Labor Mercosur
Montenegro, Marcelo
The Southern Common Market (Mercosur in Spanish, Mercosul in Portuguese)-a regional trade bloc comprised of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay-has been hailed by government and business...
...As a consequence, the negotiators simply ignored that topic, which was excluded from the main agenda...
...Over a four-year transitional period that ended on December 31, 1994, negotiators dismantled 90% of tariffs and non-tariff barriers between countries in the bloc...
...With the transition period over, labor unions and other social actors are now turning up the heat...
...In Buenos Aires, Argentina and Punta del Este, Uruguay, for example, construction companies have been accused of illegally "importing" workers from Brazil...
...During that time, trade among the Mercosur nations quadrupled...
...Even though the forum is merely consultative, union and business representatives welcomed its inclusion in the Ouro Preto Protocol...
...fast-track schedule of the Asunci6n Treaty which focused attention on meeting the deadlines for the imple- mentation of the customs union...
...At the Sao Paulo meeting, CUT president da Silva said that until very recently the Latin American unions were practically ghettoized in the negotiation process, making it impossible for them to pressure governments to adopt social and labor policies...
...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...
...But, as lawyer Teixeira Mendes points out, both NAFTA and the accords of the European Union at least have side agreements which address labor concerns...
...The house is going to be renovated and improved...
...At the Ouro Preto meeting, the unions persuaded the governments of the region to promise that the labor question would move to the top of Mercosur's agenda for 1995...
...The sub-group on labor issues created eight commissions to study those topics con- The four mem sidered fundamental to the well being Mercosurare of workers, including collective bar- Paraguay and gaining, worker training, health and safety conditons, and rural labor...
...32NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32REPORT ON BRAZIL Compared withe other integration processes, such as the European Union and NAFTA, Mercosur may not be worse off from the point of view of enforcing labor rights and protections...
...On the contrary, discussions during the transitional period centered around the nuts-and-bolts problems of trade barriers and high tariffs blocking the customs union, while social and labor issues were put on the back burner...
...With these targets now met, Amorim concludes, attention can shift to social concerns...
...In addition-unlike the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-Mercosur is a true customs union with a common external tariff for goods coming from nations outside the bloc...
...It's not like we've built the house, and now no one can make any changes...
...Despite this, labor questions have been relegated to the sidelines in the negotiations...
...Their recommendations fell, however, on deaf ears...
...Since the clock cannot be set back, the unions are clamoring for a seat at the negotiating table in order to wield as much influence as possible over future decisions...
...They have redoubled their calls for a Charter of Fundamental Principles, a regional accord on basic health and safety work standards, recognition of the right to union affiliation, commissions of workers from multinational companies, a regional labor tribunal, and the formation of a support fund for "reconversion" and professional reclassification...
...Eleven working sub-groups were established in 1991 to discuss the harmonization of policies by sector...
...The forum gives unions and chambers of commerce an institutional channel to make recommendations to the Common Market Group, one of Mer- cosur's executive bodies...
...The Southern Common Market (Mercosur in Spanish, Mercosul in Portuguese)-a regional trade bloc comprised of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay-has been hailed by government and business leaders as a rousing success...
...The Mercosur countries are home to almost 90 million workers, of whom 30%-according to the region's unions-are at best irregularly employed...
...Workers, unions and the issue of labor in general were excluded from Mercosur's founding Asunci6n Treaty of 1991 and its accompanying protocols and annexes...
...In 1993 alone, commercial transactions totaled $8 billion...
...At the annual summit of Mercosur presidents held in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, in December, 1994, a new permanent governing body-the Consultative Economic and Social Forum-was created that might open the door to wider negotiations...
...Marcelo Montenegro is associate editor of Cuadernos del Tercer Mundo...
...According to Celso Amorim, minister of foreign affairs in the Franco Adminr countries of istration, Mercosur's delay in dealing "azil, Argentina, with social issues was a result of the ruguay...
...The problem, sources in all four countries agree, is that even if the free circulation of labor does not formally exist on paper in Mercosur, it does exist in practice in certain sectors of the economy such as construction...
...Mercosur's government negotiators assert that Mercosur is just a customs union and does not, for now, contemplate the free circulation of workers in the four member countries...
...Outside this strictly commercial area, however, things have been much murkier...
...This is not a definitive, closed process," he says...
...Supporting the CUT president's assertion, labor lawyer Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, a participant in the negotiations and the author of an upcoming book on labor in the context of Mercosur, notes that not a single union initiative was incorporated in the documents issuing from the negotiations...
...At a meeting in Sio Paulo in October, 1994, Vicente Paulo "Vicentinho" da Silva, the president of Brazil's Unified Workers Central (CUT), called attention to the "deficit that Mercosur has had since its birth," alluding to this marginalization of workers...
...Without work papers and outside the reach of any legislation, these workers toil in conditions of semi-slavery...
...If the unions' demands still go unheeded, Mercosur's "deficit from birth"-in the words of da Silva-has the potential to become a big headache for everyone in the region...
...The South American unions recognize that the integration processes set in motion by Mercosur acutely affect the region's workers and are provoking drastic changes in the structures of production...
...Mercosur has no such accompanying accords...
Vol. 28 • May 1995 • No. 6
