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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 3, 1993                   TAG: 9311040247
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAT PRATALI
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEGOTIATE A NEW TRADE AGREEMENT

THE CURRENT North American Free Trade Agreement should be titled the North American Free Investment Agreement. NAFTA's set of rules were drawn up by ``big money interests'' such as investment bankers, agribusiness giants and transnational corporations.

Worker, consumer and environmental safety are hardly mentioned in the agreement. The side agreements' treatment of them is window dressing. In addition, decades of animal-protection legislation will be completely dismantled. Dolphin and whale slaughter will continue unabated, puppy mills will continue to flourish, and inhumane transport of horses to slaughter houses willbe nearly impossible to legislate against. Profit will be the ultimate objective, and to heck with anything in its way.

The side agreements do not establish environmental or labor standards, nor are they tied in any way to accessible, effective enforcement mechanisms.

With Mexico's poverty-rate wages and weak environmental rules enticing U.S. manufacturers, NAFTA threatens to drain thousands more North American jobs and capital investment across the border while undermining the United States' working-class standard of living.

In the past two decades, more than 500,000 U.S. jobs have been shipped off to the 2,000 maquiladora plants, and projections show another half million U.S. factory workers would be displaced under NAFTA.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average U.S. factory worker earned $16.17 an hour in 1992 compared with $2.35 an hour for the Mexican worker. At the maquiladora plants, the average hourly wage is $1.64. As a result, the average Mexican family simply cannot afford to purchase products they make, much less contribute to U.S. prosperity by buying goods produced in the United States. Recently, 2,000 Mexicans demonstrated in Mexico City against NAFTA, processing past the U.S. Embassy.

Many maquiladora workers live in cardboard shanties without electricity or running water, and they drink and bathe in streams polluted with toxic-waste runoff from their factories.

Congress should vote against NAFTA as it's written. Environmental standards and protection for workers, consumers and animals should be central to any trade agreements. The United States, Canada and Mexico need to start from the beginning and negotiate a whole new agreement that includes an enforcement mechanism for North American standards for animal, consumer and environmental protection and for workers' rights.

\ Pat Pratali is co-director of the Plowshare Peace and Justice Center in Roanoke.

by CNB