The global economy drives wages down - not up- and there is no end to the process as long as People of Good
Will ignore the causes and effects.
The NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA trade agreements plus Fast Track and the WTO have been a Pearl Harbor attack
on workers while People of Good Will do not even address these horrific economic diseases taking down workers' dignity faster
than most any other happenings in history.
The Globalist Free Traders say the process is a natural one as wages decrease just like water reaches its
lowest level. It is in a survival of the fittest mode with the workers having no voice in the process. External powers
and money force this surge to the bottom.
It is a driven process and not a natural one.
Factories, farms and production has been made portable ready to be moved from place to place for
the sake of the cheapest labor possible. The U.S. Government actually started the process in 1956.
It funded the moving of factories to Mexico as a temporary program to help the Mexican economy and in turn offer
U.S. consumers cheaper products. It was supposed to last only one or two years but it never ended. At first the process
was a slow one. However by 1992, more than 2,000 U.S. factories were moved to Mexico. The NAFTA trade agreement just
confirmed what was going on for a long time and speedily boost the process with the number of factories moved to Mexico climbing
to more than 4,000. After getting NAFTA passed, President Clinton had to rush billions of dollars to Mexico to save the Peso.
It is now obvious, that the program never worked and People of Good Will including the Catholic Church which led the way with
Rerum Novarum as a standard for workers' dignity were silent about this betrayal of workers across all borders.
President Bush says the Mexican workers will do jobs Americans will not do. This is obviously a false assumption.
A homeless person wrote in our homeless newspaper how he went to look for work on the farms but was locked out by
the Latino workers who controlled the jobs. Imagine workers competing for less then minimum wages.
At the same time, Mexico reports a low unemployment rate. This means many Mexicans will not take the low
paying jobs in Mexico.
Today even these jobs are on the move again. Many of the factories under the Maquiladora program are
moving out to China for the sake of even cheaper labor. The $30 a week jobs in Mexico are proving to be too high
in comparison. At the same time China is contracting some of the work out to places like Jordan where workers even make
less and where they work up to 120 hours a week.
So, the Mexican workers move too in order to find jobs that at least pay a subsistent living wage in
the USA. while at the same time a working poor class has been created in the USA. The middle class production
jobs that once paid $20 to $25 an hour with full benefits have been vanquished by the forces of Free Trade. This has happened
just when the African Americans were getting these jobs and joining the middle class. Today instead, we have the
largest prison population in the world in terms of general population with the African Americans being the major number
in prison. The USA has gone through the most massive dislocation of jobs in its history.
People like Cardinal Mahony actually are prompting more of the same when they support the migration of workers.
They add to the problem. Pope John Paul said workers are not tools of Capitalism but the Church seemingly had deaf ears
to this statement and the Church remained silent about the unfair NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA, Fast Track and the WTO actions.
Even Pope John Paul seemed to have lend his worldwide travels to the efforts of Globalization that represents a new "ism"
of our times that took over unannounced. At least Communism and Facism was announced before it took form.
The Global economy - or Globalism has proven to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. This terrible betrayal
of workers' dignity is driven by power and money crushing human dignity across many borders. Rerum Novarum which set the standards
of human dignity in the work day is being ignored and put aside even by the Church itself who established Rerum Novarum.
(Please pass this page on to People of Good Will who really want to change the degradation of workers' dignity.)
