Maine Fair Trade Campaign

Maine’s largest county, Aroostook, covers much territory, many sectors of the Maine economy, and borders a big part of Canadian provinces New Brunswick and Quebec.

Basically, it’s got NAFTA written all over it.

MFTC went north for a week in June to meet with our friends up there and learn more about what’s happening as a result of trade policy in this scenic part of the state.

Daphne and I met with Gayleen, who lost her job at the Pinkham sawmill when it closed.  Almost all of the saw mill jobs, which used to sustain the Ashland/Masardis/Portage area, have gone to Canada.  Gayneen now works at the Career Center as a Peer Support trying to find fellow laid-off workers new jobs.  She is currently supporting 600 people out of work and looking for jobs all over the area.

We also met with Bimbo and his wife Brenda.  Bimbo also worked at the Pinkham saw mill, and was active with the USW local union.  Today he feels he is one of the lucky few to have a job at the Maine Woods mill in Portage.  They explained to us the outrage costs of their health insurance, a policy they pay a lot for but then doesn’t cover their medical expenses which they have to pay on top.  Workers in Canada have single-payer insurance, universal coverage, one of the advantages companies gain when they move across the border.

We met with workers from USW 365, from the Twin Rivers (formerly Fraser) paper mill in Madawaska.  (USW 365 just became the 60th coalition member of MFTC! Welcome!)  These folks recently took a big hit in their contract negotiations with an 8.5% pay cut to all the workers.

The Twin Rivers mill is interesting because it is actually on both sides of the international border! The pulp mill is in New Brunswick, Canada and the paper production is in Maine. Very interesting!

We collected postcards outside the mill during shift change, to send to Senator Snowe to ask her to co-sponsor the TRADE Act.  Everyone in Madawaska, St. Agatha, and St. David know that if anything were to happen to that mill, it would be devastating to the entire region.

Daphne and I also splurged and took a day off to enjoy the beauty of the area.  No trip in the future will be complete without time on the Allagash waterway. Thanks to Troy Jackson, Chase and Clayton for their help in making our paddling trip happen!

500 people rallied in Portland yesterday for immigration reform.

Kudos to our friends at PICA who made sure the message of trade made it into the news coverage in the Bangor Daily News.

http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/142488.html

Activists from People in Community Alliances, a Bangor organization that advocates for human and worker rights, attended the march and rally. They said effective immigration reform needs to begin with a reassessment of trade policies such as NAFTA.

“I think the perspective for many people is that this topic of immigration seems to begin at the border. It begins with a crime and the only alternatives we have are to give amnesty or punish the crime,” said Chinoy, who is also a PICA volunteer. “That’s obviously not where the story of immigration begins. The same forces that are displacing U.S. jobs south are displacing Latino people northward and there’s a lot of desperation involved. You can’t really reasonably think that simply beefing up security at the border is going to put a finger in the dike of that kind of desperation.”

“Those same free trade arrangements have wiped out the ability of many people to make a living south of the border,” said Jonathan Falk of Carmel, the director of PICA.  “People need to make a living, so they go where they have to go to work.”

What happens to a community when unfair trade shuts down the largest employer?

Go to Jay, Maine to find out.

On December 30, folks from MFTC and PICA (Peace through Interamerican Community Action) traveled to Jay, Maine to interview laid-off workers.  The folks at the Otis mill in Jay were laid off in 2009 when the paper mill shut down.

The job loss was certified by the Department of Labor under TAA- Trade Adjustment Assistance- because it was due to unfair foreign trade. These interviews are a part of the “kNOw US AND THEM” project that PICA is leading, a series of interviews of laid off workers and immigrants in Maine- people impacted by the costs of free trade.

We went to the  union hall in Jay to meet with the workers.  These workers were members of United Steelworkers Local 11.  We interviewed four laid-off workers, Sonny, Kim, Mike and Deb.

They shared with us the lost sense of community and family since the mill closed.  They talked about the hardship the town and region are going through now. There are very few jobs.  People are depressed.  The town’s budget has shrunk so much that the youth no longer have as many options in the schools, like after school programs that keep them out of trouble.

We saw pictures from the days the mill was running, and heard the long history of the Otis mill in the town.

We will share more of their stories when we get the interviews processed and clips prepared.

Kim Lavoie of USW Local 11

Mike, left, and one of the volunteers at the Papermaking museum in Livermore Falls look over photos of workers at the mill.

November 30- December 5, 1999 was the start of something big.  That was the week when protesters shut down the World Trade Organization Meetings in Seattle, Washington.  New alliances came together- workers, farmers, environmentalists, and faith leaders- to say NO to the WTO and YES to a new vision for a just and sustainable global economy.

This was a turning point in the fair trade movement.  This year, being the 10th anniversary, Mainers gathered together to celebrate the Battle in Seattle and look ahead to continuing the fight.

We marked the anniversary with a rally and march in Bangor on the 30th.  We paid a visit to Rep. Mike Michaud’s office to thank him for his leadership on fair trade, and continued to Senator Snowe’s office to ask her to co-sponsor the TRADE Act.  Thanks to everyone who came out in the rain, it was a great event!

We held the first ever Annual Meeting of the Coalition at the Waterville UCC Church on Saturday the 5th.  A local foods luncheon prepared by the worker-owned cooperative Local Sprouts, followed by speakers who were in Seattle and presentations of the Fair Trade Champion awards- given to Rep. Mike Michaud and Matt Schlobohm for their fair trade leadership.

We also held a number of film nights and delivered presentations around the state. Thank you to everyone who participated!

On Thursday, Nov. 5th a delegation of Maine Fair Traders went to D.C. to meet with Senator Snowe about The TRADE Act.  Although we were disappointed she canceled on us, we did get to meet with her Legislative Director Ron Lefrancois, and had a good talk with him about why Maine needs the TRADE Act.

Stephan Donnell (USW 1188), Sandy Amborn (Sierra Club), Deb Kendall (USW 11, laid off worker) and myself for MFTC went to the meeting hoping Senator Snowe would be ready to sign-on, since we had basically heard as much from her staff last summer.  She did not commit to being a sponsor, yet.

The TRADE Act is a bill written and sponsored by our own Mike Michaud in the House.  It requires a review of existing trade agreements, lays out what must and must not be in future trade agreements, like enforceable labor and environmental standards, and calls for renegotiation of NAFTA, CAFTA, and the WTO if they don’t meet those standards.  This is what we have been waiting for!

All in all it was a good day- we had to go to find out where things stood.  We met with folks from Global Trade Watch, from Senator Sherrod Brown’s office, from Rep. Mike Michaud’s office, and said hello to Rep. Chellie Pingree’s staffer Cassie who handles trade.  We got a lot more clarity on where the Senate version of the bill stood.

We will continue to fight for Snowe to be a co-sponsor of the TRADE Act!

I will post again soon with stories from Jay, that Deb Kendall told in the meeting about what has happened since the mill shut down (due to unfair trade policy).