ROANOKE TIMES 

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

DATE: FRIDAY, April 30, 1993                   TAG: 9304300179
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

UNIONS' RALLY TO PROTEST TRADE PACT

Roanoke-area labor leaders said Thursday they will launch a grass-roots campaign to defeat the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement.

An inter-union rally Wednesday is intended to inform the community of "the harsh realities" of the plan. Local 161 of the International Union of Electronic Workers at the Salem General Electric plant is sponsoring the protest at 4 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 1202 Jamison Ave. S.E.

Danny LeBlanc, state AFL-CIO president, and Mike Giardino, president of IUE District 1, will speak, said Local 161 President Gerald Meadows. Rallies and protests in major cities will be part of a "national week of fair-trade action," Meadows said.

Interest in NAFTA has been building as negotiations of supplemental agreements on labor and the environment continue among the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

"This is no time for the U.S. government to make it easy for corporate America to ship our jobs to Mexico," Meadows said, noting continuing problems related to unemployment and the economy. He said the IUE has been one of the hardest-hit unions in the past decade, as many plants have moved to Mexico "to exploit the low-wage workers and poverty" there.

When the people of the Roanoke Valley "are truly informed about what this treaty means to their jobs and families, I am sure they will join our effort to `nix' NAFTA," LeBlanc said from his Richmond office.

Members of railroad and building trade unions in Western Virginia have been invited to the parking-lot rally, said James Wright, business agent for Carpenters Local 219 in Roanoke.

The AFL-CIO has opposed the trade agreement for years, calling it "a boon for investors, bust for workers." The national labor organization has said pact is an inequitable and nonreciprocal arrangement that "encourages U.S. investment in Mexico to the detriment of domestic needs."

The agreement, awaiting approval in Congress, "fails to address the serious problems of environmental pollution and limits the ability of government to adopt measures to promote employment or protect public safety and health," said Thomas Donahue, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer. 


 by CNB