[Excerpt] A year and a half after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect, the rosy picture painted by NAFTA supporters has turned grey. A growing number of labor activists, researchers, and academics are developing a more accurate picture of how NAFTA is affecting our lives

Anderson, Sarah

English

DigitalCommons@ILR

Labor Research Review 
Volume 1 | Number 23 
Confronting Global Power: Union Strategies for 
the World Economy 
Article 9 
1995 
LRR Focus: NAFTA Monitoring 
Sarah Anderson 
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© 1995 by Labor Research Review 
LRR Focus: NAFTA Monitoring 
Abstract 
[Excerpt] A year and a half after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect, the rosy 
picture painted by NAFTA supporters has turned grey. A growing number of labor activists, researchers, 
and academics are developing a more accurate picture of how NAFTA is affecting our lives. 
Keywords 
North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, trade, labor market, commerce 
This article is available in Labor Research Review: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/lrr/vol1/iss23/9 
A Sony worker sustained head injuries and was carried away by co-
workers. Two days after Sony workers walked off the job, city police 
arrived in riot gear and began beating the workers. This incident 
and others are being investigated under NAFTA. 
A year and a half after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took 
effect, the rosy picture painted by NAFTA supporters has turned grey. A grow-
ing number of labor activists, researchers, and academics are developing a 
more accurate picture of how NAFTA is affecting our lives. 
DISPUTING OFFICIAL JOB CREATION CLAIMS 
Prior to NAFTA's passage, the administration projected that the U.S. trade 
balance with Mexico would improve, resulting in a net increase of 100,000 U.S. 
jobs during the first year. In fact, official statistics show only 535 NAFTA-related 
jobs were created. When Mexico's exports to the United States grew faster than 
U.S. exports to Mexico, officials stuck to their claim that NAFTA was creating 
U.S. jobs. 
Groups such as the AFL-CIO, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Economic 
Policy Institute have persistently challenged the administration's claims regard-
ing jobs created by NAFTA. David Ranney, of the University of Illinois, Chicago, 
has also challenged the NAFTA job claims, disputing the administration's argu-
ment that increased exports automatically translate into increased jobs. Through 
case studies of several top exporters, Ranney shows that in today's hi-tech 
factories, companies can increase exports without hiring new employees. 
TRACKING NAFTA-RELATED LAYOFFS 
Labor unions and other researchers have also kept a close eye on the NAFTA 
Transitional AdiustmentAssistance (NAFTA-TAA) program, which provides retrain-
ing and other benefits to U.S. workers who lose their jobs as a result of NAFTA. 
As of April, more than 40,000 workers had filed petitions for this assistance, 
and more than 20,000 had been certified. And NAFTA-TAA recipients repre-
sent only a fraction of the workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the 
agreement. Nonetheless, data from this program has been crucial to the mon-
itoring work. The Department of Labor has made available the names, telephone 
numbers, and addresses of NAFTA-TAA recipients and their union representa-
tives to researchers who have used this information to gather and publicize the 
stories of workers and communities suffering the dislocating effects of free trade. 
EVALUATING NAFTA'S LABOR SIDE AGREEMENT 
NAFTA's labor side agreement was designed to help strengthen worker rights 
enforcement in the three NAFTA countries. In September 1994, the U.S. agency 
responsible for handling NAFTA-related labor disputes held its first two hear-
ings, which involved complaints filed by the Teamsters against Honeywell and 
by the United Electrical Workers against General Electric. Both cases concerned 
the firing of Mexican workers for attempting to organize unions at their plants. 
A month after the hearings, the cases were dismissed. 
The International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund (ILRERF) and the 
involved labor unions were highly critical of how the hearings were handled. 
Their harsh assessment of the labor side agreement process was at least par-
tially responsible for improvements in the handling of a third hearing, con-
cerning the Sony Corporation's interference with union reform efforts at a plant 
in Nuevo Laredo. The government investigators agreed to the complainants' demands 
to allow more time for testimony, to hold the hearing closer to the workers' 
homes, and to permit electronic media coverage. The outcome of these hear-
ings was a report from the U.S. National Administrative Office in mid-April 
calling for U.S.-Mexico ministerial consultations and other measures. Minister-
ial consultations in May and June led to some promises of investigation and action 
by the Zedillo government. (See "More NAFTA Complaints, More Labor Lever-
age/ page 16.) 
MONITORING WORKER ABUSES IN MEXICO 
The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM), the Southwest Network 
for Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ), the AFL-CIO, and other groups 
have continued to monitor violations of worker rights and health and safety reg-
ulations in plants along the U.S.-Mexico border. Although the Clinton admin-
istration claimed that NAFTA would help reduce these problems, there is no evi-
dence of improvement. For example, CJM found that W.R. Grace Corporation's 
Erika plant in Reynosa, Mexico does not provide masks or ventilation to protect 
against fumes from chemicals that cause headaches, nausea, nervous disor-
ders, and even death. Jose Bravo, of SNEEJ, reports that violations may have 
even escalated since NAFTA's passage. "During the years leading up to NAFTA, 
companies were trying to clean up their act to avoid bad publicity that might 
have jeopardized the passage of NAFTA. Now that they got the agreement, they 
feel they can do whatever they want/' Bravo said, 
TRACKING WHIPSAW BARGAINING 
While NAFTA opponents were concerned about job loss, they were even more 
concerned about the threat of corporations bargaining down wages and work-
ing conditions. In polls taken before the NAFTA vote, a number of corporate 
executives indicated that they planned to use the increased mobility that NAFTA 
offered as leverage in bargaining sessions with their workers. Unfortunately, 
NAFTA-related "whipsaw bargaining" has proven to be extremely difficult to 
track. The AFL-CIO Task Force on Trade has requested that affiliates report such 
incidents, but has received limited response. The help of labor union activists is 
clearly needed to build our knowledge of NAFTA's impact on wages and work-
ing conditions. 
THI NEED FOR ACTION 
The NAFTA monitoring efforts have done much to dispel myths about the ben-
efits of free trade and to raise awareness of the adverse effects of NAFTA on 
workers and their communities. The work is particularly important at this polit-
ical moment. The Mexican crisis has opened up new opportunities for chal-
lenging the NAFTA model and building support for an alternative approach to 
economic integration that would place the interests of workers and communi-
ties on an even par with those of corporations. However, despite the Mexican 
chaos, the Clinton administration continues to pursue its plan to use NAFTA as 
the model for the Western Hemisphere. Negotiations are already underway to 
expand the pact to include Chile. We need to act now to counter free trade dis-
information and press for change. • 
- Sarah Anderson 
• Sarah Anderson is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and an expert on global 
economic integration. 


LRR Focus: NAFTA Monitoring

[Excerpt] A year and a half after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect, the rosy picture painted by NAFTA supporters has turned grey. A growing number of labor activists, researchers, and academics are developing a more accurate picture of how NAFTA is affecting our lives.Issue_23_____Article_21.pdf: 177 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

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