E D I T O R I A L
STOP MAQUILADORIZATION George Bush's proposal for a United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement (FTA) is an attempt to strengthen the power of multinational corporations at the expense of workers and the environment in all three countries. Though the details are still being negotiated, an FTA would have high costs for the United States and Canada. U.S. and Canadian corporations will gain enormous leverage with the threat to shift production from their home countries to Mexico unless wages and workplace safety and environmental standards are lowered. For U.S. and Canadian workers, the demands for concessions will be virtually endless, because they will never be able to lower their salaries to the level of Mexican laborers. The effects of an FTA on Mexico are foreshadowed by that country's maquiladora program, which allows foreign companies to set up assembly and other plants that produce for export, mainly to the United States. With all barriers to trade between Mexico and its northern neighbors eliminated, additional U.S. and Canadian firms are likely to open factories in Mexico which will manufacture goods for Northern markets. The maquila program began in the mid-1960s, but it expanded greatly in the 1980s, when repeated devaluations of the peso lowered Mexican wage rates. While the maquiladoras have generated some jobs in Mexico's stagnant economy, they have also contributed a host of social ills. Almost 500,000 workers are employed in maquilas, most of them young women. The normal wages at maquila plants are about $23 a week; Mexican workers are lucky to earn in a day what U.S. workers make in an hour. Ten percent or fewer of the workers are unionized, and many of the unions are company formed. Working conditions in the maquiladoras are deplorable. The National Safe Workplace Institute (NSWI) reports that "most experts are in agreement that maquila workers suffer much higher levels of injury than U.S. workers." The NSWI finds that "the vast majority of workers in maquila operations have repetitive- motion or other injuries" and that occupationally related diseases are "especially" evident in the maquila industry. Many occupational diseases have latency periods of four to forty years, but one sign of the extent of latent disease is that "an alarming number of mentally retarded infants have been born to mothers who worked in maquila plants during pregnancies." Most of the approximately 1,800 maquiladora plants line the United States-Mexico border, where transportation costs to the U.S. market and from U.S. suppliers are low. This concentration of maquilas has caused the northern Mexico region to suffer severe environmental degradation, resulting largely from the improper disposal of hazardous wastes. Mexican regulations require plants producing for export to the United States to ship the hazardous waste generated by their operations back to the United States, but these laws are almost wholly unenforced. The Border Ecology Project, an Arizona-based environmental group, reports that the maquiladoras are unable to account for 95 percent of the waste they generated between 1969 and 1989. By further opening the Mexican economy, an FTA would spur the "maquiladorization" of the entire country. The FTA would lock Mexico into the maquila model of development, making it extremely difficult for future Mexican governments to pursue alternative strategies. Foreign firms are attracted to Mexico because of its low wages and weak health and environmental standards, and they will leave if those conditions change. Mexican manufacturers also pay low wages, endanger their workers and pollute, and they are often more socially irresponsible than the foreign maquiladora operators. But the issue for Mexico is what sort of development path it is going to pursue. Mexican firms could play an important role in a sustainable development plan, but maquiladora plants offer few positive options. Mexican firms are subject to greater government control and regulation, and those that produce for domestic consumption stand to benefit from an overall increase in the wage structure, because it will increase internal demand. As a letter to the president of the Mexican legislature from a group of prominent Mexicans, including author Carlos Fuentes and political scientist Jorge Castaneda, says, "Low Mexican wages cannot be a permanent feature of North American economic relationships. That comparative advantage is too costly for everyone involved: too humiliating and unproductive for Mexican dignity and economic development; too costly in jobs and welfare of American and Canadian workers." For the benefit of people and the environment in Mexico, the United States and Canada, the proposed FTA should be rejected.