In a few days, the Congress will vote on NAFTA--the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Clinton and NAFTA supporters believe it will be a win-win situation for Canada, Mexico and the U.S. They believe that increased investment in Mexico will raise living standards there, making it a big market for our goods and services and increasing the number of U. S. jobs. They say U.S. job loss will be small, and workers can be retrained. Also, greater prosperity in Mexico will reduce illegal immigration to the U. S. They cite the success of the European Community as a model.
If I thought it would work out this way, I'd support NAFTA, but I don't.
We should enter into a NAFTA which is modelled on the European Community, but this one is not. Europe faced problems similar to the ones we face. There are wealthy European nations like Germany, France and Belgium and poorer ones like Spain, Portugal and Greece. There are great disparities between these countries in terms of standard of living and average wages--just as there are between Mexico and the U.S.
But the European Community did not accept the poorer countries into membership immediately. It spent 30 years, and billions of dollars--$100 billion since 1989 alone--on programs to reduce the disparities between countries and to retrain workers from richer countries who lost jobs. It negotiated agreements about minimum wages and working conditions that poor countries had to meet before becoming full-fledged community members. Why? Because the community feared a huge drain of jobs from rich to poor countries. Why can't we follow this pattern? Why can't we spend five, ten or fifteen years increasing trade and investment and entering full free trade when the disparities between the two countries are narrowed?
The Europeans had another proviso: Only democratic countries can be members of the European Community. There is vigorous debate about NAFTA going on here and in Canada. Whatever the decision, it will have legitimacy because of the debate. Why is there no debate in Mexico? We have ample evidence that there is opposition to NAFTA in Mexico-- maybe even a majority of people oppose it--but with state control of radio, TV and the press, we don't know whether the treaty represents the wishes of the Mexican people or is being imposed on them by a government that was unfairly elected.
Democratic Spain, Portugal and Greece have freedom of association. There are free trade unions to guarantee that, as productivity rises, workers can increase their standard of living so they're able to buy goods from the richer countries. But Mexican workers don't have free trade unions. Workers who try to improve wages and working conditions through strikes are fired and blackballed. Mexico has increased its productivity, but real wages have gone down. The small wealthy class has gotten richer, but the poor remain poor. How will NAFTA change this? Will NAFTA help to prop up an undemocratic system? If workers don't have a better standard of living, how will they buy our products? If they remain poor, won't they continue pouring over the border to look for better jobs here?
There is another major difference between what we're doing and what the Europeans did. They established effective worker training and retraining systems. The U. S. does not have these things. U. S. workers who lose their jobs remain unemployed for long periods of time and, if and when they are reemployed, it is usually at a great loss in their living standard. Also, when Europeans lose their jobs, the impact is different. American workers lose their health care, but European workers continue to have have theirs. And they receive unemployment benefits which last longer and are much closer to their salaries than ours. For European workers, losing a job is a great inconvenience; for American workers, it is a disaster.
Why are teachers concerned about NAFTA? When plants close, the tax base for schools disappears. When workers are unemployed, funds are shifted from education to social services for the unemployed. When one or two plants close, it affects other businesses in the community. But most of all, it has a devastating impact on families and the children we teach.
We need a NAFTA, one which has been developed as carefully as the European Community developed its common market, a NAFTA which works in the interests of workers here and in Mexico and is supported by the people of both countries. Is it this NAFTA or none? Nobody can really believe that. The U.S. is the greatest consumer market in the world. If this NAFTA is defeated, as it should be, free trade between the U. S., Canada and Mexico will be just as attractive as it is today. Only next time, we can do it right.