Those of you who aren't planning to attend the Washington State Labor Council convention later this week are urged to attend the following American Federation of Government Employees rally this Friday morning in Tacoma. Here's the AFGE announcement:

RALLY TO DEFEND VETERANS AND V.A. WORKERS WITH A.F.G.E. MEMBERS
COME TELL SENATOR MURRAY AND OTHER SENATORS...

"Bush Needs a Watchdog"

Friday, August 17, 10:15 to 10:45 A.M.
in front of U.S. Senate Field Hearing in Tacoma
at Bates Technical College, South Campus New Auditorium  (2201 S. 78th St., Tacoma)

• The Bush Administration under-estimated veteran needs by at least $3 billion this year.

• Bush began sending the under-estimated funds 4 months late. 

• Media headlines abound on VA and military hospital facilities, stingy healthcare gate-keeping, and claim processing delays.

• Now Bush wants to rob Peter to pay Paul and cut many other local social services on which vets and working families rely to compensate for the VA benefit and military healthcare shortfall

Background
Over 35,000 VA & Dept. of Defense civilian and uniformed military workers work in our region and many depend on the VA and Military hospital systems including members of the federal workers' union AFGE.  The VA is one of our region's largest healthcare and retirement systems.  American Lake and Seattle VA workers (AFGE Locals 498 and 3197) routinely face understaffing and impossible workloads.  Local Social Security workers (AFGE Local 3937) wade through tremendous claim backlogs and inhuman caseloads serving the veteran population.  That vets make up the largest group in the homeless population shows how much Bush broke the VA and Social Security system.  Civilian defense workers at McChord and Fort Lewis (AFGE Locals 1501 and 1504), many vets themselves, rely greatly on the VA system for healthcare and as a needed safety net.

Despite Bush's aggressive attacks on the independent voice of AFGE and other federal worker unions through the NSPS and privatization, AFGE members are fighting back.  Join with JwJ and AFGE locals 498, 3197, 3937, 1501, and 1504 for this family-friendly informational picket and leafleting to hold Bush and Congress accountable.

Senator Murray has powerfully defended against Bush's previous VA benefit cuts.  Now Bush is trying to use his past fiscal irresponsibility to pressure Congress to fund the VA through budget cuts to social programs. Shouldn't we be cutting another budget or raising revenues from Bush's "base" the super-rich?

MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2007
Trade policy must balance business and societal goals 

The following excellent guest column by Stan Sorscher, a SPEEA/IFPTE staff member who serves on the board of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition, was published in the latest edition of the Puget Sound Business Journal:

NAFTA took effect in 1994. With more than a decade of experience with our new global trade model, we should stop and take stock.

Trade is good. As the cliché goes, "We do what we do best; they do what they do best; and we trade." In 1993, advocates of the North American Free Trade Agreement promised shared prosperity, mutual gains and a rapid reversal of our trade balance from deficit to surplus.

Since then, our cumulative trade deficits total about $4.5 trillion, with the deficit still in free-fall. Any conceptual model that is off by $4.5 trillion should be examined closely before being used again to justify public policy.

From 1960 to 1994, our trade balance fell erratically from a surplus of 1 percent of gross domestic product to a deficit of 2 percent of GDP. Since then, as our new NAFTA-style trade policy extended to more and more countries, that negative trend accelerated abruptly, with our trade deficit increasing to 6 percent of GDP last year. Contrary to promises, the U.S. economy de-industrialized to the point where our strongest and most dominant export goods are now cotton, soybeans, corn and wheat. (The only manufactured goods in which the U.S. is a strong net exporter are aerospace, scientific instruments and chemicals.) We are fabulously productive in agriculture. Unfortunately, that sector produces very few jobs, and the wages and working conditions are notoriously poor.

What have we learned? For one thing, trade advocates promised us "access to markets." Most people understood this to mean access to consumers who would buy products we made in America. More often, it meant access to producers in low-cost countries like Mexico, China and India, who make goods for us to consume.

Another lesson is that China and other low-cost countries can produce at prodigious levels. They have abundant, low-cost, well-educated workers, and they enjoy easy access to technology and capital. Meanwhile, China consumes at tiny levels, given its low wages, high savings rate and low standard of living. As their well-being rises, people in China would still feel little pressure to consume our products, since they can produce enough for themselves and still export to us for many decades to come.

Well, that's not "trade." Trade assumes that the rest of the world will buy something from us.

In fact, our trade policy is not about "trade," it's about blurring the identity of different countries -- merging all economies rich and poor. In economic jargon, this is called economic integration and is characterized by leveling, and not necessarily mutual gains.

In actual trade, when we do what we do best, "we" are not economically merged with "them."

Aerospace is a simple example. Boeing exports are booming. Employment is up lately, but over the last decade or so aerospace employment of hourly workers in Washington state dropped in half. In addition, the offshoring of engineering work is accelerating, and engineering employment is still down more than 25 percent from the peak in the early '90s.

The foreign content of each new airplane model rises steadily as foreign suppliers displace local content.

New aerospace jobs are appearing in Japan, Italy, China and Russia. Boeing prospers, shareholders prosper and suppliers prosper. But global economic integration de-couples this prosperity from local Puget Sound communities where workers live.

The 18th century philosopher Adam Smith argued that the self-interest of the butcher, baker and brewer would guide the invisible hand of markets. Smith's merchants all lived in the community. If the baker or the brewer prospered, the community prospered. If the butcher invested and grew, that growth made the community stronger.

My baker is a multinational company. My brewer moves production from my community to an offshore facility to improve margins for his global investors. I try not to think about my butcher.

The European Union has a different policy for economic integration.

The EU integrated carefully to minimize negative leveling effects. Ireland had the lowest wages in Europe. As part of the integration, the EU invested in Ireland and developed the resources to raise living standards quickly. Similarly, Italy needed stabilizing before coming into the EU. The various EU countries shared the costs of leveling, with the expectation that they would share prosperity, too, over time.

This economic solidarity goes only so far: Turkey and Poland are farther off the norm, and costs for integrating them are high. Russia is so far off the European norm that Russia's admission into the European integrated economy is politically out of reach. In any event, the EU experience shows us one alternative to NAFTA-style policy.

If we believe that trade -- actual trade -- is good, we should re-establish the conditions needed for beneficial trade. There must be a balance between the business interest on the one hand and the public or community interest on the other. One possibility to consider is a World Trade Organization that represents the public interest in the way the current WTO represents business interests.

STAN SORSCHER is on the board of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition and also a staff member of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace/International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the union that represents more than 20,000 workers at Boeing.