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WASHINGTON,
D.C. – U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) issued today’s “Bush Administration’s
Misstatement of the Day” on NAFTA
and trade.
Joining
Mexico’s President Vicente Fox at a news conference in Monterrey, Mexico,
during the Summit of the Americas, President Bush said:
I
believe that NAFTA has worked. It helped America; it helped Mexico… [t]he
fact is that NAFTA has lifted lives and ended poverty in some parts of
our - in our neighborhood. (President Bush, 1/12/04)
However,
according to "Justice
for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Mexico," a report released
by the AFL-CIO American Center
for International Labor Solidarity, after 10 years, “NAFTA has failed
workers in Mexico.”
The
report finds: “…Mexican employers routinely commit unfair labor practices
designed to prevent workers from exercising their right to join a union,
including harassing and intimidating workers, hiring armed thugs and attack
dogs to patrol election sites, forcing workers to declare their vote in
front of supervisors and limiting the number of union supporters in voting
areas.”
In
November of 2003, Schakowsky participated in a fact-finding mission with
other members of Congress to Mexico to examine the impact NAFTA has had
on workers and jobs. The delegation met with workers, local labor
organizers and officials to discuss the impact NAFTA has had on the health
and welfare of families and the environmental affects of the treaty. |
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