How would you feel about paving over an area nearly the size of Vermont to help big corporations like Wal-Mart eliminate unionized trucking and rail workers? Get ready for a shock. It?s been in the planning for years.
One "NAFTA Corridor," up to 1,200 feet wide with separate lanes for passenger vehicles (three in each direction) sandwiched between truck lanes (two in each direction) is projected to run along Interstate 35 from Laredo to the Canadian border.
The corridor will also contain six rail lines (three in each direction) and in addition a 200-foot wide utility zone, consuming a total area of agricultural land and open spaces almost as large as the land area of the state of Vermont, according to an article by writer Richard D. Vogel in the February 2006 issue of Monthly Review magazine.
This corridor, and others associated with it, are intended to be a major part of a reorientation of US/North American transportation patterns, especially container traffic, from west/east to south/north.
Since 1995, when NAFTA first went into effect, container traffic shifted through the Pacific ports of Mexico has increased 450 percent -- and that is only the beginning.
The intent here is twofold:
1.) "Off shoring" unionized port jobs on the West Coast to new Mexican "mega-ports" like the multi-billion dollar project planned for Punta Colonet ? "the future Mexican Long Beach." (The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handle some 13 million containers annually an are, by far, the largest employers in California.) Significantly, Wal-Mart has emerged as a key player in a $300 million expansion of Mexico's Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, according to a report from Reuters News Service. The goal, creating an alternative point of entry for goods headed to U.S. stores, was spurred on by the 2004 strike at the largest U.S. container port complex in Los Angeles-Long Beach, as well as concerns over capacity, Reuters said.
2.) Using NAFTA protections to make the NAFTA corridors essentially long distance "enterprise zones" traversed by super-exploited Mexican workers (truck and rail) unprotected by U.S. labor laws.
Even though this alternative shipping route is 30 percent longer from the Pacific Rim to U.S. destinations, NAFTA Railway is offering customers a 15 percent savings on the cost of shipping containers through Mexico as compared to Los Angeles or Long Beach.
The staggering dimensions of this union-busting project are so massive that they can only be financed with major support from the U.S. and Mexican governments, both subservient to the same corporate interests. Promoters, Vogel says, "tout the system as the largest engineering project in U.S. history." Public return on this multi-billion dollar investment (estimated up to $185 billion through Texas alone), he says, "will be minimal, because, even though the NAFTA corridors will be toll roads, most of the profits will flow to private entities under exclusive development agreements with the various state governments." Construction is contemplated to be done through the utilization of temporary immigrant labor under Third World wages and labor conditions through Bush's "guest worker" migrant program.
Probably the best way to visualize this immense boondoggle is as an "enterprise zone" free of "prevailing wage" and other worker protections, extruded from Mexico through North America. The full extent of the threat to unionized construction and transportation wages can only be guessed at.
Dave Riehle is local chairman for United Transportation Union Local 650, representing trainmen and locomotive engineers on the Union Pacific railroad.
For more information
For the complete article, go to www.monthlyreview.org/0206vogel.htm
 |
| This map shows the route of a proposed new "NAFTA" corridor through the heart of Mexico and the United States. |
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How would you feel about paving over an area nearly the size of Vermont to help big corporations like Wal-Mart eliminate unionized trucking and rail workers? Get ready for a shock. It?s been in the planning for years.
One “NAFTA Corridor,” up to 1,200 feet wide with separate lanes for passenger vehicles (three in each direction) sandwiched between truck lanes (two in each direction) is projected to run along Interstate 35 from Laredo to the Canadian border.
The corridor will also contain six rail lines (three in each direction) and in addition a 200-foot wide utility zone, consuming a total area of agricultural land and open spaces almost as large as the land area of the state of Vermont, according to an article by writer Richard D. Vogel in the February 2006 issue of Monthly Review magazine.
This corridor, and others associated with it, are intended to be a major part of a reorientation of US/North American transportation patterns, especially container traffic, from west/east to south/north.
Since 1995, when NAFTA first went into effect, container traffic shifted through the Pacific ports of Mexico has increased 450 percent — and that is only the beginning.
The intent here is twofold:
1.) “Off shoring” unionized port jobs on the West Coast to new Mexican “mega-ports” like the multi-billion dollar project planned for Punta Colonet ? “the future Mexican Long Beach.” (The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handle some 13 million containers annually an are, by far, the largest employers in California.) Significantly, Wal-Mart has emerged as a key player in a $300 million expansion of Mexico’s Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, according to a report from Reuters News Service. The goal, creating an alternative point of entry for goods headed to U.S. stores, was spurred on by the 2004 strike at the largest U.S. container port complex in Los Angeles-Long Beach, as well as concerns over capacity, Reuters said.
2.) Using NAFTA protections to make the NAFTA corridors essentially long distance “enterprise zones” traversed by super-exploited Mexican workers (truck and rail) unprotected by U.S. labor laws.
Even though this alternative shipping route is 30 percent longer from the Pacific Rim to U.S. destinations, NAFTA Railway is offering customers a 15 percent savings on the cost of shipping containers through Mexico as compared to Los Angeles or Long Beach.
The staggering dimensions of this union-busting project are so massive that they can only be financed with major support from the U.S. and Mexican governments, both subservient to the same corporate interests. Promoters, Vogel says, “tout the system as the largest engineering project in U.S. history.” Public return on this multi-billion dollar investment (estimated up to $185 billion through Texas alone), he says, “will be minimal, because, even though the NAFTA corridors will be toll roads, most of the profits will flow to private entities under exclusive development agreements with the various state governments.” Construction is contemplated to be done through the utilization of temporary immigrant labor under Third World wages and labor conditions through Bush’s “guest worker” migrant program.
Probably the best way to visualize this immense boondoggle is as an “enterprise zone” free of “prevailing wage” and other worker protections, extruded from Mexico through North America. The full extent of the threat to unionized construction and transportation wages can only be guessed at.
Dave Riehle is local chairman for United Transportation Union Local 650, representing trainmen and locomotive engineers on the Union Pacific railroad.
For more information
For the complete article, go to www.monthlyreview.org/0206vogel.htm
|
| This map shows the route of a proposed new “NAFTA” corridor through the heart of Mexico and the United States. |