Tom Paine
by Jonathan Tasini

07/29/05

Enough is enough. The 15 so-called Democrats who voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement must pay a heavy price for turning their backs on labor: None of them should receive a dime from labor unions and each one should face a labor-backed primary challenger next year. And the recruitment of good candidates should start now. If the CAFTA 15 do not suffer the political consequences for their vote, labor will look weak and the march of so-called 'free trade' will continue. In 1993, after a small group of Democrats defected to support the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), unions threatened to get even. But virtually nothing was done. The message this sent to each elected representative was that labor would make a lot of noise but eventually the waters would grow calm -- and no one suffered for casting a vote that hurt workers here and abroad...

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050729/spanking_the_cafta_15.php


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp