This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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The global union of the United Steelworkers (USW) in North America, Workers Uniting, has highlighted their concerns and openly condemned the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), i.e. anticipated to be “initialed” on September 26. Although the official text of the agreement has not been made public, it was leaked in August.
Despite having raised their concerns, it seems that the CETA negotiators have ignored the fundamental concerns raised by the trade union movement. The Canada-EU agreement aims to allow multinational corporations to sue governments, in secret tribunals, to challenge regulations that protect health and safety, workers’ rights and the environment. Earlier, Canada has been dragged to court for more than 20 times under a similar provision in NAFTA and made to pay over $150 million to corporations. USW Canadian National Director, Ken Neumann, said that “ISDS is bad news for Canada,” and so “under NAFTA we currently face $6 billion in lawsuits from American multinationals. If CETA is approved, that number will increase exponentially.”
In addition to that, CETA also has the right to interfere with the governments to regulate in the public interest, protect public services, or create new public programs, giving a green light to auctioning off public services including transportation, education and health care. Whereas the General Secretary of the UK-based similar organization, UNITE, Len McCluskey stated that “the Tory government in the U.K. is hell-bent on privatizing our National Health Service,” adding that “if that happens, CETA locks in the privatization: if a Labour government reverses it, then the private companies can sue the government for damages. We would no longer have democratic control over our economy or our public policies.”
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