WASHINGTONFor the five AFL-CIO union leaders who sat down with GOP President Donald Trump to talk NAFTA last week, the devil is in the details of the U.S.-Mexico so-called free trade framework the two nations unveiled on August 26.
But a top trade expert, former trade attorney Lori Wallach, now director of USPirgs Global Trade Watch, is a lot more skeptical. She questions whether the framework has real enforcement mechanisms, among other problems.
By contrast, Jerry Dias, head of the Canadian Auto Workers union Unifor, called the framework a good first step even though Canada was left out in the cold in the talks. Thats not what the five U.S. leaders said, though.
We are aggressively engaged in pursuing an agreement that works for working people in all three countries, and we are not done yet. There is more work that needs to be done to deliver the needed, real solutions to NAFTAs deeply ingrained flaws, warned the five: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, Auto Workers President Gary Jones, Machinists President Bob Martinez and Communications Workers President Chris Shelton. Teamsters President Jim Hoffa was also in the meeting.
Other union presidents, either in or out of the prior weeks Oval Office meeting, declined immediate comment.
Any new deal must raise wages, ensure workers rights and freedoms, reduce outsourcing and put the interests of working families first in all three countries, the five union leaders continued. And working people must be able to review the full and final text and have the confidence not only in the terms of the deal, but its implementation, monitoring and enforcement. We remain committed to working with the administration to get NAFTA right. Our members jobs depend on it.
Trump announced the framework, which he promptly renamed, in an Oval Office press conference with his trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, and with retiring Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on speakerphone. The two spent their time praising each others negotiators. Trump also dumped the NAFTA name.
The framework they reached calls for increasing North American content of vehicles cars and trucks from 62.5 percent to 75 percent and specifies that 40 percent-45 percent of each vehicle must be constructed by workers earning at least $16 an hour.
That particularly caught Dias attention, since yellow unions in Mexico sign contracts
with auto firms there which pay Mexican laborers far less. The newest one which Dias said now cant take effect unless wages really shoot up calls for a planned BMW plant in Mexico, building cars for export here, to pay workers $1.10 an hour.
According to a USTR fact sheet, other provisions of the preliminary agreement in principle Lighthizers words between the U.S. and Mexico include a labor chapter that brings labor obligations into the core of the agreement, makes them fully enforceable, and represents the strongest provisions of any trade agreement.
The labor chapter includes an Annex on Worker Representation in Collective Bargaining in Mexico, under which Mexico commits to specific legislative actions to provide for the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, Lighthizers fact sheet adds.
The labor chapter requires the parties to adopt and maintain in law and practice labor rights as recognized by the International Labor Organization, to effectively enforce their labor laws, and not to waive or derogate from their labor laws.
Lighthizer was not specific about which ILO labor rights both the U.S. and Mexico must adopt, maintain and enforce. And his summary has no mention of the Canadian governments initial demand the U.S. outlaw so-called right to work laws.
The Canadians originally said RTW undercut wages so much that just as U.S. firms shifted factories and jobs south of the Mexican border to exploit low Mexican pay and lax environmental rules, Canadian firms shifted their plants and jobs south of the U.S. border to grab at lower pay in RTW states.
Trump wanted to get the deal done both to fulfill a campaign promise a pledge that helped him get half of unionists votes in key Midwestern industrial states whose electoral votes in turn sent him to the White House and to meet a legal deadline. If he didnt get a new NAFTA to Congress before Labor Day, it could slide into the next Congress, which might have a pro-worker anti-NAFTA House majority.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, whose district has lost thousands of industrial jobs to NAFTA, and who joined unions and workers in fighting it a quarter of a century ago, also evoked the devil in the details. She also reminded Trump he cant claim victory yet, as Congress must still approve it.
The details and the fine print matter more than a hasty self-proclaimed victory, she said. As someone who fought with all I had to prevent NAFTAs passage and the trauma it wrought on American workers, I know the devil is in the details. I look forward to reviewing the details of this agreement as well as the issues that remain with Canadian negotiators in the days and weeks to come, Kaptur concluded.
While the U.S. union leaders were skeptical, Wallach was much more so.
As weve made clear since Day One, an acceptable deal must remove NAFTAs job outsourcing incentives, she said in urging signers for a petition demanding a NAFTA replacement that puts people and the planet before corporate greed.
Source: PAI