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Trans Pacific Partnership is bad news for workers – call to action

February 25, 2014
No TPP
Many unions and civil society groups fighting the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Fast Track process of this terrible free trade deal have been frustrated by the lack of mainstream media coverage, especially in America. The media's conspiracy of silence makes it hard to mobilize our members against the TPP and Fast Track because they aren't hearing anything about it.

Unions and campaign partner Public Citizen are challenging the US mainstream media via social media to cover this important economic story. Currently we’re targeting ABC, which hasn’t reported once on the TPP in 6 months.

If you tweet, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram or the like, please share messages like the sample tweets below with your networks: 

  • Say @ABC, you’re missing the biggest economic story of the year: the TPP trade deal #StopTPP #NoFastTrack #EndtheSilence
  • Study shows @ABC keeps viewers in the dark about huge trade deal with enormous impact http://ow.ly/tYzfT #StopTPP #EndtheSilence
  • In past 6 months, @ABC covered most significant trade talks in a generation ZERO times http://ow.ly/tYzfT #EndtheSilence #StopTPP


Statement on the TPP by Teamsters leader James P. Hoffa

The following is a statement from Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa on the ministerial declaration made in the wake of the latest Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) meetings concluding in Singapore. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is affiliated to Public Services International:

“While negotiators want to tout minor progress made during these latest TPP negotiations, the fact is it’s really just Groundhog Day,” Hoffa said. “We’ve heard this story before, and none of it will help create more Americans jobs, stop currency manipulation or keep our food and environment safe. Workers would be no better off from the TPP today than they would’ve been yesterday.

“If negotiators are actually close to closing the deal on TPP, now would be a good time to release the full text of the agreement to the media and the public,” he continued. “It’s time to lay this deal on the table so all can see it.”

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and “like” us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.



Statement by Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

“The spotlight on the Japan-U.S. market access deadlock is obscuring the broader reality that deep divides remain on many TPP chapters while opposition to TPP and Fast Track authority is growing steadily in the U.S. Congress and public.

Other TPP countries remain opposed to outrageous U.S. demands on behalf of corporate interests to extend medicine patents and other terms that would raise medicine costs, ban the use of capital controls and other financial safeguards, limit Internet freedom and expand the scope of the investor-state extrajudicial tribunal system where domestic public interest laws can be attacked by foreign firms. If such terms were included, it would further increase U.S. public and congressional opposition to TPP.

U.S. proposals for enforceable labor and environmental standards and disciplines on state owned enterprise face continuing opposition from other TPP nations, but the absence of such terms would make U.S. congressional approval of the TPP improbable.

U.S. negotiators have not even raised the demand from 60 U.S. Senators and 230 Representatives that TPP must include enforceable disciplines against currency manipulation, yet a TPP without this will be dead on arrival in Congress whether or not there is Fast Track.”

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