PAGE 2 | January 4, 2019 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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...Labor on Trump’s new NAFTA
From Page 1
ico.” And while the new
NAFTA has workers’ rights lan-
guage written into its text, a key
labor demand (and not in an un-
enforceable side letter), that lan-
guage won’t stop the outsourc-
ing, Martinez said.
Steelworkers Legislative Di-
rector Holly Hart agreed.
“NAFTA and implementing leg-
islation must reverse the corpo-
rate incentives to outsource pro-
duction and, instead, promote
investments in plants, equip-
ment and people domestically,”
she said. She cited GM’s lay-
offs, closures and outsourcing –
just before Christmas - as evi-
dence a tougher new NAFTA is
needed to stop “corporations
only interested in profits.”
“In certain areas, the text of
the new agreement is an im-
provement. But Mexico must
pass legislation to enforce the la-
bor and environmental stan-
dards to which it committed.
And, mechanisms must be es-
tablished to ensure provisions
are aggressively implemented,
monitored and enforced.
“Mexico inaugurates a new
president, and new political
leaders control their Congress.
Mexico has made commitments
to its people. We have every rea-
son to believe the new political
leadership will faithfully adopt
strong provisions to implement
its constitutional commitments.”
Auto Workers President Gary
Jones also cited GM’s closures
as a reason the new NAFTA
falls short, though he said UAW
“is committed to working” with
Trump and Congress to fix its
failings. At the UAW conven-
tion in Detroit earlier this year,
dissident delegates argued for
scrapping the current NAFTA
with no replacement at all, citing
the present pact’s cost to auto in-
dustry jobs.
“When we look at the new
NAFTA through the eyes of
workers in Lordstown, Detroit-
Hamtramck, Warren, Brown-
stown, and Maryland” – the
plants GM is closing – “Do you
see a better future? It is hard to
see how, as the reality of the new
measure failed to stop the flow
of work from the U.S. to Mexico
in search of cheap labor.”
“Workers in Mexico are paid
so little because they lack basic
rights. Some 6,000 workers at
PKC – a wire harness maker –
were brutally attacked for just
trying to exercise their rights to
join an independent union. This
“The NAFTA 2.0 text ...
will not stop NAFTA’s
ongoing job outsourc-
ing or downward pres-
sure on wages in Mexico
and the United States,
said Global Trade Watch
and LCLAA. ” They called
the new NAFTA “no sur-
prise” as a successor to
“the corporate-rigged
trade-pact model that
NAFTA hatched in the
early 1990s.”
points out, once again, that
Mexico’s labor laws are broken
and demonstrates why it is so
important to have an agreement
that gives Mexican workers a
voice on the job and better liv-
ing standards to stop a wage
race to the bottom.”
Public Citizen’s Global Trade
Watch and the Labor Council
for Latin American Advance-
ment – the AFL-CIO con-
stituency group for Latino and
Latina union members – issued
a joint analysis of the current
NAFTA’s impact on Latino and
Latina workers in the United
States and Mexico. It was dev-
astating, and those workers were
disproportionately hurt, the re-
port said.
In two examples, U.S. textile
firms exported 123,000 jobs to
Mexico, and electronics firms
sent 138,000. Mexican real
wages declined, the value of its
minimum wage crashed, and
Mexican auto workers now earn
only one-ninth of the basic pay
of their U.S. counterparts, the
report said. Before NAFTA, the
pro-U.S. ratio was 3-to-1.
“The NAFTA 2.0 text…will
not stop NAFTA’s ongoing job
outsourcing or downward pres-
sure on wages in Mexico and the
United States,” said Global
Trade Watch and LCLAA. They
called the new NAFTA “no sur-
prise” as a successor to “the cor-
porate-rigged trade-pact model
that NAFTA hatched in the early
1990s.”
“However, if the pact’s labor
standards can be made subject
to swift and certain enforcement
— and other key improvements
are made — then the final pack-
age expected to head to Con-
gress in 2019 could stop some
of NAFTA’s continuing, serious
damage to people across North
America,” the two concluded.