers from other countries will not be based on who can most suppress the rights of other workers and that for our own businesses, in this day and age of our massive trade imbalance, there will be increasing numbers of middle income  residents in other nations to buy our goods and services.

“Under those circumstances, I support this agreement -- circumstances very plainly leveled out here, I hope this Administration takes notice.” 

(####)

Home Page  |  Press List