Today is a day to celebrate–no kidding. The so-called "free trade" deal with South Korea is dead in the water–at least for now. There are a whole host of reasons these deals stink from top to bottom. But, little attention is ever given to this reason: the phony promises made about enforcing labor and environmental standards, which are always grafted on to these deals as a way to buy off votes of wavering members of Congress who don’t want to burn bridges with labor and environmental groups but still can’t quite bring themselves to see beyond the phony marketing phrase of "free trade".

   Phony in this sense: there is no way to enforce these agreements. Ever. I made this point back during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary in looking at the positions of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when it came to trade. I wrote then about enforcement the following:

   Back when NAFTA was passed, the Clinton Administration agreed to negotiate a labor side accord (as an aside, the finger prints for pushing NAFTA are all over both campaigns, from, obviously, Bill Clinton to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich to Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, who was hired to push the deal by NAFTA campaign czar William Daley). It was supposed to be enforced by the Commission for Labor Cooperation.

The CLC was supposed to be funded, partly by the U.S., via a $2 million-a year appropriation, which would have meant that, over the period between 1993 and 2005, the CLC would have had $22 million from the U.S.. But, as Public Citizen found:

In another example of the gap between promised authorizations and actual funds appropriated to such programs, the CLC has only been granted $7.2 million of the $22 million it was authorized to receive from the United States as of 2005, or less than a third of the promised amount.

  Here’s a useful analogy. In the U.S., we have accepted, under Democratic and Republican Administrations alike, that injury, illness and death in the workplace are a cost of living in the wonders of the "free market". We make a show of enforcement—-the same show being proposed for NAFTA enforcement—-but the truth is that the system embraced, in a bipartisan way, does very little to ensure a safe workplace.

  Here’s what the AFL-CIO found in its 2007 report [the emphasis is mine]:

At its current staffing and inspection levels, it would take federal OSHA 133 years to inspect each workplace under its jurisdiction just once. In seven states (Florida, Delaware, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Maryland, and South Dakota), it would take more than 150 years for OSHA to pay a single visit to each workplace. In 18 states, it would take between 100 and 149 years to visit each workplace once. Inspection frequency is better in states with OSHA-approved plans, yet still far from satisfactory. In these states, it would now take the state OSHA’s a combined 62 years to inspect each worksite under state jurisdiction once.

The current level of federal and state OSHA inspectors provides one inspector for every 63,670 workers. This compares to a benchmark of one labor inspector for every 10,000 workers recommended by the International Labor Organization for industrialized countries. In the states of Arkansas, Florida, Delaware, Nebraska, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, the ratio of inspectors to employees is greater than 1/100,000 workers.

When the AFL-CIO issued its first report "Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect" in 1992, federal OSHA could inspect workplaces under its jurisdiction once every 84 years, compared to once every 133 years at the present time. Since the passage of the OSHAct, the number of workplaces and number of workers under OSHA’s jurisdiction has more than doubled, while at the same time the number of OSHA staff and OSHA inspectors has been reduced. In 1975, federal OSHA had a total of 2,405 staff (inspectors and all other OSHA staff) responsible for the safety and health of 67.8 million workers at more than 3.9 million establishments. In 2005, there were 2,208 federal OSHA staff responsible for the safety and health of more than 131.5 million workers at 8.5 million workplaces.

  Now, the current OSHA budget proposed for 2008 is $490 million. Yes, that’s a Bush budget. But, even in Democratic Administrations, OSHA was underfunded given the task described above.

  So, think about that for a moment: we have an entirely inadequate system in this country just to watch over safety and health in the workplace, funded at a miniscule level of several hundred million dollars—and, yet, we even more ludicrously proposed to oversee labor rights enforcement over three countries (the U.S., Mexico and Canada) at a laughingly pathetic and criminal level of a couple of million bucks?

  Senators, how do you propose to change that scheme? By raising the budget for enforcement 10 times to say $20 million per year? Or go wild and hike it 50 times to $100 million per year—still a pittance compared to our own failed system here in the U.S. Pick a number.

  The fact is enforcement is a farce. It was a farce created to buy a few votes to jam NAFTA through a Democratic Congress. It was a farce accepted by the labor movement,, which, weak as it was (and continues to be) felt that it was the best deal it could get in the face of a Democratic president (and his Labor secretary) who was a full-throated champion of so-called "free trade."

   I thought of this today when I got a report from the good folks at Policy Matters Ohio. They did a study looking at the enforcement of minimum wage laws in the U.S. Conclusion: pathetic and inadequate. Or, in their more diplomatic words:

A nationwide survey has found that states employ few investigators to enforce their laws covering the minimum wage, overtime, child labor and payment of wages.

Policy Matters Ohio, a nonprofit research institute based in Cleveland, found that 43 states and the District of Columbia collectively employ just 659.5 investigators enforcing state minimum wage, wage payment, overtime and child labor laws. Compared to the nearly 100 million private-sector employees in these states, that works out to more than 146,000 workers per investigator, though that is a rough gauge since not all workers are covered by state laws and some states leave much or all enforcement of minimum-wage laws to the U. S. Department of Labor.

   So, let’s get this straight: the people pushing these so-called "free trade" deals want us to believe that conditions can be monitored and enforced all around the world when we can’t even enforce our own basic labor laws?

   Please, stop telling me it’s raining when you are peeing on me.