63°
UMass Boston's independent, student-run newspaper

The Mass Media

The Mass Media

The Mass Media

Center to hold program on labor issues in Latin America

The Labor Resource Center at UMass Boston is holding a program on Sept. 12 called Labor in Latin America: Fighting an Uphill Battle. The discussions for the program are going to focus on Latin America’s two largest countries, Mexico and Brazil.

Carlos Salas, from Tlaxcala College in Mexico, who co-wrote “NAFTA at seven: Its impacts on workers in all three nations,” among other pieces, is one of the speakers. The other is Marcia Leite, from the University of Campinas in Brazil, who was the co-author of “Flexibility and the Casualization of Labor: the Brazilian experience,” among other works.

Salas and Leite are a leading labor economist and labor sociologist, respectively, in their countries, and will be flying in to share their perspectives the impact that globalization will have on workers in Latin America.

The topic of Salas’ discussion is “How NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] Has Hurt Mexicans.” NAFTA, which was put into effect in 1994 to eliminate tariffs between Canada, Mexico and the US, has been criticized for destroying hundreds of thousands of farming jobs in Mexico. Leite’s discussion is entitled “Has a Workers’ Party Presidency Helped Brazilian Workers?”

The program is set to take place from 3 to 5 p.m. in the fourth floor student lounge of Wheatley Hall. For more information, contact Tess Ewing at 617-287-7352.