UNISON’s international guest today warned of the ‘loaded dice’ presented by the international trade agreements currently being negotiated in secret on both sides of the Atlantic.
Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), said that TTIP and other free trade deals will lead to “democratically elected governments ceding power and authority to private corporations, to public interest being trumped by corporate interest.”
An existing agreement between Canada and the US was already proving calamitous for his own country, he said, with the Canadian government paying millions of dollars to corporations who are suing over alleged loss in profits.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between Europe and the US Partnership is currently being agreed behind closed doors
Mr Moist said: “We don’t want to be isolationist. We want to encourage managed trade. But we have to resist deals that promote privatisation and the diminishment of environment and labour laws.
“Our governments must retain the right to govern on behalf of all citizens,” he added, calling for “a global Magna Carta that puts people before profits around the world.”
Mr Moist last spoke to conference in 2010, after the coalition government came to power, and in his stirring speech today he sympathised with UNISON over the experience of the past five years.
Noting David Cameron’s re-election, he added: “Cameron’s mandate is not to cut spending to a 70-year low. Britain can’t shrink from greatness.”
In the following debate on TTIP, delegates spoke of the numerous dangers that would follow if the agreement was signed, including:
- Public services such as the NHS falling into the hands of US multi-nationals;
- Profit taking precedence over enviroinment protection;
- EU bans on chemicals currently used in the US being dropped;
- Hard-won regulations protecting workers being lost.
“The stakes could not be higher,” said one speaker, “but TTIP can still be stopped.”
Delegates agreed to continue to campaign against TTIP.
UNISON: Secret trade agreement a battle between big business and everybody else
