Storm of protest greets trade
accord
By CLAIRE
SCHAEFFER-DUFFY Special to National Catholic
Reporter Quebec City, Canada
Archbishop Maurice Couture of Quebec, primate of Canada, was among
the many voices critiquing a free-trade accord during events surrounding the
Summit of the Americas. This gathering of dignitaries, who convened April 20-22
to discuss establishing a hemispheric trading bloc, generated a storm of
protest, both violent and peaceful, in this French Canadian city.
Couture, who addressed anti-trade activists and heads of state in
two separate venues, told both audiences that he spoke on behalf of the 12
million Catholics from Quebec and Canada, and his episcopal
colleagues from the Southern Hemisphere.
During the [1997] Synod of the Americas, Couture
said, the Southern bishops begged their North American counterparts to
influence their governments to counterbalance the negative effects of
globalization.
President Bush, however, presented a more positive view of global
economics. On the eve of the Quebec summit, he lauded The North American Free
Trade Agreement, NAFTA -- the 1994 free-trade agreement between Mexico, Canada
and the United States -- as an example that shows free trade works
and described it as a model for a future, broader accord. Formally known as the
Free Trade Area of the Americas -- FTAA -- the hemispheric agreement, which
excludes Cuba, is currently under negotiation between 34 countries of the
Americas.
If implemented, it would establish the worlds largest free
trade zone -- one stretching from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego.
NAFTA has created good jobs for our workers, Bush
said. Now is the time to extend those benefits of free trade throughout
the Western Hemisphere.
According to Canadian newspaper the National Post, Mexican
president Vicente Fox, in an April 18 meeting with NAFTA critics, also defended
free trade, saying it was the key to Mexicos prosperity.
While Fox acknowledged that 40 percent of his country still lives
in poverty, he said free trade had led to record employment.
But increased employment in Mexico has not meant more attention to
workers rights, says labor lawyer Robin Alexander. The Labor Site
Agreement, a NAFTA attachment, is balanced in favor of corporations, Alexander
said, making it virtually impossible to prosecute them for
violations. The process is designed so that there could never be
penalties.
Bushs optimism was not shared by the thousands of anti-trade
activists who poured into Quebec. The North American accord and an expanding
global economy, they say, have not translated into economic gains for the
average worker, not for the potato farmer in Prince Edward Island, the farmer
in Chiapas or the steelworker in Peru. Instead, it has meant loss of local
economic control, a decrease in government protection of public services and an
increase in privatization of natural resources, even one as basic as water.
Ironically, judging from the protest in Quebec, eight years of
NAFTA seems to have galvanized a more informed and international opposition to
free trade.
Couture, the archbishop, seemed to side with those who rejected
the free traders confidence in an unfettered market inevitably benefiting
all. In his brief address to international activists, he summarized the
Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishops recent statement on free trade,
issued in early April and titled That None Be Excluded. The
Catholic church, concerned for the well-being of all people, particularly
the poorest, stresses that profit must not be the primary
goal of economic order.
Other factors, which deserve greater consideration, Couture said,
include protection of the environment and absolute respect for human
dignity and the inalienable rights of all people, particularly women, children
and the indigenous.
The archbishop concluded by saying, in four languages, Let
us globalize solidarity! and then, in French, passionately added the
oft-chanted slogan of unionists and other free-trade critics, heard throughout
the weekend: So! So! So! So-li-da-ri-té!
The prelate, who received a standing ovation, articulated a common
sentiment circulating among opponents gathered in Quebec. Given the imminence
of a hemispheric free trade zone, they said, civil society throughout the
Americas needed to organize.
A bit of that organizing occurred during the Peoples Summit
of the Americas, held in the four days before the Summit of the Americas and
sponsored by the Hemispheric Social Alliance. The alliance is an international
coalition of labor, human rights, environmental and religious organizations.
The event included plenary sessions, forums and teach-ins where anti-free trade
activists traded notes about the impact of the global economy on their daily
lives.
On April 18, at a steelworkers forum, Canadian employees of
NORANDA, a Canadian-owned mining company that also operates in Peru, listened
attentively to stories illustrating the discrepancy in working conditions for
themselves and their Peruvian counterparts. Ottawa director of Political Action
for the Canadian Labor Congress, Pat Kerwin, who attended the meeting, said the
Canadian steelworkers want to help their Peruvian colleagues obtain a more
equitable contract.
Over the past 10 years, Kerwin said,
international links between workers have become much more
serious.
On Saturday, April 21, thousands of unionists poured into the city
to attend an anti-Free Trade Area of the Americas march, organized by a large
coalition of Canadian labor unions. Among them was Sue Smock, a member of the
United Electrical Workers from Erie, Pa.
Smock, who builds locomotives for GE, said her union first forged
links with workers from the South while galvanizing opposition to NAFTA.
Standing beside a cluster of Mexican unionists waiting to march, Smock referred
to the members of a Mexican federation of unions/agricultural workers and
cooperatives as her brothers and sisters.
Ten years ago, she knew nothing about Mexico, but changing working
conditions at home forced her to take notice. Before putting five plants in
Mexico, GE in Erie employed 14,000, Smock said. Now the number is 5,000,
3,500 of which are union. You can see how it has dwindled. And they pay them
pennies down there.
National Catholic Reporter, May 4, 2001
[corrected 05/18/2001]
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