Hear the one about CAFTA and labor standards?

Membership ticker

Right now is no time to come up short.

It's time to fight like hell for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme and cruel agenda, where the Big Lie is called a Big Lie, where facts matter, and where accountability at the polls and in the press has a fighting chance. We have our work cut out for us, and we urgently need to raise about 400,000 by Thursday, June 30, to finish our fiscal year on track and give it everything we possibly can. Please help us get there with a donation if you can right now.

$1,150,000

$1,350,000

Right now is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme and cruel agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability at the polls and in the press has a fighting chance. We have our work cut out for us, and we still need to raise upwards of 400,000 by June 30 to give it everything we can. Please help:

Facts matter: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter. Support our nonprofit reporting. Subscribe to our print magazine.

Nathan Newman, citing BNA Daily Labor Report makes a good point:

The joke of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is that its labor rights standards only require governments to enforce their labor laws as they exist, however pathetic those standards may be.

But to add insult to this ridiculous standard, the Bush administration proposed this year to slash $80.8 million from the $93.2 million currently spent by the US Bureau of International Labor Affairs to investigate labor law enforcement by foreign governments.

So a toothless set of labor standards will have equally toothless enforcement. And the House Appropriations Committee approved this cut in the Labor Department on June 16th. “It’s a strange way to search for votes for CAFTA,” Ranking Democratic David Obey noted.

Well, it is a strange way to search for votes, but it’s also perfectly consistent with the Bush administration’s labor policy in general.