The Impact of Integration on Mexico's Workers: Why GATT, NAFTA, WTO, and OECD are Important

Abstract

Globalization and integration have reduced living standards for workers and peasants in Mexico, even while the pundits continue to applaud the efforts and call for patience from its hoards of malcontents. This decline is an inherent and inevitable result that can only be stemmed by effective international solidarity movements along with the coordination of local struggles against this process on an international scale. New technologies frequently increase accidents and other adverse health outcomes for workers. Partially the result of the rising intensity of work, it is aggravated in Mexico by the lack of appropriate training. Although more attention is devoted to reducing problems of workplace health and safety, and more resources are devoted to problem-solving, the global spread of production and finance is recklessly destroying resources, contaminating the environment, threatening workers' lives and our collective capacity to survive. As a result, new opportunities must be seized to empower local labor groups that in the past would have been defeated by their anonymity.