• NAFTA and CAFTA

NAFTA and CAFTA

This paper assesses the human rights impacts of the NAFTA in Mexico, with a particular focus on working conditions. It specifically examines levels of employment and labour rights in the northern part of Mexico, especially in the maquiladora industry and in the informal economy, and draws particular attention to the impacts of the Treaty on women and children.

Findings include:

• with open borders and corruption at customs, there are no health inspections from imports from the US to Mexico, and Mexico has become the dustbin of the U.S. agri-food industry
• NAFTA has led to inefficient trading for consumers with great gains for intermediaries
• the commercial Agreements have had particularly discriminatory and negative effects on women, who find themselves obliged to work in maquilas in exhausting conditions, with long hours during the night, and very low pay
• clear evidence, either statistical or anecdotal, that indicates that the situation of children who are members of families in the lowest income brackets have benefited in any way from the implementation of the NAFTA
• many of the jobs created through NAFTA are of poor quality, many of them without social security or holidays, among other benefits prescribed by law
• the stagnation of salaries in the maquilas in recent years is evidence of the deterioration in the real purchasing power of the Mexican working class.

The paper also offers a number of recommendations. They include:

• a deep reform of the trade union model is necessary in order to eliminate corruption and to create an autonomous unionism that protects the rights of its members
• the Mexican government must reform the current labour law to ensure that workers are in fact protected and are able to meet a basic standard of living
• federal states have to guarantee that appropriate judicial organs apply labour law and enforce it effectively. In this regard, many obstacles can be stressed such as the cost of justice access, the lack of impartiality of the judicial component of the arbitration and reconciliation tribunals, and the lack of effective council
• employers must ensure an open workplace where monitoring groups have access and are able to speak with workers
• a large and participative debate to analyse the adopted development model and its implications for the full guarantee of human rights, and to consider alternatives to guarantee the primacy of international human rights treaties needs to be in place.

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