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.
