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UEST COLUMN

NAFTA is another
U.S. resource grab

by Joy Langan

ust three years have passed since the
Mulroney government signed the Free
Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United
States, and hundreds of thousands of
Canadian workers have lost their jobs.
These human casualties are the result of man-
ufacturing plants closing across Canada as
well as the relentless American harassment of
Canadian exports. Workers in Canada’s forest
communities are well aware of the effects of
the softwood lumber tax on Canadian jobs.
Now, the Mulroney government wants to
make things worse by signing the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

NAFTA and FTA are more than simple trade
deals. They are part of the Tory corporate
economic agenda that will see Canadian jobs
and resources exported south of the border
and Canadian workers forced to compete
with low wages, virtually non-existent union
rights, lax health and safety standards and
poor environmental regulations in Mexico.

We need only look at the forest company
Louisiana Pacific (LP) for an example of how
forestry jobs are threatened by NAFTA. LP
has closed one of its California plants and has
built a state of the art sawmill in Suarez,
Mexico just 60 miles south of San Diego.
American logs and unfinished lumber are
being barged to this remanufacturing plant
where they are processed and returned to the
United States. The Mexican workers are paid
wages of between U.S. $1 and $1.60 per hour
with no benefits.

It is clear that for the Americans, free trade

is a way to get access to Canadian raw

resources and cheap
Mexican labour. The
FTA with the United
States has resulted in
an unprecedented
resource grab by the
Americans. For every
dollar of Canadian
manufactured goods
|} exported to the
United States we now
ship $10 of our raw
resources -— and
Canadian jobs — south

of the border.

The ongoing softwood lumber tariff dispute
with the Americans is all part of this agenda.
When five New Democrat MPs — Nelson Riis -
Kamloops, Lyle MacWilliam - Okanagan-
Shuswap, Brian Gardiner - Prince George-
Bulkley Valley, Jack Whittacker - Okanagan-

Similkameen-Merritt

Canadian workers and their families have
been clobbered under the free trade agree-
ment with the United States. NAFTA will be
worse. Disputes will be settled in secret meet-
ings where Americans will continue to pass
judgment on Canadian laws. There is nothing
in the agreement to create jobs, or reverse the
negative impact of the Canada-U.S. deal.
NAFTA has no protection for health and safe-
ty standards, workers’ rights or the environ-
ment. With Mexico’s poverty-level wages and
dangerously lax environmental standards,
there would be enormous pressure to lower
Canada’s standards as well so we could com-
pete. Things won't be any better for Mexican
workers either. There are already free trade
zones along the border with the United States
— environmental disaster areas where poverty
and pollution run rampant.

Audrey McLaughlin and Canada’s New
Democrats are the only political party that
opposes both the FTA

and Iain Angus -
Thunder Bay-Atikokan
went to Washington,
D.C. earlier this year
to meet with U.S. gov-
ernment and forest
industry officials, the
Americans made it
clear that their target
was Canadian raw

It ts clear that NAFTA

is a way to get access
to Canadian raw resources
and cheap Mexican labour

and NAFTA. The
Liberal Party support-
ed the NAFTA negotia-
tions; now they say
they oppose the deal.
But they changed their
minds about the last
‘trade deal. They have
caved in to the inter-

logs. An industry offi-
cial told the MPs: “If you just give us your
logs, the tariff issue will go away”.

Canada has shown that its softwood indus-
try is not subsidized. The softwood lumber
dispute is deliberate harassment of Canadian
workers on direct orders from the White
House.

The Mulroney government continues to
claim that the free trade agreement will
resolve the softwood dispute, but the first
meetings will not be held until 1993. Even
then, the panel's mandate is merely to deter-
mine if American law has been properly fol-
lowed. As the NDP MPs discovered, if the
Americans lose at the dispute panel, “they'll
just change the law”.

ests of the rich, the
powerful and the big
corporations who say we have no choice but
to give up control over our economy and sup-
port free trade.

There is a choice. Canada’s New Democrats
put working families ahead of the rich and the
powerful. The NDP believes in government
that pays attention to creating decent, secure
jobs for Canadian workers. The New
Democrats reject trade deals like the FTA and
NAFTA that hurt Canadian workers and their
families.

Joy Langan is the Member of Parliament
for Mission-Coquitlam, British Columbia
and is Labour Critic for the New Democratic
Party of Canada.

Fake Mexican labour unions controlled by repression

By John W. Warnock

In reports on the North American
free trade agreement (NAFTA), the
media have concentrated on the fact
that Mexican workers are paid wages
far below the Canadian or U.S. aver-
age. But there has been no discussion
of a more important question: the
absence of labour rights in Mexico.

Mexico is a one-party state. Since
1917, the Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) has dominated the politi-
cal scene. Through patronage, control
over the mass media, repression and
electoral fraud, it usually gets at least
80 per cent of the votes cast.

One result is that there is no separa-
tion between the government and the
PRI. As Peruvian writer and presiden-
tial candidate Mario Vargas Llosa put
it, Mexico is “the perfect dictator-
ship.”

Since the end of the 1910-17
Mexican Revolution, trade unions
have been formally tied to the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, The
leadership of the unions and the
labour confederations are often
directly chosen by the PRI or the gov-
ernment. The groupings are referred
to as the “official” unions, a recogni-
tion that they are not independent of

¢ party or the government.
iene 123. of the Mexican
Constitution of 1917 set out progres-
sive trade-union and labour rights. So
did the Federal Labour Law of 1931.
But as we know from the experience
of the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe, even the best laws are mean-
ingless when they are ignored by gov-
ernment. ;

Fundamental labour rights are out-
jined in the convention of the
International Labour Organization.
Let’s look at how a few of them work
in Mexico.

© The right to free association:
Trade unions are not recognized
unless they are registered by the
Boards of Conciliation and Arbi-
tration, appointed and controlled by
the PRI. Non-PRI unions are simply
not registered.

e Workers cannot change unions.
They rarely have the right to elect
their own union leaders. Employers
can at any time fire union organizers,
activists and dissidents and simply
pay them a small indemnification.

° The right to free collective bar-
gaining: Workers rarely have a chance
to vote on contracts negotiated by
their leaders. In the large industrial
unions, they never have this right.

“Protection contracts” are signed by
the “official” unions and companies to
guarantee labour peace. The union
leaders often sell these to the compa-
nies. Most contracts in Mexico are
protection contracts.

There are also “white unions,” con-
trolled by the companies. Workers in
these unions have no collective bar-
gaining rights.

e Workers have the legal right to
strike: Unions may not strike in
Mexico without the approval of the
Boards of Conciliation and Arbi-
tration. Between 1982 and 1988,
unions submitted 78,801 requests;
only 2.3 per cent granted.

e Federal government workers are
denied the right to bargain collective-
ly and to strike. The government regu-
larly uses the police and military to
break strikes. Union activists are tor-
tured and even assassinated.

¢ Workers have the right to non-dis-
crimination: Mexican workers are reg-
ularly expelled from “official” unions
and fired for political and union activi-
ties. Workers in “official” unions are
required to join the PRI; if they refuse,

© During May Day rally in Mexico City members of independent union move-

ment rally for rights and recognition.

they are expelled from the union and
lose their jobs.

“Official” unions have bylaws that
prohibit members from proposing
ideas “foreign to the union.” Workers
who criticize the “official” unions or
the PRI can be expelled and lose their
jobs. This regularly happens.

¢ The right of workers to a safe and
healthy workplace: The Mexican gov-
ernment does not recognize the exis-
tence of occupational illness. Laws
are general and weak. Regulation is
non-existent. The “Official” unions are
not interested.

For example, the government
insists there are no cases of occupa-
tional cancer in Mexico, even though
the country manufactures asbestos,
vinyl chloride, chromates and petro-
chemical products.

Conditions under NAFTA will be
very different from the working envi-
ronment of the European Community.
The EC has set a goal of raising stan-
dards in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and
Spain to the general level of the more
advanced: states. Cash subsidies are

Continued on page sixteen

deen ener eS

LUMBERWORKER/OCTOBER, 1992/3

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