NO BORDERS IN THE WORKERS' STRUGGLE
By Milt Neidenberg
Free trade is just a bankers' and politicians' term for freedom to exploit across any border.
The bankers behind the plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas being presented at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City are based on Wall Street. Their enforcers are in Washington--both the politicians and the bankers' political fronts, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
Like generals preparing for battle, the bankers have lined up their forces in an attempt to crush any opposition to their plan.
They have failed to stop the opposition, however, which is growing stronger and louder with each day. Just as the bankers want to be "free" to cross any border they want, the workers of the Americas are demonstrating that there are no borders in workers' struggles or solidarity.
The public is barred from the summit talks on the FTAA, to which 34 governments from the Western Hemisphere--all but Cuba--have been invited. The secret deal being worked out is reportedly based on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has been devastating, especially for the workers of Mexico.
Over 2 million workers were displaced in Mexico in the first two years of NAFTA, according to a study on its impact by Molly Scott at the University of Washington. Displaced means that workers with good full-time jobs lost them. Most ended up with part time or day-labor-type jobs paying below the minimum wage.
In Canada, during the first year of NAFTA, 250,000 jobs were lost completely.
In the U.S., about half a million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The impact was much wider though. During the first three years of NAFTA, some 8.6 million workers were displaced because of plant closings, that is, they lost good full-time jobs and were forced into unemployment or lesser jobs. Half of the displaced workers were in the apparel and textile trades. Many of these displacements were because of NAFTA. Many of the apparel and textile plants moved to Mexico, where the mass of unemployed workers were offered jobs at a pay rate one-eighth or less what was being paid by the same companies in the U.S., according to Scott.
The FTAA is NAFTA, and worse.
NAFTA's harsh effects on the Indigenous peoples in the Chiapas region sparked the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico.
NAFTA's conditions have sparked many labor struggles. One was led by Juan Tovar Santos, an assembly line worker from an Alcoa plant in Mexico. Tovar went to Pittsburgh in 1996 to Alcoa's annual shareholders' meeting and confronted the chief executive about working conditions in Alcoa factories in Mexico
Alcoa's chief executive at that time, Paul O'Neill, is now George W. Bush's secretary of the treasury.
The Alcoa factory is in Acuna, one of many towns that have boomed up on the U.S.-Mexico border since NAFTA. As in the other border towns, all the companies are U.S. owned. They pay little or no taxes so the schools are falling apart, the hospital can barely stay open, the sewage system has collapsed and many people live in cardboard "houses."
Tovar described the workers' conditions. A toxic gas leak left a hundred workers hospitalized. Managers were stationed to watch workers in the bathroom to make sure they didn't use more than three pieces of tissue.
Last spring, some 60 workers from the same factory where Tovar works confronted another Alcoa official. It was a rare appearance by one of the company bosses from the U.S. The workers asked why O'Neill got a $33-million Christmas bonus, when they were each paid only a $40 bonus. The anxious official promised an "investigation" and quickly ran away across the border.
While NAFTA means no borders for the bosses, it does not mean that workers can follow their bosses across the border.
After five months of waiting with no answer from the U.S. bosses, hundreds of Alcoa workers walked out of two factories. The police attacked the workers and the company fired them. The strike began to spread until finally the company agreed to negotiate. Some of the fired workers were rehired and the company undertook a "study" of conditions. In November, after declaring the study was completed, Alcoa gave the Mexican workers their first raise in nine years.
The labor struggles along the U.S.-Mexico border are spreading. This is the front line of the battle against globalization. It is a class struggle that goes beyond the borders. And it lays the basis for potential unity between the oppressed workers of this hemisphere and the tens of thousands of anti-globalization protesters who will take to the streets to march on the bankers' closed-door meeting in Quebec City.
The 2.3 million-member Canadian Labor Congress will be one of the leading voices in Quebec City. Labor will be welcoming the protesters.
Labor in the United States is also speaking out against the FTAA. The Longshore and Warehouse Union, well known for its progressive history and militant stands, has denounced the FTAA and is supporting the protests.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council passed a resolution at a recent meeting in Los Angeles that in part called "on our members to make their voices heard in Quebec City as part of the international actions, and join in partnership with Jobs With Justice and other allies in communities across the country." Teamsters, steelworkers and other labor unionists have also passed resolutions and are planning to join the protests.
Truly, a new phase of the global class struggle is unfolding.
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