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# Randy Walburger: NAFTA and cheap labor gutted American factory workers
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/051105-story-20050511-4/
- Published: 2005-05-11T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T07:03:23.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

*By Randy Walburger Santa Monica* world countries where dictatorship flourished and wages were less than $3 a day. “Profit maximizers” were able to dump the unions and their workers for jobs they could now buy for pennies, with no benefits of any kind. The Republicans sponsored economic agreements like NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which allowed American producers access to third world labor, which spelled doom for American factory workers. Plants closed at home and their workers were laid off permanently. As a result, whole communities died that had relied on manufacturing to support its citizens. Service jobs replaced manufacturing jobs. Then benefits, health care, overtime, vacation pay and 401Ks disappeared or were greatly lowered.

The “profit maximizers” were in profit dividend heaven. To make matters worse, the federal government looked the other way and allowed millions of illegals to take jobs and dilute America’s labor market, so for American workers there was a greater demand for jobs and there was an employer demand for workers. Employers were able to avoid federal and state payroll taxes all together by hiring illegals under the table — below the minimum wage. When that occurred, American workers were forced to take any job they could get regardless of the pay or working conditions. This was a veritable “profit maximizers” dream come true. The “profit maximizers” could either ship work out of the country and pay no tariffs when importing those goods back into this country, or they could hire starving workers at home who were willing to take any job just in order to stay alive. And that’s where we are today. “Profit maximizers” hold all the cards, make all the profit and labor has no union, or no power to deal with the situation.

Government institutions that cared for mentally and physically disabled were dismantled in the 1980s and the disabled were basically tossed out on the street to suffer the harshness of homelessness.

The attack on labor and the attack on the disabled were a single attack on working people and their families by taking away any safety net lower working class people had. Homelessness threatens all working class people who lose their jobs for any reason, especially if they strike for better wages and benefits. If they lose their jobs, they too will fall into this gaping abyss created by the big business Republicans and Ronald Reagan.

The Democrats too are controlled by the money that an all shareholder/profit maximizer class dominates. Democrats too have to have that corporate financial sponsorship to fund an expensive electoral process. Democrats too must go along with the dictates of wealth over workers’ interests in order to fund their electoral needs. Money talks. Boards of directors controlled only by shareholder/profit maximizers talk only about immediate short-term profit. They have no time for workers’ strikes or benefits. They have no interest in protecting the environment or people’s health or rights. Their interest is only in their short-term profits and dividend earnings.

It used to be that the American economy prospered by making goods and services for the American peoples needs and enjoyment. Manufacturing concentrated on household goods and through mass sales to America’s middle-and working-class consumers. These companies made good profits. Workers prospered, as well as manufacturers through an economic loop that nurtured both the consumer and the seller. Today, many of the economy’s most profitable businesses is in military defense manufacturing. Fewer workers produce weapons that do nothing to support the middle-or working-classes. This year’s military budget is over half a trillion dollars. That money could be used to better society’s communities, i.e. schools, hospitals, parks and infrastructure. But by spending this money on war, only the “profit maximizers” are getting something and working people get nothing. This country built 100 B2 bombers at $2 billion a piece. Bush is talking about spending a trillion dollars on an anti-missile system.

In other words, labor has been completely disenfranchised. Workers work for increasingly less and less, while military spending and deficit spending by the government goes higher and higher.

Now the shareholder/profit maximizers want to take it up a notch higher by dismantling Social Security and Medicare. Social Security is to poor people the essential lifeline between homelessness and having a bed to sleep in at night. If Bush is able to dismantle Social Security, then working people will have the cold hard street to sleep on in their old age.

Increasingly, homelessness is the result of having undercut labors’ check and balance with the shareholder/profit maximizer system through their union affiliation. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The shareholder/profit maximizers now have all the power over labor. Homelessness has become a shareholder/profit maximizer’s weapon used to enforce low wages and no benefits for workers. Today we live under a cunning, polite form of fascism based on the propaganda of lies and deceit. Bush said that cutting taxes on the rich would not create a deficit because the tax cut would create more jobs and thus more taxes paid in. Today our government is in more debt than it’s ever been in the history of this nation. The jobs that do trickle down are low paying service industry jobs that workers can barely live on. And there is more homelessness today then since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The answer is not violent revolution. The answer is “checks and balances.” Capital and labor must be valued equally. The boards of directors of all publicly owned corporations must elect their boards 50 percent from their employees and 50 percent from shareholder/profit maximizers. That way shareholder/profit maximizers have to share control with labor. That way their power would not be absolute and their ability to corrupt our economy would be held in check by the values of working people and their family and community interests. Homelessness would be addressed because families, workers and average people want to create a society where people aren’t just left to die on the street. There is no benefit to labor to see people live homeless on the street. On the other hand, shareholder/profit maximizers use homelessness to intimidate workers into submission. This is corrupt and immoral. Workers need equal power with shareholder/profit maximizers to protect themselves and the homeless who have become the prisoners of war in a war against labor by the shareholder/profit maximizers’ complete control of big corporations.

The shareholder/profit maximizers aren’t inherently bad people. Their interests are simply unopposed. Even the shareholder/profit maximizers must sense the corruptness of their domination. They and their families must yearn for a society that is less harsh, where the gap between rich and poor does not cause continual violence and strife. Rich people aren’t inherently bad. It’s just a lopsided system that needs true democratic reform.

Today in Los Angeles County there are upwards of 100,000 people homeless on the street each night. That number has been growing every year since Ronald Reagan and the defeat of labor in the 1980s.

Roll the clock ahead another 20 years at this pace. If the U.S. hasn’t been bombed out of existence by countries it’s attacked or harmed, there will be more Americans left on the street to die in the cold.

There will be more Americans in prisons and fewer educated Americans. Basically, a polite fascist government will reward its people with pseudo moralism and religious fundamentalism. Your reward will come in Heaven, just like the Jihadists who blow themselves up today. Your dignity will be in your patriotism. And so, labor will have devolved back to third world conditions and America’s working poor will be able, once again, to compete with any third world county on a wage basis.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 11, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/051105.pdf?ref=smdp.com)