Thank you. I'll try to talk a little more slowly.
I'll read a short statement from the union, but just for a bit of background, when Bill Clinton left office in the United States, one of the final things he did was to negotiate the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement. A lot of organizations like ours that had generally protested trade policy in the U.S.actually worked to get the Jordan free trade agreement passed, simply because it had worker rights and human rights protections in the core text of the agreement.
It was not like the NAFTA agreement, which offered protections in side letters and side deals that were never binding. They were actually in the core text of the Jordan agreement, so we championed the bill and it passed overwhelmingly through the U.S. Congress. Bill Clinton signed it on his way out the door. Then everybody kind of went home and forgot about it until five years later, as Charlie mentioned, when we began to hear what this trade deal really was about.
Let me read a short statement. Then I'll wrap up.
As I said, the United Steelworkers union originally supported the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement when it was being negotiated in 2000. It's a decision that our union has come to deeply regret, as the U.S.-Jordan free trade deal has descended into human trafficking of tens of thousands of foreign guest workers into Jordan, where they're stripped of their passports and are all too often held under conditions that can only be described as slave labour.
I've travelled to Jordan three times and have met with hundreds of guest workers who toil under abusive conditions in factories that are all set up for the sole purpose of exporting to the U.S. marketplace. By the way, it's exactly what they're trying to do here now.
We heard testimony after testimony there from workers in several industrial parks, all confirming the existence of excessive mandatory overtime, grueling workloads, the shortchanging of legal wages, deplorable working and living conditions, and the routine violation of every single labour law in the country of Jordan, not to mention the ILO's internationally recognized worker rights standards, which I know are championed here in Canada.
Our international president, Mr. Leo Gerard, joined our Canadian national director, Mr. Ken Neumann, in writing to the minister of labour of Jordan on November 30, 2009, raising a number of critical issues with regard to the guest workers' continued appeal for help. Part of that letter addressed promises made to the Canadian government to jump-start this current trade deal that we believe are untrue. They were untrue then, in our opinion, and are still untrue, and in the letter, which I have left copies of for you to access, we've asked for clarification. They have yet to respond to this letter.
I'm not going to go through cases; there are some in the testimony. But I have attached a copy of the letter. Let me just say that in our opinion, and by its very definition, what's going on in Jordan is a serious violation of human rights. Set aside the profit for multinationals. Set aside the amount of money that has gone to the Chinese from this deal. Set all of that aside for a moment. This is about human trafficking.
In all of those factories I was in, I saw almost no Jordanian workers. They did this deal and then brought all the workers in from the Philippines, China, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. At the airport, they seize their passports and they lock them in factory compounds. It's the basic definition of human trafficking. They're unable to move freely in the country and the laws don't apply, so all of a sudden they're there, and they have no country and they have no laws. If they move about without papers, they're arrested and thrown into a Jordanian prison, where they have no rights.
In my opinion, and in the opinion of the United Steelworkers, this is a question of the human rights of these people. You have an interesting opportunity right now to help 30,000 workers in these factories simply by saying that you won't do a deal with these people until there are certain guarantees to protect the human rights of the people who are brought in to service these factories.
You have a unique opportunity. Jointly, we ask that the country of Canada take exception to what's going on there, to the violation of the rights of these many people, and put your foot down and say that this is going to end right here, right now.
Thank you.