
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 1, 1993                   TAG: 9401220004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DICK AUSTIN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A POOR BARGAIN

SIX MEXICAN-American women visited my Southwest Virginia farm last summer, worried that NAFTA would cost them their jobs in the garment factories of El Paso, Texas. They had come all this distance to alert folks working in low-wage industries here. These women received only minimum wage, but right across the Rio Grande from their homes, Mexican citizens did the same work for a small fraction of the U.S. minimum.

I was able to offer some temporary comfort. I raise peppers, and when I showed them a bucket they cried, "Saranitos!" The bland food here was getting them down, so I encouraged them to fill their pockets with these tiny hot peppers to season their next meals.

The problems with the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement are considerably more complicated than the obvious threat to workers in low-wage factories that moved to the Southern mountains in search of cheap labor, and can easily move farther south to exploit Mexicans forced to work for less than a dollar an hour.

High-tech and high-polluting industries may also find it attractive to move to Mexico. Louisiana Pacific Corp., the largest employer here in Dungannon, already has moved one large mill from northern California to Ensenada, saving money by shipping logs, once milled by American workers, to Mexico.

"Walk down the long rows of huge machines, newly installed in the freshly painted Ford Motor Company factory," reports The New York Times from Chihuahua. "Watch Mexican engineers fine-tuning the new machines. And it becomes easy to imagine - except for the Spanish and the low salaries - that this most modern of engine plants is really in Dearborn, Mich., and not here on an arid plateau in northern Mexico.''

Paradoxically, while some American factories move to Mexico, many more Mexican nationals may be forced to look for work in the United States. NAFTA will expose Mexican small farmers to free trade in corn and wheat. Grains produced on America's large Midwestern farms will undersell what Mexicans have been growing for their own tortillas.

American farmers may get a penny or two more per bushel, and Cargill will make millions transporting our grain to Mexico. But there could be as many as 800,000 Mexican farmers who are forced to leave their land to look for work. Many of them may wade the Rio Grande and search on this side. It seems a poor bargain for everyone.

The major reason NAFTA is not real free trade is that Mexico is not a free country. One party has ruled for 80 years by rigging elections. Unions are controlled by the government, which holds wages down to attract foreign investment. Laws that confer worker rights and environmental protections are routinely subverted by the government itself. Indeed, during Mexico's rapid industrialization over the past decade, real wages have fallen by a third, to an average of only one-seventh the comparable U.S. wage.

Western Europeans, on the other hand, have been designing their Common Market on very different principles. There the implementing treaties have improved rights to collective bargaining and strengthened environmental protections, particularly in the more backward countries. When Spain - poor but newly democratic - was admitted, its Common Market partners invested heavily in efforts to bring Spanish labor, health and environmental standards up to those of its trading partners.

NAFTA does the reverse. It does not require honest elections in Mexico, nor does it help Mexican workers bargain freely or collectively. Instead, it threatens gains U.S. workers have made over the past century.

It does not effectively spread modern environmental protection "south of the border." Instead, it prohibits U.S. states and localities from maintaining any environmental standards higher than the international standard.

NAFTA will surely enrich many large, international corporations willing to exploit production opportunities regardless of national or community needs. These corporations, through their economic might and political influence, are tightening their grip on the political processes in this country. NAFTA will promote their interests at the expense of democracy, labor and the environment.

The fate of NAFTA will be decided in the U.S. House of Representatives, where 9th District Congressman Rick Boucher will cast one of the key votes. To protect our economy, to protect our hard-won labor and environmental gains, and, indeed, to protect democracy itself, Boucher should vote this treaty down.

He should support real free trade with Mexico - trade that spreads freedom, trade that improves worker rights and environmental protection, trade that helps all people earn their bread in dignity. When a treaty like that comes before Congress, Rick Boucher should be its champion.

\ Dick Austin farms near Dungannon and teaches with Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center.

by CNB