By Fred Gaboury

Protests in 40 U.S. cities, spanning the nation from Buffalo, N.Y. to Bellingham, Wash., and in cities along the U.S.-Mexican border will greet trade ministers from 34 western hemisphere nations when they meet in Quebec City April 17-21 to adopt the final draft of a trade treaty that will expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to all countries in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba.

Called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the treaty would do more than increase the geographic scope of NAFTA; it would expand the mandate of corporations beyond the provisions of NAFTA to include privatizing essential services like education, health care and postal delivery. It is, in the words of Jean Wolff, director of communications for the Canadian Labor Congress, "a charter of privileges for corporations."

Wolff said Canadian opposition to the FTAA stems from the bitter six-year experience under NAFTA and before that of the free trade agreement between the United States and Canada. "We were promised increased jobs and access to the U.S. market and got neither. As a matter of fact, several Canadian companies moved operation to the U.S. to take advantage of lower wages and taxes. The process accelerated under NAFTA."

Wolff said the week-long series of activities, organized as the People's Summit by labor, environmental and other components of the growing anti-globalization coalition, will culminate in a march on Saturday, April 21. He added that authorities have erected a 10-foot-high chain link fence around the perimeter of the Old Town section of Quebec City. "It's two-and-a-half miles long," he said, adding that residents must show a special pass to enter.

Maria Whyte is coordinating the anti-FTAA protests in Buffalo, where activities begin on April 20 with a bicycle ride/pedestrian walk across the Peace Bridge and will continue through the weekend with a "No more toxics" rally at the Dupont facility and end with a rally at the downtown offices of the Trico Company on Sunday.

Whyte said these companies were selected as focus points for the demonstrations because Dupont was one of the world's worst polluters. The demonstration at Trico is a protest against the export of jobs to Mexico that is sure to increase if the FTAA is ratified.

"April 22 is Earth Day and since environmentalists and unionists are two of the main components of the coalition fighting corporate globalizations, we decided to demonstrate against Dupont." Whyte said.

Buffalo is an example of a "fallen industrial giant" that has been significantly hurt by NAFTA and the corporate welfare policies of local government.

Once a major steel-producing center and the nation's eighth-largest city, it had fallen to 57th in the 1990 census as Bethlehem Steel and Republic Steel banked their furnaces and left, leaving Buffalo a city with vast areas of boarded-up homes, abandoned factories and deserted downtown streets.

"Simply put, few places are more symbolic than Buffalo as an American victim of free trade," she told the World.

In a statement opposing the FTAA, the AFL-CIO Executive Council warned in February, "If negotiations continue along their current path, they will yield an agreement that undermines workers' rights and environmental protections, exacerbates inequality and constrains the ability of governments to regulate in the interests of public health and the environment."

In its endorsement of the anti-FTAA activities, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union said the agreement will "go beyond" legitimate trade issues and warned that the process of negotiating the agreement has been so undemocratic that, days before the Quebec meeting, the draft of the trade agreement is still secret.

In the years since NAFTA went into effect on Jan. 1, 1995, unions have filed more than 20 complaints under its side agreements, which are supposed to protect the rights of workers and/or their unions. Ten have been "investigated," none have resulted in a decision favorable to workers. Reliable estimates show that some 400,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost since NAFTA became effective.