Free Trade without Free Labour is a Travesty

My position on the immigration issue: Simple. As long as there are free trade deals with the relative free movement of goods, services and most importantly, capital, then there must exist as well the free movement of labour and universal labour standards. Anything else is unfair, unethical, and quite possibly racist.

(Ironically it is the rich United States which clamors the loudest for free trade while maintaining many a subsidy. A New York Times article in 2004 noted that while "a typical farmer in Mexico receives $722 a year in government subsidies, the average American farmer receives more than $20,000.")

So what happens without the free movement of labour? Livelihoods and lives destroyed as free trade wrecks havoc on local economies. In Mexico, with NAFTA in effect, it has been the farmers that have been hit the hardest.

According to a 2004 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, at least 1.5 million Mexican farmers have abandoned their work under NAFTA. In the aforementioned NYTimes article, it was noted that "By the end of 2002, one third of all Mexican pig farmers who had farms when NAFTA was implemented had been driven out of business." (“NAFTA to Open Floodgates, Engulfing Rural Mexico,” Dec 15, 2002). Additionally the Carnegie Report noted while from 1994-2002 foreign investment led to the creation of 500 000 manufacturing jobs (nice jobs those), 1.3 million jobs in the agricultural sector were lost (where 1/5 of Mexicans work). Further wages are lower today than when NAFTA took effect.

A 2004 report by the Public Citizen and the Global Resource Action Centre for the Environment found that (via GlobalPolicy.org):

NAFTA has eliminated 99 percent of Mexico's agricultural tariffs, meaning, for example, that since 1994, the amount of U.S. corn dumped -- sold at subsidised prices -- on the Mexican market has increased 15-fold. Similarly, the amount of U.S. beef going into Mexico has doubled, poultry has tripled and pork imports have quintupled, adds the report. "Farms by the hundreds of thousands have been driven into bankruptcy, creating havoc in the Mexican countryside," the document says. "Three-fourths of the Mexican population now lives in poverty, up 80 percent since 1984."

So not surprisingly at all many Mexicans flee their homeland, family and friends purely for economic survival. And what kind of jobs are waiting for them when they arrive (if they get past the militia)? From today's Washington Post:

The seven sheepherders were eating lunch in a trailer with no toilet, heat or water, its leaky roof held down by a rope.

A lunch break, especially one together, was a rare event. But they were celebrating, sort of. Lambing season was ending. That's when the ewes give birth and the sheepherders who come to this country on three-year work visas put in their hardest 12- to 16-hour days, seven days a week.

Still, the sheepherders were steeling themselves for spring. From late March until fall, sheepherding is almost unbearably lonely. Each herder is driven deep into pastures far from town or even a paved road. For weeks on end, he sees no one but the boss, and rarely does he have a cellphone or radio...

... Schneider (Chris Schneider, executive director of Central California Legal Services in Fresno) had hoped that the publicity surrounding last year's report (which found that 91 percent of sheepherders' trailers had no toilet) would embarrass the ranchers into complying with the law -- or prompt the state Employment Development Department (EDD), which inspects the sheepherders' living quarters, to step up scrutiny.

Instead, he found sheepherders using shovels to bury their waste. Old water jugs, some lined with mold, provided for their drinking, bathing and cooking. Trailers were powered by car batteries.[the pay in California is about 800$ a month, while in Wyoming, with the cold winters they get 650$ a month.]

In 2001 a law was passed by the California state legislature that declared that sheepherders were to "have adequate housing, with toilets, heat and potable water. They were to get graduated raises, from $800 to $1,300 a month at present, and they were to get vacation." However, according to Schneider, in reality little has changed. The president and spokesman of the Western Range Association (who had lobbied against the 2001 law) was unavailable for comment. You see:

He was in Peru, recruiting sheepherders.

Comments

[warmi]

"n 2001 a law was passed by the California state legislature that declared that sheepherders were to "have adequate housing, with toilets, heat and potable water. They were to get graduated raises, from $800 to $1,300 a month at present, and they were to get vacation." However, according to Schneider, in reality little has changed.""

Why didn't they declare that each one of them should get a fucking BMW and at least a $400 000 house.
I mean, it is so fucking easy to "declare" stuff like that, is it not ?

And, of course, legislate away cancer while you at it.

[warmi]

"n 2001 a law was passed by the California state legislature that declared that sheepherders were to "have adequate housing, with toilets, heat and potable water. They were to get graduated raises, from $800 to $1,300 a month at present, and they were to get vacation." However, according to Schneider, in reality little has changed.""

Why didn't they declare that each one of them should get a fucking BMW and at least a $400 000 house.
I mean, it is so fucking easy to "declare" stuff like that, is it not ?

And, of course, legislate away cancer while you at it.

[brian]

I'm not sure your point.Is it that the enforcement sucks? If this is the case then I most certainly agree, (a bunch of feel good legislation that accomplishes nothing)
If you want to equate toilets with a BMW then I'm afraid I can't go along with you there, (that is you're saying the legislation is too generous. I hope that is not it, I don't think it is)

Of course labour would never be free. That's why the hypocrisy of these so called capitalists and free traders makes me sick. They love to tell countries like mexico how wonderful their version of 'free trade' is, but it is not free, (and certainly not capitalist in any meaningful sense of the word.)