Disappointed' in Obama, Sanders Calls on Top Dems to Drop Lame Duck TPP Push

[Egnever]

48. Again not an argument of it's ills

Trade unions oppose lots of things just because a trade union is against it does not mean it is necessarily bad.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/03/20/why-are-unions-so-focused-on-fighting-trade-deals/

Half of all U.S. workers represented by unions work for governments, and another 12% are in education or health care. Trade has very little direct impact on them. Another 20% of workers represented by unions are in construction, wholesaling, retailing or transportation doing jobs that are largely immune from import competition. Less than 10% of all the workers that U.S. unions represent today are in manufacturing or agriculture, the industries most exposed to harm from globalization. Trade creates winners and losers; a small fraction of union workers are among the obvious losers.

So with states passing right-to-work laws, Congress pressuring the National Labor Relations Board, the tax code rewarding big corporations that move overseas, funding for education, training and infrastructure under pressure middle-income wages stagnating across the whole economy, why so much union energy devoted to fighting TPP?

At this point union workers are mostly immune to trade agreements as most manufacturing already shed the unions years ago. Blame that on right to work states and republican propaganda against the unions. Bottom line though is the vast majority of union members will be almost entirely unaffected by the TPP when it comes to job impacts which by the way from almost all models run on the TPP impacts have been negligible.

If the models are to be believed the impact of TPP on jobs overall should be small gains mostly from an increase in trade world wide or worst case small losses. With that however you get much better environmental and labor standards along with mechanisms to resolve disputes in countries where the court systems are less honorable than supposedly ours are.

I am all for unions and think they need to become much more prevalent than they are today that does not mean i think they are infallible or that their desires necessarily reflect what is best for the country.