http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/images/carrier.jpgNow back to NAFTA, and to the workers who lost their jobs and who decided to flip the middle finger to the Clintons. A disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with free trade. The free movement of people and goods should be a part of any intelligent international policy. But "free trade" has been a slogan applied to the machinations of industrial capital to drive down wages and erode working conditions. NAFTA represents a neoliberal perversion of free trade. Capital and industrial production move freely. Standards for wages and working conditions do not move freely. NAFTA has a toothless "side agreement" on labor rights. Here is an excerpt from an official U.S. government report on that agreement: "[NAFTA's] companion 'side agreement,' the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation . . . went into effect with NAFTA on January 1, 1994. . . . However, under NAALC, sanctions as an enforcement tool . . . are not applicable to three basic rights: the right to organize, bargain collectively, and strike." . . . As you can see, the non-enforcement relates to the most precious and historically effective weapons of workers -- the rights to organize, bargain, and strike. . . . NAFTA is not only a single episode; it represents a paradigm of the transnational assault on worker rights. The Clinton mantra was free trade and an open world. The goal and purpose was otherwise. We should not have been surprised.

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