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Voices
Voices of opposition: The personal pain of free trade
November 21, 2003
By Oscar Pedro Musibay
Free trade advocates and protesters don’t have much in common, but in the end their arguments still boil down to money.
The boosters claim that creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas will spur prosperity in the hemisphere and bolster business. But much of the opposition says the FTAA will destroy their livelihood and threaten their ability to feed, clothe and send their kids to college.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against trade. I’m for fair trade,” said Ken Alexander, 35, a father of two who lives in Tyler, Texas, and works at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. manufacturing plant. “I’m doing this for my wife and two kids. I want to send my kids to college.”
Alexander said his union just negotiated a three-year contract with the Kelly-Springfield tire plant that is owned by Goodyear. The contract guarantees the tire manufacturer will remain open as long as production quotas are met and costs are cut. Last week, 200 people were laid off.
He contends that free trade supporters are slowly killing the manufacturing sector in the United States.
Alexander and the United Steelworkers of America joined hundreds from around the globe — from Australia to Mexico to Argentina — to protest in Miami this week. On Thursday, a broad coalition of unions under the banner of the AFL-CIO rallied and marched to show their opposition to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. The opposition — a vast array of labor groups, farming interests and so-called anarchists — contend the FTAA would decimate the lives of millions of workers throughout the region.
Argentina native Noemi Palma came to Miami three years ago because she couldn’t find work. This week she joined the international coalition of protesters in an effort to impact the trade talks.
But she isn’t optimistic that her voice or those of her fellow protesters will ever be heard by hemispheric leaders.
Palma has two children: a son, 16, and a daughter, 10. She arrived in Miami three years ago looking for work, leaving the children in the care of her mother in Argentina. She began doing construction work. This year she started the nonprofit organization called From Immigrants For Immigrants to help new arrivals to this country navigate American laws and get settled.
Palma became interested in the FTAA during the Freedom Ride to Washington, D.C., in late September, which was aimed at bringing attention to immigrant issues.
Palma said she witnessed firsthand the impact of privatization and liberalization of investment in her country.
As businesses were privatized, she contends, Argentina’s resources were sold to foreign investors and jobs were shipped abroad. Argentina has been gripped by economic and political turmoil during the last three years and continues to suffer through one of the worst recessions in its modern history.
She told her story to those gathered at the Marriott hotel near downtown Miami Tuesday as part of a panel of speakers from places such as Guatemala, California and Brazil.
“Here the factories are closing. It’s what’s happening in my country,” Palma said. “The jobs are leaving to countries that pay nothing to the workers. The only people making money are the rich. The poor are getting poorer. And those people that lost their jobs in other places are coming here, chasing the money that was made in their homelands.”
Maria Rovelles said Puerto Rico has become the last stop for many manufacturers leaving the U.S. in search of a cheaper work force. Companies like Levis Straus & Co. and Ford Motor Co. have established factories in the U.S. commonwealth, creating a salve to a shrinking job market on the island. U.S. manufacturers have received tax breaks for opening manufacturing plants in Puerto Rico, often operations transferred from the mainland.
“We are American citizens, but we don’t have congressmen or senators,” Rovelles said. “Our economy is very fragile because we rely a lot on tourism. These companies come down here and they don’t pay union wages and they take away all the benefits.”
Part of the protesters’ efforts during this week has been focused on dispelling the myth that opening foreign markets such as Mexico benefits natives as well as incoming businesses, said Terry Janosek, who works for Invensys Metering Systems, a holding company operating out of Uniontown, Pa.
Janosek blames the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by the U.S., Mexico and Canada in 1993, for his woes.
Invensys bought the maker of gas and water meters from British Tire & Rubber, which had acquired the company from Rockwell International. Janosek said Invensys has since implemented a plan to take different parts of the manufacturing operation and export them to other countries.
At first it planned to move part of the plant to Mexico, but now, he said, the company is threatening to move it to China instead, where its labor costs would be even lower.
A call to Invensys Thursday was not returned before deadline.
The company also sold off its foundry, prompting it to buy parts from other manufacturers, Janosek said. “Our foundry had a 97 percent efficiency rating before it was sold,” he added. “The first two years, 60 percent of the castings we got from other companies were no good. We had to machine them ourselves. Then they sold off our machining equipment.”
Calvin Croftcheck has a “hot, dirty and dangerous” job making coke, a material needed to produce steel, for British Tire & Rubber in a Uniontown plant purchased from Rockwell International in 1989.
“This is the kind of living that feeds my family. This is the kind of living that created the American middle class. This is the kind of living that this country can’t afford to lose.”
More than 500 people were laid off, including him, since the company changed hands.
“They moved a lot of the operation to Juarez, Mexico, where they paid young girls 90 cents an hour,” said Croftcheck, chairman of the Steelworkers’ Rapid Response Team in Miami this week to oppose the FTAA. “But they also have 300 percent turnover. The workers come down, make their money and leave. They live in cardboard boxes.”
The devastation wrought on Uniontown by the closure of plants and downsizing wrought havoc with the town.
“I was witness to a lot of suicides, broken marriages, heart attacks and drug abuse,” he said. “I buried a lot of my members in Uniontown. I attribute it to NAFTA, and all the FTAA is, is NAFTA on steroids.”
Croftcheck found another job making coke at a plant in Clariton, Pa., about 50 miles from Uniontown, but his passion for protest against free trade agreements has not diminished.
“I’m a third-generation Eastern European. My father was a coal miner,” he said. “We had the American dream and now it’s being taken away. That’s what this is really about — families, community.”
Oscar Pedro Musibay can be reached at omusibay@floridabiz.com or at (305) 347-6651.
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