Archive Transcript: Speeches
Jay Mazur's Speech NAFTA is a Disaster
NAFTA is a Disaster
Jay Mazur
Remarks adapted from a speech delivered to a meeting of the New York City Central Labor Council
April 15, 1993
Much has been written and many opinion have been delivered on the meaning of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed last December by President Bush, Mexican President Salinas and Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney.
There should be no confusion in our ranks, however, about what we are dealing with here.
It's basically a struggle for jobs, a struggle for survival. We in the labor movement understand that. The extraordinary attendance at this meeting this morning is proof of how well we understand that, and how seriously we take this challenge. NAFTA is basically a question of whether the labor movement, not just the apparel industry, not just manufacturing, but services and even the public sector as well-a question of whether this labor movement as we know it will survive.
As the AFL-CIO Executive Council stated on February 17th, this agreement would be a disaster for millions of working people in the United States, Canada, and in Mexico. It should be rejected and renegotiated, the statement adds, to advance the overall public interests. It's not only a question of the United States. The 1988 Canadian free trade agreement with the United States has been a disaster for Canadian workers. Since that agreement went into effect Canada lost over 400,000 manufacturing jobs-20% of its entire manufacturing sector! It has created the worst crisis in the Canadian economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has hit the service sector, the public sector, tax revenues, wages-all down across the board!
Well, with so many of these job moving to the United States, what did it do to our economy? Not much. They went mostly to low-wage and non-union areas of the country. Now, if NAFTA is passed, they can move on, with millions of American jobs, to take advantage of 70-cents-an-hour Mexican labor.
None of the workers of the three countries will benefit. Do you know what's happened to Mexican wages over the past ten years? During the time when all these U.S. companies were going down there to set up their assembly plants, their maquillas? Mexican wages have been cut in half! Here these multi-nationals are supposedly doing the Mexicans a great favor by setting up plants to employ half a million workers, but what are they really doing?
They're screwing these people just like they're screwing us! They are driving down wages and the standard of living for workers in all three countries-all in the name of greed, which they call Free Trade.
When we talk about disaster, we're not talking just rhetoric. I believe very firmly that NAFTA cannot be fixed, that it's got to be rejected. At the core of my concern, is what I regard as the fundamental flaw in NAFTA. You can not negotiate free trade between two systems, two economies, two societies as different as those of Mexico and the United States.
We're talking about a country where wages are 1/10th of ours. A country where we've seen labor leaders thrown in jail for negotiating contracts that displease employers. A country where laws are routinely ignored by the rich and powerful. A country where the political process is monopolized by a single party, with all that implies about the administration of justice.
I've been on the border, I've been to Brownsville, I've been to Matamoros. It's not only a question of the environment, the flaunting of environmental standards by the corporations that set up operations there. The babies born without brains. It's not only a question of child labor, of labor rights, of safety and health standards on the job and in working-class communities. They are a disaster as plain as the light of day.
It's a question of our whole approach to this type of agreement. The approach of the Bush Administration, and we hope not that of the Clinton Administration as well, is to say that these differences don't really matter all that much. We'll give you side agreements, pieces of paper that promise to monitor the situation, to report on these problems, to let us know how lousy this deal really is.
I believe it can't be fixed. Side agreements, no side agreements, parallel agreements. It's a lot of baloney! It's icing on the cake, it's a way of lulling us into some false sense of security. You're dealing with fundamental values. It's one thing to have a free trade agreement with Canada where you're dealing with a viable trade union movement, with wages and working conditions comparable to the United States, and even that hasn't worked. But for us to be talking about a free trade agreement with Mexico, without addressing the question of wages there, without addressing the dictatorial powers of the government there, without addressing the question of real enforcement mechanisms-it's an insult to our intelligence and a formula for disaster!
I say to you that Congress, as of this moment, understands that. If this agreement came before the House of Representatives today, it would be rejected, and only one house of Congress has to reject it in order to defeat it. We've got to keep the pressure on. I could spend hours telling you why it shouldn't be passed. We could go around the room and everybody would have a horror story. The fact of the matter is that I understand why employers want it-I have no problem understanding why employers what it-70-cents-an-hour labor and unions that can be broken by government decree. I don't have any problem understanding that. I don't even have a problem with all the economists and editorial writers who keep telling the American people what a great deal this is. I understand who's paying their bills.
Our problem is not with them-our problem is with our government. We've got to continue to put the pressure on. We can agree with Clinton on a lot of issues, and we do—striker replacement, labor law reform, minimum wage, health care, depending on what is finally proposed. But we are the labor movement. We are not a political party-we seek no jobs-we represent workers and their families.
I don't see doom and gloom, but I think we have to take a strong position in opposing NAFTA without regard to whether we can refine it. The American labor movement is not opposed to expanding international trade. We understand as well as anyone how trade, under the right conditions, can strengthen our economy and raise living standards for workers everywhere. But this agreement doesn't do that. It does the opposite. It's a cover for multi-national corporations to do as they damn well please. And if they get their way, we will see lower wages, lower living standards, and the intensification of poverty and exploitation throughout the world.
In the AFL-CIO statement I mentioned earlier, we spell out the conditions that could provide the basis of a free trade agreement for the nations of North America, or beyond, for that matter. NAFTA doesn't come close. So we have no choice but to fight this agreement every inch of the way. We must bring our cause to the public and to our elected officials. Our case for trade agreements that would recognize and promote the rights, the needs, and the dignity of labor. An agreement that would raise everyone toward the highest standards instead of lowering everyone to toward the lowest standards. I think we should even consider getting together with our sisters and brothers in Canada and Mexico, not only the labor movement, but the whole broad coalition of forces who understand the impending disaster contained in this agreement. Get together with them and formulate the basis of a trade agreement that places people above profits, an agreement that embodies the principles of solidarity and human rights for which our movement has always struggled.
So that when we go to our members, when we go to Congress and to the Clinton Administration, we can explain that we are not just against something-this abominable NAFTA-but that we in fact stand for something. And here it is. If you want to negotiate a free trade agreement, here is the model you should use, here is an agreement that will raise standards, that will lift people out of poverty, an agreement that will enlarge our notion of freedom and democracy.
We must begin by educating and motivating and mobilizing our own members-that is the key to our strength. We represent millions of workers. We've got to lobby Congress. They have to know that this is a-make-or-break issue for the labor movement. We've got to work with all our friends and allies. In Congress, the universities, and yes, even a few in the media. Work with groups like the Fair Trade Campaign. The environmentalists, the consumer, religious and community groups. There is a broad and powerful movement out there and we must join them in coalition. We've been successful before and if we ban together, work together, put up the resources, we can do it. We've got to make this campaign visible. We must be creative. Let's pick a single day, coordinated nationally, when we all get out there and let the whole world know exactly what we think about this NAFTA that some people want to shove down our throats!
And when we're out there, we've got to remember-that we are not acting in the name of any one industry, or any one sector of the economy, or this or that group of people, that we are not a special interest. How can we be a special interest when we are fighting for millions of jobs, fighting for the right of workers to live like human beings? This is not a special interest, this is a public interest!
We're not coming hat in hand. We speak for the majority of working people, union and non-union, in this country who are about to be screwed once again by the real special interests. I call them the economic royalists-a term that was used during the New Deal days. But they're the economic royalists-the corporate kings who don't like inconveniences like democracy getting in the way of their profits. Well, we can beat them on this if we stick together and participate in meetings like this and get back to our people, get back to our members, get back to coalition groups, speak out—get back to Congress. If we stick together we can do it.
So I'll say it one last time-NAFTA, we don't hafta.