This wasn't Miami.

It was a parking lot beneath the Hill-to-Hill Bridge in Bethlehem on Thursday, where a cold wind whipped between tractor-trailer trucks and muffled the speeches of Teamsters union leaders.

But the message was the same from the banks of the Lehigh River to the Atlantic off Florida—free trade is costing American labor.

About 35,000 protesters were expected in Miami this week to fight talks by trade ministers who planned to discuss the expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

About 100 were at the morning rally of Teamsters in Bethlehem.

''On the surface, free trade sounds like a good thing,'' said Brad Yeakel, an organizer for Teamsters Local 773 in Allentown and a speaker at the event. ''But the Free Trade of Americas is a hideous distortion of freedom and trade.

''The only thing that is free about it is the freedom of corporations to do anything they like. The price for that is the loss of freedom for workers and the ability of formerly free citizens of formerly free countries to do anything about it.''

A new agreement would extend the elimination of tariffs to every country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba.

The Teamsters at first planned to rally in front of the Allentown office of U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey, a Republican, but then changed the site to Bethlehem because the home of defunct Bethlehem Steel symbolizes their plight.

''Right here in Bethlehem—steel town, union town, builder and defender of the U.S.A.—we stand in the shadow of the great Steel, victim of, among other things, the unscrupulous dumping of underpriced foreign steel,'' Yeakel said.

Yeakel said he wasn't a big fan of President George W. Bush, but he gave him credit for attaching a temporary tariff on steel imports.

''Just days ago the World Trade Organization overruled the president, the leader of the free world, and told him his tariff was illegal,'' Yeakel said. ''Since when does anyone from another country tell the president what is legal and illegal on our own soil?''

Leaders of Bethlehem locals of the United Steelworkers Union of America went one better than the local Teamsters. They traveled to Miami to join the protest.

Dwindling union membership has forced them to consider selling Van Bittner Hall, their Bethlehem headquarters. From a high of about 35,000 members in 1964, the membership has slipped to about 1,800. Bethlehem Steel, the company they worked for, no longer exists.

''We're having a rally and march,'' Jerry Green, president of Local 2599 of the United Steelworkers of America, said by cell phone on Thursday. ''There are helicopters overhead and SWAT teams. But no problems so far.''

 

The article originally appeared in The Morning Call (Allentown, PA) on November 21, 2003 written by Dan Shope.