-Yeah, those Latins just can't be trusted to fix a plane, can they? -Always slinking off to take a nap or smoke some cheeba. -The cost-cutting and union-busting suck, but why do so many leftists -have to paly with racist stereotypes?
Doug-- These accusations of racism around trade issues are getting really ridiculous. Yes, some anti-trade arguments may have that as a background but most do not, especially considering many of the workers losing their jobs in these trade arguments are black or latino.
The point is not that a "Latino" can't be trusted to fix a plane, but that a company that chooses to locate its maintenance in a low-regulation country like El Salvador can't be trusted to do the maintenance correctly. That's not because of inherent incompetence but because there is little regulatory pressure to do the job right.
If unions were just engaged in racist protections of white workers, they wouldn't just be campaigning for stronger trade rules; they would be calling for a crackdown on immigrants.
Yet labor is one of the main players fighting for legalization of undocumented immigrants.
So a race-based analysis of labor's stance on trade issues has some serious analytic holes.
Nathan