As director of the United Steelworkers in District 7, representing more than 60,000 steelworkers in Indiana and Illinois, I have to ask, Is everyone in America asleep? These jobs are leaving Northwest Indiana because steel imports made with substandard wages are flooding America at an all-time high, compliments of their trade agreements. It is going to get worse because Congress is once again considering legislation to renew "fast track" trade promotion authority.

Fast track is a policy that gives the executive branch the opportunity to negotiate — in secret and out of public view — trade agreements that have historically proven to suck the highest paying jobs out of America, fast. Since NAFTA was passed 21 years ago, via Fast Track, our trade deficit has grown from $218 billion to $912 billion. And when President Barack Obama signed the South Korea trade deal in 2011, our trade deficit with South Korea alone jumped 50 percent, which equates to a loss of 50,000 well-paid jobs.

America needs to be shocked, emotionally and psychologically, because every steel layoff is a major hit to the working class, causing poverty to trickle up. Nearly 40 percent of the jobs gained since the 2008 recession came from low-wage sectors. And that's because the good jobs are "fast tracked" out of this country. In Northwest Indiana, nearly 40 percent of families struggle to meet basic needs, stuck in low-paying jobs.

Trade agreements need to:

• Be transparent, democratic and participatory.
• Include a fair deal for workers with shared prosperity and sustainable social and economic development.
• Ensure a priority of worker paychecks over corporate profits.
• Strengthen labor and human rights, and eliminate outsourcing to countries that abuse workers and the environment.
• Protect us from unsafe imports.

Trade agreements need to ensure that workers in America benefit as much as the corporations pushing our jobs offshore while they pocket the effects of our loss.

Enough is enough. It is time to wake up! Contact your president, senators and congressman. Remind them they are elected officials and need to keep the good jobs here in America. I have offered, as other labor organizations have, to work with Congress to ensure that future trade agreements work for America, all of America.

It is time to stop fast track and secret trade agreements that permanently take away the good jobs from America and destroy the middle class.