WASHINGTON / CATHERINE COLLINS : Environment, Workplace Issues Complicate Mexico Free-Trade Talks

More than just tariffs and quotas are at stake in the free-trade negotiations under way between the United States and Mexico. Representatives of leading labor, environmental and consumer groups say that progress on environmental and workplace standards is on the table too.

The Bush Administration wants to rush these talks to conclusion by using what is known in the jargon as “fast-track authority.” Without the freedom and speed of fast-tracking, the Administration argues that the chances of reaching an agreement are doomed.

Fast-track authority limits congressional debate by mandating that the Senate and House must vote on the resulting agreement within 30 days of its signing. Congress is also restricted to voting yes or no--with no amendments allowed.

The name-calling has already begun. Inside the Beltway, you are either a free trader or a protectionist. Few congressmen want to stand in the way of free trade, yet some are still having a difficult time giving President Bush a free hand with Mexico.

U.S. Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the U.S. trade representative’s office, has introduced a bill (S. B. 636) to eliminate the fast-track treatment of all trade talks. He says the process shuts out Congress in an area where it has an authority and duty to perform. Similar legislation (H. R. 101) has been introduced in the House.

Some advocates are worried that fast-tracking the Mexico talks will come at the expense of hard-won victories in environmental and workplace health and safety standards. Two powerful legislators, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) and House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), have asked Bush to clarify his position on those issues.

In a letter, they sought Bush’s position on the “disparity between the two countries in the adequacy and enforcement of environmental standards, health and safety standards and worker rights.”

Other congressmen would like to see a free-trade agreement that includes provisions to ensure that U.S. workplace and environmental standards are enforced on both sides of the border. If that cannot be accomplished, they are asking that a bilateral agreement on those issues be pursued simultaneously with the trade talks.

The United States and Canada recently reached their own free-trade accord. But the gap that had to be bridged by that agreement was far narrower than the one with Mexico. Canada and the United States share similar economies and cultures, decades of relatively unhindered trade and investment, and similar labor and environmental standards.

Although Mexico is the United States’ third-largest trading partner, after Canada and Japan, it is still a developing nation. As a result, the issues have turned out to be more complex than the usual array of tariffs, licensing agreements and other market factors that constitute free-trade negotiations.

Pointing out the disparities between Mexican and U.S. wage levels, fringe benefits and worker protections, Rep. John J. LaFalce (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Small Business Committee, said: “The proposed U.S.-Mexico free-trade agreement is unprecedented in seeking to link an advanced industrialized economy with a developing country whose size and proximity carries the potential to dislocate industries and workers on a massive scale.”

By making it easier to move between the two countries, the trade agreement could leave companies holding the “maquila card” the ability to threaten to relocate to Mexico, said Steve Beckman of the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. And that, said Beckman, would make further improvements in the American workplace impossible.

A new report by the National Safe Workplace Institute based its findings on a study of working and living conditions in the maquiladora companies already in operation in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border. A great number of these companies are just across the border from California.

“To open the Mexico-U.S. border without effective rules governing occupational and environmental health will immediately damage Mexican workers and communities and, in a short period of time, harm U.S. workers and communities as well,” cautions the report.

Michael McCloskey, chairman of the Sierra Club, testified recently before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about his concerns in this area. “To the extent that Mexico has lower environmental standards either in law or in fact, industry will be drawn there from the United States,” he said. “Society may get cheaper goods as a result, but it will pay a higher environmental price.”

But R. K. Morris, director of international trade for the National Assn. of Manufacturers, put an entirely different spin on the subject. “Our hunch about labor and environmental issues is that they are likely to be improved as a result of an agreement,” he said.

“For example, to the extent that you have pollution as a result of outdated technology and the inability to pay for the cleanest production processes, you are dealing with the frustrations of poverty,” he said.

“A trade agreement should encourage new investment and increase the strength of the Mexican economy and with that growth should come the ability to meet higher standards. They have no incentive in weakening our standards, but great incentive in strengthening their own.”

What it comes down to is an argument over whether the glass is half full or half empty. Will a new openness at the border help raise Mexican standards through new investment or drag down U.S. guidelines through the threat of moving jobs south?

Those who want to go slower in answering this question say that Bush wants the free-trade accord so badly that he will be willing to compromise with Congress. After all, they say, an accord can be reached without fast track. Just look at the Clean Air Act, a model of compromise.