Latino Leaders Let Down the Latino Worker : Support for NAFTA is the last straw for the newly middle class besieged by unemployment, crime and a fearful future.

The North American Free Trade Agreement means more than the free flow of products between Mexico, the United States and Canada. It also means the free flow of jobs.

Where are our Latino political leaders on this issue? Why aren’t they screaming for protection for their constituency, the Latino-American worker?

Latino members of Congress, like long-time union member Esteban Torres (D-La Puente), represent districts made up of working people, not the upper crust. Why aren’t they screaming for human-rights guarantees for workers in Mexico, their ancestral homeland? (Torres has said that he is for NAFTA.) Even at this late date, NAFTA side deals have been cut to protect sugar, citrus and vegetable growers. But we hear hardly a squeak on our behalf. Must we turn to Ross Perot for leadership?

Latino leaders should speak up loud and clear: “Stop this NAFTA!” And Latino workers should remember who has spoken up on their behalf.

I represent 2,500 highly skilled carpenters in the San Gabriel Valley. In 1987, our Carpenters Local 309 was among the labor and community groups that got the minimum wage raised to $4.25 an hour.

We’re those Americans who have worked hard and played by the rules. We’ve finally gotten a shot at our piece of the American dream. We should be happy and content. We’re not. We’re mad! We’re afraid! Just when we should be looking to the future for our children, we find ourselves struggling to hang on to what we’ve worked so hard to achieve.

Violent crime is no longer a disease of the barrio or ghetto. Middle-class Latino communities that have spread from East L.A. roots are no longer safe havens. Even at school our kids are at risk. Just as we reach out for the American dream, it’s beginning to look like a mirage.

California’s economy is in the pits. Construction is especially hard-hit. More than 30% of our members are out of work. This is not a good time for California’s working people. And as many of us know, when times are bad for working people, they’re really bad for minority workers.

Our children, the source of our hopes and dreams, face a grim future. We’re now being told that the middle-class, high-skill jobs of the future will depend on the passage of NAFTA and an expanded North American market.

You don’t have to be a Stanford graduate to know that jobs in this “market” will “flow” to the lowest wages, especially when those wages are 10 times lower, as they are in Mexico. Workers sense that this economic experiment may mean higher profits for business, but it means danger for them.

They also know that the first American workers hurt in any downturn are minority workers. According to the Department of Labor, in plant closing and layoffs between 1987 and 1991, Latino workers were an astonishing 49% more likely than white workers to suffer job displacement.

A mini-NAFTA, the maquiladora zone, already exists in Mexico on the U.S. border. Thousands of American manufacturing plants have been built in this zone, primarily for products to be sold in the United States. They have created 600,000 new jobs for Mexican workers who average $1.64 per hour. These jobs were formerly held by Americans earning middle-class wages. Many of them were held by Latinos living in California.

Mexicans working in these new plants drink and bathe in polluted water discharged by the plants that employ them. The shanties they live in are made from trash dumped by these plants.

On top of that, these workers aren’t paid enough money to buy the products they make.

American business likes this union-free and environmentally carefree arrangement. So does the Mexican government run by Mexico’s super-wealthy elite.

A long-term strategy is needed for a free-trade agreement, but it must protect more than business investments. It must protect workers on both sides.

Expanding Mexican democracy by demanding the right to organize free unions is an important start. Free unions will raise Mexican living standards and reduce the wage gap between our countries.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, as now written, means only bad news for workers on both sides of the border.