El Paso Times | By Louie Gilot | June 6, 2003 HEADLINE: :Lawsuit over NAFTA will head to court
BYLINE:
BODY: 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 Asociacion 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 Asociacion de Trabajadores Fronterizos. A court hearing is scheduled for Dec. 12.El Paso Times:
