Taking Note
FR
Workers of the World, UNITE! For every Mexican, Central American or Caribbean worker who migrates to the United States, another is hired by a U.S. firm that has migrated southward. Companies...
...In many Latin American countries, the legacy of U.S...
...apparel production...
...The labor movement has always called itself internationalist," says Mazur, "but now we are moving into a practical dimension of that term...
...employer in the maquila sector, recognized the union which had organized its workers, and pledged to negotiate a contract...
...The union, says UNITE's leader, has both a right and an obligation to help workers of all countries defend themselves against the depredations of transnational companies, especially when those countries are producing for the U.S...
...As UNITE follows the work to other countries, it concentrates on building public awareness and consumer solidarity back home, and on providing advice and support for host-country unions...
...The breakthrough came a few days later when Phillips Van Heusen, a major U.S...
...Not only cheap labor, but low (or no) taxes and tariffs, and lax (or no) health, safety and environmental regulations have attracted U.S...
...label in the Bonao free-trade zone...
...labor, environmental and other progressive activists over the past century...
...That contract was precedentsetting for the Dominican Republic...
...A new productive sector defined by a variety of easy-access arrangements with the United States (ranging from designated free-trade zones to in-bond maquila production) has attracted thousands of U.S...
...See "Union-Organizing Breakthroughs," p. 1.] The rest of Guatemala's 80,000 maquila workers, however, remain without labor contracts...
...In that year, a contract was signed with a small subcontractor for a U.S...
...Even so, the union always establishes a "strategic partnership" with a local union, frequently affiliated with the same international trade secretariat-in UNITE's case, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation, based in Brussels-so that the relation is clearly one of solidarity...
...The Teamsters, United Electrical Workers (UE), Communication Workers of America (CWA) and, among the most active in the free-trade zones, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), have established working relations with their counterparts abroad to deal with this internationalization of production...
...UNITE's concern is the half-million unorganized apparel workers in Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico working for companies that sell exclusively to the U.S...
...But union officials say that when they get attacked these days it is not from the left but from the right, and, they emphasize, the attacks are not meant to defend sovereignty but to neutralize attempts to organize...
...As transnational capital increasingly considers the globe its home, labor is following suit...
...Since it was signed, seven new collective-bargaining agreements have been reached, covering 3,000 workers in that country...
...This past March, the union held a meeting at its New York headquarters to announce its support for local organizing drives in Central America and the Caribbean-particularly Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic...
...Once again, the union is catching up-this time internationally...
...market they would have if they were still producing in New Jersey or North Carolina...
...International organization and pressure is the key," says Mazur...
...Companies in virtually all industries have discovered that geographical mobility can have substantial payoffs, and have become adept at playing desperately poor countries and workers off against one another, convincing their hosts (and workforce) that awful jobs are better than none...
...In the free-trade zones of the Dominican Republic-in which 140,000 out of 170,000 workers are in the apparel industry-there was not a single agreement until 1994...
...union--even a union as progressive as UNITE-to shake off...
...For a century, the union's precursors-the ILGWU and the ACTWU-have "followed the work," as manufacturers and their subcontractors, or "jobbers," tried to escape union jurisdiction by moving further and further from the city...
...The sobering news for these companies is that U.S...
...firms to areas in the Caribbean and Central America, as well as-of course-to Mexico...
...In turn, a number of "free-trade" agreements have given those firms the same access to the lucrative U.S...
...While New Jersey and Pennsylvania were once considered foreign territory for the apparel unions, the past few decades have considerably broadened the industry's geographic scope...
...market...
...unions are beginning to follow the work to other countries...
...UNITE has deep roots in New York City, the old center of U.S...
...market...
...There is not a single collective-bargaining agreement in a maquiladora in Guatemala," UNITE president Jay Mazur told those assembled, "but we are hopeful there will soon be a breakthrough...
...It is a development well worth watching...
...Laws have to follow trade, and follow work...
...firms to areas of the world not covered by the gains won by U.S...
...domination is a hard one for a U.S...
Vol. 30 • May 1997 • No. 6
