Tournament: Grapevine | Round: 2 | Opponent: Moore GC | Judge: Stephen Taylor
NAFTA has traded away the humanity of workers. Mexican maquila employees suffer from a fatal indifference – corporations care more about rapid production of goods, and workers are treated as insignificant cogs 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
The gendered violence of NAFTA is unconscionable. NAFTA’s current structure cares more about investors than workers. NAFTA is trading away life and the quality of living on 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
Mexican women working in U.S.-owned maquilas 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)
The rapid post-NAFTA expansion of maquilas and the simultaneous production of worker disposability are intimately tied to the suppression of labor movements – enforcement of union weakness in the name of free trade is the lifeblood of corporate oppression.
Chacon 2007 Justin, professor of U.S. History and Chicano Studies in San Diego, California, “Migrant workers: Casualties of neoliberalism”, ISR Issue 54, July–August 2007
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)
Plan - The United States federal government should renegotiate NAFTA to include binding workers’ protections for Mexico in the agreement itself, including: mechanisms for improving labor standards based on International Labor Organization recommendations, assistance for local organizing education centers, and full public participation in all parts of the dispute settlement process.
NAFTA renegotiation is a crucial corrective - incorporating civil society input about NAFTA’s labor failures provides needed information to move past sterile economics
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 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
Further, including labor protections in the main body of NAFTA puts people over profit – it sends a message that workers are not less important than products and helps reevaluate how to measure the success of trade agreements. Additionally, 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
And, assistance for organizing centers solves – it prevents deference to abusive employers and lays the foundations for transnational labor co-operation – it moves beyond understandings of Mexican unions as incapable of organized action.
French 2 JOHN D. Faculty of Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Professor of History. Labor History, Vol. 43, No. 4
Economic integration is not simply a question of liberalization, but 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
We are 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
The plan’s effects do not end in Mexico – the reformation of NAFTA’s labor protections is critical to ensuring stronger ones in future trade negotiations
Delp et al. 4 Linda, Project Director, UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, Marisol Arriaga and Guadalupe Palma, Graduates of UCLA Law School, Haydee Urita, Graduate, UCLA Department of Urban Planning and Latin American Studies, and Abel Valenzuela, Associate Professor, UCLA Department of Urban Planning and Chair, Cesar Chavez Center for Chicano Studies, “NAFTA’’S LABOR SIDE AGREEMENT: Fading into Oblivion? An Assessment of Workplace Health and Safety Cases”, UCLA CENTER FOR LABOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION, http://www.labor.ucla.edu/publications/pdf/nafta.pdf\