MS. KAHLER: Thanks for this opportunity to address the U.S.

MR. ALLBEE: Would you please identify yourself?

MS. KAHLER: My name is Ellen Kahler. I'm a Director of the Peace and Justice Center based here in Burlington. I have been the Director of the Peace and Justice Center for the last nine years. We are an educational non-profit organization, 1200 members focusing primarily on economic and racial justice here in Vermont.

A contributing factor to our focus on economic justice, and in particular livable wages for Vermont working people, grew out of our effort in the early '90s to educate our congressional delegation and fellow Vermonters not to support NAFTA and GAP. We believe that free trade does more harm than good for local democracy, family farms, the environment and working class people.

The financial benefits accrued by U.S. multi-national corporations does not equitably trickle down to those who enable such trade to exist in the first place, namely, workers, farmers and consumers. In our well-accepted multi-phase research product, we have documented what it costs to live in Vermont through a bare bones basic needs budget, and thus, what wages would needed for a full-time worker to be economically self-sufficient. According to our research findings, 20 percent of all full-time working Vermonters do not make at least $17,000 a year or 8.10 an hour. 83 percent of all single parents with two children do not earn at least $32,000 a year, and even with both parents working, 21 percent of all four-person households in Vermont do not earn at least $21,000 a year or the equivalent of 9.82 for each worker.

This state deplores the fact that in Vermont there are not enough wage jobs for all those who want and are able to fill them. Overall, our wages are depressed and our cost of living is high. A contributing factor to our wages, we believe, has to do with the overall transglobalization. While access to new markets has assisted some small businesses in Vermont and milk products, because of the lack of a fair wage throughout the world, Vermonters are forced to compete against workers of developing countries making 30 to 80 cents a day.

The concept of a level playing field is a joke as small locally owned businesses anywhere in the world cannot compete against large multi-national corporations who enjoy economies of scale and virtual market monopolies. We believe that the USDR should work to develop international wage standards that allow families to be economically self- sufficient, to work in work sites with high health and worker safety rules, to have access to education and training programs and allow them to improve themselves over time, to form a union and negotiate a fair contract if they so choose, to be treated fairly and with respect by the employers and to -- child labor rule. These basic and fundamental principles should be championed by the USDR in its negotiations at the WTO.

Another factor locally on economic justice issues is our belief that by strengthening and diversifying our local economy, Vermont and Vermont businesses will be less dependent on the global marketplace and, therefore, shielded from its vagaries over time. The more control we can retain over our local economy, which is inextricably linked to our environmental history, our sense of place, our belief in people before profits, the better off fellow Vermonters will be. But we are not insulationists, we are for local control based on the principles of democracy. Thus, we oppose any efforts to further limit Vermonters' ability to choose whether or not they want to buy products tainted with RBGH, and maybe the international norm or to limit in any way the laws and regulations which the Vermont Legislature as an elected body may choose to adopt. We view democracy and the ability to choose what we do and do not want to be part of rather than the choice being limited or moved simply because it is not good for the corporate bottom line.

We believe that what is good for people and the environment can also be good for the bottom line. These things are not mutually exclusively. For too long public policy has been made under the assumption that this or that rather than this and that. We believe the USDR has an obligation to support survival of family farms, local economies, state sovereignty, consumer rights to know, the Vermont workers' rights to fair wages as fundamental assumptions under which normal national trade rules are negotiated. These are not, they should be primarily concerns which lend the need to fair trade among all people of the world.

Thanks for the opportunity to talk.