REVIEWS

FREE TRADE AND THE FUTURE OF WOMEN'S WORK: MANUFACTURING AND SERVICE INDUSTRIES

Marjorie Griffin Cohen

Garamond Press, Toronto and the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, Ottawa, 1987

The publication of Marjorie Cohen's book couldn't be more timely, given the attention now being given to free trade in Canada. Cohen, an economist teaching women's studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, has pioneered work on women and free trade over the last few years, including writing briefs and background papers for the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. This recent book adds yet more substance to the debate.

    Cohen takes an anti-free trade position. She makes her arguments on many grounds but most importantly, given the focus of the study, on the negative impact such an agreement will have on women. She demonstrates this in an industry by industry examination of the two major sectors of the economy where women work: manufacturing and services.

     At one level, Cohen shows, the debate is over the scope and methodology used in the economic studies quoted by the proponents of free trade, notably the government itself. Government officials often refer to an econometric study by Harris and Cox published in the Canadian Journal of Economics. Yet that study predicts job expansion with free trade in the same industries for which all sector-by-sector analyses predict job losses. For those of us with serious qualms about the kind of data and assumptions that are used in such econometric studies, this comes as little surprise. However, such smugness is little consolation when the errors involved could have serious consequences for the Canadian economyand women in particular.

    Cohen argues that gains in the service sector are possibly the greatest drawing card for the United States in the free trade talks. Yet the MacDonald Commission, whose reports provided the major impetus for those talks, did not devote even one of its seventy-two, specially commissioned studies to the service sector. This was an extremely serious omission, Cohen writes. In fact, an Ontario study, done later to fill in the gap for the province, found that in the five service industries examined - banking, culture and broadcasting, investment dealing, telecommunication, and transportation - there would be no net benefits from free trade.

     In her analysis, Cohen examines the industries in which the majority of women work: textiles and clothing, food processing, electrical and electronics, and footwear industries in the manufacturing sector; data processing, transportation and public service industries in the service sector. She finds two major negative effects on women. First, contrary to what the government has said, there would be serious job losses. With the removal of the tariff between Canada and the United States, many industries or companies in these industries would be unable to compete against lower-cost producers across the border. And, if past experience is any guide, women will fare badly in any restructuring of industry. Given the levels of education of many immigrant and older workers it is unlikely they would be chosen for retraining schemes. Second, in those companies and industries not eliminated by free trade, increased competitive pressures would force employers to keep wage costs and fringe benefits as low as possible. This would effect not only wages but also working conditions, including health and safety, as employers cut costs in any way possible. These new competitive pressures would have broader implications as well. They could, in Cohen's words, "inhibit effective use of social policies to correct labor market inequalities between males and females." This could set Canadian women's progress back many years.

    It is to the credit of the Network Basics Series publishers that they have published the book. With the series' use in college and university courses, it should reach a wide audience. The result will be, we hope, that this important book will make the kind of impact on the free trade debate that these issues deserve.

Joan MacFarland is New Brunswick director of CCLOW.