January, 1999
Labor Party Press
George Becker:
'NAFTA is the
Greatest Betrayal
of Workers
in My Lifetime'
Excerpts from a talk by George Becker,
President of the United Steel Workers of America
I want to applaud you for your efforts to advance the agenda of working
people at all levels in society. I want you to know that the Steelworkers Union will not
endorse a candidate based on political parties. We endorse candidates based on labor
issues — your issues.
I want to share with you the issues we think candidates should be judged
by. The first is trade and the exploitation of workers throughout the world. I’m
talking about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), fast track, the
Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), the collapse of the Asian economies, for which
we’re paying one hell of a price... None of these things are happening accidentally.
Our leaders have adopted trade rules and agreements throughout the world that affect us.
I’m concerned about the loss of sovereignty in our nation, the inability of our
leaders to correct injustices.
NAFTA has failed for American workers, for Mexican workers, and for
Canadian workers. They told us NAFTA would create 200,000 jobs a year and clean up the
environmental degradation in the maquiladoras. It was supposed to provide a living wage
for Mexican workers. These were the hollow promises that were laid out by the government
spokespersons and by industry.
Five years later, what do we have? Do we have 5 million new jobs? No!
We’ve lost 600,000 industrial jobs to Mexico. In Mexico, 2 million jobs have
evaporated from the landscape. Meanwhile, workers there are making less than a dollar an
hour.
There isn’t a day that goes by that our union doesn’t hear about
some plant or factory that is closing down and reopening in Mexico. The workers who get
these jobs are living in poverty. They can’t support their families. Families are
living in hovels with dirt floors, drinking water out of drums. And yet they are working
in state-of-the art plants owned by companies that are based in the U.S. They get paid
$4.50 a day for working approximately nine hours, and they have no benefits, and no rights
to organize.
NAFTA is the greatest betrayal of workers in my lifetime. NAFTA was never
intended to protect workers – NAFTA was intended to protect industrialists and
bankers. The only institution that protects working people is the union movement.
NAFTA is the most substantial trade treaty ever negotiated – but a
treaty requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate to pass. So they just rushed this through
saying this is just an "agreement." My union has challenged the legality of this
with a lawsuit. We need to raise the level of debate on trade in this country. Will trade
serve the interests of Wall Street or Main Street?
The other treaty I’m concerned about is MAI – an under-the-table
backroom scheme that was put together by industrialists and financiers to get complete
control of money around the world. This treaty did not see the light of day until someone
who had a pang of conscience put it on the internet. Under MAI, every signer would have to
yield to the financial community on decisions that are usually reserved for countries
– like safety and health legislation, clean water and air. We need to be ever
vigilant on MAI.
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