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Following visits today with Congressional leaders, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard characterized the Democrat’s new policy on trade released Tuesday as “a good first step,” but cautioned that any policy must include strong enforcement procedures for holding the Bush administration’s feet to the fire, once agreements are negotiated.

“The Democrats have developed a good foundation for making some progress,” Gerard said, “but Congress has to make sure that any new trade legislation has explicit safeguards for enforcing labor rights and environmental standards.

“In the absence of strong language that achieves these goals,” Gerard said, “there’s ample evidence that the Bush administration will continue ignoring environmental concerns and undermining workers’ rights as it has from day one.”

“Until Congress reasserts control over trade policy,” Gerard declared, “the Bush administration’s trade deals will continue to be a disaster for working families and their communities.”

Gerard added it is essential  that “one small step in the right direction doesn’t become an excuse ” for reauthorizing the president’s Fast Track authority or approving trade agreements already negotiated with several countries, including Colombia and Peru.

The USW cited Colombia’s horrific human rights record as evidence of the crucial importance of including labor rights and strict enforcement procedures in core trade agreements.  More than 4,000 Colombian trade unionists have been killed in the past two decades by paramilitary groups alleged to have ties to major corporations.

“There’s a long history of promises made in side agreements that turn out not to be worth the paper they were written on,” Gerard said.  He cited the side agreements in NAFTA, and more recently the trade agreement signed with Jordan.

Despite the inclusion of labor standards in the Jordan agreement, a recent investigation by the Nation Labor Committee reported in the New York Times revealed that Bangladeshi workers were paying exorbitant fees for job “opportunities” in Jordan, where the companies they were recruited to work for seized their passports and forced them to work in conditions tantamount to indentured servitude.

The Steelworker president said the best formula for developing a full-blown trade policy that addresses the concerns of a growing number of Americans is the AFL-CIO’s recently-passed resolution, Fast Track or the Right Track?, which calls for:

A strategic review of existing trade agreements before the initiation of any new trade negotiations; 

Congress establishing a role in choosing trade partners, which it does not have under current rules, including establishing “readiness criteria” to assess the desirability of a potential trade agreement partner; and,