Mexico’s Labor Reform
Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Trade, Mexico’s Labor Reform: Opportunities and Challenges for an Improved NAFTA, June 25, 2019
That labor reform has occurred in Mexico is good news for those of us who resist comprehensive trade as a means to give American consumers a better deal, while simultaneously taking American jobs and benefiting from the abuse of overseas workers without such rights. Indeed, such developments are everything the current Administration insists it is for, but has only lucked into because of the efforts of career civil servants. I am sorry for the cynicism, but it seems to be justified.
As we commented just last week to the full committee, trade negotiations have taken on the character of economic gunboat diplomacy, but without the Navy. These occur because the President is ill equipped by his background as a businessman to work cooperatively, which is the essence of governance in a free society. He has a freer hand in trade negotiations.
Sadly, his experience as a CEO has not served the nation well. The modus operandi of most executives is to break things in order to be seen fixing them. This must stop. The public is not amused, including the Chamber of Commerce, farmers and the stock and commodity markets...NAFTA negotiations and its successor, as well as similar free trade agreements are an example of this. The Trans-Pacific Partnership was one such effort, but it was derailed by presidential politics on both sides. In trade, what is good politics is often not good economic policy.
This is not to say that there are not fundamental issues that need to be addressed in current and future agreements. We have reservations in matters having to do with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. We have previously expressed concerns about Chapter 19 Tribunals and their effect on extending sovereignty to industrial oversight and to the disparate treatment of Mexican migrants when compared to Canadian NAFTA visa holders.
From last week’s comments, Canadian (including refugees from Hong Kong) and American citizens can immigrate for one year (renewable) on a NAFTA visa. Mexican workers cannot. This is purely racism.
Progress in Mexican labor relations mitigate, but does not remove, these concerns, nor do they solve the problems undocumented migrants face, particularly on the southern border. Please see Attachment One with our comments for tomorrow’s Budget Committee hearing about how migrants improve the economy (through their bondage). It is a bitter pill.
Labor reform will take the pressure off of migration, although that is now the case already. Mexican workers who can join a Union in Mexico and not in so called right-to-work states will face an easier choice to stay home. We hope that this will lead manufacturers in such states to rethink their positions on organized labor and American labor unions to seek expansion into these states and to link with Mexican unions in solidarity. This may increase prices for some goods, particularly food, but it will increase wages even more, particularly among lower wage workers. We have suffered under a two-tier economy for too long, with undocumented workers suffering the most of all.
As a more union-based economy progresses on both sides of the border, the desire for more workplace democracy through employee ownership, as well as for solidarity between domestic and overseas workers, including joint multi-national ownership of what are now internationally based capitalist firms. Tax reform can certainly facilitate expanding ownership when actual worker control, rather than simply a change in management at the top, evolves.
We will not spend time on our tax reform proposals except to say that our proposed subtraction VAT could have a huge impact on long term trade policy, probably much more than trade treaties, if one of the deductions from the tax is purchase of employer voting stock (in equal dollar amounts for each worker). We will repeat these comments from last week in Attachment Two regarding trade and Attachment Three regarding the benefits of Employee Ownership.
That labor reform has occurred in Mexico is good news for those of us who resist comprehensive trade as a means to give American consumers a better deal, while simultaneously taking American jobs and benefiting from the abuse of overseas workers without such rights. Indeed, such developments are everything the current Administration insists it is for, but has only lucked into because of the efforts of career civil servants. I am sorry for the cynicism, but it seems to be justified.
As we commented just last week to the full committee, trade negotiations have taken on the character of economic gunboat diplomacy, but without the Navy. These occur because the President is ill equipped by his background as a businessman to work cooperatively, which is the essence of governance in a free society. He has a freer hand in trade negotiations.
Sadly, his experience as a CEO has not served the nation well. The modus operandi of most executives is to break things in order to be seen fixing them. This must stop. The public is not amused, including the Chamber of Commerce, farmers and the stock and commodity markets...NAFTA negotiations and its successor, as well as similar free trade agreements are an example of this. The Trans-Pacific Partnership was one such effort, but it was derailed by presidential politics on both sides. In trade, what is good politics is often not good economic policy.
This is not to say that there are not fundamental issues that need to be addressed in current and future agreements. We have reservations in matters having to do with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. We have previously expressed concerns about Chapter 19 Tribunals and their effect on extending sovereignty to industrial oversight and to the disparate treatment of Mexican migrants when compared to Canadian NAFTA visa holders.
From last week’s comments, Canadian (including refugees from Hong Kong) and American citizens can immigrate for one year (renewable) on a NAFTA visa. Mexican workers cannot. This is purely racism.
Progress in Mexican labor relations mitigate, but does not remove, these concerns, nor do they solve the problems undocumented migrants face, particularly on the southern border. Please see Attachment One with our comments for tomorrow’s Budget Committee hearing about how migrants improve the economy (through their bondage). It is a bitter pill.
Labor reform will take the pressure off of migration, although that is now the case already. Mexican workers who can join a Union in Mexico and not in so called right-to-work states will face an easier choice to stay home. We hope that this will lead manufacturers in such states to rethink their positions on organized labor and American labor unions to seek expansion into these states and to link with Mexican unions in solidarity. This may increase prices for some goods, particularly food, but it will increase wages even more, particularly among lower wage workers. We have suffered under a two-tier economy for too long, with undocumented workers suffering the most of all.
As a more union-based economy progresses on both sides of the border, the desire for more workplace democracy through employee ownership, as well as for solidarity between domestic and overseas workers, including joint multi-national ownership of what are now internationally based capitalist firms. Tax reform can certainly facilitate expanding ownership when actual worker control, rather than simply a change in management at the top, evolves.
We will not spend time on our tax reform proposals except to say that our proposed subtraction VAT could have a huge impact on long term trade policy, probably much more than trade treaties, if one of the deductions from the tax is purchase of employer voting stock (in equal dollar amounts for each worker). We will repeat these comments from last week in Attachment Two regarding trade and Attachment Three regarding the benefits of Employee Ownership.
posted by Michael Bindner at 2:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home