Give Mexican Workers Their Due : U.S. firms are already taking advantage of poor labor protections; the treaty must be amended to prevent further abuse.

The negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement is heating up as a campaign issue. President Bush taunts Bill Clinton, alleging that the governor can’t decide whether he is for or against it. Clinton replies that he is in favor of an agreement in principle but wants to see the fine print, particularly with respect to provisions concerning the environment and the protection of worker rights.

There is no reason to hesitate. Clinton should forthrightly declare himself against the agreement as negotiated, which does not address the question of worker rights in Mexico. The Bush Administration contends that Mexico has socially advanced labor legislation but lacks the resources for effective enforcement of work-safety standards, a deficiency that would be cured by increased resources resulting from expected growth spurred by the treaty.

It is true that Mexico’s labor legislation, on paper, is highly progressive. However, the legislation bears no relationship to the reality. The principal issue is not resources for effective monitoring of workplace safety, although that is a problem. The central issue is the Mexican government’s policy of assuring a low-wage, stable labor environment, enforced by strong-arm tactics, as a means of attracting foreign, that is, U.S., investment.

The question is at the heart of NAFTA because the pact is more than an agreement on trade; it is also one that governs the climate for investment in the Mexican economy. Labor stability is assured by a labor relations structure that makes the Mexican union leadership dependent on the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI--rather than the workers.

The government’s tough wage policy, which resulted in a decline of nearly 50% in average real wages since 1982, has been enforced by the Ministry of Labor. The tough line with unions has worked to the advantage of U.S.-owned companies investing in Mexico. The Ford Motor Co., for example, closed its plant in Cuautitlan, renounced the prevailing union contract and handed severance payments to 3,400 union employees. A few months later it reopened the plant and rehired many workers, but with reduced salaries and benefits under a new union contract, which it negotiated with the “official” union, affiliated with the PRI-dominated Mexican Workers Confederation (CTM). Dissident workers sought to regain the lost benefits and to organize an independent union, an attempt defeated by the Ministry of Labor and the CTM. The accompanying violence resulted in the deaths of eight dissidents. The Ford drama was replayed with Volkswagen this year, albeit without the violence.

The case of Agapito Gonzalez Cavazos, leader of the Union of Journeymen and Industrial Workers in Matamoros is equally instructive. Matamoros is across the border from Brownsville, Tex. Gonzalez, unlike most of the PRI-dominated union leadership, has been aggressive with American-owned companies. In negotiations early in 1992, he sought an increase of wages for his union membership to bring them up to $1.74 an hour. The companies, unhappy with his aggressive negotiating style, sent their Mexican lawyer to complain to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari that Gonzalez was ruining the investment climate in Matamoros.

Within days of the meeting with Salinas, Gonzalez was arrested and taken to Mexico City, where he was held incommunicado and grilled by two magistrates about alleged tax evasion in 1988. Without a lawyer present and isolated from his family and union colleagues, this 76-year-old man began to hyperventilate. He was transferred to a hotel, then removed to a hospital, remaining under arrest the entire time.

The message was clear: Conform to the government’s low-wage policy or pay the price. The Gonzalez case is not an aberration; it is symptomatic of the state of labor relations in Mexico. The NAFTA negotiations have not dealt with this issue.

The job creation issue is essentially a red herring. No one can definitively say whether the agreement would result in the loss or gain of jobs in the United States. Estimates depend upon assumptions that are too uncertain and nebulous to yield reliable conclusions.

The overriding issue is what constitutes unfair labor practices and therefore unfair investment incentives in a society that has weak democratic political institutions. By not addressing the labor relations issue, the United States is, in effect, sanctioning a system in which abuses are endemic.

If NAFTA prevails in Congress, as a minimum it should include a provision that all parties adhere to the International Labor Organization convention governing worker rights, something Mexico only nominally does now. An alleged violation of the right to organize an independent union, for example, would thus be actionable. Such a provision would be consistent with traditional American trade policy, which denies trade preferences to countries that systematically violate worker rights.

By upholding this principle, Clinton would show real strength of character.