Well said! Both on the issue of human rights and worker rights (the latter which was intentionally excluded from both NAFTA and its predecessor the Free Trade agreement between Canada and the US. NAFTA has become a model for other trade agreements which intentionally exclude worker and environmental protections.

Have you come across the following yet?

Women not included in Conservative budget

There is not a single mention of women in the entire budget document.

by Irene Mathyssen, NDP MP

The Conservative budget is totally inadequate when it comes to funding for Status of Women and for issues that directly affect women. Women are not considered at all in this budget. There is not a single mention of women in the entire document.

http://www.straightgoods.ca/2009/ViewFeature.cfm?Ref=58

Slave-wage countries, you say? Don't forget the U.S., with it's 12-20 million illegals working two or more slave-wage/no-benefits jobs, living in barracks-like housing, and doing little besides working, eating and sleeping.

Insourcing is every bit as bad as outsourcing, and even worse macro-economically because taxpayers are forced to subsidize the illegal employers' labor costs with food stamps, subsidized housing, medicare-paid healthcare, public schools, and increased law enforcement costs.

There are many ways that employers can thwart or discriminate against employees who have the wrong race or gender. I have seen quite a few in action. No single law can change thousands of years of discrimination and belittling of women or hundreds of years of racial discrimination. It is a constant struggle, legally and in breaking up walls of silence that hide the unfair treatment.

Joe

That sounds like BS. Alabama is a right-to-work state, which means employers can fire employees at any time without giving any reason at all. Absent proof of a racial motive, there would be no grounds for a discrimination lawsuit.

RoR - where do you get the idea that her performance was not up to par - because she is a woman? And employers don't keep on substandard workers because they agree to lower pay!

Let me guess she probably got substandard reviews because she dared to stick up for her rights. I might not agree with Obama on everything but the fact he supports things that piss off bigoted regressive like you RoR IS a good sign indeed. Have fun for the next 8 years, smirk.

and you dont think that the reason she received substandard reviews for her performance was a way to justify their discrimination? you are kidding right?

Did you read the opinion, and the dissent, in the Ledbetter case? The jury found that Goodyear had discriminated against her on the basis of sex. Other female supervisors testified to being paid less than the men they supervised. In one of the years that Ledbetter had a poor performance evaluation, she received an award. I've never known any employer to retain employees whose work is truly unacceptable. But it makes sense that Goodyear would benefit from keeping her around at a substantially lower salary than the men who did the same job. The poor performance evaluations were both a pretext for discriminatory pay and evidence of discrimination. This isn't the first time that Congress has corrected the court when it was overly narrow in its interpretation of Title VII. And, don't forget, it was a 5-4 decision by the very pro-Corporate/anti-individual Roberts court.