Tapsearch Com EditorHuman Dignity in the workday violated
July 2nd 2008 00:15
Free Trade is actually abusive to labor and workers. Free Trade is not really trade either. It was fashioned by the U.S. Government and Big Business. As we reported before the U.S. Government triggered it. The U.S. sponsored the moving of factories outside the USA starting in 1953. It was announced as a temporary measure to help out the Central American and Mexican economies while providing cheaper goods for U.S. consumers. The program never ended and it evolved into the maquiladora factory system.
By the 1980s, hundreds of factories were moved to Mexico alone. President Reagan and the elder President Bush acted as the set up men for the process. President Clinton followed and put the process at warp speed. The free-trade zones, were promoted by the Reagan and Bush administration and financed to a great extent by U.S. tax dollars. It proved to be a bonanza for U.S. companies , but the human toll was and is unconscionable.
The maquiladora factory program evolved to a point where a company did not even have to move their production to Mexico. Companies could just close down their production in the USA and fire all their workers and under the maquiladora program, they could contract the entire operation for a cost that included everything - building, workers and machinery.
The President of Fruit of the Loom after he closed his last factory in the USA, said he had no choice. He said there was no way he could affort paying workers just $9 an hour and survive. Consumers in the USA put on blinders about the unconsionable assault of human dignity in the workday. The U.S. companies that benefit from the near-enslavement of their workers, pretend not to know about the abuses in the factories and many hide behind the contract operations of third party independent companies as noted above where they wipe their hands like Pilate did with Jesus.
Many Christians in the USA looked the other way too with many being investors in the process. Aristotle said making money on money is unnatural. Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple. Christians and people supposedly of good will, look the other way as they shop and invest in a war on workers everywhere.
Because so many of the workers are young, the scene outside the factories resemble a schoolyard. Some of the workers are actually driven to the plants in traditional yellow buses. Attempts to form a union is futile and in some country deadly. Senatator McClain is going to visit Columbia where hundreds have been killed trying to unionized. Columbia holds the record for the most being killed trying to form unions.
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , tells about the many deals forced on other nations by the U.S. Government. It is all about making money on money with the unconsionable use of cheap labor down to the lowest levels of wage slaves and children.
Charles Kernaghen, who participated in human rights work in Central America during the Reagan years reports how the maquiladora sysem was developed, detailing how the Reagan-Bush administration had channeled over a billion dollars through the United States Agency for International Development ( USAID ) to Central America and the Carribean basin to set up industrial parks designed to subsidize and facilitate the movement of US manufactures away from the US workers to the phenomenal cheap, union-free labor pool o the third world. His independent reporting confirms what John Perkins said in his book years later.
( (The Catholic Worker March/April 1993 edition) , ( John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man was first published in 2004
In 1995, after President Clinton led the way in getting both NAFTA and GATT trade agreements passed, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation made available a hundred million dollars of financial insurance and over five million dollars in loans to U.S. businesses in the maquiladora system in Haiti alone. Exploitation of workers became an economic disease across the globe
About 500,000 US apparel workers lost their jobs with 99,000 cut soon after NAFTA was passed. 70 percent of the $178 billion worth of clothing sold in the U.S. in 1995 alone was produced outside the USA.
American shoppers shop their way out of their jobs at places like Wal-Mart. The average wage of a German apparel worker was $16 an hour: for Italian workers, it was $12 and hour. U.S. workers were making only $9 an hour. Compare this to sthe maquiladora workers who routinely work over 12 hours a day with no change in pay rate at wages ranging from 69 cents an hour in Guatemala to 30 cents and hour in Haiti.
The National Labor Commitee, a tiny New York based labor and human rights group has amassed loads of documentary evidence on the maquiladora system. It shows a massive history of abuse, legal and illegal. The investigations and interviews are conducted secretly since workers risk being beated and/or fired and/or blacklisted. Most of the blacklists are computerized and apply on a country-wide basis. In Honduras, child labor seesms widespread with the legal age lowered to 14 . However, there are reports of 12 year old laborers everywhere.
And this is only one industry. How can any Christian or others of good will let this happen and let it continue. We live in a brutalize world with different kinds of wars. The main war of our times is the war with ourselves. And directly in the USA, the immigrant laborers come and work at less than minimum wages while everyone looks the other way. More than 4,000 fomer U.S. factories are in Mexico and this did not stop the massive migration of workers. Someone should tell President Bush that there are jobs in Mexco that Mexican workers will not take. God help us now as we watch Tiger Woods and Lebron James wear the NIKE emblem in turn for millions of dollars in payments. The NIKE emblem is not a symbol of modern slavery.
By the 1980s, hundreds of factories were moved to Mexico alone. President Reagan and the elder President Bush acted as the set up men for the process. President Clinton followed and put the process at warp speed. The free-trade zones, were promoted by the Reagan and Bush administration and financed to a great extent by U.S. tax dollars. It proved to be a bonanza for U.S. companies , but the human toll was and is unconscionable.
The maquiladora factory program evolved to a point where a company did not even have to move their production to Mexico. Companies could just close down their production in the USA and fire all their workers and under the maquiladora program, they could contract the entire operation for a cost that included everything - building, workers and machinery.
The President of Fruit of the Loom after he closed his last factory in the USA, said he had no choice. He said there was no way he could affort paying workers just $9 an hour and survive. Consumers in the USA put on blinders about the unconsionable assault of human dignity in the workday. The U.S. companies that benefit from the near-enslavement of their workers, pretend not to know about the abuses in the factories and many hide behind the contract operations of third party independent companies as noted above where they wipe their hands like Pilate did with Jesus.
Many Christians in the USA looked the other way too with many being investors in the process. Aristotle said making money on money is unnatural. Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple. Christians and people supposedly of good will, look the other way as they shop and invest in a war on workers everywhere.
Because so many of the workers are young, the scene outside the factories resemble a schoolyard. Some of the workers are actually driven to the plants in traditional yellow buses. Attempts to form a union is futile and in some country deadly. Senatator McClain is going to visit Columbia where hundreds have been killed trying to unionized. Columbia holds the record for the most being killed trying to form unions.
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , tells about the many deals forced on other nations by the U.S. Government. It is all about making money on money with the unconsionable use of cheap labor down to the lowest levels of wage slaves and children.
Charles Kernaghen, who participated in human rights work in Central America during the Reagan years reports how the maquiladora sysem was developed, detailing how the Reagan-Bush administration had channeled over a billion dollars through the United States Agency for International Development ( USAID ) to Central America and the Carribean basin to set up industrial parks designed to subsidize and facilitate the movement of US manufactures away from the US workers to the phenomenal cheap, union-free labor pool o the third world. His independent reporting confirms what John Perkins said in his book years later.
( (The Catholic Worker March/April 1993 edition) , ( John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man was first published in 2004
In 1995, after President Clinton led the way in getting both NAFTA and GATT trade agreements passed, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation made available a hundred million dollars of financial insurance and over five million dollars in loans to U.S. businesses in the maquiladora system in Haiti alone. Exploitation of workers became an economic disease across the globe
About 500,000 US apparel workers lost their jobs with 99,000 cut soon after NAFTA was passed. 70 percent of the $178 billion worth of clothing sold in the U.S. in 1995 alone was produced outside the USA.
American shoppers shop their way out of their jobs at places like Wal-Mart. The average wage of a German apparel worker was $16 an hour: for Italian workers, it was $12 and hour. U.S. workers were making only $9 an hour. Compare this to sthe maquiladora workers who routinely work over 12 hours a day with no change in pay rate at wages ranging from 69 cents an hour in Guatemala to 30 cents and hour in Haiti.
The National Labor Commitee, a tiny New York based labor and human rights group has amassed loads of documentary evidence on the maquiladora system. It shows a massive history of abuse, legal and illegal. The investigations and interviews are conducted secretly since workers risk being beated and/or fired and/or blacklisted. Most of the blacklists are computerized and apply on a country-wide basis. In Honduras, child labor seesms widespread with the legal age lowered to 14 . However, there are reports of 12 year old laborers everywhere.
And this is only one industry. How can any Christian or others of good will let this happen and let it continue. We live in a brutalize world with different kinds of wars. The main war of our times is the war with ourselves. And directly in the USA, the immigrant laborers come and work at less than minimum wages while everyone looks the other way. More than 4,000 fomer U.S. factories are in Mexico and this did not stop the massive migration of workers. Someone should tell President Bush that there are jobs in Mexco that Mexican workers will not take. God help us now as we watch Tiger Woods and Lebron James wear the NIKE emblem in turn for millions of dollars in payments. The NIKE emblem is not a symbol of modern slavery.
| 58 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Tapsearch Com Editor
Ethics Box
Stories behind News in Global Economic Arena
The Rationale Quest
The World's News
Tapsearch explores untold stories