A fair deal for Mexicans By Richard Trumka

[Omaha Steve]

http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/98499-a-fair-deal-for-mexicans

By Richard Trumka - 05/18/10 06:23 PM ET

When President Kennedy sent his brother on a worldwide Goodwill tour in 1963, there wasn’t a single country in which Robert Kennedy wasn’t asked about the Civil Rights movement at home. People in Japan, France and Germany had seen the images of burning buses and Birmingham’s fire hoses, and they wanted answers.

Yet, when President Calderon of Mexico meets with President Obama and addresses a joint session of Congress this week, it’s unlikely anyone in this country will ask him about the human rights of the miners his government has persecuted. He will not stand before Congress and explain why Mexican police shot and killed two striking mineworkers and injured more than 100 others. He will not have to explain why the government has persecuted and exiled the miners’ union leader, Napoleon Gomez, despite multiple rulings in his favor by the Mexican courts. Neither will anyone ask why 44,000 members of the electrical workers’ union were summarily fired last October. He won’t be asked if Mexican workers have a real right to form a labor organization, or even how working people in Mexico are faring economically.

President Calderon won’t be asked because, as a nation, we have chosen not to give priority to workers and their families, but instead have favored the multinational corporations who fuel the global race to the bottom in living and working standards. Working men and women, in both Mexico and the United States, need good jobs and a fair economic deal, including the freedom to improve their lives through forming unions.

President Obama and Congress must make human and worker rights issues part of our international dialogue with Mexico, as with every other nation with which we have diplomatic and economic relations. Mexican leaders are correct to criticize the thinly veiled racism of Arizona’s new anti-immigrant legislation, and to call on the United States to do more to reduce demand for drugs and stop the flow of weapons to Mexican cartels. Our nation must also call on President Calderon to honor workers’ rights, including the freedom to form unions and to earn wages to support a family.

FULL story at link.