Source: CNN
Republicans have sold us out even more. CAFTA is a five letter curse word just as NAFTA is. Big businesses wil now have a new section of the globe which will allow them to shut down factories here in the states and open up factories in this new section. More American jobs going outside the United States. This is highly depressing.
I used to work for Russell Corporation. I am sure you have seen the big R on Collegiate and Pro team jerseys. Before NAFTA, Russell had several sewing plants throughout Alabama. After NAFTA, they started building Sewing Plants in Mexico. After these were built, they shut all but one that were located in Alabama. The one they opened in Alabama was where the jerseys you see on TV were stitched.
Russell is not alone in this endeavor. A lot of companies have used the same scenario. Most people that read this post will never ever be directly affected by NAFTA or CAFTA. The ones it will affect are the blue collar workers that don't have a computer and/or internet service.
I was once a blue collar worker, so I know how they will feel once they lose their job to exploited labor in Central America.
George Bush says: "CAFTA would boost textile exports" I don't see a rise in textile products being exported, I see a rise in texttile jobs being imported. Bush says: "'This deal is a good deal for workers" Yea, good for the Central American worker.
And do you know what is down the road? SAFTA!
South American Free Trade Agreement.....
We are on a downward spiral of destroying the backbone of America, THE BLUE COLLAR WORKER.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Out of curiosity, do you have a job now? How does it pay relative to your job for Russell? How are the working conditions in comparison?
Dave
2 - Nancy
The true agenda of these "agreements" is that they will allow already rich US corporations an even greater opportunity to exploit poor foreigners by setting up sweat shops in their countries, and to continue exploiting US workers by deliberately creating such a dearth of jobs that they are forced to agree to take similar slave labor conditions here in the US, or starve. Smirk is the everyday worker's worst enemy & biggest traitor, indeed. I could almost be glad he's destroying the jobs & economic welfare of those millions of deluded fools who voted for him; they deserve him.
3 - Phillip Winn
In the big picture, free trade seems to be mostly good. It encourages peace, since nobody wants to go to war against a big source of income.
On the person-by-person leve, though, it can suck, because someone else somewhere else can always do what you're doing more cheaply.
I'll be really curious to see the answer to Dave's question above.
4 - Dave Nalle
Wrong, Nancy. These agreements are entirely about two things. Increasing the ability of manufactured and farm goods from Central America to reach the US, and increasing the efficiency of the transport of US manufactured goods to Central and South America. The exporting of jobs was not restricted before these agreements, because we did not have a tarriff on imports. Before these agreements the jobs were already being exported and we were not gaining as much of the benefit as we could have as consumers. Now that balance is eased somewhat.
Dave
5 - Nancy
Then why were there such huge uprisings of poor workers against CAFTA in their own countries? (W. post articles) And if it doesn't involve US labor, then why is Labor & everyone else not an "imperialist capitalist pig" (to use a phrase from long ago) against it? Or more to the point, why is Bush so FOR it? Anything he's for, I'm against, on general principle that he's a liar & and a traitorous sellout to US citizens.
6 - Al Barger
The racism, faux nationalism and cheap short-sighted selfishness of free trade opponents really turns me off.
The free-er the trade, the better off the big majority of people are, here and yonder. The artificial limits of economic protectionism clearly end up hurting everyone, starting with domestic consumers who will be expected to pay double market prices for everything so that American workers can be payed way more than the work is worth in the market.
Yet people insist on trying to get the government to intervene to save them from the inevitability of market forces. Low end manufacturing jobs OF COURSE are going to be headed to cheaper labor markets. That's what they SHOULD be doing. The locals then have a chance to start increasing their job skills, begin organizing themselves and working their way up- much as Americans were doing in the last century.
Meanwhile, Mexicans and Columbians have to eat too. They need those jobs worse than we do. We've got the biggest, strongest economy in the world. We're generating new jobs with higher skill levels and pay, and passing down the low skill textile jobs and such. Free trade, eliminating tariffs and import quotas and other such artificial barriers, will do FAR more to help poor people around the globe than than any dumb Live Aid or foreign aid package the Congress can conjure up.
7 - mojoala
Dave Nalle, yes I have a job. I am a Programmer/Analyst. How does it pay?
I was a forklift driver with Russell.
You do the Math: Forklift Driver vs Programmer/Analyst.
8 - mojoala
You are very so right Nancy!
9 - mojoala
Nancy I agree with comment #5.
Good Job1
10 - mojoala
Al Barger sounds like an owner of a corporation....
11 - Phillip Winn
Mojoala, help me out, since I've never been a forklift driver. A programmer/analyst makes more money, right?
12 - mojoala
At least down here in Alabama they do.
I make 4 times now what I use to make as a forklift driver.
you're funny P Winn.
13 - Aaman
They have programmers in Alabama?
I'm sorry - couldn't help myself:)
14 - Phillip Winn
I'm not trying to be funny. I figured a forklift driver was a low-paying position, but I've never worked in a job that had unions before, so I wasn't sure. I know some pretty low-paid programmers, too -- though not many.
I think that Dave's point is probably made here, by the way, in that for all of the hurt and anguish you feel at having lost your job at Russell, you're better off.
You've gotten better working conditions, better pay, and a brighter future.
I know that isn't the case for everybody, but the concept of free trade basically says that lower-skilled jobs tend to be replaced by higher-skilled jobs, so as lower-skilled workers in other places take jobs away from the US, the US in theory should be able to develop more higher-skilled (and higher-paying) jobs with the freed-up capital and so on.
Like I said, that's not much help to the guy who can't get a job after his factory shuts down, but I think the idea is that there aren't as many of those people as most people think there are.
Congrats on the new job, by the way!
15 - Dave Nalle
>>Then why were there such huge uprisings of poor workers against CAFTA in their own countries?<<
There were? I thought workers in these countries liked more jobs with higher pay. Got a link on these 'uprisings'? I'd love to hear more.
Dave
16 - Dave Nalle
What Philip said. Saved me some typing.
I realize that there's always a transitional period, but when the low paid work leaves new businesses move into the vacuum looking for workers, and in many cases they are willing to train those workers and send them to school, and after a few years they end up earning more money.
Don't think of things like CAFTA as taking jobs away, think of them as restructuring our economy and our work force - usually for the better.
Dave
17 - Phillip Winn
Uprisings are based on people's beliefs, which may or may not correspond with the facts of a matter. People protest things based on misinformation all the time.
That may or may not be the case here. Mexico has seemed to enjoy NAFTA overall, despite hiccups here and there.
18 - mojoala
Well I never lost my job at Russell because of NAFTA, nor do I know anyone personally that had. I was at Russell in plant not affected by NAFTA.
I am a white collar worker that has never forgotten where he came from.
Not a knew job, I have been here as a Programmer for 4 years come September 1st.
Those sewing plant closings occured in 1996. I left Russell in 1998.
19 - mojoala
funny Aaman.
20 - Phillip Winn
Dave, it's easy to say "for the better" when you're not one of the unfortunate few who can't adjust to the new economic reality.
I agree overall, but let's not forget that the process is painful for many.
21 - mojoala
Do any of you believe SAFTA will be on the floor next?
22 - mojoala
Side note: Russell, when they opened up some plants in Mexico, they also opened a plant up in Central America and South America. They shipped the finished products to Mexico and up to the States. Now they can ship directly from Central America, and eventually SAFTA will allow them to ship directly to the States.
23 - Dave Nalle
>>Dave, it's easy to say "for the better" when you're not one of the unfortunate few who can't adjust to the new economic reality. <<
Those unfortunate few still have lateral mobility. So long as unemployment remains low they can find a similar job somewhere, especially if they're willing to relocate. As a nation our priority has to be to encourage economic growth, development and modernization, and that means moving away from old style industry and towards high tech and information technology.
Dave
24 - Dean
Interestingly enough, one of the problems that Mexico has noted in the aftermath of the NAFTA agreement has been its own inability to truly take full advantage of the opportunity.
Mexico is losing a significant number of the manufacturing positions that they expected to get to even lower wage countries such as China and SE Asia.
The flattening of trade restrictions, the opening of the Chinese labour markets and a number of other convergent events are fuelling job shifts far more extensive than NAFTA has or then CAFTA potentially will.
25 - Phillip Winn
It took a number of years for NAFTA to lead to CAFTA, so it'll probably be a number of years more for SAFTA, but yeah, I think it will eventually come.
I guess the overall question is whether NAFTA (which I opposed at the time, but I am now more mixed on the subject) and CAFTA and so on and so forth are improving conditions overall -- with short-term negative effects for some -- or just making things worse for everybody.
I think it's the former, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant for those caught up in the churn.
Put another way: in the future, the USA might have no low-end manufacturing jobs whatsoever, but that might not be bad.