Remembering labour mistakes of NAFTA’s past
Memories being what they are — fragile — one has to reach into the newspaper archive to reclaim the tempest mood, some 24 years ago, when the not-yetratified North American Free Trade Agreement had American voters storm tossed.
Would presidential hopeful Bill Clinton endorse the deal, negotiated by President George Bush, despite the absences in the Mexico-Canada-U.S. marriage?
Clinton was a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats globalist Kool-Aid drinker — skol! — but he was a pragmatist too and so, in October 1992, he came out in support of the deal, with a qualifier: Negotiators would have to cut side agreements on labour and the environment. I see this as killing two birds with one stone, winning the support of Congress (Clinton became president in January 1993), while not messing with the core agreement.
Students of the free-trade pact may recall that one of the loudest antiNAFTA voices was Democratic House majority leader Dick Gephardt, who repeatedly and so eloquently argued that environmental controls, protection for workers and an international dispute resolution covering the right to strike and collective bargaining were essential.
Gephardt made a couple of trips to Tijuana to assess matters for himself. He returned with a first-hand understanding of buck-an-hour jobs and industrial waste flowing freely through the places where children play and cattle graze.
It took a year to work up the so-called environmental and labour provisions. Who among us can recall the council of Canadians — Doris Anderson, Farley Mowat, Pierre Berton and many more — who protested these “side-bar deals,” rightly pointing out that the labour provisions failed to even cover basic union rights? See: collective bargaining.
The final language of the labour provision had more weaselly words than those mission statements so beloved by transnational corporations who very much like what they term “nimble cost structures.” The parties were “committed to promote” a few “guiding principles” governing “broad areas of concern.” Dialogue was “encouraged.”
Dick Gephardt voted against NAFTA, and that was a blow. So did House Majority Whip David E. Bonior of Michigan. “It will cost jobs,” Bonior said. “It will drive down our standard of living. It will lock in place a Mexican system that exploits its own people and denies them the most basic political and economic rights.” Still, the deal passed quite breezily. And then a flood of manufacturing jobs rushed to low-wage sites in Mexico. The workers there had rare hope of forming true, as opposed to sham or “phantom,” unions.
No wonder Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland felt compelled to acknowledge this week that, as she put it, “There are reasons why Canadian workers might have some skepticism about trade agreements.”
She continued: “Canadian workers have legitimate anxieties about the ways in which international trade can lead to a race to the bottom in labour standards.”
She noted that she was “quite optimistic” about the chances of improving the labour chapter in the current NAFTA talks, which resume in Washington on Oct. 11.
If I’ve got my timing right, Freeland’s comments arrived just about the time workers at Rexnord Corp.’s bearings plant in Indianapolis exited their place of work for the last time. The company had announced months before that it would be transferring operations, and more than 300 jobs, to Monterrey, Mexi- co. Local reports pegged the average wage at the Indianapolis plant at $25 (U.S.) an hour, adding that by moving south of the border the company aimed to realize $15.5 million in savings — or a wage reduction to $8 an hour.
Indianapolis, we remember, is home to the Carrier air conditioning/furnace company that announced the outsourcing of jobs to Mexico, which drew the ire of Donald Trump, which resulted in tax breaks and incentives being doled out to the company.
In July, more than 300 workers were nevertheless let go, with another 300 due to exit before Christ- mas. The president appears to be vexed by this turn of events, no doubt wondering if he got his money’s worth.
How will Mexico engage on this in the next round?
Mexico’s negotiators have some cover with the country’s newly enacted constitutional reform amending its labour justice system. That won’t work for long. There can’t be any patience any longer for denying core principles in the core agreement enshrining fundamental labour rights, rights that should have been enshrined a quarter century ago. jenwells@thestar.ca