Posted on 06/06/2003 5:47:52 AM PDT by FITZ
Mediation in the lawsuit by El Paso displaced workers failed last week, leaving the parties to meet in court this winter and debate the adequacy of job training offered by the federal government, officials from the Catholic diocese and the Asociación de Trabajadores Fronterizos said Thursday.
The suit, filed in April 2002 by six trade-displaced garment workers and the association, a workers advocacy group, accuses the Texas Workforce Commission, the Upper Rio Grande Workforce Development Board and the U.S. Department of Labor of not rising to NAFTA's expectations.
The governmental agencies involved deny the workers' claims. "We feel we're taking positive steps to improve the training for the workers with the funds available," said Martin Aguirre, CEO of the Upper Rio Grande workforce board.
Bishop Armando X. Ochoa celebrated a Mass Thursday night at St. Patrick Cathedral for displaced workers and the unemployed.
Since the trade agreement went into effect in 1994, tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs to Mexico, particularly in El Paso's garment industry, which employed about 22,000 workers in the early 1990s but fewer than 8,000 in 2001. This year alone, 3,500 workers have lost their jobs in El Paso.
One of them, Rodolfo Diaz, 50, was among 450 workers laid off from Sun Apparel-Jones this spring.
"We are working people," he said in Spanish. "We want to keep working."
The workers want bilingual training, saying that expecting them to learn English in the 18 months of allowed training is unrealistic and discriminatory.
The workers walked away from a day and a half of mediation because they didn't feel the government was making offers that met their demands, said Guillermo Glenn, coordinator of the Asociación de Trabajadores Fronterizos. A court hearing is scheduled for Dec. 12.
By the taxpayers. Of course it's not adequate, some jobs they could be retrained for might require a little English language skills, if people have lived in the US for 20 years and haven't learned the language by now, it's because they don't wish ever to learn it.
We're stuck with these people who originally came from Mexico but would never dream of going back because their jobs went there, they're not "retrainable" so we can provide for them the rest of their lives.
The workers want bilingual training, saying that expecting them to learn English in the 18 months of allowed training is unrealistic and discriminatory.
Maybe if they learned English, providing they are here legally, then they would have a better chance of finding work. Don't let this country go the way Canada went. THere, you need to be bilingual to get a government job. Since only the French learn English, they get all the positions of power. Don't let Spanish-Enlish bilingualism happen here!
Los unions van a matarles - salgan de los socialistas y reveulven a EEUU.
Our government is just as guilty ---supposedly the justification for NAFTA is we didn't need low-skilled jobs in the US ---but we keep the low-skilled workers and even bring in many more. Many never became citizens of the US anyhow --- but they won't be heading back home, they'll stay and collect their handouts and meanwhile if the farmers want the chili picked, they'll have to find illegals to do that harder kind of work.
Yep. We have socialism-creep.
Sorry, my heart doesn't break for a guy who still doesn't speak English and can't learn it in 18 months.
We had thousands of Irish bums who came over in the 1840s; thousands of Scandanavians in the 1870s who NEVER learned English. Doesn't mean that many of the others weren't great people and hard workers. It means that these people were bums.
I wouldn't say they learned it all that well ---but many know some ---not nearly enough to find jobs that require English. It's easier to sue to get more welfare money (the taxpayers aren't just providing 18 months of free education, we're also paying their living expenses while they're supposed to be persuing this education). We have a lot here who I doubt will ever work again ---- it was better when they were making their $8-10 an hour and getting health insurance and setting an example for their kids to see ---parents going off to work. Now it's just wait for the government money to come in each month.
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