 |
|
|
 Editorials | May 2005 
Labor, NAFTA and CAFTA
 Fred Rosen - The Herald Mexico
As a proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is debated in the United States and Central America, proponents and opponents alike are using the example of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to bolster their cause. NAFTA is the 11-year old free-trade agreement among the U.S., Mexico and Canada that has freed up the movements of goods, services and investment capital — and in a backdoor, illegal manner, labor as well — among the three economies.
Opponents of CAFTA — and earlier, of NAFTA — argue that while the unfettered flow of trade and private capital can be a powerful tool for economic development, there are many reasons to set limits on what private investors can do with their money.
For one thing, ensuring that genuine economic development accompany private profit-making frequently requires-in advanced and underdeveloped countries alike-the careful regulation of investment capital. Secondly, some basic protections of the natural environment, the well-being of working people and the rights of local communities also require that regulations be placed on what investors can do with their money.
Much of the recent foreign investment in Mexico has either created no jobs (as when a foreign firm buys out a domestic one) or low-quality, maquila-type jobs (as when one part of a larger production process is outsourced to Mexico). Some growth has taken place, but effect on labor has not been a happy one.
When NAFTA went into effect in 1994, it was meant to put Mexico on the fast track to recovery and development. Most immediately, it was supposed to reverse the severely declining fortunes of the broad swath of the population extending from the working middle class to the extremely poor. It was argued that the jobs available to Mexicans would soon grow in number, quality and income levels. NAFTA was supposed, in the words of then-President Salinas, to create jobs instead of migrants.
But labor has not done well. I'm not talking about Mexico's “official” labor organizations, the PRI-affiliated Labor Congress (CT) and Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), which still have their privileges and perquisites, but about the working population in general-rural, urban, white collar, blue collar, no collar.
For many Mexicans, holding a decent, steady job has become either a distant memory or a fading hope. An increasing number are opting to simply call out their trades, offer their services or sell what they can on the street and other public spaces. Or leave the country.
According to the government's National Employment Survey (ENE), self-employment now accounts for over 20 percent of all the “jobs” held by members of the non-agricultural workforce. Self-employment can mean many things, some of them quite creative and remunerative, but in Mexico it is all too frequently a last refuge for those who have nowhere else to go.
And of the jobs that come with a regular wage, the same precariousness holds. Economist Carlos Salas, using ENE figures, reports that of all the salaried jobs created between mid-2000 and mid-2004, 65 percent came with no benefits whatsoever, and nearly half without a written contract. And Salinas' jobs-instead-of-migrants promise has become dramatically hollow as the northward migration of Mexican workers has exploded over the last decade. Leigh Binford, an immigration researcher at the Autonomous University of Puebla, reports that the Mexican-born population in the United States has increased from 6.7 million to 11.2 million between 1995 and 2004. And citing data gathered by the Pew Hispanic Center, he reports that net migration flows to the U.S. from Mexico have grown from 220,000 annually between 1980-84, to 370,000 annually between 1990-94 and to 575,000 annually between 2000-04.
This has something to do with changes in the U.S. labor market as well, where an increasing number of jobs require no more than a high school diploma. As the U.S. job market polarizes even more, low-wage, low quality jobs are proliferating, and as Vicente Fox recently said in somewhat undiplomatic language, desperate Mexican (and, he might have added, Central American) migrants are taking the jobs that not even the worst-off members of the U.S. working class are willing to take.
NAFTA, of course, is not simply an influential treaty, but a key-even iconic-part of a larger global offensive against all “inefficient” barriers to profit-making and private investment. That's why investors have not been required to channel their investments into employment-generating activities, and only minimally to consider the health, safety and environmental consequences of their investments. That's why for both sides, it has become a powerful touchstone in the CAFTA debates.
frosen@cablevision.net.mx |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us