No one wins with NAFTA

We are supposed to be living in a golden age of prosperity spurred on by the New Economy. Unemployment is low and corporations are making record profits. But every time I look in the paper, I see some sort of protest. \nI guess it must be a bunch of bored, rich kids who've decided to turn off the Playstation and instead chuck rocks through the window of Starbucks. But these kids seem to be getting around. Right now in Quebec, they're clashing with police while trying to protest the Summit of America. The summit's aim is to further expand free trade in North and South America. \nThese protests got me thinking: What if these kids are right? What if this prosperity is a lie? What if the North American Free Trade Agreement and other proposals like it do nothing more than make the rich richer and the poor poorer?\nYou know what I discovered? The kids are right. The only people who have prospered under the New Economy and free trade are the rich.\nI'll give you a few examples: According to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, the income of the poorest fifth of U.S. households dropped 2.7 percent between 1989 and 1996. In fact, the bottom three-fifths of U.S. households bring in significantly lower incomes than they did in 1977. Meanwhile, the richest 20 percent of Americans saw their incomes jump by 9.1 percent. \nStill not convinced? In 1980, chief executive officers made 42 times the pay of average factory workers. In 1990, they made 85 times as much. Today, they make at least 475 times more, according to Corpwatch, a Web site designed to "hold corporations accountable." Here's an even nicer statistic: one in six children in the United States lives in poverty, according to the Children's Defense Fund. Just so you know, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal poverty level is $14,630 a year for a three-person family. This rate is roughly twice as high as Canada and Germany and at least six times higher than France, Belgium or Austria. So much for prosperity. \nNAFTA is not helping. The Economic Policy Institute, the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Canada and the Mexican Institute of Labor Studies and Investigation joined forces and came out with a report this month on the effect of NAFTA on labor, and the findings are not good. The report describes how U.S. companies are using the "threat effect" in collective bargaining, in which they threaten to move production out of the country if workers don't make concessions. The report also estimates that NAFTA cost workers 766,030 manufacturing jobs in the United States and 276,000 in Canada.\nOf course, all of these jobs moving to Mexico must mean Mexican workers are benefiting, right? Well, no. NAFTA has not delivered many of its promised benefits to Mexican workers. By 1998, the incomes of salaried workers had fallen by 25 percent since 1991, while incomes of the self-employed had fallen 40 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. \nAccording to a report in the Toronto Star, when Mexican workers tried to set up an independent trade union at the United States-owned Duro bag factory, one worker's house was burned to the ground. Another came home from work to discover her mother, grandmother and sister had been deliberately hit by a car outside their home. Another was run off the road and hospitalized.\nI wonder who benefits from union busting and a 25 percent decrease in hourly wages? Corporate America is clamoring to spread this sort of free trade around the world. Businesses in Third World countries don't have to worry about labor laws, unions or strict environmental policies. All they worry about is making money and keeping the richest 5 percent in this country happy.