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.
In Cleveland Ohio, we have a problem with panhandlers in the downtown area. There are also many homeless in the small parks and even lying on the ground near the sidewalks. Dick Feagler, top editorial writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote once that the bums prosper like software salesmen from the Silicon Valley. With more than a million workers losing their jobs in the computer industry, some of the bums may be former salesmen from the Silicon Valley. However, the downtrodden seem to all look alike.
There was a time when the downtown area hosted many international corporate offices. A salesman could stay downtown for days just calling on all the accounts. Even during those days, we had many panhandlers and homeless. It was not like it is today, but they were in ample supply back then too. I spent many of days doing business downtown and the sidewalks were filled with people. The panhandlers would stand near the buildings and so I tried to walk in the curb area to avoid their pursuit. For some reason, many would cut through the crowd to get to me. I wondered why but my wife says I have that kind of face. I would give a dollar to almost all who would approach me because I never knew who really needed help and who did not.
More recently, my wife and I went downtown on a Sunday for dinner. We could not find parking near the restaurant and so we parked blocks away. The homeless were everywhere but none were pandhandling. We actually had to walk off the sidewalk to get past one or two lying on the walkway. The experience was overwhelming relating to the past when we thought things were bad then. However compared to today, the problem is massive.
Back then, after going to noon mass one day with a friend at the downtown cathedral, a pandhandler asked us for some money for food. I was ready to give him my normal dollar contribution but my friend who happened to be my boss was new at the game and insisted on taking the panhandler for a cup of soup in the church's cafeteria. Our new friend agreed and we took him into the cafeteria but soon we were surrounded by the workers there and we were quickly ushered out of the cafeteria. My boss was dismayed at this response at the main cathedral in he city. We took our new friend with us to find him help. We spent the next hour or so driving around seeking a place to leave him. We ended up a Stella Maris, an agency that helps the downtrodden. They knew our friend as a past client who went through rehab more than once. They took him in again while they smiled at us for our complete naivete about the situation, but thought we had at least gave it try. They told us our guest would have most likely thrown up the soup in the cafeteria if we were successful in getting the soup for him after he was drinking for some time.
Soon after this encounter , I experienced another situation that profoundly affected me forever. I was backing out of a parking lot on a very busy street downtown. I had to wait at the curb trying to break into the traffic with my window rolled down when I saw in the background a new friend coming down the side walk headed directly for me. I could not get out into the street in time and the panhandler leaned over and asked me for some money as our faces met each other at a very close range. My wallet was in my back pocket and I would have had to get out of the car to get to it for a usual contribution of a dollar. And so I just slowly pulled out into traffic and told him I would pray for him. He shouted back - That's right , you do the praying and I will do the walk . He kept repeating this in a loud voice as I drove away shouting the phrase over and over again - That's right, you do the praying and I will do the walk. As he faded away into the background his dirty gray sillhoutte slowly turned into a bright light color as the sun broke through the high office buildings. I suddenly realized how someone else did the walk for me. It was of course - Jesus!
I still do not know what to do or how to discern a professional pandhandler from a person in real need. The homeless population keeps growing downtown while the crowds of people doing business has dwindled. The top newspaper writers write the same way and the politicians still talk about controlling the situation with little results. The flow of "clients" have new places to seek handouts. The flow of the general population around the old cathedral has diminished too. However, the new professional basketball arena and the new baseball stadium are now centrally located downtown. The new "cathedrals" are dedicated to professional sports and I surmise that many budget a dollar for contributions when they come downtown to attend the "sports liturgies" of our times. And they have to be careful they do not park far away from the sports facilities.
The question of what to do about the panhandlers and homeless remains. I do not think Jesus attends the sports events but under the circumstances, he may just do that hidded in a face of one of the "unnetted". And we really do not know who is doing the walk while we talk - do we? In the global economic arena, more are losing than winning. Work and labor remain to be the stepchildren of philosophy and religion.
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