The alphabet soup is threatening to attack again. By “the alphabet soup”, I mean the multitude of trade agreements (NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA, etc.) which have been undermining democracy and making the world safe for transnational corporations. I previously wrote about some of them in my article entitled “Special Interest Trade Agreements.”

     This week I would like to take a look at GATS, the evil twin of GATT.

     GATT was bad enough. It dealt primarily with trade in goods and commodities, and helped the producers of those items move their work places to wherever they could get the cheapest labor. It was good for factory owners, but very bad for workers.

     Although commonly referred to as a “free trade” agreement, GATT has little to do with free trade. Instead, it is a lengthy and very complex set of detailed rules which reduced restrictions on trade in some ways, but which increased restrictions on trade in other ways.

     Like GATT, GATS is administered through the World Trade Organization, but it deals primarily with trade in services. That means it sets up rules for when, and under what conditions, workers from one country can be brought in to work in another country.

     Originally the United Nations set up the rules for protection of migrant workers, but the United States wanted a more malleable and business friendly forum, and it got what it wanted.

     GATS first came into effect in 1994 at the end of the Uruguay round of trade talks, but it is now being rewritten to extend and strengthen its effects. Did you think that President Bush’s immigration reform proposal was controversial? Just wait until the rewritten version of GATS comes up for ratification. Then you will see a real donnybrook.

     GATS is still being rewritten, so it is not possible to say with certainty what the final agreement will include, but based upon the work which has been done so far, it will be very bad for workers. Here are some of the things that have been proposed to date.

     First, workers who are brought in from another country may be treated as “service providers” rather than as “workers” and their transportation across an international border may be treated as “trade” rather than “migration.” These are more than just changes in terminology. They allow the foreign workers to be treated very differently than domestic workers have historically been treated.

     Under some of the draft language, foreign workers would receive no protections under the domestic law of the country where they are working. They would only be protected by the laws of their home country. Unfortunately, their home country has no jurisdiction over the foreign employer, so the worker has no real protections at all.

     Under another draft proposal, workers would be contractually bound to a particular employer, and would be subject to deportation whenever the employer decided it did not want the worker any more. Foreign employees who complain about abusive or dangerous working conditions are likely to be deported.

     Another major problem is that the proposed GATS treaty will block existing and potential future international agreements that might otherwise provide protections for foreign workers. It could also make it much harder for nations to voluntarily provide additional protections for foreign workers. This would be based on the theory that protecting foreign workers is just a disguised form of protectionism that will make foreign workers more expensive to employ, and which will therefore encourage employers to hire domestic workers rather than foreign workers.

     This latter point helps expose the real agenda behind the GATS treaty. It is intended to further weaken protections for domestic workers by subjecting them to competition from cheap foreign labor.

     Want to keep your job? You have to accept the same conditions that the foreign employees are working under. When foreign and domestic workers are forced to fight among themselves for jobs, they are less likely to organize for better working conditions and compensation.

     This is a complex topic, and I have barely scratched the surface in this column. For more information, a good place to start is www.gatswatch.org/index.html

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