Mich. Union Leader Warn Clinton On Trade

AFL-CIO Official Says Democrat Must Call For NAFTA Changes Or Risk Losing Labor's Support

(AP)  Some Michigan AFL-CIO members may be reluctant to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton if she won't back changing some of the trade deals they say have cost jobs, President Mark Gaffney said Friday.

"Hillary needs to be stronger on trade," Gaffney said during the taping of public television's "Off the Record" program. "We're not opposed to trade. We've never been opposed to free trade. We understand selling products overseas. But we want to ship products overseas, not ship jobs overseas."

A request for comment was left Friday with the Clinton campaign.

Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, pushed to approve pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement over the bitter objections of labor leaders, who complained the deals would put U.S. workers in competition with cheap foreign labor.

Last month, Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to address lingering concerns over those trade agreements. She told a United Auto Workers regional conference in Iowa that she would call a "time out" on such agreements if she wins the White House to see if the deals are draining jobs from the United States.

"I am going to do everything I can to move toward smart trade," she said. She promised to appoint an official to ensure that trade agreement provisions designed to protect labor and environmental standards are enforced by groups such as the World Trade Organization and the International Labor Organization.

Gaffney says he thinks John Edwards and some of the other Democratic presidential candidates are more in line than Clinton with union members when it comes to trade.

But he also says if Clinton is the Democratic nominee and changes her stance, union members will back her.

During a recent chat, Gaffney said, "I made her understand union members in Michigan don't like NAFTA, want it to be renegotiated - some would like to see it thrown out - and we've got to get her to that position. I don't think she's there yet, but I think she's headed there."

It's unclear how union members' trade issues with Clinton will affect the results of Michigan's Jan. 15 presidential primary, where Clinton is the only major Democratic candidate on the ballot.

Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden took their names off the ballot to satisfy Iowa and New Hampshire, which were unhappy Michigan was challenging their leadoff status on the primary calendar. That left Clinton facing only Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.

Gaffney said he could see some union members crossing over to vote in the Republican primary for Mike Huckabee or "a couple of other Republicans who are saying the right things on trade. But I don't think you're going to see a great big crossover."

[cfin5]

Finally! The AFL-CIO is waking up to what the globalist''s are doing to our countries middle class, hard working Americans. Hillary will do everything her lying tongue can to keep their endorsement while at the same time working with her treacherous ideology to give China the Deed to the United States via Walmart. The Union really needs to push "FAIR TRADE", NOT FREE TRADE! GO USA!!!

[rowdytexan2]

If these AFL-CIO people thought NAFTA was such a bad idea, why weren''t they out rousing the whole country to oppose it! How come they didn''t lobby harder to protect labor!

The real truth is the statistics used to push NAFTA thru were promulgated by Papa Bush''s consultants who rather cooked the books to make it appear that NAFTA would BRING in jobs. Everyone at that time still believed the republican bustward and thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. So the republican congress passed it like a speeding bullet with no aforethought.

[denn034]

This Reagan Republican opposes NAFTA. Vote Republican labor!

[avraamjack]

----- CLINTON SLEAZE FATIGUE WILL INVIGORATE GOP, DISPIRIT DEMOCRATS AND SINK DEMOCRATIC TICKET-----
-----EDWARDS/RICHARDSON TO WIN-----
It is possible that Senator Clinton is the best candidate. However, even though many may like the policies that Senator Clinton proposes, they should also consider her record, just as Senator Clinton insists.
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The last Clinton Administration, when faced with the fact that protection rackets where assaulting, torturing and murdering people with poison and radiation, chose to avoid its responsibilities to incarcerate the criminals and to protect the citizenry.
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Instead, they made a deal with the criminal gang stalker protection rackets to leave them alone and to consequently abandon the citizenry.
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Do we want a President who sells out the citizenry for votes?
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Do we want a President who sends a "crime does pay" message to society?
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Would you vote for a President who signed nonaggression deals with the KKKlan or the Nazi party? Gangs that torture with poison and radiation are much like the KKKlan and Nazi Party.
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We do not need a sellout President. We need a principled leader President.
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[prinzowhales]

These arse-licking union leaders have been "reluctantly" voting for and financially supporting the scumbags who gave us NAFTA and the WTO for decades while wages stagnated and good jobs left our shores and cheap labour came in unabated.

Working people stupid enough to vote for Clinton can expect to see more of the same.