Mexico Charges Upset Apple Cart in U.S.

After bearing the brunt of criticism for substandard labor practices in recent years, the Mexican government has turned the tables and is investigating charges that Washington state apple growers are exploiting and endangering the health and safety of their predominantly Mexican migrant work force.

The accusations were included in a complaint filed by a coalition of leading Mexican unions and farm worker groups under the North American Free Trade Agreement’s labor provisions.

Migrant workers from the Mexican states of Michoacan and Oaxaca comprise the bulk of the apple industry work force in Washington, the nation’s leading apple producer.

Earlier this summer, the Mexican government agreed to conduct a formal review of the unions’ complaint. It includes allegations that U.S. labor law discriminates against Mexican migrant workers and that Washington apple growers had harassed Mexican workers involved in union activities and had exposed their workers to dangerous pesticides.

If the Mexican government finds evidence to support the charges, it can request negotiations with the U.S. government and industry representatives to resolve its concerns. If that effort fails, the Mexican government can impose trade penalties.

Pharis Harvey, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based International Labor Rights Fund, said the Mexican action represents the first time that a NAFTA complaint has been filed challenging U.S. enforcement of labor laws as well as health and safety issues.

“This is the first one dealing in the U.S. labor market with the potential for moving forward,” Harvey said. “This is an important case to test one of the more complex aspects of the law.”

Of the 10 NAFTA labor complaints filed to date, nine involved alleged failures of Mexican labor law enforcement. The other was a U.S. case that was an unsuccessful complaint challenging the 1995 closure of a San Francisco facility by Sprint Corp. one week before a union vote was scheduled.

If the apple worker case is successful, labor law experts predict unions and other labor advocacy groups will increase their use of the NAFTA labor agreement to challenge U.S. labor practices. Already, the apple worker campaign has resulted in greater collaboration among unions in the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The Teamsters, who are trying to organize Washington state apple workers, have worked closely with the Mexican unions that filed the complaint.

U.S. apple growers vigorously deny the union’s charges and said the working conditions and wages of apple workers in the U.S. are far superior to those in Mexico.

Chris Schlect, president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, a tree fruit industry group, said unions on both sides of the border are abusing the NAFTA process in an effort to expand their power.

Schlect warned that this effort, if successful, would open the door to a host of costly and frivolous complaints against U.S. employers. He said the labor section of NAFTA should be revised or industry support for future trade agreements will be severely eroded.

“What [NAFTA’s labor side agreements] are is just an open invitation for specific labor disputes to be raised into an international question,” he said. “And the idea that U.S. labor laws are somehow below world standards, below Mexican standards, is not something most Americans would agree with.”

Others, however, believe the Washington apple case, if successful, would demonstrate to skeptics that trade agreements can be crafted that not only improve profits for U.S. multinationals but also protect workers on both sides of the border.

“This is the kind of thing that can save NAFTA and trade agreements by giving people confidence that this is the way to address labor, public safety standards and consumer standards,” said Lance Compa, an international labor law specialist and senior lecturer at Cornell University.

Evelyn Iritani can be reached by fax at (213) 237-7837 or by e-mail at evelyn.iritani@latimes.com.