Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

NAFTA and the Corporate Redesign of North America

1995; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0094582x9502200107

1552-678X

Kim Moody,

Labor Movements and Unions

Free trade is not a popular idea in labor circles these days. Trade liberalization is closely associated with industrial restructuring, job dislocation, and declining real wages, which both underlie and reflect shrinking union size and power. Thus, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has U.S. union members and leaders alike worried about their future. Thomas Donahue, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, probably spoke for many when he said in 1991, A free trade agreement will only encourage greater capital outflows from the U.S., bring about an increase in imports from Mexico, reduce domestic employment, as the U.S. moves deeper into a recession, and accelerate the process of deindustrialization that has confronted this country during the 1980s (Donahue, 1991). Most AFL-CIO leaders view the problems of globalization generally and NAFTA more specifically through the prism of U.S. trade policy. In a pamphlet on NAFTA (AFL-CIO, 1991) the labor federation stated that what is at stake is not more or less trade with Mexico, but the nature and quality of that trade. In particular, it warned of further deindustrialization and technological stagnation due to reliance on labor in Mexico that would make the United States less, not more, competitive in the world market. In opposition to free they propose fair trade, which usually means maintaining existing protectionist laws and appending labor rights and environmental standards provisions to any agreement. The problem with this diagnosis is that it falls back on a national (and legislative) solution to a problem that is international in nature. Furthermore, the tendency of AFLCIO literature and spokespersons as well as others in organized labor to dismiss Mexican workers as victimized cheap labor who act as a disincentive to American technological innovation is a serious miscalculation. It is also insulting and as such makes joint action by U.S. and Mexican workers and their organizations all the more difficult.