California’s Melting Pot

So now the propaganda blitz begins, with articles such as your March 11 editorial a beginning barrage to “soften up” the public for what is sure to be a furious campaign by President Bush to shove a “free trade” agreement down our throats.

I hope our citizens are quick to alert themselves to the inevitable results of an agreement that will force our farmers and industrial workers to compete with a country that has essentially no union protection for its labor force, little if any environmental regulation and pitifully substandard workplace safety codes.

Already our multinational corporations are relocating by the thousands in Third World countries, where the labor is cheap and desperately compliant and the added costs of environmental and safety laws do not have to be cut out of the profit margin.

George Bush has shown himself to be an internationalist who cares nothing for the quality of life of anyone but his rich business buddies. Instead of allowing our industrial and agricultural backbone to be “Mexicanized,” why don’t we encourage Mexico and other Third World countries to allow unions to form, forcing industries to pay workers a living wage--and urge upon them higher standards of environmental and worker safety codes, thereby giving their workers reason to stay at home, and making a better world for all of us?

RICHARD POTTER

Sepulveda