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Tomato Imports Deal Reached by U.S. and Mexico

February 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The United States and Mexico have reached a tentative agreement on cross-border trade in tomatoes, narrowly averting a trade war that threatened to engulf a swath of American businesses.

The agreement, reached late Saturday, raises the minimum sales price for Mexican tomatoes in the United States, aims to strengthen compliance and enforcement, and increases the types of tomatoes governed by the bilateral pact to four from one.

“The draft agreement raises reference prices substantially, in some cases more than double the current reference price for certain products, and accounts for changes that have occurred in the tomato market since the signing of the original agreement,” Francisco J. Sánchez, the United States under secretary of commerce for international trade, said in a statement.

The agreement will be open for public comment until Feb. 11. The Commerce Department estimated it would take effect March 4.

Estimates are that nearly half of tomatoes eaten in the United States come from Mexico. Last fall Florida tomato growers asked the Commerce Department to end a 16-year-old agreement that had suspended an antidumping investigation that began in the mid-1990s. The agreement had been amended several times over the years, but Florida growers contended it set the minimum price of Mexican tomatoes so low that the Florida growers could not compete.

The Florida growers said the new agreement addressed their three main concerns: pricing of Mexican tomatoes, the number of growers covered and enforcement.

“We believe that the Department of Commerce and Mexico have struck a deal that meets those three tests, and we’re hopeful and optimistic that we’ll be able to compete under fair trade conditions,” Edward Beckman, president of Certified Greenhouse Farmers, a trade association, said in a statement. “Much work remains to have the agreement fully and faithfully implemented, and continuous monitoring and enforcement will be critical.”

Martin Ley, a Mexican tomato producer who was on the negotiating team, said the agreement required significant concessions from the growers he represents.

“Even though no dumping or injury to the U.S. industry was demonstrated by our competitors, over the last year our growers worked with our government to overhaul the whole Mexican industry, broaden the coverage and develop tough enforcement schemes,” Mr. Ley said.

He said the agreement will be discussed by more than 600 Mexican growers this week. “While concessions on price will impose hardships on our industry, we are hopeful that over the long run we will be able to continue to supply the United States with what are acknowledged to be the best tomatoes in the market,” Mr. Ley said.

The new agreement covers all fresh and chilled tomatoes, excluding those intended for use in processing like canning and dehydrating, and in juices, sauces and purées.

It raises the basic floor price for winter tomatoes to 31 cents a pound from 21.69 cents — higher than the price the Mexicans were proposing in October — and establishes even higher prices for specialty tomatoes and tomatoes grown in controlled environments. The Mexicans have invested billions in greenhouses to grow tomatoes, while Florida tomatoes are largely picked green and treated with a gas to change their color.

The Mexican and United States governments will both carry out mechanisms to increase enforcement of the new agreement.

The dispute unfolded in the heated politics surrounding the presidential election, with Mexican growers charging that the Commerce Department was courting voters in the important swing state of Florida. Instead, the timing of the negotiations ensured that the government could win those votes and bring the controversy to a conclusion satisfactory to the Mexicans after the election was over.

The Mexicans enlisted roughly 370 American businesses, including Wal-Mart Stores and meat and vegetable producers, to argue their cause. Those businesses feared a bitter trade war like the one the Mexicans waged over trucking, which imposed stiff tariffs on American goods headed south.

If the old agreement had expired, it would effectively have led to the resumption of the antidumping investigation, and so Mexico fought hard for a new agreement, offering to substantially raise the minimum price and increase the number of Mexican growers covered by it.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/business/united-states-and-mexico-reach-deal-on-tomato-imports.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Autoworkers’ Early Vote on Ford Contract Is Negative

October 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

With voting completed Thursday at plants that account for roughly 20 percent of Ford’s 41,000 members of the United Automobile Workers union, the four-year tentative contract had been rejected by about 55 percent, the union said on a Facebook page dedicated to its negotiations with the company.

In the last couple of days, 63 percent of workers at two big assembly plants in Michigan and Illinois voted against the deal even though it promised larger bonuses and more new jobs than contracts negotiated with General Motors and Chrysler.

Workers have indicated that they are most upset that the contract keeps wages frozen for those on the traditional pay scale, particularly in light of bonuses given to top Ford executives as the company, the country’s second-largest automaker, has rebounded from the recession. Many are also upset that people hired in the last few years will continue to be paid much lower wages, though the second-tier pay scale was increased by several dollars an hour in the new contract.

“I’m fairly confident that Ford can afford to pay us more,” said Gary Walkowicz, an opponent of the deal who works at a Ford plant near the company’s headquarters in Dearborn, Mich. “We’ll be talking about more than 10 years without a raise by the end of this contract.”

The surprising early showing against the contract prompted the U.A.W. to alert union locals to begin preparations for a strike as soon as next week if the tentative agreement failed to pass. Voting will continue through Tuesday.

“This will be our next course of action if the tentative national agreement is rejected,” Keith W. Brown, president of U.A.W. Local 245 in Dearborn wrote in a blog posted Thursday.

Mr. Brown, who represents workers in Ford’s research and engineering departments, added that he was “still hopeful that we will not need to strike.”

Some workers opposing the deal say union leaders are merely raising the possibility of a strike to scare more of its members into ratifying the deal.

And some labor experts said the big payouts to Ford’s senior management — its executive chairman, William Clay Ford Jr., and chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, each received $26 million in compensation last year — might be stirring up a protest vote at the first plants to cast ballots. Postings on the union’s Facebook pages have criticized the paychecks of “greedy” executives and empathized with the protests on Wall Street about compensation in the financial services industry.

“There’s no question the executive salaries played into this,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “It sets the wrong tone and invites comparison to the issues on Wall Street.”

The U.A.W.’s president, Bob King, and his aides were pushing hard for workers in other large plants to support the contract and counteract the negative vote received thus far.

In previous contracts, union members have occasionally rejected agreements early in the process, only to have the last voting factories support the deal overwhelmingly. A big swing factor could be the voting that concludes this weekend at Local 600 in Michigan, which represents about 6,000 workers at Ford’s Rouge assembly complex.

“The early votes tend to reflect anger over what’s not in the contract,” said Mr. Shaiken. “The later votes tend to reflect a more realistic view that this is the agreement they are going to get.”

Ford is the only American auto company that the U.A.W. can strike during this round of contract talks, but both the company and the union have indicated little interest in a showdown. Beyond a strike, if the ratification should fall short, the two sides could hold further talks, or Ford could impose a lockout on the union workers.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c71341b63c299aa0c853f734ebd8db65

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Chrysler Is Last to Reach Deal With Union

October 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The union said Chrysler, which went through bankruptcy protection in 2009, also committed to investing $4.5 billion to retool plants for new models. It planned to lay out more details of the proposed contract, which covers 26,000 workers, at a news conference later Wednesday.

“This agreement is the latest in a remarkable turnaround for Chrysler,” General Holiefield, the U.A.W. vice president in charge of negotiations with Chrysler, said in a statement. “Chrysler has turned the corner and with this agreement will continue to move forward. It’s a new day at Chrysler.”

Chrysler, the smallest of the three Detroit automakers, was the last to reach a deal with the U.A.W. Negotiations there were the most difficult, as Chrysler executives took a hard line against any increase in labor costs.

The union last month ratified a new contract with General Motors that creates or retains 6,400 jobs. Workers at the Ford Motor Company began voting this week on a tentative agreement, reached Oct. 4, that adds 12,000 jobs. Both deals follow the same basic framework, giving workers signing bonuses of at least $5,000, raising entry-level wages and moving work from other countries, including Mexico, to American plants.

 “Together with the jobs created in suppliers and other businesses supported by auto manufacturing, a total of 180,000 jobs will be added to the country’s battered economy” if the Ford and Chrysler agreements are approved, U.A.W. President Bob King said in the statement. The 180,000 includes the new G.M. jobs.

G.M. has said its new contract increases labor costs by just 1 percent annually, an amount that prompted Standard Poor’s to upgrade G.M.’s credit rating. Ford and Chrysler were waiting until their deals are ratified before discussing them in more detail.

Chrysler’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, last week described the G.M. and Ford deals as “overly generous.” Chrysler was the only one of the Detroit companies to lose money in 2010 — $652 million — but it has since repaid $7.5 billion in high-interest government loans that were its largest hindrance to profitability.

Ford workers were scheduled to finish voting on their contract next week. The first big plant to vote, a compact-car assembly plant in suburban Detroit, narrowly rejected the deal Tuesday. Some Ford workers have complained that they deserved larger bonuses or a pay raise, which they have not received since 2003.

“I have no doubt in my mind that the agreement will pass,” Jimmy Settles, the U.A.W. vice president in charge of negotiations with Ford, said in an interview Saturday.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=57b43610760406a3a5bf2e35832dc83e

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