NAFTA Debate Goes Before L.A. City Council : Trade: Panel hears testimony on Svorinich’s resolution urging the pact’s defeat. Opponents of the agreement outumber supporters, but both sides are well-represented.

Since they amount to little more than pronouncements, City Council resolutions rarely cause commotion. But that wasn’t the case Friday, when a Los Angeles City Council panel heard testimony on whether the council should go on record opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement.

From all over the state, the pact’s supporters and opponents turned out in force to argue the issue in a three-hour hearing before the council’s Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Seasoned lobbyists for both sides confidently occupied front-row seats in the council chambers. Grass-roots organizers, virtually all of whom opposed the agreement, tentatively traveled the halls, asking directions from the movie extras shooting a film in the City Hall rotunda.

At issue was an anti-NAFTA resolution proposed by Councilman Rudy Svorinich of San Pedro, whose blue-collar, waterfront district has a strong union presence. Svorinich asserted that NAFTA, which would eliminate trade barriers between Mexico, the United States and Canada, would cripple his district.

“I think people are extremely concerned, and they’re scared,” Svorinich said. “This agreement comes at the wrong time in the wrong place.”

A large contingent of labor leaders from San Pedro showed up to back Svorinich’s resolution, but other opposition to NAFTA was also well-represented. The NAFTA opponents outnumbered supporters of the agreement, but representatives of such corporate heavyweights as Mattel Inc. in El Segundo and the Minnesota-based 3M company showed up to argue in favor of the agreement.

Proponents urged the council to consider how trade with Mexico has increased since tariffs in that country began to decline. Since 1986, when Mexico began lowering its tariffs, 3M has increased its exports to that country by ninefold, said 3M spokesman Jim Vaughn.

“If we fail to seize this opportunity, it could be years before we see another one, and that would be tragic,” Vaughn said.

NAFTA supporters said a full elimination of the tariffs would spark a trade boom benefiting workers in both the U. S. and Mexico.

Nicole Goldman of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group formed in the 1980s to push the agenda of moderate Democrats, called the language in Svorinich’s resolution “alarmist” and “irresponsible.” Goldman accused him of feeding workers’ fears that they will not be able to compete on an even playing field.

“Reject the presumption that Americans cannot compete, that Californians cannot compete and that Los Angeles cannot compete,” she said.

“If you lower the tariffs to an even playing field, then we can compete,” said Rudolfo Fernandez of Gov. Pete Wilson’s Office of Mexico Affairs. “California has the most to gain because we are the most successful manufacturing complex in the country,” he said, adding that passage of the agreement would create 30,000 to 40,000 jobs in California by 1995.

But NAFTA’s opponents said the agreement would lure jobs to a country with no enforceable labor standards, no minimum wage and poor environmental regulations.

Steve Nutter, west coast director of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, said his workers would be the “biggest losers” if the agreement is passed, estimating that 75,000 of the union’s 142,000 workers in California could lose their jobs.

NAFTA opponents said repeatedly that they did not oppose open trade or Mexico. But the specifics of the agreement, they argued, were unacceptable.

“It was negotiated on behalf of the interest of business, and the problem is that the other side, workers and those (representing) the environment were not represented,” said Craig Merrilees, director of the California Fair Trade Campaign in San Francisco.

Jim Larkins, a pilot at the Port of Los Angeles and president of the Los Angeles Pilots Assn. Branch 68, said people who support NAFTA are naive if they think that while some jobs might be lost, in the long run NAFTA will help the U.S. economy.

“We believe that not only will it hurt this area’s economy, but that it really won’t do much for any workers in Mexico either,” Larkins said. “Since there are no real labor laws there, you’re not going to see a middle class just rise up like some people say.”