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Mexican working classes are
threatened hy NAFTA say women

Working people and their families
in Mexico have been struggling to
survive in the face of an impending
North American Free Trade Agree-
ment say two Mexican activists who
were in Vancouver during the B.C.
Federation of Labour Convention.

The women, Regina Avalos Castan-
eda, an organizer within UPREZ
(Mexican popular urban movement)
and Georgina Rangel Martinez, a
founding member of the Independent
Workers’ Union at the Independent
Metropolitan University in Mexico
City, were on hand to give details of
the changing social and economic con-
ditions in Mexico in light of the
NAFTA.

The struggle for workers’ rights
and the rights of the popular classes
in Mexico is getting together as the
NAFTA talks progress.

Under the tight control of the Inter-
national Monetary Fund, which is
controlled by U.S. banking interests,
the Mexican government has been
phasing out and eliminating food sub-
sidies which will be completely gone
at the end of this year.

Gone will be essential subsidies for
rice, beans, tortillas, and many items
which sustain working parents and
their children.

Ms. Castaneda’s organization is
demanding that food subsidies be
maintained for children in a country
where the legal age of work is only 14.
She says that workers earning less
than minimal wage cannot afford any
decrease in subsidies.

The IMF has dictated that the
Mexican government of Carlos Sali-
nas de Gortan cut social spending in
areas such as housing, education,
health care and food subsidies in order
to pay their external debts and recom-
mended signing a trade deal with the
United States and Canada.

© Georgina Rangel Martinez decried the
lack of free trade unionism in Mexico.

Castaneda says the debt repayment
schemes and free trade talks are
“unequal and unfair” to working
parents.

She says that the “popular classes
it Mexico will ae be able to survive

luring these changes.” .

She also calls for free trade unions
and women of popular movements to
confront the FTA. ‘

The IMF's prescriptions are just
too tough she says and “we see it as a
monster that come to harm our

families and children. i
Georgina Martinez says that Mexi-
cans have been aware of IMF pressure

since 1982 and that most Mexican
workers don’t believe a NAFTA will

benefit ti! m at all. ;
With tne purpose of repaying the
s external debt the govern-

~ ment has decreased all social spend-

even though the Mexican Consti-
guarantees the people educa-
health care, nutrition and shelter.

“The government has a constitu-
tional obligation to set aside part of
its budget for social obligations,” says
Martinez.

But constitutional objectives are a
far cry from reality for working Mexi-
cans. Undernourishment of workers’
children are on the increase since 1982
and no new hospitals have been built
in Mexico in the past 5 years despite a
booming population of now over 88
million people.

Martinez says the Mexican govern-
ment recognizes that 41 million peo-
ple are below the poverty line and that
17 million have very low salaries equal
to or below the minimum wage with
absolutely no wage or benefits.

Workers who belong to Mexico’s
largest trade unions do not have any
democratic control and are unable to
improve their collective well being
says Martinez.

Salinas’ talk of free trade and an
expanding “Maquiladora” trade zone
will only perpetuate the poverty and
oppression of Mexican workers.

“In my country there exists a type
of union, which together with govern-
ment, controls the workers,” says
Martinez. The majority of workers in
these unions are women who enjoy no
benefits of security.

The Maquiladora unions are largely
part of the (CTM) Congress of Mexi-
can workers who sell out their work-
force even before they get a job. These
corrupt unions meet with foreign
financiers and sell collective agree-
ments to the prospective employers.

Such agreements decide what will
be paid to workers even before they
are hired by the employer.

“This type of union only serves to
protect the interests of the employer,”
says Martinez.

© Regina Avalos Castenada (r.) said that the Mexican government is eliminating food
subsidies for working poor.

The country’s largest unions such

:as refinery workers, miners, and pub-

lic sector employees are controlled by
the government's ruling PRI party,
which violates any notion of free trade
unionism.

The Mexican govern-
ment is abandoning
the popular classes to
satisfy free trade
requirements

The only unions which have any
freedom are those which formed dur-
ing the 1970’s as part of an “authentic
worker front” says Martinez. How-
ever they are a definite minority.

“Workers in employer and govern-
ment unions are not anti-democratic.
In Mexico, workers are killed when
they fight for democratic rights.”

Martinez says the Salinas govern-
ment is unable to disguise the repres-

sion but that he is trying “to diminish
this so that big capitalists will come
into the country.”

Typically, says Martinez, women
who work 10-12 hours a day in the-
Maquiladora are just given a 3 month
contract which they must sign along
with a pregnancy test. If found preg-
nant they must either quit work or
have an illegal abortion, since abor-
tion is illegal in the country.

_ “They tell us the Maquiladora will
given us a better life, but we do not
believe it,” says Martinez.

At the same time the Mexican gov-
ernment is trashing social programs
and privatizing industry, it is seeking
constitutional amendments to elimi-
nate guarantees for social programs
and seize farmland from peasant fam-
ilies to benefit multi-national agri-
business.

Ms. Castaneda and Martinez were
brought to Vancouver by Mujer a
Mujer (Woman to Woman) which is a
woman's organization formed this
year to establish a link between Amer-
ican, Mexican and Canadian women
involved in trade unions, anti-poverty
organizations, housing coalitions and
women’s and church groups who are
examining the effects of the NAFTA.

Labour movement must rise to fight
North American trade deal — Barrett

Canada’s number one critic of the

’ North American Free Trade Deal, New

Democratic Member of Parliament
Dave Barrett, was on hand at this
year’s B.C. Federation of Labour Con-
vention to give B.C. trade unionists
encouragement in their fight against
the deal.

Barrett said the trade union move-
ment has a historical role in the battle
to stop the deal and is the “only viable
force which unites Canadians from all
walks of life, religions, languages,
races and creeds.”

He said that Canadian unionists”

have respect for the rights of workers
to have the opportunity to organize
themselves in Mexico, a country
where over 80 social activists and
trade unionists have disappeared in
the last 2 years.

Barrett said the labour movement
is a community of interests and of
social activism and that it must fight
the NAFTA which “will enslave Mexi-
cans as low wage partners and
threaten honest gains made in Can-
ada over many tough fights.”

“Instead of us moving down to
their standards - we must join (with
Mexican workers) in a partnership to
bring them up to our standards.”

“The reality is that International
corporations are now operating at a
level of transnational capital move-
ment that brings back horror stories
of a century ago,” said Barrett.
“Corporations are financing opera-
tions inside Mexico where there is

© NDP Trade Critic Dave Barrett.

abuse of child labour laws, abuse of
women, and destruction of the
environment.”

._ “It’s not a question of us maintain-
ing our standards in Canada but the
story in this competitive age is that
we are being told that we must move
down to the low wage levels of
Mexico.” _

In the House of Commons, Barrett
has questioned the Mulroney govern-
ment’s new high profile position of
connecting foreign aid to human
rights as the Prime Minister has been
preaching to others around the globe.

When Barrett questioned the gov-
ernment’s International Trade Minis-
ter on negotiation for a NAFTA and
human rights abuses, he was told
that the government will continue to
negotiate with Mexico because it is
not aid the governments are talking
about, but rather a trade deal.

“The Mulroney administration is
saying ‘if we give you aid you have to
respect human rights, but if we're
making money off you, you can do
anything you want’ (to working: peo-
ple),” said Barrett. “That’s hypo-
crisy.”

The speaker.told the delegates that
there is about 18 months to go before
a federal election in Canada and that
the labour movement must mobilize
itself for an election fight.

He said no other party other than
the New Democrats has vowed to
scrap the CANADA-USS. free trade
deal and get out of the NAFTA
negotiations.

“Neither the Liberals or the newly
formed Reform Party will fight the
deals,” said Barrett.

The Liberals are now divided over
free trade and have no sense of direc-
tion. He cited statistics which point
to over 350,000 manufacturing jobs
which have been lost after the signing
of the FTA in January of 1989.

Barrett said that free trade with
Mexico will be a big issue in the next
US. presidential election and that the
AFL-CIO is gearing up to do battle
with the Bush Administration.

LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1991/9