Hispanic Enterprise - October/November 2007 - (Page 52)

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT A FORK IN THE THE ROAD THE TEAMSTERS HAVE TRIED —AND FAILED— TO DETOUR THE NAFTA PROVISION THAT OPENS U.S. HIGHWAYS TO MEXICAN TRUCKS. By Ruben Navarrette, Jr. ometimes, organized labor gets so caught up in winning a battle that it loses sight of the damage it is doing to itself, to its members and to the rest of society. Take the controversy over allowing Mexican trucks to travel on U.S. roadways. The Teamsters Union has been trying for more than ﬁve years to detour the provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement that opens the highways in Mexico, Canada and the United States to truckers from all three countries. And throughout this campaign, the Teamsters have demonstrated that they have no compunction about taking the low road to accomplish their goal. NAFTA represents a step in the right direction in addressing a double standard. Canadian trucking companies had full access to U.S. roads, but Mexican trucks could travel only about 20 miles inside the country before having to transfer their cargo to U.S. trucks in order to complete longer trips. 52 S Under NAFTA, Mexican truckers are ﬁnally allowed to haul cargo throughout the United States without having to make a transfer. That is great news for Mexican truckers, and for those who think the current system is horribly inefﬁcient. TEAMSTER OFFICIALS KNOW THAT IF THEIR MEMBERS LOSE OUT ON THE EXTRA BUSINESS PROVIDED BY TRANSFERS FROM MEXICAN TRUCKS, THOSE MEMBERS COULD ALSO LOSE CONFIDENCE IN THE UNION AND ITS ABILITY TO PROTECT THEM. * But it is bad news for the Teamsters Union, which is determined preserve the status quo. First, the union tried and failed to keep Mexican trucks out of the negotiations over NAFTA. Then it lobbied Congress to ban Mexican trucks outright as the treaty was ratiﬁed; it failed again, and had to settle for Congress setting restrictions. And then, in a desperate attempt to head off a Bush Administration plan to welcome Mexican trucks onto U.S. roads, it asked a federal appeals court to issue an emergency injunction just days before the plan was to take effect. It failed again when the court refused to do so. And it did all this because, like most unions, the Teamsters union is in the protection racket. It protects its members from competition—in this case, competition from foreign workers. In trying to keep Mexican truck drivers off U.S. roadways, the Teamsters union has a simple and transparent goal: to artiﬁcially inﬂate the wages of unionized truck drivers in this country who October/November 2007 HISPANIC ENTERPRISE AP

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hispanic Enterprise - October/November 2007

Hispanic Enterprise - October/November 2007 Contents BIZBUZZ: Business Briefs Trendsetters BIZTECH: Personally Digital BizLife - Travel: The Mobile Meeting Motoring: Is What You Drive, Who You Are? Q&A - Fact Tank for the Hispanic Population Hispanic Commerce Cover Story: Tiles with Style Success & Motivation: Grammy Whammy Finance: Talking Code Event: Masterminds NCLR Report - Improving your Triple Bottom Line Politics & Government: Keep on Truckin' Managing: Avoiding an Identity Crisis Franchising: Beyond the Brand Finance & Investing - Talking Money Movers & Shakers Regional Report - Louisiana, Louisiana Chamber Focus - On the Island of Enchantment

Hispanic Enterprise - October/November 2007

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