Peace Talk — Summer 2006
The Quarterly Newsletter of Peace Action MaineThe Maine Fair Trade Campaign won a huge victory recently when Maine Governor John Baldacci took groundbreaking action to protect Maine’s democracy, public services and working families from the latest corporate “free trade” attack. In an April 5, 2006 letter to the US Trade Representative, Governor Baldacci insisted that Maine be taken out of the worst parts of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) services agreement—the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). This is a huge victory for the people of Maine! Maine and Oregon are the first states in the country to take this kind of action.
What is the WTO’s GATS services agreement? It’s a sneaky corporate trade deal that attacks our democracy, public services and public sector workers. Trade agreements once dealt primarily with trade in goods and agricultural commodities. The WTO’s GATS represents a new generation of corporate trade agreements that go after services, including public services. The world’s largest corporations have written a set of global rules that all of our local, state and federal laws must comply with. The GATS challenges the fundamental idea that democratic societies can regulate and govern their own decisions within their borders. Under the GATS and other trade deals, democratically-made decisions can be challenged and effectively overturned by unelected trade tribunals that meet in secret.
The goal of the GATS is to privatize public services and to open them up to global competition and control. The agreement specifically targets healthcare, education, water, libraries and the public services that we all need. It also limits communities’ ability to set their own zoning, land-use and environmental policies.
Motivated by these concerns, the Maine Fair Trade Campaign (MFTC), a coalition of 40 Maine organizations, worked for several months to educate organizations and the Governor’s office about the threats posed by this agreement. MFTC met with public sector unions, library associations, healthcare activists, community groups and others who would be negatively impacted by this trade deal. All of this work culminated in Governor Baldacci’s letter demanding that Maine be removed from the GATS.
Thanks to the Governor’s action, Maine’s ability to support public sector workers, create a universal healthcare system, maintain strong public services, and set our own land use policies cannot be undermined by the WTO’s trade rules.
In a press release, Governor Baldacci said, “Trade issues are some of the most critical issues of the day. Maine cannot sit idly by and let the federal government negotiate trade agreements that undermine public services, good paying jobs, and our ability to make our own decisions at the state and local level.”
The WTO’s GATS agreement would have had a very harmful effect on Maine teachers and public sector workers as well as on access to healthcare. “We are very concerned about the impact that the WTO services agreement could have on higher education in Maine,” said Mark Gray, Executive Director of the Maine Education Association. “Committing higher education to the GATS rules would limit Maine’s regulatory authority in this area and accelerate the privatization of higher education. Governor Baldacci did the right thing by ensuring that Maine’s education system cannot be challenged or undermined by international trade deals.”
Tim Belcher, Executive Director of the Maine State Employees Association, SEIU Local 1989 shared similar concerns “We’ve all seen how trade agreements like NAFTA have devastated manufacturing workers in Maine. The WTO’s GATS services agreement would do the same thing to public sector workers. This trade deal threatens the jobs, wages and occupational health and safety of all public sector workers.”
The GATS could even threaten Maine’s public libraries. Pamela Turner, President of the Maine Library Association, shared similar concerns, “The GATS rules could seriously threaten the ability of Maine’s libraries to act as free and democratic institutions of learning and culture.”
While trade policies are set at the federal level, states have the authority to decide whether they wish to be covered in areas such as services and government procurement, which are traditionally within the realm of state and local authority.