Campaigns

The 2009 TRADE Act

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act, which outlines a way forward to a new trade and globalization agenda that sets enforceable labor, environmental, food and product safety, and human rights standards was reintroduced in the House for the 2009 session on June 24, and is soon to be introduced in the Senate. The bill, boasting 134 cosponsors, is our path to turning around failed and harmful "free" trade policies and entities, such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and the WTO. Among the cosponsors are 11 committee chairs, 54 subcommittee chairs and the full range of Democratic caucuses and geography. The CFTC and its allies have secured 15 cosponsors from California, including recent commitments of our newest representative, John Garamendi, and the Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, George Miller.


More background
2009 TRADE Act Factsheet


S.B 657: Human Trafficking

This bill would, beginning January 1, 2011, require retail sellers and manufacturers doing business in the state to develop, maintain, and implement policies related to their compliance with federal and state law regarding the eradication of slavery and human trafficking..

California is becoming a hotbed of human trafficking, as thousands of vulnerable and impoverished immigrants came to seek the California Dream. Unfortunately, many of these immigrants never live that dream as they are captured and forced to work off unpayab;e debts in conditions often worse than prison. Free trade agreements not only ecourage such dangerous immigration by widening income inequality, they weaken the ability to regulate these clandestine industries.

The CFTC is joining with the bill's author, State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, The Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET), the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council, among others to help enact this important legislation.

Text and Analysis of the bill