National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #40-98 Empty Promises: NAFTA and the Workforce
October 7, 1998

Program description at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1998/9840.html

Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information. This week on Making Contact:-

Roberto Rodriguez: If you keep exploiting people’s labor, you know, if you treat people as commodities, they’re gonna rebel, cause, you know, people are not machines.

Phillip Babich: Proponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement promised more jobs and higher wages for workers in the United States, Mexico and Canada. And consumers were promised better deals on goods and services. Almost five years later, U.S. workers have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, while Mexican workers have encountered unfair labor practices and low wages. On this program, we take a look at some of the results of NAFTA. I’m Philip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact.

According to Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, more than two hundred thousand U.S. workers were certified as of August 1998, under a special NAFTA unemployment program called NAFTA Transitional Adjustment Assistance. "This represents only a fraction of the U.S. workers who have lost their jobs due to NAFTA," says Public Citizen. Critics of NAFTA charge that job losses in the United States and weak regulatory enforcement of labor laws in Mexico have lowered standards for workers throughout North America. Most attention to labor violations has focused on maquiladoras along the border. But now high profile charges have been filed against apple growers in Washington state. Correspondent Martha Baskin has more.

Martha Baskin: In an unusual turn of events, one of the most substantive cases involving labor rights‚ violations in the United States is about to be heard under NAFTA. The formal complaint was filed by the Mexican government against the Washington state apple industry. The complaint alleges failure of U.S. labor law to protect workers’ rights. It is by far the broadest case to be filed before the administrative body set up to enforce the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation, commonly known as NAFTA’s Labor Side Agreement, and could, therefore, result in trade sanctions against the industry. The accusations were filed by a coalition of Mexican unions and farm worker organizations, including the National Workers Union -- a new labor federation formed in 1997 by dissident Mexican unions representing 1.2 million workers -- the Authentic Labor Front, and the Democratic Farmworkers’ Front, as well as the Teamsters, the United Farm Workers, and the International Labor Rights Fund based in Washington D.C.

Over forty-five thousand migrants work in the orchards and warehouses of the largest apple producing industry in the United States. Many come from the Mexican states of Michoacan and Oaxaca. Because Mexico is the largest single export market for Washington state apples, the industry maintains a high visibility in Mexico. This fact, coupled with the twenty million dollar subsidy the industry receives from the U.S. government to promote overseas sales, triggered concern among unionists upon learning how extensive labor rights violations were among migrant workers. Lance Campa, spokesperson with the International Labor Rights Fund, was in Washington state recently documenting worker violations

Lance Campa: The complaint is actually quite wide-ranging. It goes first to the question of freedom of association and the right to organize. First, it addresses the exclusion of agricultural workers from protection of the National Labor Relations Act. And second, in connection with workers in the warehouse sector of the industry -- who are covered by the National Labor Relations Act -- it goes to the inadequacy and the failure of enforcement of U.S. labor law.

Martha Baskin: Conflicts over the right to organize came to a head in January during the Teamsters United for Change organizing efforts at Stimilt Packing Plant in Winache, and Washington Fruit in Yakama. Lance Campa.

Lance Campa: Where egregious unfair labor practices basically destroyed the trade unions’ majority support there, it was concern over these issues that really drove these organizations to collaborate. And for the Mexican groups to take it upon themselves to file this complaint.

Martha Baskin: Migrant worker, Mary Mendez worked for seven years in the apple industry at Stimilt.

Mary Mendez (via translator): During the forming of our union, we always had the guards right in front of us. We always had the foremen following what we were and weren’t doing. Then they started to threaten us with immigration inside the plant, and many of us have families or are undocumented ourselves. And, of course, we were terrorized with this. Other tactics that they used were that for many of us participating in the union, our wages were reduced more than the people who were in with the company. I have an example of this in the cherry season now. Some co-workers, who have been working less than a year were earning eight dollars and fifty cents an hour. And me, after so many years of work, I was earning seven dollars and forty-one cents an hour.

Martha Baskin: The National Labor Relations Board eventually agreed with the Teamsters, that Stimilt’s conduct during the election was unfair. The NLRB has advised its regional office in Seattle to seek a collective bargaining order as a remedy for the numerous unfair labor practices filed against both Stimilt and Washington fruit packing plants. In addition to firing, suspending and threatening workers with dismissal, some plants began hiring anti-union consultants to discourage workers from organizing, according to Robert Gibbs, attorney for the Teamsters.

Robert Gibbs: They also had a consultant from California who came in and did probably ten private meetings with groups of workers, each worker went to probably ten meetings at both companies, where he would fill them full of anti-union propaganda and threats. Among the ones that we thought were the most damaging and despicable were suggestions that somehow the union would cause their termination or there to be an INS raid once, if the union won the election. And there were also suggestions that somehow the company was protecting them from INS but that, after the election, you know, the company couldn’t make any promises, suggesting that if things didn’t go the way that they wanted them to go, that people would lose the companies favor and might be deported and lose their jobs, their family, their residence here in the United States.

Martha Baskin: The President of Stimilt Packing Plant in Wanache, Tom Mathiesen, denies any wrong doing on the company’s part. Specific election violations may be resolved via collective bargaining, but the real test for the NAFTA complaint will most likely fall under possible safety and health violations and charges of discrimination. Alleged violation within these two categories, pushes Mexico’s complaint further than any of the twelve previous cases which have been filed under NAFTA’s Labor Side Agreements. Observes say the case is unique, since most of the earlier NAFTA labor complaints were filed against Mexico. Lance Campa.

Lance Campa: Lord knows there are certainly problems in Mexico connected with labor law, labor law enforcement and all the rest. But this agreement is supposed to be a balanced agreement. And, I think, Mexico appreciates the opportunity to undertake a review of U.S. labor law and practice so that the countries are treating each other as equals under this agreement, and not so much one country taking an arrogant attitude toward another country’s system.

Martha Baskin: The Mexican government cites illegal chemical hazards, which are frequent in apple packing and shipping plants, and exposure to toxic pesticides. Mexican officials also say injured workers were forced to do heavy work. Ben Delgado has been working in the orchards since 1970, and is a representative of the region’s Shalan and Douglas County Community Network. He believes that problems of discrimination and abuse are the worst he’s seen in the many years he’s been working in the state’s apple orchards. Pesticide use is just one of the problems he is concerned about.

Ben Delgado (via translator): The people who apply the chemicals and the pesticides don’t have sufficient protection in the use of these chemicals. The pickers go into the orchards soon after the chemicals are applied without protection. And in the meantime, the growers are getting richer than they’ve ever been and not taking steps to solve these health and safety problems or the problems of economics of daily life for the workers.

Martha Baskin: Migrant worker Mary Mendez suffered a hand injury in December, 1997.

Mary Mendez (via translator): I had my doctor’s note that said I couldn’t do heavy work. They were putting me in heavier work than those who were siding with the company in completely lighter jobs without being injured at all. In spite of having so many injuries on the job, the foreman did not report the injuries and fired the injured people. The Anglos have the lighter jobs and are better paid. There’s discrimination with all the Hispanic people.

Martha Baskin: The International Labor Rights Fund is interested in seeing a resolution before the imposition of trade sanctions. Ideally, they would like to see the Washington state apple industry become a model for good labor relations and effective enforcement of labor laws by federal and state regulatory agencies. Tom Mathiesen of Stimilt maintains that U.S. labor laws are being adequately enforced at his plant, and that it’s the teamsters who orchestrated the complaint with the Mexican government. But Loraine Sheer, organizer with the Teamsters United for Change apple campaign, who has sought arbitration from the NLRB on other occasions over the years, sees it this way:

Loraine Sheer: Conditions are worsening for workers in the apple industry, and that includes workers at Stimilt. There’s a very different philosophy whether you think that workers deserve the right to organize and form their own organizations, just as the Growers’ League and just as the... Mathiesen is a part of the Apple Commission and many different associations and organizations that support growers‚ and owners‚ interests, or whether you don’t.

Martha Baskin: The election violations will be heard by an administrative law judge later this year. It may take as long as two years for the remainder of the labor law violations, filed under the NAFTA complaint, to reach arbitration, with recommended remedial action plans or trade sanctions. For "Making Contact," this is Martha Baskin.

Shereen Meraji: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. This program can now be heard across the United States, in Canada, in Haiti, South Africa, and around the world on Radio for Peace International short wave. You can also hear us on the internet.

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Phillip Babich: This summer, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission granted the company Telephones of Mexico, TELMEX, permission to operate in the United States. Together with its U.S. partner, Sprint, TELMEX is expected to heavily advertise to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans to try and cash in on the lucrative long-distance phone business. But back in Mexico, TELMEX is embroiled in multiple controversies, including allegations of widespread over-billing. Correspondent Kent Paterson spoke with members of the consumer group which is leading a campaign against TELMEX.

Kent Paterson: In a public plaza in Chihuahua City, the activist group Women for Mexico gathers documentation from citizens who allege they suffer chronic over-charges from the private company TELMEX. Women for Mexico contends that TELMEX, one of the world’s most profitable corporations, regularly over-bills customers. Guillermo Beltran del Río claims he was charged for many calls he did not make.

Guillermo Beltran del Río: According to the people from TELMEX, a customer has a right to make a certain number of calls, and if you exceed them, they charge you. But we don’t know how many calls. They’ve told me five or ten daily. If they charge me three hundred pesos a month for extra calls, that’s three hundred extra calls or ten a day. There aren’t ten extra calls made from the house like the phone company has marked down.

Kent Paterson: Graciela Ramos, the coordinator of Women for Mexico in Chihuahua, details another common consumer complaint.

Graciela Ramos (via translator): The majority of farmers in Chihuahua have relatives in the United States. They have children and brothers and sisters over there. They always call their people in the U.S. collect. Invariably, the collect calls to the U.S. are charged over there, but they’re also charged over here. Because the rural people live pretty far from the city, out in the countryside, they could wind up spending much more time to travel in order to make a complaint, only to risk not even being heard. So they prefer to pay and not lose the service. But this is a phone service for which people are being double-charged.

Kent Paterson: A former state-run enterprise, TELMEX was privatized in a controversial 1990 sale to a group of Mexican and foreign investors headed by Carlos Slim, an associate of then Mexican president Carlos Salinas. The sell-off was justified as a needed divestiture of an inefficient firm. But eight years later, as almost any visitor to Mexico can attest, poor service is often the rule. Public telephones are frequently broken, and sometimes entire rural towns complain that it takes days to repair broken equipment, leaving the people without service.

Despite the problems, the company is highly profitable. From 1991 to 1995, TELMEX reported an average profit margin of about thirty-three percent. And according to Forbes magazine, TELMEX owner Carlos Slim became one of the richest men in the world within a few years of the company’s purchase, possessing an estimated fortune of about 6.6 billion dollars.

(voices of speakers at a hearing)

Mounting anger with TELMEX is being voiced in public protests and hearings like this one in Chihuahua. When Mexico permitted foreign competition in the long distance phone market last year, TELMEX responded by hiking the cost of a basic monthly phone rental fifty percent. Citizens object to unaffordable service, over-billing, and the proliferation of phone sex lines. Consumer activist Alicia Ayala was a cofounder of Women for Mexico in the border state of Nuevo Laredo.

Alicia Ayala (via translator): The people are being charged for an uncompetitive telephone service that makes charges which can never be proven. From Southwestern Bell receipts we have, we know that in the United States they’re charging fifteen to eighteen dollars for residential telephone service. Nevertheless, a bill that works out to be two or three percent of the monthly minimum wage in the U.S. turns out to be four hundred and fifty percent of the minimum wage here. It’s not possible to get by. The telephone is supposed to be for communicating, yet TELMEX, with its prices, has us cut off from communicating.

Kent Paterson: Women for Mexico coordinator Graciela Ramos says her group is demanding low income telephone rates, the restriction of phone sex lines, and the installation of special devices to measure the exact number of calls made from home phones. Another grievance is the telephone company’s withdrawal of low cost coin public telephones and their replacement with expensive card activated phones.

Graciela Ramos (via translator): All the coin telephones have been taken out of service. A few remain in airports, where people who can afford them use them. But in the low income neighborhood, a telephone can be a question of life or death. To call an ambulance, the police or a relative, people have to have a card that costs a minimum of thirty pesos. And thirty pesos is more than the daily minimum wage in Mexico. This is a grand injustice. The poorest have to pay TELMEX in advance for a service they don’t even know if they’ll receive.

One of our proposals to the Federal Congress is that there be a coin telephones again, or if not, that there be cards worth two or five pesos, so any person can have a card for their home, in case of an emergency. Another of our emergency proposals is that the basic rental cost of local home service include five hundred allowable call a month, because it’s not justified what TELMEX is doing now, making insulting profits in an impoverished country that is bankrupt.

Kent Paterson: Women for Mexico’s campaign is striking a popular chord. Now, other groups are taking on the issue and a national network of telephone consumer advocates is in the process of formation. So far, Women for Mexico has coaxed TELMEX into restoring service to some cutoff customers and reviewing disputed accounts. The group has occupied company offices on occasion, and won mass complaints with Mexico’s federal consumer attorney general. Ramos adds the group has convinced thousands to protest TELMEX overcharges by making their payments into escrow.

Graciela Ramos: Our actions have arrived at civil resistance only in extreme cases. We’re not an organization that invites disorder, nor are we an organization that invites no payment. We believe that citizens have to live in a way that is more conscious, but also more responsible, in a more just way. Taking into account the culture of Mexicans, in which we don’t know our rights and the laws that protect us, paying into escrow is a very difficult thing. We’re afraid to get involved in legal matters. To have more than four thousand people like we have, who are going to pay into escrow, means that an extraordinary situation has reached its limits. Not only is it a situation in which people can’t pay for a service of prime necessity, but apart from this, it’s like the foreign debt: people make payments, but owe more all the time.

Kent Paterson: For "Making Contact," I’m Kent Paterson reporting.

Phillip Babich: While NAFTA has lessened restrictions on the flow of capital and goods across the U.S.-Mexico border, Mexican migrants risk harsh punishment and conditions when entering the United States in search of work. To learn how NAFTA is affecting Latinos here in the United States, I spoke with Roberto Rodriguez. He co-writes the "Column of the Americas" with his wife, Patricia Gonzalez. Their column appears weekly in about forty newspapers and is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

Roberto Rodriguez: It probably really hasn’t affected relations at all... race relations. Only in this respect: because it hasn’t been touted as a racial agreement. But it very much has affected relations not only in this country, but in the hemisphere, possibly the world. In the context of it’s about to expand. We’re gonna have, instead of a North American Free Trade Agreement, it’s gonna be an American Free Trade Agreement. That is, North and South American Free Trade Agreement, a hemispheric agreement. And, it’s gonna be dire consequences.

It’s the opposite of the European model, where, in Europe, all the nations are... There was an attempt to equalize the economies of each nation, each member nation. In the Americas, and the example of Canada, U.S. and Mexico, they exploit the difference, and that’s what the hemispheric agreement’s gonna be. A further exploitation, you know, a solidifying of, you know, what they used to call "banana republics." You know? I mean, it’s almost like that’s... we’re gonna have our twenty-first century versions of that, where nations are going to be exploited, you know, taken advantage of because of their cheap labor, or one product and, you know, or several, you know, products, as opposed to sustainability, you know, livable wages.

See, on a theoretical level, a NAFTA would be ideal, you know, if you include human beings. So that’s of course a big difference. What we have in these agreements is everything but human beings. In other words, there’s nothing wrong with capital, with equipment, with ideas, investment, you know, executives, you know. They could all come back and forth, no problem. But, you talk about human beings, like, oh wait a minute, you know, sovereignty, you know, national interests. They come up with all these fancy terms and to the detriment of the majority of the people. And I think, and again its not gonna get better at that level.

You know, the Zapatistas of course stepped forward and fired the first shot. And I think you’re gonna see a lot more of that, you know. A lot more shootings, in terms of those warning shots. I’m not saying revolution is gonna just happen overnight. But I think people are gonna get hip to that, that this is an exploitation agreement.

Phillip Babich: So what you’re saying is you, do you see perhaps an increase in maybe violence, or at least strong reactions from communities that are adversely affected by agreements like NAFTA?

Roberto Rodriguez: Yeah. I mean, you know, I think, you know... I don’t know, some people call them natural laws, but I don’t know if it’s so natural. But I think it’s a logical response that, if you keep exploiting people’s labor, you know, you treat people as commodities, they’re gonna rebel. ‘Cause, you know, people are not machines. And, you know, just the notion of like, oh well, you’re better off than you were a century ago, or you’re better off here than you were in your shack back home. You know, that doesn’t work, you know.

Phillip Babich: Speaking as a journalist, what have you seen in the Latino community as far as effects on relations among Latinos, as a result of NAFTA, and perhaps greater focus on immigration?

Roberto Rodriguez: Well, the unfortunate thing about NAFTA is that it did bring... it brought forth a division and... I don’t know, maybe that division is healed at one level, because there was a strong labor human rights element that opposed the NAFTA agreement. And then there was a business element along with a few prominent national Latino organizations that supported NAFTA. But, even those that supported it did it only because they were promised, you know, they were given a carrot called the North American Development Bank. They were saying like "Hey, What we’re gonna give you is a multi-billion dollar bank to develop the border. You know, it’s gonna be a, you know, an economic Disneyland." And so people bought it. But, you know, four years later, that not a penny, literally, maybe a few pennies... and I’m talking in the literal sense... that hardly anything has flowed from that bank. I mean, you figure that that might have been the case three months after. But we’re talking about four years later. I mean, zero.

So, what has happened is, especially because of immigration, and, you know, the false promise plus immigration, I think there is a unanimity, you know, amongst people that are active at almost any level, you know. Of course I’m not talking about extreme right-wingers, but, you know, people that are active that they see immigration as very central to the entire equation of these NAFTAs and politics in the U.S. You know, we’re talking about a population that is being delegitimized and there is a counter-offensive. Although it’s more, been more defensive than anything. But I think you’re gonna see people go on the offensive very soon, because it strikes at the heart of who a people are.

You know, I say when we talk about a red-brown perspective, I say we’ve been here for thousands of years and yet this society treats us as if we just got here. And I think there’s gonna be a reaction. And I was talking to you previous to the program about a map that we found. It’s called the 1847 Disternal Map that shows that the original homeland of the Aztecs was in Utah. Its on the map... the official treaty of Guadalupe, and it’s causing... You know, it’s almost like it was a hidden map, and it’s causing reverberations around the country because people feel validated, you know. In most instances, who would care about a hundred year old map? Or a hundred and fifty year old map? But when you kick people around, step on ‘em over and over and tell Œem that they’re illegitimate, that they don’t belong, and to discover a document that says hey, all of a sudden what we’ve always been told is true. And it’s on their document. You know, it’s... Like I say, we thought it was Arizona, but it’s actually in Utah. So we might see a mass exodus of Mexicans to Utah.

Phillip Babich: We’ve been speaking with Roberto Rodriguez. He’s a columnist, along with his wife Patricia Gonzalez. They write the "Column of the Americas" which is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate and its now published in about forty papers across the United States. Roberto, thanks for joining us on Making Contact.

Roberto Rodriguez: Thank you very much.

Phillip Babich: That's it for this edition of Making Contact, a look at some of the results of NAFTA. Thanks for listening. And special thanks this week to Shereen Meraji, Michelle Simon, and Susan Celli for production assistance. Travis Lee and Werner Hertz provided voice-over help. I'm Philip Babich.

If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts, or if you'd like to make a comment or suggestion for future programs. That's 800-529-5736.

Making Contact is an independent production funded by individual contributors. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. Our National Producer is David Barsamian. Philip Babich is our Managing Producer. Our Senior Advisor is Norman Solomon. Shereen Meraji is our Production Assistant. Peggy Law is our Executive Director. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. For everyone at Making Contact, thanks for listening.