To my dismay, as I write this it is evident that the race to the bottom has already reached the US.  Here in the US, we have good labor laws on the books. We also have decent laws protecting communities from environmental degradation, and protecting consumers from unsafe products.  We are apparently little better than China or Brazil, however, in finding the capacity, resources or political will to enforce these laws.  As a consumer, worker and citizen I am alarmed at the extent to which the current Administration has eviscerated the bureaucracies we need to protect us and ensure our legal guarantees to safe and healthy homes, communities and workplaces.

I have mentioned the Employee Free Choice Act, new proposed legislation that seeks to redress longstanding and very serious problems with enforcement of the National Labor Relations Act.  Despairing of ever achieving effective enforcement of laws intended to protect workers’ rights to associate freely in US workplaces, our labor allies have turned to this high-profile legislative ‘fix.’  It is no secret that the Bush Administration has all but de-funded most of the US Department of Labor’s enforcement activities, with the sole exception of the Office on Labor Management Standards (more on that below).  Otherwise, as the AFL-CIO and other analysts have helpfully detailed, the annual budgets for the US Department of Labor under each year of this Administration have cut support for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to levels insufficient to maintain existing inspection levels of these agencies.

Wage and hour, child labor, overtime and other employment standards enforcement has also been systematically defunded.  The only office at DOL whose staff and funding have grown over the past eight years has been the Office of Labor Management Standards, (OLMS), which oversees programs to audit, investigate and prosecute trade unions.

This is not an effort to single out a particular government department, but part of a publicly articulated effort to undermine confidence in federal government by undermining the ability of federal government to act effectively as a regulatory force in public life.  We saw a prominent example of this effort in early and public battles over the role of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and we have seen it most recently in the area of product safety.

As it has done with the Department of Labor, each year the Bush Administration has sought cuts in the EPA’s budget for enforcement of the legislation providing environmental protections.  Enforcement of laws intended to protect the environment, and to protect local communities from toxic exposure, as I mentioned, have for some time been considered valid subjects for negotiation in our trade agreements with developing countries.  However, our own lax enforcement of our admirable environmental legislation gives a wink and a nod to companies that would rather externalize costs by polluting communities, and undermines the ability of developing country governments to hold such corporations accountable. 

In recent years we have also seen growing evidence of the real effects on each of us, as consumers, of weakened capacity among the consumer protection agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC). According to our friends at OMB Watch:  “Toys, tires, toothpaste and a variety of food products made headlines this year for the risk they posed to consumers. Federal agencies responsible for regulating these products are plagued by declining resources and authority. While the agencies bear the brunt of the criticism for individual failures, the common link among the failures is Bush's seven-year war on regulatory protections.”  This Administration, as now is well-known, has slashed the CPSC budget and staffing.  No wonder our trading partners have gotten the message that they can send unsafe products to our markets.

The pattern is consistent across agencies charged with protecting Americans from hazards and providing us with the assurance of safe and healthy workplaces, safe and healthy communities and safe and healthy consumer products.  The budget cuts have provided negligible savings for the federal government, and have not in any way reduced the real costs to the US public.  We continue to pay those costs through the deterioration of our own health, and the deterioration of the natural environment in which we live. 

We have, through our trade agreements, enabled the shift to production of consumer goods overseas to developing countries, and have justified this shift through clauses intended to suggest that developing countries will in turn protect their workers and the environment.  However, this Administration has failed either to provide meaningful safeguards within trade agreements or even to continue to enforce those protections here at home.

Here is where a little money can go a long way.  The simple and obvious proposal for the next Administration is simply to restore the necessary resources, and equally importantly, the political will to allow our domestic enforcement agencies to return to effective protection of the safety of US workers, communities and consumers.  This will have a long term effect in our trade negotiations in future.  We cannot lead the world on fair trade if we fail to practice what we preach.