[CMI-Chiapas] Americas Program | Toxic Border

[IRC Communications]

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What's New at the Americas Program
“A New World of Ideas, Analysis and Policy Options”
http://www.americaspolicy.org/

December 29, 2004
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New from the IRC's Americas Program:

The Toxic Border
By David Bacon

In early September 2002, the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM) 
put out a call to border activists, urging them to act quickly to salvage one 
of the few remaining complaints filed under the North American Agreement on 
Labor Cooperation­the case of mistreated workers at Customtrim/Autotrim. Inside 
the cavernous San DiegoConvention Center, the CJM had learned, the temporary 
Binational Working Group on Occupational Safety and Health was holding a secret 
discussion between U.S. and Mexican government officials, supposedly to find 
ways of protecting the safety and health of maquiladora workers.

What followed that call, and the ultimate fate of the Customtrim/Autotrim complaint, 
is not only a stark illustration of the failure of the NAALC, but also a grim 
warning. A second Bush administration has already begun a hard push for the 
Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the 
Americas (FTAA). Free trade's defenders argue that the rights of workers in 
Central and South Americaunder these agreements can be protected in much the 
same way that the NAALC protected the rights of workers in Mexico. The bitter 
experience of the workers at Customtrim/Autotrim and their supporters, however, 
indicates that exactly opposite is true. Labor protections embodied in the 
NAALC not only failed in this one case, but in every other effort made by workers 
to use the same mechanism to protect their health, their safety and their rights 
at work. Basing protection for workers in future agreements on this experience 
condemns them to the same fate.

David Bacon is a reporter and photographer specializing in labor issues and 
a regular contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, online at http://www.fpif.org.

See full article online at:  
http://www.americaspolicy.org/reports/2004/0412toxic.html

With printer-friendly PDF version at:
http://www.americaspolicy.org/pdf/reports/0412toxic.pdf

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InternationalRelationsCenter(IRC)
(formerly InterhemisphericResourceCenter)
http://www.irc-online.org
Siri D. Khalsa
Outreach Coordinator
Email: communications at irc-online.org
 


 

Siri D. Khalsa
Communications Coordinator
Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
siri at irc-online.org

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