quote:
Originally posted by Jugflier:
BFred,
The truth about NAFTA from a Mexican perspective.
quote:
May Day demonstrations throughout the entire region condemned unemployment, plummeting worker purchasing power, privatization -- and the resulting corporatization of society -- and widespread labor abuses.
In Mexico City, workers overflowed the capitol's huge Zocalo, jamming surrounding streets, demanding more jobs, better wages, an end to the privatization of the nation's Social Security pension system and to new reforms making it easier to fire workers. A huge effigy of President Vicente Fox, depicted as a snake, was burned at a rally of the National Union of Social Security workers, denouncing the undermining of public workers' pensions, chanting that they were prepared to join in a national strike. Tens of thousands protested what they called a campaign against workers by Fox and his conservative National Action Party. Exporters have benefited from NAFTA, but workers have not, they said, as the gap between rich and poor is growing.
http://www.guadalajarareporter...m-worker-abuses.htmlhttp://www.peoplesworld.org/wo...rotests-rock-mexico/quote:
Earlier on January 30, a rally organised by the peasant organisation Central Campesino Cardenista (CCC) was held in front of the US embassy in Mexico City.
The CCC delivered a letter directed to the US president, calling on him to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. In particular, the CCC wants the section on the agriculture and fishing industries to be fundamentally revised. The peasants then marched to join the main mobilisation in Zocalo.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/782/40277Mexican workers being fed worms by Wall Street corporations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10...americas/08MEXI.html Yes, the wonderful paradise for the Mexican worker under NAFTA.
So far it is the Mexican gov't that has not held up their end of the deal on agriculture so these guys are blaming the U.S. when it was just us enforcing the agreement.
As for making it easier to "fire" workers it is more like lay off workers. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for firing an employee in Mexico without recourse on the employer however a short term lay-off or a reduction in work force is a big no-no in Mexico and very expensive for employers. As a result employers are very reluctant to hire extra workers for short term projects and very worried about giving raises as an employee’s "severance" is directly affected by what they are paid.
As for abuses they do happen, there are to many greedy A-holes going there to open up shop and thinking they can treat the people working for them like crap but most soon find that the employees will not put up with it especially in the more industrialized areas of the country. I've run across people like that and they are not usually in business for long.
As for some of your other comments in the thread, did you not realize that most labor in Mexico is union labor? I am not talking just about larger companies the way it is here but even companies with 3 or 4 employees are mostly union. Most of the unions are independent or exclusive to a small area. With the larger unions you do have a lot of crooked leadership just like here but with the smaller unions the membership will deal appropriately with anyone trying to rip them off.
