Obama’s Stance on NAFTA Rules, Military Aid Aggrieves Mexican Labor

By Roger Bybee

This post is related to my June 18 Working ITT piece on oppressive conditions at Johnson Controls' operations in Mexico.

The election of Barack Obama raised the hopes of workers not just in the U.S., but also south of the Rio Grande.

However, Obama's failure to act decisively has been deeply disappointing to Mexican workers who had hope that leverage from a progressive US president would force Mexico to revised its repressive low-wage labor policies. Mexicans had been expecting reform of the investor-centered North American Free Trade Agreement, a fair policy on immigration to protect the rights of immigrant workers, enforcement of NAFTA's labor-rights protections.

But positive action has failed to materialize. Instead, a major surge in U.S. military aid has been employed against workers in legitimate labor actions,  according to a delegation of Mexican workers visiting in Milwaukee last week.

The workers had come all the way from central Mexico in the hope of meeting with top Johnson Control officials at corporate headquarters about oppressive conditions and denial of union democracy at one of its plants in Puebla, but leader corporate officials refused to meet, and contemptuously told them to meet with the very same local Johnson Control officials who have been stonewalling them for about 17 months.)

Obama's performance contrasts sharply with his 2008 campaign, where he talked  about  transforming the North American Free Trade Agreement from a deal protecting only investor rights to a genuine development plan promoting labor rights, higher incomes, and environmental protections on both sides of the border.

MEXICAN MAJORITY: NAFTA BAD FOR MEXICO

This was greeted very positively in Mexico, said delegation members.
Obama campaigned against the North American Free Trade Agreement ,  primarily on the basis of industrial job loss to Mexico. But the notion of re-shaping NAFTA to help workers also struck a responsive chord among   Mexicans who oppose NAFTA because of the devastation caused to their  nation's agricultural and retail sectors.

"Polls show that most Mexicans think NAFTA was bad for Mexico," says economist Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute, who resides several months a year in Mexico.

While very cognizant of the intense opposition from Corporate America and the Right that Obama has faced, the Mexican workers had hoped for much more from Obama.

NAFTA DRIED UP JOBS IN MEXICO, ESPECIALLY FOR MALES

"As a progressive president, we would have hoped for more," admitted Blanca Velázquez, a slim, intense woman who serves as coordinator the CAT workers tights center in Puebla. "We realize changes aren't easy to get done in the face of corporate power, but in my opinion, Obama has been failing by not  getting Mexicans status as legal immigrants.

"Also, there's been no responsibility taken for NAFTA, which made the situation worse in Mexico and caused so much immigration," she stated.

An estimated 1.5 million to 2 million farmers, especially those involved in
producing corn, have been forced off the land as they were undercut by
US-subsidized agribusiness. The retail sector composed overwhelmingly of small family-owned businesses has also taken a major hit with the entrance of Wal-Mart and other gigantic "big-box retail" operators, with an estimated 28,000 small Mexican firms going out of business..

While roughly one million jobs relocated to Mexico from Mexico since NAFTA's enactment in 1994, these have been converted from family-supporting jobs in the US to bare-subsistence wage levels even by Mexican standards.

KEY FACTOR: 'LOW WAGES'

A Wall Street Journal headline (9/24/92) brazenly proclaimed "U.S. Companies Pour Into Mexico, Drawn Primarily By One Factor: Low Wages. Real wages have actually been falling since then, typically about 10% of US pay and often in the 75 cents to $2 an hour range. Employers have almost exclusively located along the US-Mexican border and chosen to hire workforces that are 70% to 80% female.

The declining supply of decent job opportunities in Mexico, especially for males living in the central and southern sections of Mexico, has fueled the major surge in immigration into the US as migrants desperate seek any job that will allow  them to send back money to Mexico to allow their families to survive.  

CLINTON-BUSH NON-ENFORCEMENT CONTINUES

Shockingly, the Obama administration has continued the policy--followed under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush--of choosing not to enforce labor rights under the much-touted labor "side agreement" to NAFTA, said Carlos Ezquer, a leader of the Mineros miners union engaged in prolonged battle with the Grupo Mexico conglomerate at the immensely important copper mine in Cananea. 

While "side agreements" on labor and environmental protections were utilized in 1993 to persuade some Democrats to voter for NAFTA by allowing them to claim that not only corporate rights were safeguarded (as detailed in John MacArthur's The Selling of Free Trade), no labor complaint has actually prompted remedial action by a joint US-Mexican-Canadian commission, according to Jeff Faux in The Global Class War.

NOT ONE SINGLE VIOLATION REMEDIED

The denial of  labor rights in Mexico remains the cornerstone of its low-wage manufacturing strategy, with government officials collaborating with corporations to hold down wages with the aim of sharpening Mexico's "competitiveness."

Government-affiliated "protection unions" and police and military forces are
utilized to suppress labor rights on a massive scale.

But US and Canadian administrations have been unwilling to enforce rules against violations of labor rights, since American and Canadian-based corporations benefit so richly from a system based on denial of such rights..

"We of the Mineros filed a complaint under NAFTA in 2006 which the Bush administration rejected as premature," noted Ezquer.  "But in the only case filed since Obama took office, involving Mexican electrical workers, the Obama administration has also postponed taking action."

MILITARY AID FROM US FUELS LABOR REPRESSION

Even more seriously, the Obama administration's stance on Mexico has been dominated by a military focus, funneling  huge amounts of military aid to the Mexican government in the name of fighting violence among Mexico's huge and well-armed narcotics traffickers.

"This narrow focus has minimized all the other key issues, and justified military action," observed Velasquez. The military and National Police have  been using its new forces and weapons against workers, like those striking at the Cananea copper mine since 2007 over safety issues.

Clearly, the existence of widespread violence among drug cartels--some with extensive connections to pro-corporate Mexican political leaders-- who have killed some 23,000 Mexicans since 2007 is an urgent  problem.

UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM OBAMA

But the US under Obama has granted "unconditional support"  to conservative Mexican President Felipe Calderon, imposing no effective oversight against the misuse of military aid against labor and other dissenters

On June 6, some 3,000 troops descended upon Cananea to beat and tear-gas strikers and their families, says Carlos Esquer.

Such attacks led US AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka to issue a forceful call June 9 for a freeze on US military aid to Mexico, which has totaled $1.3 billion since 2008. Another $310 million in military assistance will soon be up for consideration.

MILITARY AID 'ENABLING'  REPRESSION

In a extraordinarily important gesture of solidarity with Mexican workers, Trumka declared:

Sunday night's assault is yet another example of the Mexican government's unjustified persecution of miners who are bravely taking a stand against the country's largest mining company, Grupo Mexico.

U.S. support to Mexican security forces is enabling the Mexican government and Grupo Mexico to violate workers' most basic rights.  As long as the Mexican military and police continue to violate the fundamental rights of workers, the U.S. Congress should freeze current funding for these forces and any proposals for future support.