The Southern Common Market (Mercosur in
Spanish, Mercosul in Portuguese)-a regional
trade bloc comprised of Brazil, Argentina,
Paraguay and Uruguay-has been hailed by gov-
ernment and business leaders as a rousing success.
Over a four-year transitional period that ended on
December 31, 1994, negotiators dismantled 90%
of tariffs and non-tariff barriers between countries
in the bloc. During that time, trade among the
Mercosur nations quadrupled. In 1993 alone, com-
mercial transactions totaled $8 billion. In addi-
tion-unlike the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA)-Mercosur is a true customs
union with a common external tariff for goods
coming from nations outside the bloc.
Outside this strictly commercial area, however,
things have been much murkier. The Mercosur
countries are home to almost 90 million workers,
of whom 30%-according to the region’s
unions-are at best irregularly employed. Despite
this, labor questions have been relegated to the
sidelines in the negotiations. Workers, unions and
the issue of labor in general were excluded from
Mercosur’s founding Asunci6n Treaty of 1991 and
its accompanying protocols and annexes. At a
meeting in Sio Paulo in October, 1994, Vicente
Paulo “Vicentinho” da Silva, the president of
Brazil’s Unified Workers Central (CUT), called
attention to the “deficit that Mercosur has had
since its birth,” alluding to this marginalization of
workers.
Supporting the CUT president’s assertion, labor
lawyer Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, a participant in
the negotiations and the author of an upcoming
book on labor in the context of Mercosur, notes
that not a single union initiative was incorporated
in the documents issuing from the negotiations.
On the contrary, discussions during the transition-
al period centered around the nuts-and-bolts
problems of trade barriers and high tariffs block-
ing the customs union, while social and labor
issues were put on the back burner.
Marcelo Montenegro is associate editor of Cuadernos del
Tercer Mundo. Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
32NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32REPORT ON BRAZIL
Compared withe other integration
processes, such as the European
Union and NAFTA, Mercosur may not
be worse off from the point of view of
enforcing labor rights and protections.
But, as lawyer Teixeira Mendes points
out, both NAFTA and the accords of
the European Union at least have side
agreements which address labor con-
cerns. Mercosur has no such accompa-
nying accords.
Eleven working sub-groups were
established in 1991 to discuss the har-
monization of policies by sector. The
sub-group on labor issues created eight
commissions to study those topics con- The four mem
sidered fundamental to the well being Mercosurare
of workers, including collective bar- Paraguay and
gaining, worker training, health and
safety conditons, and rural labor. Their
recommendations fell, however, on deaf ears.
Mercosur’s government negotiators assert that
Mercosur is just a customs union and does not, for
now, contemplate the free circulation of workers in
the four member countries. As a consequence, the
negotiators simply ignored that topic, which was
excluded from the main agenda. The problem,
sources in all four countries agree, is that even if the
free circulation of labor does not formally exist on
paper in Mercosur, it does exist in practice in certain
sectors of the economy such as construction. In
Buenos Aires, Argentina and Punta del Este,
Uruguay, for example, construction companies have
been accused of illegally “importing” workers from
Brazil. Without work papers and outside the reach
of any legislation, these workers toil in conditions of
semi-slavery.
The South American unions recognize that the
integration processes set in motion by Mercosur
acutely affect the region’s workers and are provok-
ing drastic changes in the structures of production.
Since the clock cannot be set back, the unions are
clamoring for a seat at the negotiating table in
order to wield as much influence as possible over
future decisions.
At the annual summit of Mercosur presidents
held in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, in December,
1994, a new permanent governing
body-the Consultative Economic and Social Forum-was created that might open the door to wider negotiations. The forum gives unions and chambers
of commerce an institutional channel to make recommendations to the Common Market Group, one of Mer- cosur’s executive bodies. Even though the forum is merely consultative, union and business representatives welcomed its inclusion in the Ouro Preto Protocol. According to Celso Amorim, minister of foreign affairs in the Franco Admin-
r countries of istration, Mercosur’s delay in dealing “azil, Argentina, with social issues was a result of the ruguay. fast-track schedule of the Asunci6n Treaty which focused attention on meeting the deadlines for the imple- mentation of the customs union. With these targets now met, Amorim concludes, attention can shift to
social concerns. “This is not a definitive, closed
process,” he says. “It’s not like we’ve built the
house, and now no one can make any changes. The
house is going to be renovated and improved.”
At the Sao Paulo meeting, CUT president da Silva
said that until very recently the Latin American
unions were practically ghettoized in the negotia-
tion process, making it impossible for them to pres-
sure governments to adopt social and labor policies.
With the transition period over, labor unions and
other social actors are now turning up the heat.
At the Ouro Preto meeting, the unions persuad-
ed the governments of the region to promise that
the labor question would move to the top of Mer-
cosur’s agenda for 1995. They have redoubled their
calls for a Charter of Fundamental Principles, a
regional accord on basic health and safety work
standards, recognition of the right to union affilia-
tion, commissions of workers from multinational
companies, a regional labor tribunal, and the for-
mation of a support fund for “reconversion” and
professional reclassification. If the unions’ demands
still go unheeded, Mercosur’s “deficit from
birth”-in the words of da Silva-has the potential
to become a big headache for everyone in the
region.
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