From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: US LABOR & N.-AMERICAN ECON. INTEGRATION: TOWARD A CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIQ
    "Have we reached such a stage in human development that to rescue
    our economy we must pay another nation's productive adult
    population sixty cents an hour to assemble twenty-thousand-dollar
    automobiles and advanced computers, while denying them basic
    social services and human rights? Can we claim with any sincerity
    that this will be the basis upon which to build a reasonable
    future for their community and nati
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 05:46:19 GMT

*To: harelb@math.cornell.edu
*Subject: Re: _Trade News_ Oct 2, 1992
*Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism
*In-Reply-To: <1992Oct3.054207.12233@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
*Organization: Houston UNIX Users Group (HOUNIX), Houston, TX
*Date: 6 Oct 92 17:47:46 CDT (Tue)
*From: wlarkin@hounix.org (Ward Larkin)

Harel,

Steve asked me to post this to the net on his behalf, but
something seems to be amiss with "hounix".  Current space
limitations aren't allowing me to post anything.  I ( and
Steve ) would be appreciative if you could post it for me.

Thanks. 

-- Ward 

- - - - - -

      U.S. LABOUR AND NORTH AMERICAN ECONOMIC INTEGRATION:
                 TOWARD A CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIQUE

                    Stephen Fielding Diamond
              Email:  SFDYLAW@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu


With congressional approval of the Bush Administration's request
for "fast-track" negotiating authority for a free trade agreement
between the United States and Mexico in the spring of 1991, the
U.S. labour movement suffered one of its most important recent
political defeats. Labour was unable to hold on to some of its
staunchest congressional allies. Democratic Congressman Richard
Gephardt, for example, backed fast-track despite the
protectionist industrial policy that lay at the heart of his
presidential campaign in 1988. Thus, what AFL-CIO Secretary
Treasurer Tom Donahue declared would be labour's "top priority"
for the 1991 legislative calendar signalled, instead, the very
low priority that trade unionism holds in U.S. political life. A
fresh perspective is desperately needed by labour if it is to
understand this defeat and move beyond it. This paper will first
examine the context in which U.S. labour now finds itself.
Labour's response to the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) is examined critically and an alternative approach is
considered.


The Strategic Context

The Salinas and Bush announcements of negotiations toward NAFTA
should be understood as one of the final building blocks of a
decade-long process of reintegrating the Mexican economy into the
world economy, and, more specifically, into the U.S.-dominated
regional economy. The process began in the early 1980s, with the
collapse of Mexico's ability to repay its external debt. Since
then, Mexico has taken, or has had forced upon it, a series of
steps resulting in greater financial and economic integration
with the United States and international institutions (United
States International Trade Commission, 1990).
     A primary concern for U.S. business is the growing pressure
of worldwide competition from the European community and the
Japanese-led East Asian bloc. These regions emerged in the 1980s
and 1990s as home to the most productive economies in the world.
They combine a relatively cheaper labour force (shifting to new
pools of cheap labour as home-country wages rose) with the best
technology available, establishing flexible and innovative human
resource policies and supplier networks to dominate critical
areas of growth. Their success is the ultimate example of the
emphasis Fajnzylber (1990) has so correctly placed on added
intellectual value in a modern economy, including the innovative
relationships between the state and industry, the organization of
supplier networks, and the just-in-time and continuous-
improvement systems of production.
     This is a structure that presents formidable challenges to
the U.S. economy. Where U.S. management once found the detailed
job descriptions of individual workers in an assembly plant a
critical basis of productivity, control, and stability, employers
now do battle with trade unions that in turn find themselves,
somewhat paradoxically, defending the old Taylorist regime
(Piore, 1989). The opportunity to move production where new
relationships can be established on a much lower wage scale and
in a less regulated environment is understandably tempting.
Mexico, then, appears as a natural target for U.S. manufacturers.
Just as the conditions leading to NAFTA are really not new,
neither are the conditions that have stimulated the response of
labour, in particular U.S. labour, to the negotiations. Over the
last two decades, the trade union movements of most of the
advanced industrial economies have been facing a complete
restructuring of the international division of labour (Kolko,
1988; Ross & Trachte, 1990). There are four areas of major change
under way. First, with the end of "Fordism," there has been an
ongoing crisis in the membership of trade unions in the advanced
capitalist democracies; second, there is a growing rift between
the trade unions of those countries and the political parties
they have traditionally supported or, even, controlled; third,
there has arisen a very particular kind of trade union activity
in newly industrializing countries such as South Korea and
Brazil; and fourth, there has been a dramatic end to the statist
era--signalled most loudly by the collapse of the Soviet bloc
regimes and the lack of a coherent response by the labour
movement to that change.


The End of Fordism

U.S. labour is at its lowest level of membership density since
the 1920s. This is not simply the result of aggressive
antiunionism by employers, which is a fact of U.S. industrial
life from the beginning of modern trade unionism. Rather, the
decline in membership must be seen as part of a general
structural change in the economy. As early as 1961, labour
economist Lloyd Ulman noted the deeply rooted slowing of union
growth in unorganized plants or firms. Steady growth in wages in
the centrally organized sectors of the economy, fuelled in part
by Vietnam-era inflation, and new union membership in public
employment and the service sector enabled the labour movement to
defer discussion of the problem. But with the victory of Ronald
Reagan in 1980 and his defeat of the Air Traffic Controllers
Union, it finally hit home that the House of Labour was resting
on a crumbling foundation.
     A recent study found that "collective bargaining has yielded
much smaller compensation packages in the last few years than
previously"; moreover, in the 1980s compensation gains for
unionized labour averaged below those for unorganized workers
(Griffin, McKammon & Botsko, n.d.). To argue blithely that
this is a cyclical process ignores the technological shift
occurring in the new global workplace. Manufacturing jobs can and
do "return" to the United States but, in doing so, they have been
fundamentally transformed. A recent Commerce Department study
found that manufacturing now represents an increasing proportion
of the gross national product--the apparent reversal of a long-
term decline--but only after "a wrenching contraction in payrolls
and plants," as the number of jobs in that sector dropped from 21
million to 19 million over the last decade (Nasar, 1991). Such a
setting alters in a basic way the premise of continued expansion
on which the modern collective bargaining system was built
(Kochan, Katz, & McKersie, 1986; Piore and Sabel 1984;).
     The decline of labour is a general trend in the advanced
industrial economies. The Griffin study found that "more than
three-fourths of the eighteen largest, politically stable
capitalist democracies experienced sustained declines or
stagnation in union density in the late 1970s or early 1980s"
(Griffin et. al, n.d.). Only the sharpness of the conflict
varied, in proportion to the relative strength of labour in the
previous period.
     Organized labour narrowed its horizon in the fifties and
sixties, often sacrificing organization, militancy, and internal
democracy, in return for a strong dues base in what appeared to
be the secure commanding heights of the U.S., Canadian, and
European economies. But the era of the social contract, of
Fordism and corporatism, has come to an end. The stability and
predictability of an earlier era have left much of labour unable
to comprehend the nature of the changes that are taking place.


A New Political Era

Both a reflection and a cause of labour's structural weakness is
the growing rift between trade unions and politics. In the United
States, alone among the industrial economies, labour failed to
move to political independence, relying instead on a seat at the
table in the quadrennial smoke-filled rooms of the Democratic
party. By the late 1970s, labour was no longer seen as
representing a broad view of social justice in U.S. life, a
movement that had fought for free public education, affordable
health care, social security, the minimum wage, and the end of
child labour, but as just one among many "special interest"
groups.
     A similar development has been under way in Europe, where
tensions between trade unions and labour or socialist parties
have heightened. Neil Kinnock and Francois Mitterand, for
example, have made their ability to control labour a cornerstone
of their appeal to the general electorate. This development
merges with the technocratic vision that has long had a home in
mainstream social democracy. The labour movement, in falling back
on the narrower terrain of disputes over wages, hours, and
working conditions, has lost a forum for debate and argument
about the wider social consequences of economic change (Martin,
1988).


New Unionism

Some in the labour movement have expressed the hope that the
emergence of unions in the newly industrializing countries could
presage a return to trade union health on a world scale. Indeed,
the flip side of the deindustrialization of the United States and
Western Europe has been the industrialization of countries like
South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico (see Harris, 1987; Peet, 1987).
This has been accompanied by new organizing efforts and, in
certain cases, explosive strike waves for better wages and
working conditions. In some cases this new unionism has fed
deeper movements for democratic political change: The Brazilian
Workers' Party is one example, Poland's Solidarity movement is
another.
     Yet, the industrialization process in these countries is
built upon relatively high capital intensity, and international
capital has proved to be highly mobile. The commitment of
international capitalists to the development of forward and
backward linkages is weak. This does not appear to be a
development akin to that of earlier U.S. industrialization. The
long-term ties between Virginia's coal mines, Chicago's steel
mills and Detroit's automobile assembly lines, which fuelled the
U.S. CIO and its version of Fordism do not seem to be present in
these cases.
     Many researchers, including Grunwald (1990/91) have noted
the failure of the maquiladora program in northern Mexico to
generate linkages with the rest of the economy. Maquila firms
have remained peripheral to the Mexican economy and have
contributed little to Mexico's industrialization, technological
growth, or international competitiveness (see the chapter by
Kopinak in this volume). The global roller coaster even
contributes, on occasion, to the return of some manufacturing
jobs to the United States.  An overvalued cruzeiro and huge price
increases in raw materials and energy pushed Ford recently to
shift final assembly of truck kits back to Kentucky from Brazil
because it is now cheaper (Lamb, 1991).
     The South Korean example is also telling. Despite
historically low unemployment, union militancy has declined
dramatically there. There were more than thirty-seven hundred
labour disputes in 1987, but half that number in 1988. In the
first five months of 1990, there were only one-fifth as many
disputes as in the first five months of 1989. Why? Manufacturing
employment growth slowed steadily as the 1980s came to an end,
going into negative figures at the end of 1989. This reflected an
automation of production facilities (Bank of Korea 1990). Overall
wage and job gains there are attributable to the construction and
service sectors. This pattern appears, in a hothouse fashion, to
mimic the long-term structural changes in the economies of the
United States and Western Europe (Amsden, 1988; Vogel & Lindauer,
1989).


The End of the Statist Era

Finally, in this survey of the strategic context in which the
trade union movement finds itself, mention must be made of the
end of the era where state-centred accumulation seemed
inevitable. In one way or another, important segments of the
labour movement had staked themselves on the state-led efforts at
development found either in the Soviet bloc, within the state-
centred programs of social democracy, or within the post-World
War II national liberation movements. This perspective was
stronger in France and Italy than in Great Britain or the United
States, but the sudden collapse of bureaucratic and collectivist
politics in the East and the trend to privatization in the West
has put the left in disarray, unprepared for the aggressive
promarket social movements that have now emerged. One example of
this development came in Germany, where social democratic ties to
the old East German regime and its official labour movement
helped Helmut Kohl move to a strong victory in the post-
unification elections. Another example is found in the success of
Lech Walesa breaking from his roots in Solidarity to usher in
economic shock therapy. The failure of a new socially conscious
and democratic paradigm to emerge in the wake of the collapse of
the Eastern bloc has contributed to a certain level of
demoralization in labour generally.
     The reverse side of this coin is also significant. The close
links between official U.S. labour and the foreign policy of the
United States were built around a common program of anticommunism
(see Diamond, 1989). Now that that target has dissolved, the door
would appear to be open to new initiatives for an independent and
democratic foreign policy for U.S. labour. Trade union visitors
to Eastern Europe, for example, find a tremendous potential for
new union organizing, but find only token support for such
efforts by the U.S. labour movement. The open debate which could
chart a new independent foreign policy for U.S. labour has yet to
be scheduled.


Labour's Response

How has organized labour in the United States responded to the
announced negotiations with Mexico and Canada? They have begun a
battle to hold tenaciously to what little they have left (AFL-
CIO, 1990; Anderson, 1990;). Though there is very little serious
discussion within labour about the above-mentioned global
developments, every union member knows the telling impact they
are having on life in the United States. It is not just a matter
of protecting a textile plant here or an auto parts assembly
plant there. The globalization of the economy has begun to break
down the general fabric of U.S. society. Fewer and fewer people
in the United States are able to be productively integrated into
the economy. Visible signs of this process are seen in the rise
of an unproductive service sector, of long-term unemployment, of
a steelworkers' union trying to steal members from a union
representing supermarket employees, of street people living off
the recycling of aluminum cans.
     The less visible reality is also coming to light. A recent
Census Bureau study found that the median income of the most
affluent fifth of all U.S. households rose 14 percent from 1984
to 1988, after adjusting for inflation. But income remained
unchanged for the remaining four-fifths. The statistics comparing
white and non-white U.S. citizens are equally disturbing. The
median income of all households in 1988 was $35,750, but the
median for whites was $43,280, while that for blacks was $4,170,
and that for Hispanics was $5,520 (Pear, 1991). Robert Reich
(1991) has pointed to the increasing isolation of that top fifth
from the rest of U.S. society. He notes that we now live in a
country where there are more private security guards than
publicly financed police officers. More and more, the top fifth
lives in areas of the country insulated from the world around
them--belonging to private health clubs, sending their children
to private schools. How far away is the United States from the
the brick walls embedded with glass shards so common in the
developing world?
     In this setting, the so-called protectionism of the working
class is no more surprising than the constant attempt of the
middle class to live upstream from the foul air and decaying
streets of our inner cities. Given the historic goal of the trade
union movement to defend and improve the wages, hours, and
working conditions of its dues-paying members, their opposition
to so-called free trade is understandable. Unfortunately, it is
also destined to be ineffective.
     The protectionist response of labour is, in essence, as
narrowly drawn as the drive by management for cheaper labour
across the border. It pits unionized workers in one sector of the
economy against fellow unionized workers who may indeed gain jobs
and income by greater trade (Lustig, 1991; Reynolds, 1990;). It
can cause a rise in the price of those goods that might improve
in quality and decline in price when made with new technology or
new material resources, or when affected by new competition. The
result is a divide between organized labour and consumers. The
union movement, in turn, is viewed as a drag on productivity
rather than as a spur to new innovation in technology and
economic organization. Finally, protectionism divides this
nation's union movement from that of other nations, where
different levels of development naturally give rise to different
perspectives for trade unionism. Hence, the Mexican labour
movement, while apparently cautious about the imperial approach
of Salinas in negotiating a free trade agreement, looks forward
to future job gains from increased trade with the United States
and to less pressure on its members to migrate northward (see
Aguilar, 1990; C rdenas, 1991; Casta$eda, 1990).
     This is not to underestimate the potential damage a "pure"
free trade agreement could do to workers in all three countries.
As Robert Dunn (1990) points out, in the United States and
Canada, low-skilled workers will lose jobs unless trade policy is
broadly developed to include compensatory financing for genuine
retraining and job placement. Also, the horrific conditions under
which many Mexicans labour will not be altered simply by the
lowering of tariff barriers. In fact, these conditions are part
of the attraction of Mexican workers. Their low pay, relative to
the north, and unregulated social and workplace conditions mean
greater profits to investors (see Anderson, 1990; Kochan, n.d.;
Peters,1990). To date, however, organized labour has been willing
only to discuss this tragic side of the debate. Their
unwillingness to counter the free market position with more
viable, positive-sum policy alternatives increases labour's
political isolation. United States labour's anti~free trade
position is, in fact, relatively new. Its trajectory has followed
the structural shifts in the U.S. economy (see Mitchell, 1978).
     The anti~free trade view is disturbing from another angle,
as well. Alongside of its historic tradition of defending the
wages and working hours of its current membership, trade unionism
has also often taken advantage of an expanding and changing
economic structure to recruit new members. International trade
and financial integration would appear to offer labour a new
vista for organizational expansion, for a move to multinational
bargaining and for political moves to place labour at the table
of new international institutions. Attempts to do this will only
be hampered by a protectionist stance.


An Alternative Strategy for Labour
Managed versus Free Trade

How can labour respond adequately to the challenges of the free
trade debate? A starting point would be to note that there is no
such a thing as "free" trade any more than there is a free lunch.
In fact, there is now a very intense debate within the business
community about how U.S.~Canadian~Mexican economic integration
must be "managed" to achieve its full potential. The label free
trade is little more than a metaphor aimed at limiting the
participants in the debate to business interests. This
"management" debate takes for granted the need to form elaborate
legal and institutional structures to put the agreement into
place and to regulate its impact once it has taken effect. Many
different subject areas are dealt with in the agreement,
including intellectual property rules, changes in Mexico's rules
on foreign investment, the cross-border harmonization of product
standards and certification, the establishment of a dispute-
resolution mechanism, and debate about the rules of origin, which
will ensure that the benefits of cross-border trade are limited
to substantial investors in the region.
     This "managed trade" position represents what might be
called the neutron bomb approach to economic integration. It
secures a safe and level playing field for capital, but it
ignores the general human and social cost of the agreement. It
pays no attention to the unemployed stagnating in the Rust Belt,
it ignores cross-border pollution, and it fails to examine the
implications of integrating societies with vastly different
standards of living. As an alternative, labour should argue for
an agreement that reckons with the total social cost of the
integration process.
     Such costs are often labelled externalities or political
factors precisely because of the inability of mainstream economic
theory to deal with the full impact of economic change and
development (see the chapter by Helleiner in this volume). But
the existence of this wider reality is, in fact, the reason for
the establishment in every advanced economy of institutions such
as collective bargaining, environmental regulation, and minimum
standards for labour as well as for products. Only democratic
institutions can adequately examine, debate, and regulate this
integration process. The rules and standards of such institutions
must encompass more than the agenda of the business community.
     There can be no more dramatic proof that this community,
with its trickle-down approach to economic development, is not up
to the task we face in the post~Cold War era than the very crisis
of the economy and labour force of the United States and Canada.
A decade of speculation in real estate and junk bonds has pushed
us into a deep recession. Have we reached such a stage in human
development that to rescue our economy we must pay another
nation's productive adult population sixty cents an hour to
assemble twenty-thousand-dollar automobiles and advanced
computers, while denying them basic social services and human
rights? Can we claim with any sincerity that this will be the
basis upon which to build a reasonable future for their community
and nation?


Regulating the Social Cost of Integration

The market alone cannot be relied upon to take account of social
and human resources--the horizon of any individual business is
inherently narrowed by competitive pressures. Contrary to the
neutron bomb approach of the so-called free market, the social
costs of economic growth and integration should be made central
to the debate. Job creation, health care, labour standards, water
and air pollution control, migration issues, wages, housing,
education, progressive taxation systems, and debt relief--these
should be the basis of a new regional economy. If Mexico and the
United States can cooperate to expand bilateral trade, why can
they not cooperate to create employment opportunities, protect
the environment, and enforce occupational health and safety
standards (see Diamond 1986)?
     Some partial efforts in this direction have been made. The
AFL-CIO has backed labour and human rights provisions in U.S.
trade legislation (International Labour Rights, 1988). Such
efforts are limited in their impact by broader political conflict
and the development needs of the targeted countries. In essence,
they raise the cost of development while not necessarily
reorganizing economic structures. Another approach is being tried
in the Mexican context. A Coalition for Justice in the
Maquiladoras, with the backing of the AFL-CIO's Industrial Union
Department and church groups, has proposed a Code of Conduct
aimed at U.S. firms operating in the already existing export-
based free trade zone of northern Mexico (Coalition for Justice,
n.d.). In addition, an attempt to expand the very limited nature
of bilateral trade unionism between U.S. and Mexican labour has
been made. But only a few meetings have been held at the highest
levels of the Confederation of Mexican Workers and the AFL-CIO,
with little or no impact on union activity (California AFL-CIO
News, 1988; Interviews by author of various regional and national
AFL-CIO officials, 1990-1991).
     Efforts in all three areas--labour rights tied to trade,
expanding labour law to cover international investment, and
multinational trade unionism--must continue. One of the likely
by-products of any trade negotiation process, even one limited to
the current Bush agenda, is that these efforts will be stepped
up. International attention to human and labour rights in Mexico
can greatly aid the efforts of Mexican workers and their unions.
Such pressures will raise the social standards of living in
Mexico, while resisting a decline in the living conditions of
U.S. citizens and Canadians. But these efforts will remain
partial and ameliorative and the process they stimulate in Mexico
will take many years.
     Labour must now attempt to institutionalize these efforts
within the framework of the emerging economic structures. One
concrete possibility would be to include labour issues as
constituent parts of the dispute-resolution mechanisms that are
integral to trade agreements. U.S. workers, for example, should
be able to monitor any plant closings or new investments by U.S.
firms. If there is a factual basis for a claim that such
investments are aimed not at new markets in Mexico but at taking
advantage of cheaper labour costs to reexport to old markets
here, then the affected U.S. (and Canadian) workers should be
able to bring a charge to a new trinational social rights agency.
Compensation or adjustment spending could be ordered. Or, at the
minimum, the agency could order the company to undertake
"mandatory" bargaining with the union. This would mean a
commitment to negotiate over alternatives to plant closure until
a compromise is reached.
     Similarly, Mexican workers should have access to this agency
to bring claims that foreign investors are refusing to recognize
their collective bargaining rights or are not acting as good
corporate citizens. The latter concept could cover environmental
concerns, plant health and safety issues, and taxation. The
internal political problems in Mexico point to the need for such
an autonomous agency concerned with the social impact of economic
integration. This agency could be investor-financed. Those
companies that win new markets or higher profits because of
integration would be taxed to fund the agency and its essential
investigative units.
     The advantages of a such an agency are many. To private
investment capital it would provide a policing effort to keep out
sweatshop competition. It would mean the establishment of some
basic sense of due process and fairness in investment decision-
making. It would provide a public forum for argument over the
investment process. This would be essential to encouraging
Mexican workers to come forward. It would provide an organizing
tool for labour movements in all three countries. To bring
successful charges forward on behalf of U.S. workers, for
example, would require an investigation of investment patterns in
Mexico by U.S. unions. This could force U.S. and Mexican workers
into greater contact and, eventually, cooperation. It would, at
the same time, require a constant assessment of the genuine
benefits of the integration process.


Economic Growth

A second leg on which labour's response must stand should be a
positive alternative strategy for economic growth and job
creation, on an international basis. Austerity, rationalization,
and retrenchment are the bywords of today's global economy. In
the process, millions are being denied productive work. Labour
should begin an internal and then public discussion about how the
global economy can be restructured in a progressive and positive
sum fashion. Dramatic debt reduction for the Third World, and a
shift of workers in the advanced economies out of unproductive
labour (such as military production), would be important starting
points to a fundamental reorganization of the economy.
     In a partial way, labour, environmental, and human rights
groups have raised some of these issues. In pointing to the
emergence of a "social charter" in the European Community and
suggesting that a similar effort be made in North America, these
groups aim to shape the process of economic and social progress
(Aguilar Zinser et al., 1990; Donahue, 1991). But the fundamental
goal of these arguments appears to date to have been to weigh
down the discussion in order to stop the agreement from going
forward--not to recognize the global and strategic context in
which the free trade debate has inevitably emerged. The social
charter perspective ignores the serious limitations to that
charter process in Europe itself, where a much larger agenda is
controlled by business interests (Dewetring, 1990; Schmitter &
Streeck, 1990). It appears as an addendum to the debate about
integration, rather than as a basis for arguing that social costs
are inherent in economic expansion and can only be dealt with by
an alternative strategic view of economic institutions.
     This type of defensive response is, to an extent, inherent
within trade unionism. It is indicative of the strength and
importance of trade unionism within a classical capitalist world.
But we no longer live, if we ever did, in an era of individual
business people who trust social and economic well-being to the
invisible hand of Adam Smith. Instead, we live in a world of
global markets made up of large and small constantly competing
corporations, backed by and sometimes competing with huge state
powers, locked in a battle to integrate dramatic new technologies
using huge populations of unorganized, often cheap, human labour.
These organizations are engaged in this battle largely over the
heads of the majority of the world's population--in boardrooms
and conferences closed to the everyday working (and-out-of-work)
population. Their managers and directors have difficulty
understanding why such a system cannot resolve the problems it
encounters. Their social perspective is narrowed by the very
competitive battle in which they are mired.
     The NAFTA negotiations now under way provide an opportunity
to alter this process. Critics of NAFTA, then, must be willing to
recognize that economic integration is natural in human affairs.
If the process is regulated, consciously and openly, through
democratic institutions, it can be shaped in a progressive
direction with benefits to all three societies. In a number of
discussions with Canadian and U.S. labour and business groups,
Mexico's Cuauhtmoc C rdenas (1991, p. ? ) has begun to raise
this perspective. His arguments go beyond labour rights and
social standards to the very nature of economic progress itself.
     "We cannot be satisfied with the kind of future that would
emerge from a simple economic liberalization," he argues. "This
would only extrapolate present trends and exacerbate present
vices. Economic liberalization is not our objective, it is one of
our tools. Development, social justice and a clean environment
are our objectives. We are in favour of a broad Continental Trade
and Development Pact that primarily includes free trade between
Mexico, the United States and Canada and that is, at the same
time, in the interest of Mexico's development and not at the
expense of U.S. or Canadian welfare standards." If U.S. labour
begins to engage in this kind of debate, the establishment of a
multinational trading area could represent an opportunity for
labour to strengthen its place in social and economic affairs and
emerge with a new paradigm based on the democratic and socially
just development of the world economy.


                          REFERENCES

AFL-CIO. (1990, May 24). Statement by the AFL-CIO Executive
Council on U.S.-Mexican Free Trade Agreement. Washington, D.C.

Aguilar Zinser, A. (1990, October 5). Open to Business, Si; to
Dissent, No. Los Angeles Times.

            , et al. (1990, November 28). Letter to Gonzalo
Martinez Corbala. Mexico City.

Amsden, A. H. (1988, Fall). South Korea's labour market in the
context of early and late industrialization. Cambridge, MA:
Centre for International Studies, MIT.

Anderson, M. (1990, June 28). Statement before the Subcommittee
on Trade, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of
Representatives.

Bank of Korea. (1990, June). Quarterly Economic Review.

California AFL-CIO. (1988, November 18). Maquiladora dialogue
ok'd at labour summit. California AFL-CIO News.

C rdenas, C. (1991, February 8). The continental development and
trade initiative. (what type of source is this? missing info?)

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