WASHINGTON (PAI) - One of organized labor's major problems with NAFTA,- the lack of enforceable foreign worker safety and wage protections - is now coming home to roost with CAFTA.

On a 10-10 tie vote, the key Senate Finance Committee rejected a plan to insert enforceable labor rights into CAFTA legislation that would implement the controversial U.S. trade treaty with six other nations.

The June 14 vote on the labor rights amendment, offered by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), was a major hurdle passed for President George W. Bush, who is pushing for CAFTA without the pro-worker language. CAFTA is the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

The Senate panel then approved the CAFTA bill, 11-8, with nine of the 11 Republicans and two Democrats voting for it and six Democrats and two Republicans voting against it.

The CAFTA bill now heads for the Senate floor, where Bush was trying to push it through before the July 4 recess. The House Ways and Means Committee approved the CAFTA bill on June 15. Congressional prospects are uncertain.

While lawmakers do not vote on the CAFTA treaty itself, their chance to derail the so-called "free trade" treaty with Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua comes in the legislation to implement it. Once that bill reaches the floor, it must be voted up or down with no amendments allowed.

CAFTA would repeal all tariffs and trade restrictions on commerce between the U.S. and the Central American six nations. The business community says it can use CAFTA to enter that market unimpaired, but unions, citing NAFTA, respond that firms will use it to exploit Latin America's low wages, bad working conditions, weak labor laws and lax enforcement.

Pointing to the impact of NAFTA, the 10-year-old controversial U.S.-Canada-Mexico North American Free Trade Agreement that labor says has caused a loss of at least 880,000 U.S. factory jobs, unions lobbying against CAFTA predicted more of the same would occur if it passes.

They also said CAFTA would strip Latin American workers of the few protections they have under present rules governing U.S. trade with its nations. Kerry took that tack.

"CAFTA includes two sets of provisions relating to workers: First, it requires that nations uphold their own labor laws, but it makes no stipulation as to what those laws require and includes only token enforcement provisions," Kerry said. "Second, it calls on countries
to 'strive to' achieve the most basic standards, like the 'elimination of the worst forms of child labor,' but includes absolutely no provisions to enforce these negligible standards."

His amendment would have imposed enforcement on those provisions.

"The fundamental question," Kerry said, "is why does CAFTA not provide the same protection for workers' economic rights and interests? There can be no doubt that CAFTA creates a horribly unfair double-standard that punishes workers."

A portion of the agricultural industry, especially sugar producers who fear a glut of the white stuff, oppose CAFTA, and have won support among Republicans in Congress, which means the proposal is hardly a slam-dunk.

"We need a vision of trade that makes moral and economic sense for all workers, but CAFTA is not it," said AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson. "Instead of improving things, CAFTA will further oppress workers, depress wages in the Dominican Republic and Central America and cost jobs in the United States."