Will jobs go south?
Polner, Murray
REPORT ON FREE TRADE WILL JOBS GO SOUTH? ALONG WITH SAFETY & HEALTH ntil recently, almost no one paid attention to a secret treaty that was being negotiated between the United States, Canada, and...
...Something's wrong," a member of the Danville's Board of Supervisors who is witnessing the decay of his once-prosperous community told a television interviewer not long ago...
...To find a greater collapse of manufacturing employment one has to go back to the Great Depression," concluded the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives...
...Others have fled to El Salvador and Honduras after closing down or cutting back their American-based operations...
...The resulting diminution of the industrial base in the United States has been enormous: in Germany, for example, 32 percent of the labor force is engaged in manufacturing...
...health, safety, and environmental laws...
...And why all the mystery during the lengthy negotiations to hammer out this treaty...
...Or shall we follow the example of Germany and Japan by investing in new plants, the education of a highly skilled labor force, and an infrastructure sorely in need of rebuilding...
...As is happening in many Midwestern small cities, once the factories leave so do the young...
...and that there be strict maintenance of environmental standards in Mexico, subject to a special investigative body with the power to punish malefactors with trade sanctions...
...Proponents herald it as the beginning of an economic renaissance that will lead to an enormous growth in employment in this country...
...The New York State AFL-CIO argues that should NAFTA be ratified as it now stands many more jobs will be lost in the retail, finance, insurance, real estate, and construction industries, and that subsequent losses of tax revenues will also lead to layoffs in both the public and private sectors...
...clearly, trade wars and protective tariffs are the basic 23 October 1992: 5 ingredients of turmoil at home and conflict between nations...
...Indeed, the American Medical Society referred to these Mexican border towns where American-owned factories are situated as a "2000-mile-long Love Canal...
...Why the hurry...
...but here only 16 percent...
...The reality is quite different...
...Essentially because it is a multinational's let's-tame-the-unions-and-environmentalists dream pact...
...After approval by Commonweal the three nations, these vast international firms, whose influence, wealth, and power dwarf those of many sovereign states, will be able to minimize their costs and maximize their profits while transferring money and technology as they move from country to country in search of lower taxes and dirt-cheap labor, impotent unions, and cooperative third-world elites and politicians...
...NAFTA is a 1,078-page document designed to integrate the economies of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico and to permit free trading across borders...
...Nor can they explain how the movement of American industry to a country where workers now earn an average of $.59 an hour in American-owned assembly plants will lead to an American workers' paradise...
...But even more: Its enactment will not only seriously erode the living standards of millions of Americans and their children but also plant the seeds of social and political dynamite among Americans who may come to believe they have been abandoned and betrayed...
...NAFTA, as Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-Calif...
...As it now stands, NAFTA is a clear and present danger to millions of Americans and their families...
...that the same federal incentives granted businesses fleeing to Mexico be given businesses that choose to stay to allow them to expand and hire...
...Or take Danville, Illinois, where the electrical manufacturer which once employed 1,000 people is departing for Mexico...
...In New York state, as the State Senate Democratic Task Force revealed in August, more than 1 million factory jobs have been lost for a variety of reasons since 1970...
...According to Statistics Canada, the country has since lost more than 460,000 higher-paying jobs to lower-paying United States and Mexican-based corporations, nearly 25 percent of its manufacturing employees...
...when Congress takes it up early next year, it will then have sixty working days to say yes or no, with no right to amend the agreement in any way—unless a new president decides to demand changes...
...This is not to say that the concept of a global economy is a mistake...
...NAFTA has recently been presented to Congress on a take-it-or-leave-it basis...
...Canada signed its free-trade agreement with the United States in 1989...
...ALONG WITH SAFETY & HEALTH ntil recently, almost no one paid attention to a secret treaty that was being negotiated between the United States, Canada, and Mexico...
...What NAFTA's supporters fail to mention, however, is the flow of imports that will surely invade this country's markets...
...Even so, this country' s elected representatives and the American people will have to choose the course they wish to take, for themselves and for their children: Can productivity and prosperity be revitalized here at home by closing factory gates and transferring investments to poor and exploited countries...
...The same thing may well happen to a Mexican city like Juarez, now awash in Yankee and Canadian corporate dollars, when their workers decide to demand strong unions, wage and fringe benefits, and environmental safeguards...
...This adds up to a human crisis which rivals the 1930s...
...many towns that have received American manufacturing plants are being damaged by unregulated toxic wastes...
...In 1990 alone, 300,000 jobs vanished, 115,000 of them in manufacturing...
...What is required is a renegotiation of NAFTA so that displaced American workers will be compensated with money and guaranteed health-care benefits...
...Now the story is out and it is clear that the treaty, called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), threatens the jobs of hundreds of thousands of American workers while at the same time it grants unelected government bureaucrats of the three countries the right to override any federal or state law they deem incompatible with the treaty...
...in Japan, 28 percent...
...MURRAY POLNER Murray Polner writes frequently on economic and political affairs...
...When that happens, and it will, expect the multinationals to pack up and look for yet another impoverished nation with a large supply of people desperate enough to work for very little...
...safety standards are only minimally observed...
...Retail stores are abandoned and public services are reduced sharply...
...By increasing exports to the people of Mexico and ultimately all of Latin America, they argue, and thus by raising their standard of living, millions of them will rush out to buy so many American-made goods that the dream of full employment here will become a reality...
...insisted following the introduction of their bill to amend the treaty, "would clearly undercut U.S...
...Then, too, dangerous pesticides that are banned or curtailed for use in the United States are shipped to Mexico and used on the fruits and vegetables we import...
...Already there are plans to include all Latin American and Caribbean countries except Cuba in the agreement...
...and Richard Gephardt (D-Mo...
...Since 1977 some 2,000 American firms have moved their operations to Mexico where the typical pay is $30 for a forty-eight-hour week, often with few or no fringe benefits or enforced safety standards...
...Not so, argue NAFTA's proponents, reiterating mantras of "competition" and "free trade" and insisting that loss of American jobs will only be temporary (though NAFTA does not include any funds or programs for job retraining...
Vol. 119 • October 1992 • No. 18
