MFTC in D.C.

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).