Aug 30, 2019 ·
34m 16s
Leslie is joined by Roy Houseman, Legislative Director for the United Steelworkers, to discuss NAFTA 2.0. - Bad trade deals and especially NAFTA have a devastating legacy. Over the past...
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Leslie is joined by Roy Houseman, Legislative Director for the United Steelworkers, to discuss NAFTA 2.0.
- Bad trade deals and especially NAFTA have a devastating legacy. Over the past 20 years, the United States lost 5 million manufacturing jobs and nearly 90,000 factories. Some went to China or Vietnam or India. But a lot went to Mexico.
- We hear about workers like those at Carrier and Rexnord, who’ve seen their jobs shipped to Mexico. But workers who have kept their jobs are also still threatened, like tire workers at Goodyear. Goodyear opened a huge facility in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, in 2017 .Workers there make the same products as Goodyear workers in the United States; meanwhile, in Gadsden, Ala., Goodyear laid off 175 workers earlier this year.
- When Mexican workers protested poor working conditions at the Goodyear plant with a one-day strike not authorized by the company-controlled union, they fired 57 of the participants.
- NAFTA was bad for workers in all three countries, pitting U.S. and Canadian workers earning family-supportive wages against Mexican workers subsisting low wages without the protections of real labor unions. In Mexico, unemployment rose and poverty levels remained the same.
- Part of the problem is that Mexican workers don’t have the protections of real unions. New labor laws passed in April would help remedy this, but right now, Mexico has no budget for implementation. And since this requires hiring hundreds of judges and reviewing hundreds of thousands of labor agreements to determine their validity, nothing has changed. Corporatists and other opponents already are attempting to thwart the labor reforms with lawsuits and other actions.
- This is why the renegotiated NAFTA as it currently stands is not acceptable. Without labor enforcement mechanisms built into the agreement, it is meaningless. There is an opportunity here to remedy a longstanding wrong, but we have to get it right.
The website for the United Steelworkers is www.USW.org and their Twitter handle is @Steelworkers. Roy Houseman's handle is @RoyHouseman.
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- Bad trade deals and especially NAFTA have a devastating legacy. Over the past 20 years, the United States lost 5 million manufacturing jobs and nearly 90,000 factories. Some went to China or Vietnam or India. But a lot went to Mexico.
- We hear about workers like those at Carrier and Rexnord, who’ve seen their jobs shipped to Mexico. But workers who have kept their jobs are also still threatened, like tire workers at Goodyear. Goodyear opened a huge facility in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, in 2017 .Workers there make the same products as Goodyear workers in the United States; meanwhile, in Gadsden, Ala., Goodyear laid off 175 workers earlier this year.
- When Mexican workers protested poor working conditions at the Goodyear plant with a one-day strike not authorized by the company-controlled union, they fired 57 of the participants.
- NAFTA was bad for workers in all three countries, pitting U.S. and Canadian workers earning family-supportive wages against Mexican workers subsisting low wages without the protections of real labor unions. In Mexico, unemployment rose and poverty levels remained the same.
- Part of the problem is that Mexican workers don’t have the protections of real unions. New labor laws passed in April would help remedy this, but right now, Mexico has no budget for implementation. And since this requires hiring hundreds of judges and reviewing hundreds of thousands of labor agreements to determine their validity, nothing has changed. Corporatists and other opponents already are attempting to thwart the labor reforms with lawsuits and other actions.
- This is why the renegotiated NAFTA as it currently stands is not acceptable. Without labor enforcement mechanisms built into the agreement, it is meaningless. There is an opportunity here to remedy a longstanding wrong, but we have to get it right.
The website for the United Steelworkers is www.USW.org and their Twitter handle is @Steelworkers. Roy Houseman's handle is @RoyHouseman.
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