I'm Robert Andrew. I'm a lifetime resident of Windsor and I'm here to share with you a lifetime of experience with free trade agendas
I'm 60 years old and I've spent my working life in manufacturing in the auto-related industries. When I first started working in the auto industry as a summer student in the 1970s, we had the Auto Pact. Summer work was plentiful in the local auto industry. Full-time jobs with good pay and benefits were available when people graduated high school. Then came the FTA, NAFTA, and subsequently the loss of the Auto Pact.
We were promised jobs and prosperity. What working people have seen is the decimation of our manufacturing industry. There are no more summer jobs for students because the laid-off workers filled those jobs. Our children graduate from college and university at great expense and cannot find jobs related to their training. They struggle to find work and, when they do, it is low paying and precarious. For the first time in history, future generations cannot expect to do as well as their parents. This is what I have seen free trade do to our economy.
Now the global corporations have achieved the ability to export any job they want. They are going to use deals like TPP to import workers to do what work is left, reducing our workforce to a third-world status.
Why has the U.S. refused to sign onto this TFW provision?
Free trade is about giving global corporations the ability to exploit all levels of government and workers for the sake of profits. It is not about creating jobs and prosperity for workers. This is the world we are leaving to our children and grandchildren.
I still have time?