Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 1 | Opponent: Head Royce PT | Judge: Kirk Evans
CONTENTION 1: TRADING LIFE
The almost 20 year old NAFTA agreement – has traded away the humanity of workers. Current maquiladora employees in Mexico suffer from a fatal indifference – where corporations care more about rapid production of goods. Workers are become insignificant cogs trapped in the wheels of production.
Arriola - visited several border towns and met privately with mostly female workers - 7 Elvia R., Professor of Law - NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Vo. 5, Issue 2, Spring/Summer
Claudia Ivette-González might still be...cog in the wheel of production.
The gendered violence that comes along with NAFTA is unconscionable. The current structure of NAFTA cares more about investors than it cares about workers. NAFTA is currently trading away life and the quality of living under the altar of free trade.
Arriola - visited several border towns and met privately with mostly female workers - 7 Elvia R., Professor of Law - NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Vo. 5, Issue 2, Spring/Summer
The fact that a third-world ... in the fabric of global production.
Mexican women working in U.S.-owned maquiladora factories are treated as if they’re worthless trash to be dumped in the desert
Beltrán 9, associate professor of political science at Haverford College,
(Cristina, Political Theory, Going Public Hannah Arendt, Immigrant Action, and the Space of Appearance, Volume 37 Number 5 October 2009 595-622)
Such activities do not reveal human ... of surplus and oversaturation becomes important.
Corporate rule at the expense of ordinary working people paying the price is the logic that creates poverty, misery and ecological destruction to destroy the planet
Lendman 07 (Stephen L, The Racist War on Immigrants, 3/29)
No welcome sign is out for ... of the planet to sustain life.
PLAN:
The United States federal government will clarify that the NAFTA agreement itself obligates binding worker protections in Mexico, including: mechanisms for improving basic labor standards based on the recommendations of the International Labor Organization (ILO); assistance for local organizing education centers; and full public participation in all parts of the dispute settlement process.
CONTENTION 2: SOLVENCY
A. GENDERING TRADE
Individuals should connect gender to the economic rights of trade agreements as a way of politicizing the gendered roots and effects of exploitation.
And a labor movement in transnational female workplaces – is critical to furthering workers’ ability participate in the political culture that determines their lives.
The aff’s politicization is critical to spurring debates within the American labor movement, international cross-border organizing, working directly with women in maquiladoras and providing the basis for larger progressive coalitions.
Andrias 3 --Kate E., Special Assistant To The President and Associate Counsel To The President, and Chief of Staff of the White House Counsel’s Office. Academic Fellow at Columbia Law School. Taught American Constitutional Law as a Visiting Professor at L'Institut d'Études Politiques - Paris, France. She has also practiced labor law and worked as a union organizer. University of San Francisco Law Review, Spring, 37 U.S.F. L. Rev. 521
The time since NAFTA's signing has ... for themselves what rights they deserve.
B. PEOPLE NOT PROFIT
Including labor protections in the text of NAFTA sends a message that workers are not less important than products and helps reevaluate how to measure the success of trade agreements. Upholding internationally recognized workers' rights is necessary to set a less ambiguous floor for labor standards which inspires both organized labor and NGOs to get involved.
Jacobs 10 * Cody, Attorney at Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Writing Program Director at Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy, Winter, 17 Geo. J. Poverty Law and Pol'y 127
While some would argue that imposition ... an important step in this direction.
The aff is more than just a legal solution – it is also a marriage of legal work to the already active forms of transformative organizing. The framing of our aff is critical to radicalizing new notions of economic rights – creating a shared normative formula for a socially aware global economy
HUBBARD 8 Dean, Sierra Club Labor Director. Former Senior Counsel to the Transport Workers Union, AFL-CIO, HASTINGS RACE and POVERTY LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 5, Winter
With these shared principles, SAGE ... world which reflects their deepest convictions.
Economic integration must be based on respect for workers. Our aff represents a way for us to counter the propaganda of free trade advocates and claim a role – not as commodities – but as human beings.
Alternatives for the Americas 98 second draft of a document initially prepared for the April 1998 Peoples' Summit of the Americas-a historic gathering of activists determined to change the prevailing approach to trade and investment policy in the Western Hemisphere. Building a People's Hemispheric Agreement, http://www.iatp.org/files/Alternatives_for_the_Americas_Building_a_Peopl.htm
Neo-liberalism entails the imposition of a ... discrimination and the oppression of women.
Incorporating civil society input about NAFTA’s labor failures is a critical corrective. It provides needed information to move past sterile economics and convince the larger public of the importance of renegotiating NAFTA
Carlsen 9 Laura, Director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City, where she has been an analyst and writer for two decades. She is regular columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, The Huffington Post, 1-12, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-carlsen/obama-reaffirms-promise-t_b_157316.html
The mainstream press is wrong when ... now to "how and when."
Public debate and documentation of NAFTA’s impact is critical to move past the logic of markets and to force the government to live up to its promises, rolling back the current model of NAFTA
Carlsen 9 Laura is Director of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy, A Pressing Case for NAFTA Review and Renegotiation, 9-9, http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5617#sthash.E7Fh3OOD.dpuf
Over a thousand people protested outside ... and rollback the current NAFTA model.
We cannot effectively challenge neoliberal globalization without redoubling the battle of ideas.
Landsberg 6, Pf Economics at Lewis and Clark College,
(Martin Hart, Monthly Review, Neoliberalism: Myths and Reality, April, Volume 57, Number 11)
Agreements like the North American Free ... enhancement of corporate profit making opportunities.
C. LABOR TRANSNATIONALISM
Cross-border labor collaboration is in doubt because activists have no faith in the NAALC. NAFTA-induced constraints are too effective at preventing neoliberal criticisms from succeeding.
Ayres 4 Jeffrey, Political Science Department Chair and Environmental Studies Program Director, Professor of Political Science. Studies in Political Economy, POWER RELATIONS UNDER NAFTA: REASSESSING THE EFFICACY OF CONTENTIOUS TRANSNATIONALISM
74 AUTUMN
Other types of cross-border solidarity ... wages, and lower unionization rates.48
The plan’s legal support inspires BROADER labor cooperation
Kay 11 Tamara, Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of Harvard's Transnational Studies Initiative. NAFTA and the Politics of Labor Transnationalism
How did it stimulate transnational relationships ... limited the possibilities for labor transnationalism.
This is especially true for US-Mexican labor transnationalism – the expectation of justice is critical to motivating workers into solidarity
Bandy 9, Joe Bandy Assistant Director, CFT Affiliated Faculty, Department of Sociology at Vanderbuilt University, Paradoxes of a Transnational Civil Society in a Neoliberal World: The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras - In Ayres, J. and Macdonald, L. (Eds.) Contentious Politics in North America: National Protest and Transnational Collaboration under Continental Integration.
Third, greater cross border identification encourages ... transform isolation and 'sequestration into solidarity' (Britt and Heise 2000: 262).
The legal mechanisms of labor rights enforcement is critical to galvanizing transnationalism
Kay 11 Tamara, Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of Harvard's Transnational Studies Initiative. NAFTA and the Politics of Labor Transnationalism
Governance institutions that have concrete mechanisms ... transnational relationships among North American unions.