CAFTA debate: If this pact is such a good deal, who's the winner?

The Central American Free Trade Agreement is supposed to be a terrific deal for people like Juan Lopez.

Lopez was a community activist from the village of Xemal, Guatemala. According to President Bush and other CAFTA proponents, the corporate-friendly investment rules mandated by CAFTA will create a surge of prosperity in Guatemala and throughout Central America.

Even if this scenario comes to pass, it will not do Juan Lopez any good. He was shot to death by the Guatemalan army on March 15 when soldiers fired into a crowd of teachers, workers and farmers who were protesting against CAFTA.

The demonstration during which Lopez lost his life was part of a wave of protests throughout Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica in recent months.

Here in the U.S., union members, environmentalists and human rights activists have joined with our colleagues in Central America to oppose this badly flawed trade agreement.

CAFTA is patterned closely on NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States, which took effect 11 years ago. Just as with CAFTA, we were promised increased jobs, prosperity and economic growth throughout the continent.

It didn't turn out that way. Under NAFTA, the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico has exploded from $9 billion in 1993 to more than $111 billion in 2004. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost, and there is fierce pressure to lower the wages and benefits for those jobs that remain. Time and again, employers tell members of our union that unless we accept pay and benefit cuts, they will move work to Mexico.

Did Mexican workers benefit by winning the jobs lost by U.S. workers? Hardly.

Since NAFTA took effect, real wages in Mexico have fallen and poverty has increased. Small-scale farmers, swamped by imports from U.S. agribusiness, have been forced off their land and into Mexico's cities and industrial zones. But there aren't enough jobs to go around -- and those that are available don't pay very well.

With poverty and economic dislocation on the rise, many Mexicans feel they have no choice but to make the desperate, illegal journey north to the United States in search of work. The flow of illegal immigration to the U.S. from Mexico has doubled since 1994.

Having seen the disastrous results in Mexico, citizens in Central America are understandably skeptical about claims that CAFTA will improve their lives.

If the agreement does take effect, companies that have already transferred work from the U.S. to Mexico will be under more pressure to move to Central American countries. But Central American workers won't have a fair chance to enjoy the fruits of economic growth, because wages in the region are uniformly low, and protections for workers' rights can be almost non-existent.

If jobs in Mexico are moved to Central America, Mexico, in turn, will compete for even more jobs now located in the U.S. The end result is that workers throughout the hemisphere will be pushed into a merciless competition to see who can perform the most productive labor for the lowest possible wage.

In our global economy, the problems of poverty, low wages and lack of respect for workers' rights can not be isolated in any one country. Not long ago, for example, workers in a non-union U.S. auto parts plant told us that they had been forced to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, for three straight months.

Ninety days of 12-hour days without a single day off. This is the true face of NAFTA and CAFTA-style globalization. Not only are U.S. jobs being siphoned away into sweatshops overseas, but we are faced with sweatshop conditions here at home.

President Bush is still short of the majority needed to approve CAFTA in the U.S. House of Representatives. U.S. Rep. Bill Thomas, head of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, recently told a closed-door meeting of the House Republican caucus that the federal highway bill will not be voted on until after CAFTA, meaning that lawmakers who want to see roads, highways and bridges in their districts will be forced to support the administration's misguided trade agenda.

Similar bare-knuckled tactics have been used to ratify previous unpopular trade pacts.

But here in Missouri, U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau has not yet given in to such pressure. She is among the few members of Congress still undecided on CAFTA and is to be commended for taking the time to seriously evaluate this critical issue.

As she decides her vote on CAFTA in the coming days, I hope Representative Emerson remembers what Juan Lopez was fighting for on the day he died: fairness for workers and farmers, protection for the environment and cooperation across borders so we can raise living standards, not lower them.

Ron Gettelfinger is president of the United Auto Workers.