Sunday, September 16, 2012
Fortified Free Trade
When the U.S. Government bailed out General Motors in 2008 and 2009, GM was on the ropes in North America, but in South America -- specifically in Colombia -- GM was making money hand over fist. After all, that was the reason for President Clinton's push for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the subsequent agreements in Latin America: to outsource labor to countries where labor was plentiful and protections were few.
Today, fortified with $50 billion from the U.S. Treasury, General Motors is doing well, but its workers are not. As reported by Austin Robles, Colombian GM workers are hurting from workplace injuries, and GM -- along with corrupt Colombian officials -- has been busy falsifying employee medical records in order to deny them coverage for disabling conditions caused by the work they do.
This, of course, is globalization. It's what the WTO protestors meant when they hung their banners from skyscraper cranes in Seattle bearing the arrows indicating democracy to the left, free trade to the right.
Today, fortified with $50 billion from the U.S. Treasury, General Motors is doing well, but its workers are not. As reported by Austin Robles, Colombian GM workers are hurting from workplace injuries, and GM -- along with corrupt Colombian officials -- has been busy falsifying employee medical records in order to deny them coverage for disabling conditions caused by the work they do.
This, of course, is globalization. It's what the WTO protestors meant when they hung their banners from skyscraper cranes in Seattle bearing the arrows indicating democracy to the left, free trade to the right.
