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News Briefs

Date Posted: April 27 2007

Trades protest Belle Isle work
Building trades crafts want to prepare the Belle Isle for the Detroit Grand Prix - but they can't get off the starting line.

The quasi-public Downtown Detroit Partnership has hired three "no-contract contractors," according to sponsors of picket lines at the entrance of Belle Isle this month, to perform earth and paving work to set up the race course.

Laborers Local 1191 Vice President Bruce Ruedisueli said three contractors have been pouring more than 100 yards of concrete per day and will be making patches on the existing concrete course. The total contract is worth about $5.5 million, he said.

"We've always done everything union associated with the Grand Prix," he said. "But not here. We're just dealing with a closed door."

Labor, lawmakers blast Korean free trade pact
WASHINGTON (PAI) - Organized labor and Democratic lawmakers blasted the proposed U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, which the Bush regime and the South Korean government signed at virtually the last minute in the wee hours of March 31-April 1.

The pact, which Bush sent to Congress to get under a deadline for bargaining free trade treaties under his so-called "fast track" authority, would end tariffs and other barriers between the U.S. and Korea, the world's 10th-largest economy. Like trade pacts starting with NAFTA over a decade ago, the U.S.-Korea pact has no enforceable labor rights.

And, like the other pacts bargained under "fast track," including pending trade pacts with Colombia, Peru and Panama, both houses of Congress do not vote on the U.S.-Korea pact itself, but on legislation to implement it. And all those votes are up-or-down with no possibility for amendments that protect workers' rights, or anything else.

Critical lawmakers were led by Sen. Debbie Stabenow and House Trade Subcommittee Chairman Sander Levin (both D-Mich.). They said the pact would do little if anything to open Korea's auto market, while leaving the U.S. market wide open to Korean cars and trucks. In 2005, the last year for which data is available, the U.S. imported 731,000 Korean vehicles and exported 5,800, due to Korean tariffs and internal barriers.

Labor's opposition to the U.S.-Korea FTA goes beyond cars. AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said the pact would hurt U.S. workers in apparel and electronics, too. And he cited news reports that the pact would let in goods from the North Korean border city of Kaesong, an industrial zone whose workers toil as "indentured servants" to export products to South Korea.