UNION VIDEO STARS FAIRLAWN AT&T CWA SAYS PLANT CLOSING ILLUSTRATES WORRIES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 18, 1993                   TAG: 9303180116
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FAIRLAWN                                LENGTH: Medium
UNION VIDEO STARS FAIRLAWN AT&T CWA SAYS PLANT CLOSING ILLUSTRATES WORRIES
The Communications Workers of America has brought the closed AT&T plant in Pulaski County into the union's fight over the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The CWA has produced a video, "America's High Tech Future: A Fading Promise," that features the loss of electronic manufacturing jobs at the Fairlawn plant to an AT&T maquiladora plant in Matamoros, Mexico.
Maquiladora refers to the area of Mexico in which foreign companies can use Mexican labor without facing import penalties when they ship goods back to their homelands.
The video has been distributed to 2,000 union locals, which have been urged to distribute it to public and cable television stations and others interested in the free-trade law pending in Congress.
The Fairlawn plant opened in 1980 and at its peak employed more than 2,500 people. But employment began to slide and AT&T closed the plant in 1991, laying off the 900 remaining workers.
AT&T said it was moving most jobs to a plant in Dallas and the rest to Mexico. But CWA Communications Director Jeff Miller said Dallas was just a stopping-off point and virtually all the jobs eventually went to Matamoros, where the union says Mexican workers are paid about $1 an hour, compared to approximately $9 an hour earned by AT&T's Fairlawn workers.
The highly skilled Fairlawn workers are completing computer and other high-tech courses for jobs that don't exist, the video relates.
Many areas have seen plants shut down and jobs lost to cheaper labor in other countries. But at Fairlawn, where a large plant closed with a big impact on a small community, the union found the best example to make its case to the public, Miller said.
The fate of the Fairlawn workers presents an objective and dramatic picture of the the union's concerns about the free-trade agreement, Miller said.
The first half of the video is a documentary on the Fairlawn plant. The second 15 minutes is a panel discussion - using Fairlawn as a starting point - of concerns about U.S. policy represented in the trade agreement.
Panelists include former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall, economist Thea Lea of the Economic Policy Institute and Marvin Cetron of Forecast International. Susan King, a news anchor in Washington, D.C., moderates.
President Clinton is on record as supporting the free trade agreement, but he also supports legislation that would address the loss of U.S. jobs and weaker environmental laws in Mexico, Miller said.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB