Mired in the past: The AFL-CIO on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Misleading AFL-CIO ad

"It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere." Edmund Burke.

Big Labor has a big problem with free trade agreements. It was even opposed to the original North American Free Trade Agreement, which was between only the United States and Canada--a nation where unions have a strong presence.

Our course Big Labor is against the South Korean, Panama, and Colombian free trade agreements. In regards to the last one, which was signed by President Bush in 2006, approved by the Colombian Congress the following year. But the Democrats, who took control of the Senate in 2007, have been dragging their feet ever since--although they seem to finally be finding their footing recently.

President Obama's pals, the AFL-CIO, aren't above distorting the truth in their campaign to scuttle the agreement, as John Murphy writes in the Chamberblog:

Last week the AFL-CIO launched a campaign "to try and stop the pending trade deal between the United States and Colombia," The Hill reported.

It turns out that the AFL-CIO isn't just using out-of-date statistics in this campaign — even the photograph in their ad published last Wednesday is more than 13 years old.

The ad, which appeared in two Capitol Hill publications, showed a grim funeral procession and the words "Colombia FTA NO."

My colleague Reuben Smith-Vaughan contacted the photographer, Marcelo Salinas, who is based in San Francisco, California. Mr. Salinas replied that the photo chosen from his archive by the AFL-CIO shows the funeral of union activist and lawyer Eduardo Umana Mendoza on April 20, 1998.

Yes, Colombia suffered from a terrible spell of violence in the 1990s, but things are better there--especially for union members. But American Big Labor is not only obsessed with the past, it doesn't want to engage the future.

Just seven percent of American private-sector workers belong to a union--a seventy year low.

In the latest Weekly GOP Address, Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota urged ratification of the pending FTAs.

Related post:

Sen. John Hoeven delivers Weekly GOP Address

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