Originally published as A Strangling Embrace: State Suppression of Labor Rights in Mexico in 1991 by the International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund (ILRERF) of Washington, DC, a major player in the United States coalitions formed to lobby against the signing of the North American Free Trade Area. The present version, published by South End Press in Boston in 1992, has no changes except the title. The original manuscript of this book was circulated among interested parties for comments, and I offered comments in the same tenor as those contained in this article, although they were not taken into consideration.
2.
For a discussion of Mexico's recent economic history, consult BarkinDavid, Distorted Development: Mexico in the World Economy, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1990.
3.
For a sampling, see the compilation by the U.S. International Trade Commission, Economy-Wide Modeling of the Economic Implications of a FTA with Mexico and a NAFTA with Canada and Mexico, USITC Publications 2508 and 2516, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 1992. For a critical evaluation of these studies, see the excellent article by StanfordJames, “Continental Economic Integration: Modeling the impact on labor,” in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 1994.
4.
Tim Josling offers a guarded or even pessimistic forecast of developments in Mexico in his survey of the studies tracing the impact of NAFTA on agriculture, concluding that there will be “some quite dramatic changes in Mexico (to the benefit of U.S. exporters);” (see his article “NAFTA and Agriculture: A review of the economic impacts,” in LustigNora (ed.), North American Free Trade: An Assessment, (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute, 1992: P. 168).
5.
For an aggregate analysis of the Agreement, with pessimistic conclusions for the Mexican economy, and a review of other more optimistic studies, see the numerous studies by Jeff Faux and his colleagues at the Economic Policy Institute(EPI) in Washington, D.C., and other studies that EPI has published; Thea Lee is coordinating this aspect of EPI's efforts. Some examples include: Faux and SpriggsWilliam, U.S. fobs and the Mexican Trade Proposal, 1991, or Faux and Richard Rothstein, Fast Track-Fast Shuffle: The Economic Consequences of the Administration's Proposed Trade Agreement with Mexico, 1991.
6.
In this regard, it is noteworthy to mention that U.S. workers often have trouble obtaining compliance with their own more limited legal rights. The General Accounting Office analyzed a 1988 law that a law which requires 60-day advance notice to many workers about to lose their jobs is observed in the breech; not only does the law contain many loopholes that exclude vast segments of the labor force, but significant numbers of companies covered by the law do not abide by its prescriptions. Cf. Barbara Presley Nobel, “Straddling the Law on Layoffs,”New York Times, Feb. 28, 1994, Section 3, p. 37. Problems of violations of worker health and safety regulations are even more serious.
7.
This tradition is well illustrated by a very different kind of book which was also prepared by labor activists organizing against the NAFTA: MoodyKim and McGinnMary, Unions and Free Trade: Solidarity vs. Competition, Detroit; Labor Notes, 1992.
