From Low Pay to No Pay

Impact on Women Workers

Women workers are a large proportion of the workforce in several of the industries likely to be hit hard and soon by the NAFTA: garment (78%), textiles (47%), electronic-related products (41%), household appliances (40%), and food processing (33%). Garment and textiles alone account for over one million women’s jobs in the U.S.

Most of these are labor-intensive industries in which production has already begun migrating to Mexico.

Other women workers will be affected by the slowdown in the creation of new service jobs. For the last decade or more, service industries have accounted for most of the growth in employment in the U.S. and have made it possible for millions of women to enter the workforce. The drift of services to Mexico will diminish the opportunities for women entering the labor market in the 1990’s.

Impact on African American Workers

Free trade will be particularly hard on African American workers for two reasons: the regions and the industries affected. At least half of the 31 million African Americans in the U.S. live in the Rust Belt or the newer Southern industrial belt, both of which will lose many jobs.

Just over 10% of the employed workforce is Black. Many of the industries likely to be hit by free trade employ above-average proportions of Blacks. Garment, textiles, food processing, and auto alone account for almost three-quarters of a million African American jobs.

The increasing outsourcing under management-by-stress has already removed much production from urban areas with large Black populations. We can expect the subcontractors to continue to locate in predominantly white, rural areas in the upper South and lower Midwest.

Impact on Latino Workers in the U.S.

Among the first to be hurt by free trade will be the Mexican and Chicana women working in garment and electronics plants along the U.S. side of the border. There, relocation can take only a few days or weeks with relatively little investment. As Cecilia Rodriquez, former director of La Mujer Obrera in El Paso, Texas, put it, “The companies are lined up at the border waiting for the free trade gun to go off.”

All of the following are both early candidates for job loss and major employers of Latino immigrants: large garment centers along the border, in California, Massachusetts, and elsewhere; food processing in the West. Farm laborers will be displaced as imports from Mexican fruits and vegetables increase.

Latino workers are also well represented in other industries likely to lose jobs: furniture, cement, electrical equipment, steel, and auto. (Reprinted from: Unions and Free Trade.)

♦ ♦ ♦