Three days lat­er, 1,336 work­ers at Philadelphia’s largest remain­ing man­u­fac­tur­er, Car­done, learned that com­pa­ny planned to throw them out too and build brake calipers in Mex­i­co instead. Two weeks ear­li­er, a Grand Rapids, Mich., com­pa­ny called Demat­ic did the same thing to its 300 workers.

A few work­ers shout­ed obscen­i­ties at the cor­po­rate offi­cial. Some walked out. Oth­ers open­ly wept as Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies shat­tered their hopes, their dreams, their means to pay mid­dle-class mortgages.

In the week before Valentine’s Day, Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies expressed its love for its devot­ed Indi­ana employ­ees, work­ers whose labor had kept the cor­po­ra­tion prof­itable, by inform­ing 2,100 of them at two facil­i­ties that it was ship­ping their fac­to­ries, their jobs, their com­mu­ni­ties’ resources to Mexico.

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates talk inces­sant­ly of build­ing a phys­i­cal wall to keep impov­er­ished Mex­i­can immi­grants out of Amer­i­ca. What they fail to offer is an eco­nom­ic bar­ri­er to pre­vent the likes of Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies and Car­done and Demat­ic from impov­er­ish­ing Amer­i­can work­ers by export­ing their jobs to Mexico.

The pres­i­dent of Car­ri­er, owned by Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies, gath­ered the Indi­anapo­lis fac­to­ry employ­ees, skilled work­ers who earn an aver­age of $20 an hour, and informed them that the cor­po­ra­tion planned to kick them to the curb but expect­ed them to per­form to the high­est stan­dards until Car­ri­er opened a new plant in Mon­ter­rey, Mex­i­co, where work­ers will be paid $3 an hour.

Car­ri­er Pres­i­dent Chris Nel­son told the group, ​“This was an extreme­ly dif­fi­cult decision.”

Such dif­fi­cul­ties for poor, poor Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies! It was mak­ing a nice prof­it at its Indi­anapo­lis and Hunt­ing­ton fac­to­ries. But it was not the big fat prof­it it could pock­et by pay­ing Mex­i­can work­ers a mere $3 an hour, pro­vid­ing $3 an hour in health and pen­sion ben­e­fits, and doing it all in the nation with the longest work weeks among the 36 coun­tries in the Orga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Development.

It would be ​“extreme­ly dif­fi­cult” for Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies to aban­don Indi­ana after the cor­po­ra­tion grabbed $530,000 from the pock­ets of hard-work­ing Hoosiers over the past nine years as the state’s eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment agency forked over tax­pay­er cash to the corporation.

It would be even more ​“dif­fi­cult” to turn its back on Amer­i­ca con­sid­er­ing that Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies grabbed $121 mil­lion from a fed­er­al tax cred­it pro­gram estab­lished specif­i­cal­ly to ensure that green man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs remained in the Unit­ed States. Car­ri­er took $5.1 mil­lion of those tax cred­its in 2013.

“This is strict­ly a busi­ness deci­sion,” Nel­son told the jeer­ing work­ers. It wasn’t because of any­thing they had done. It was just that Mex­i­co allows cor­po­ra­tions to exploit its peo­ple in ways that Amer­i­ca does not. Its min­i­mum wage is 58 cents an hour, while the Unit­ed States requires at least $7.25. For now, at least. Some GOP pres­i­dent can­di­dates (Don­ald Trump) have said they think that’s too high.

The North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment (NAF­TA) ensnared Mex­i­can and Amer­i­can work­ers in a race to the bot­tom. And the pro­posed Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship (TPP), a free trade deal among 12 coun­tries instead of just three, would place Amer­i­can and Mex­i­can work­ers in an even worse com­pe­ti­tion. They’d vie for jobs with forced and child labor in places like Brunei, Malaysia and Viet­nam.

Under NAF­TA, cheap Amer­i­can grain shipped to Mex­i­co with­out tar­iffs destroyed peas­ant farm­ing. And that prompt­ed migra­tion north. Mean­while, Amer­i­can fac­to­ries saw des­per­ate Mex­i­cans will­ing to work for a pit­tance, a gov­ern­ment unwill­ing to pass or enforce envi­ron­men­tal laws, and because of NAF­TA, no tar­iffs when the goods were shipped back to the Unit­ed States. That pro­pelled fac­to­ry migra­tion south.

Before NAF­TA, the Unit­ed States had a small trade sur­plus with Mex­i­co. That dis­ap­peared with­in a year, and now the annu­al trade deficit is approx­i­mate­ly $50 bil­lion.

Though it has been 22 years since NAF­TA took effect, a report issued last week by the AFL-CIO says, ​“Labor abus­es in many cas­es are worse now than before NAF­TA … In short, NAF­TA has con­tributed to labor abus­es, not improvements.”

The report says the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment fails to enforce labor laws and refus­es to ensure that work­ers can form inde­pen­dent labor unions to try to pro­tect their own rights. In fact, the report says, ​“The human and labor rights sit­u­a­tion in Mex­i­co is rapid­ly deteriorating.”

As a result, work­ers are pow­er­less and com­plete­ly at the mer­cy of cor­po­ra­tions. So cor­po­ra­tions like Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies can pay them $3 an hour and get away with it. This is not good for Mex­i­can work­ers. And it’s not good for Amer­i­can workers.

The AFL-CIO report makes it clear that the TPP would wors­en the sit­u­a­tion because it would give cor­po­ra­tions like Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies the option of mov­ing to places like Viet­nam where they could pay traf­ficked work­ers and child labor­ers $1 an hour. Or less.

Just like with NAF­TA, there’s noth­ing enforce­able in the TPP that would stop the labor abus­es. It would facil­i­tate cor­po­ra­tions forc­ing work­ers from Indi­anapo­lis, Philadel­phia and Mon­ter­rey, Mex­i­co, into com­pe­ti­tion with 14-year-olds labor­ing 60-hour-weeks for $1‑an-hour in Malaysia.

Just like Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies, these cor­po­rate CEOs would say it was ​“strict­ly busi­ness” to off­shore Amer­i­can mills, indus­try that had served as city cen­ters for decades, even cen­turies, fac­to­ries so syn­ony­mous with towns that the com­mu­ni­ties took their names like Ambridge (Amer­i­can Bridge) and Her­shey, which, by the way, laid off work­ers at its Penn­syl­va­nia home in 2007 and opened a choco­late plant in Mon­ter­rey, Mexico.

The AFL-CIO inves­ti­ga­tion of the TPP deter­mined that it would do noth­ing more than increase cor­po­rate prof­its while stick­ing work­ers — in the Unit­ed States and else­where — with lost jobs, low­er wages and repressed rights.

For 22 years NAF­TA has destroyed sub­sis­tence farm­ing in Mex­i­co and good, mid­dle class fac­to­ry jobs in the Unit­ed States. Maybe cor­po­ra­tions have made out like ban­dits. But the ban­dit­ry should be stopped for the heartache it has caused on both sides of the border.

As Car­ri­er Pres­i­dent Nel­son told the Indi­anapo­lis work­ers, mem­bers of my union, the Unit­ed Steel­work­ers, that he was tak­ing their jobs from them so that share­hold­ers and cor­po­rate exec­u­tives could make a few extra bucks, the work­ers protest­ed. Nel­son kept say­ing, ​“Qui­et down. Let’s qui­et down.”

That’s exact­ly the oppo­site of what Amer­i­can work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties should be doing. They should shout­ing from rooftops, ​“No TPP!” For the love of Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing, they should be yelling bloody murder.