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Dear John, Donald Trump is pretending he fixed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.) One of his core pledges as a candidate was to end the outsourcing of jobs and protect workers. And to end our trade deficit. In reality, the U.S. government has certified at least 170,000 trade-related American job losses between 2017 and 2020. The overall U.S. trade deficit with the NAFTA countries jumped 88%. Trump lied and working people are paying the price. Sign the petition, and call out Trump’s lie! On the very day that Trump was celebrating the new NAFTA’s start and proclaiming its wonders, a new arrest warrant was issued for labor lawyer Susana Prieto Terrazas. She languished for a month in a dangerous Mexican prison and now is exiled. Her crime? Representing workers who were exercising the new NAFTA’s core protection: the right to form independent unions in Mexico. The story of the U.S. firm whose Mexican maquiladora factory Prieto was helping to organize is a perfect picture of NAFTA’s poison for workers throughout North America. In 2016, the U.S. firm outsourced production to Mexico, laying off 1,300 Philadelphians. The Mexican workers now making the firm’s auto parts are paid less per day than U.S. workers make per hour. And they were pushed back to work amidst a raging COVID-19 outbreak. Workers died. No doubt these workers voted to rid themselves of their highly corrupt company union. Arresting these workers’ lawyer on trumped-up charges, getting her exiled to another state so she cannot help workers get a real union, and now threatening to arrest her again does not just sabotage workers’ right to form a union. These actions violate Mexico’s Constitution, its 2019 Labor Law and the new NAFTA’s labor protections. So, what is being done to reserve this outrage? Nothing, so far. That is where you come in. Donald Trump wants to say he fixed NAFTA. We need to call out that lie. SIGN THE PETITION: Demand the new NAFTA's labor protections are enforced! Unless the new NAFTA is enforced, its labor protections are nothing more than words on paper. Until Mexican workers can fight for better wages and safer working conditions with real independent unions, NAFTA’s devastating race-to-the-bottom American outsourcing and Mexican sweatshop wages will crush workers on both sides of the border.
In solidarity, Joel Jobs With Justice |
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