NAFTA and Labor in North America

4. Labor Mobility and Workers' Rights in North America

4 Labor Mobility and Workers’ rights in North America On May 1, 2006, International Workers’ Day, millions of immigrant workers, comprising an overwhelming majority of Mexicans, took to the streets in several major cities and towns across the United States. The demonstrations , both in their size and national scope, were unprecedented in U.S. history. Many who participated in these actions also went on strike and called for boycotts, despite being warned by politicians of both major political parties and President George W. Bush. Those who participated did so in the face of nationwide workplace raids by U.S. immigration authorities, threats of arrest, deportation, and even violence by extreme right-wing elements.1 On the Mexican side of the border, miners and steelworkers carried out waves of wildcat strikes in protest of sixty-five miners losing their lives as a result of unsafe job conditions and the shooting of four striking steelworkers by the nation’s police and military. Also protesting the killings of miners and steelworkers on May Day were 500,000 union members marching through the streets of downtown Mexico City. Demanding justice not only for the slain strikers, the marchers also called for union democracy and labor autonomy in response to the Mexican government’s imposition of leadership on the mine workers’ union and rank-and-file union members.2 Meanwhile, many unions and civic groups joined their counterparts in the United States by organizing International Workers’ Day as “a day without gringos,” a boycott of American-owned businesses like Wal-Mart, McDonalds , and others operating in Mexico.3 On May 1, 2007, despite a sharp increase in workplace raids and deportations since the events of the previous year by American authorities, immigrant workers once again took to labor mobility and workers’ rights · 91 the streets in the hundreds of thousands demanding their right to work and earn a living in a global economy.4 While these recent collective actions are linked directly to developments associated with NAFTA, they are deeply rooted in a broader historical setting, one in which Mexican workers have demanded and exercised their rights in a region of the world that has been undergoing a process of economic and demographic integration for more than a century. inside Mexico: social and economic Factors that Propel Migration U.S.-Mexican economic and demographic integration has accelerated and intensified since NAFTA. The impact of NAFTA on the economies, labor markets, and conditions of employment in both countries is reflected in large part by the presence of at least 8 million undocumented Mexican workers in the United States. Nearly half of these workers are from rural Mexico, where NAFTA rules that have allowed cheaper agricultural imports from the United States to flood the country have had a devastating impact on farmers. While a substantial number of those affected by NAFTA policies have trekked northward to the United States in search of employment, others remain, trying to scratch out a living in the nation’s growing informal sector.5 Many also migrate to the United States because NAFTA has either destroyed or resulted in the privatization of many Mexican industries, wiping out thousands of jobs. At the same time, the Mexican economy falls short in the area of employment in the formal sector, leaving many new workers just entering the labor market either unemployed or underemployed. For those who find work, real wages have declined and stagnated. By many accounts, especially those that have surfaced as a result of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and its complaint process, working conditions have eroded while the enforcement of workers’ rights has been rolled back. Meanwhile, union density has declined and the relative power that trade unions had once exercised within the Mexican political system has significantly weakened. Declining union membership along with diminishing economic power and political influence are reflected in organized labor’s almost complete retreat from the strike and struggles to resist the employer assault on the Mexican working class. The ousting from power of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional/Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), organized labor’s long-standing ally, also has contributed to the decline of union 92 . nafta and labor in north america power. Since the crisis of Mexican political economy that began in the 1980s, organized labor has been increasingly hemmed in by the PRI shifting to a probusiness stand and by the Partido Acción Nacional/National Action Party...