...Corporate have soared, unemployment has dropped, and labour productivity has increased at nearly double the rate it did in the nation's last economic expansion, almost 30 years ago. But this economic boom carries with it some disturbing contradictions. Despite low unemployment and tight labour markets, American workers are more, not less, anxious about job security. This persistent insecurity is in large part a function of rapid increases in the extent and frequency of capital mobility, and the threat of capital mobility, since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The spectre of capital mobility, and the employment upheaval that follows in its wake, haunts the union organizing process for unorganized workers and collective bargaining for workers already in unions--keeping wages low, unions weak, and workers anxious. (1)

In the late 1980s, prior to the passage of NAFTA, employers made plant closing threats a primary focus of their anti-union campaigns in 29 per cent of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certification elections. By the mid-1990s, when NAFTA first went into effect, plant closing threats during organizing campaigns...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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