Chicago, IL
Congress shortly will be considering legislation specifically designed to weaken the American domestic waterways transportation system by gutting the existing cabotage law and opening up the trade to foreign companies allowed to replace American workers with imported, low-cost foreign workers not covered by any U.S. labor laws. Of vital concern to all American workers is the precedent such action would have, leading to an incursion of foreign interests and foreign workers exempt from U.S. protections in all forms of domestic transportation -- including rail, trucking and air.
These efforts to destroy the U.S. domestic transportation work force are being led and funded by American companies with foreign flag shipping interests and foreign corporations anxious to move into the domestic transportation scene with foreign workers hired from the world's most exploitable pools of labor. These forces choose to ignore the fact that there are vital national security and economic factors that have long ensured that transportation within the physical confines of the United States has been in the hands of American companies and U.S. workers.
All American workers in domestic transportation are threatened by any legislation which aims to replace workers earning U.S. wage and benefit levels with workers from underdeveloped nations who would be exempt from the nation's labor laws and protections. Ironically, such legislation, if adopted, would signal every U.S.- based company that they no longer need to go offshore to evade American labor standards. Such legislation implies that in the not too distant future, Congress will entertain the idea that exploited foreign labor can be imported to the United States and made exempt from U.S. laws.
Recognizing that efforts to devalue America's cabotage laws are nothing but a transparent attempt to reduce the standards of all workers employed in America's domestic transportation systems, the AFL-CIO registers its vigorous and absolute support for the nation's existing cabotage laws.