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Buchanan policies will cause pain

TO THE DAILY:

Pat Buchanan tells the U.S. electorate that he fights for the economic well-being of the "little guy" on the battleground of American politics. He points the finger at big business and a manipulated legislative body in casting blame for the jobs crisis in the United States. He endorses closing borders to foreign-produced goods and immigrants as the solution to the economic insecurity of the U.S. working class.

Closing borders to trade only manages to internalize the problem. Employers driving down labor costs by cutting wages, job security, health benefits and workplace safety and outsourcing work to low-wage non-union shops. The income gap has widened over the last 20 years, with 80 percent of Americans facing a lowering of real wages or economic stagnation.

Pat Buchanan's solution attacks the very constituency that can help working people in the United States: working people around the globe, wherever U.S. corporations are transplanting American jobs. These companies are using the threat of "global competition" to wrest painful concessions from U.S. workers, and will continue to do so while they can pit workforce against workforce, country against country. The way to reverse this process is to work to bring wages and worker rights in other countries nearer to the level fought for in this country.

To find out more about this issue, the public is invited to hear two workers from a Ford plant in Mexico City speak at the Kuenzel Room of the Michigan Union at 12 noon, Monday, March 11. Jose Santos Matinez and Edmondo Casas will discuss their efforts to democratize their own union and establish cooperative organizing efforts with unions in the United States and Canada. This talk will be sponsored by Student Labor Action Coalition, Latin American Solidarity Committee, Fuerza Latina and the Graduate Employees Organization. For more information, contact slac@umich.edu.

ELLEN SCHWEITZER

LSA SENIOR

STUDENT LABOR ACTION COALITION