HIT & RUN U.S. Runaway Shops On the Mexican Border
Baird, Peter & Caughan, Ed Mc.
In the mid-1960s, competition from the rising economies of Europe and particularly Japan forced many labor-intensive, non-monopolistic U.S. industries to flee abroad in search of cheaper labor....
...metropolis, and this dependency was only accentuated under the BIP...
...in the border towns in Texas and New Mexico...
...I might as well roll up my sack and cross as an illegal...
...electronics firms and is subject to all of the erratic changes in the U.S...
...Teresa, maquiladora worker As early as 1969, observers were claiming that the Border Industrialization Program, in effect, had ceded the northern border to the U.S...
...into integrated processes of production and foreign market conditions over which the Mexican Government has no control . .. if maquiladoras should disappear from the border area, the parks in which they are located would become industrial ghost towns...
...The last few years have seen the growth of struggles for union democratization, increased cooperation between students and workers, and the formation of several progressive parties active in border areas...
...1,613,000 Ciudad Juarez 96 21,442,720 43,532,160 22,862,880 12,058 188,000 424,000 Palomas n.d...
...and Mexican workers.28 workers, leadership from women and third world workers and the fight for union democracy...
...Emphasis added...
...each day to buy groceries...
...2 4 Between 1940 and 1960, while the total agricultural labor force grew by 60%, the number of landless laborers increased by 74%.25 But the growth of employment opportunities in the agricultural sector has fallen far short of the growth of the agricultural work force...
...It was very small and there couldn't be any overlap, so she would get these terrible headaches...
...Nuevo Laredo is controlled by two interrelated powers, the C.T.M...
...25/26, 1974...
...So bK being able to stay alive, I think we provide jobs, American jobs...
...A severance pay of roughly one month for temporary workers and three months for permanent workers is required by law, but even this is sometimes circumvented by the companies...
...economy...
...In December, the company sent letters to 500 "confianza" (supervisory and secretarial) workers instructing them to sign a voluntary resignation, in exchange for which they would receive total indemnization...
...So the political climate is extremely good...
...8. Donald W. Baerresen, The Border Industrialization Program of Mexico, p. xii, D. C. Heath Company, 1971...
...Not only did it meet the "needs" of labor intensive multinationals, it also seemed to solve some political problems...
...operates a railway along the border which services the BIP industries...
...30, 1974...
...In the early 1960s landless peasants and farm workers in the north and other parts of Mexico attacked rural military outposts and conducted sporadic invasions of private landownings, often leading to bloody clashes with federal troops...
...Embassy, State Department Airgram # A-478...
...Personal relationships between maquiladora managers and Mexican Government officials are likewise seen as good for business...
...3. U.S...
...p. 70...
...Chinese, Japanese and Pilipinos (sic) face both racial and sexual discrimination...
...Construction: This is probably the one industry that has been spurred by the growth of the BIP, as industrial parks and other facilities have been constructed, many at the expense of the Mexican Government...
...And after he told me that he planned to become the governor of that state, sure enough he became the governor...
...The number of workers entering the Southwest illegally during the period of the Bracero program is indicated by the numbers of deportations of illegal entrants: from 6,082 in 1941, to 101,478 in 1946 to over a million in 1954.20 For the growers the program was a dream - a seemingly endless army of cheap, unorganized workers, brought efficiently to their doorstep by the government...
...2 In Tijuana alone the end of the Bracero Program left a backlog of 50,000 applicants, many of them with families, waiting for permanent working-papers to allow them employment in the United States...
...2 2 And what will happen to these workers now...
...Over the past couple of years, dozens of strikes have broken out in maquiladoras along the border...
...As a result of the growers' active recruitment, the number of Japanese residents in California grew from only 86 in 1882 to more than 72,000 by 1910.10 Many of the Japanese farm workers had been small farmers themselves before immigrating, and in large numbers they slowly moved out of wage labor and into farming their own lands...
...Matamoros nal Chihuahua Brassier Ciudad Juarez cents Corp...
...Though these increases have barely kept pace with inflation and are still far less than wages in the United States, North American companies in Mexico feel that "Mexican labor today - as did U.S...
...A Chicano local organizer for the United Electrical Workers (UE) in Los Angeles well acquainted with the runaway shop spoke of some of the changes occurring in the North American labor movement: We're in a crisis right now because there is no stability in the labor movement, and the unions allow the companies to make superprofits, help the American industry monopolize and have a harder grip on foreign and domestic workers...
...Jung Sai), beginning the longest strike in Chinese American history...
...labor movement that defines its interests alongside those who are fighting U.S...
...After two successful strikes and subsequent wage increases - despite constant threats that Mextel would close down rather than meet any further demands - the final confrontation between the company and union began in late November 1974...
...NACLA interview with Richard Ives, Feb...
...As early as 1882 they already had pushed through legislation prohibiting further Chinese immigration into California...
...The workers refused, although a week later the union representative signed an agreement approving the firing of 375 of the 500 without severance pay, back wages, and other benefits due...
...is If by the late thirties, some employers were talking about dangerous excesses of labor in the Southwest, 1 6 the United States' sudden entry into World War II dramatically changed the tide once again...
...The following case study of recent actions by the three largest maquiladoras in Nuevo Laredo - Videocraft, Sarkes-Tarzian, and Transitron - will illustrate the strategy of the "runaway shop" in the face of an economic downturn and labor militancy...
...If we're allowed to operate in Morelos - where we have an independent [read company] union - with no problems, then a year from now we'll pay another third of the termination, and in two years, we'll pay it off totally...
...2, 1967...
...SARKES-TARZIAN Sarkes-Tarzian Mexicana, a subsidiary of Sarkes-Tarzian of Bloomington, Indiana, has been manufacturing TV tuners in Nuevo Laredo since 1966...
...In May, plant manager Dan Romo indicated that the company has no intention of paying severance or back wages to the 1,600 workers laid off in the previous year and that the company was pressing for a contract similar to the one signed by Videocraft and Sarkes-Tarzian: If you discussed this type of contract a year ago, they'd put up the [strike] flags and close it down...
...At a time of economic recession in both countries - and with deportations of Mexican workers from the United States expected to reach one million in 1975 - increased immigration will place enormous responsibility on struggling unions in both the U.S...
...San Francisco Chronicle, July 13, 1975...
...The Border Industrialization Program (BIP) was created, allowing entirely foreign-owned corporations to set up labor-intensive assembly shops within a 121/2 1-mile strip south of the international border, pay Mexican workers a fraction of the U.S...
...In an effort to further protect Sarkes' investments in their Piedras Negras and Allende plants, plant manager Tom Erwin re-incorporated the Nuevo Laredo firm under the name Sel-Mex...
...yet more immigrants continued to arrive daily from central Mexico...
...The mood of striking workers was more subdued than it had been last December...
...But, he gloated, "it'll take a year for it to go through the courts, and after a year there's nobody that's going to buy this kind of equipment down 6. The absence of any exchange control on capital transfers...
...And so the "Mexican border" is moving south, to central Mexico, and even more to Central America and the Caribbean - where governments ask even less of the multinationals in exchange for governmentfinanced infrastructure, giveaway tax exemptions, and "incentive" legislation, where labor is cheaper and less organized, and where living standards and popular expectations are lower...
...p. 19...
...25 Code...
...The C.T.M...
...However, it is an industry subject to all the drastic fluctuations in the American market...
...3, 1975...
...Compared to the electronics plants, the garment shops are much smaller, rarely employing more than 50 workers, and have a larger percentage of Mexican capital...
...with the land and raw materials...
...In fact, as one writer noted, By the time of the conflict in 1848, the economic border - the front lines of contact between two predominant modes of production [capitalist and semi-feudal] had been lowered close to what the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo would declare as the official international boundary line...
...The Burke-Hartke bill prompted a well-financed and systematic counterattack from powerful corporations and business organizations most dependent upon foreign investment.* The essence of their argument was that a "healthy" U.S...
...imperialism (monopolistic capitalism), which have created along the border rapidly growing centers of unemployed men and women, living at the beck and call of the companies...
...n.d...
...Expansion, April 16, 1975, "Las interrogantes de las Maquiladoras," p. 60...
...multinationals to the relatively low wages of assembly workers in the United States, the "Buy American" campaign fanned the fires of racism and national chauvinism by putting the blame on "cheap foreign labor...
...cities in 1971 and 1972 to protest the flight of jobs...
...Haiti, by contrast, offers the following advantages: "1...
...Cam Duncan, Economic Relations on the United States-Mexico Border, p. 72, unpub...
...In addition to the fact that at least $36 million in profits and other payments by maquiladoras left Mexico in 1974 alone, 6 foreign control of the border industries has far-reaching implications for the direction of economic development in the area...
...Doubleday & Co., Garden City, N.Y., 1970...
...Labor rates overseas have been increasing much faster than in the United States...
...Labor Department Statistics, U.S...
...and limits foreign participation to 49 percent in other important industries...
...workers who lost their jobs by making it easier for them to collect state unemployment...
...controls the state's sorghum industry, automobile and beer distributorships, and the nationwide banking chain Banco Longoria...
...exports and whip foreign competition into line, apparently in the hopes of sustaining the wages of the highest paid workers...
...So why don't you go home then...
...There are but two scenarios for the future of men and women along the border...
...9,760 n.d...
...the guy tells him 'This is what I want to do.' You're not actually telling him to break the law, but he's going to go and do it for you...
...Cam Duncan interview with Lloyd Keplinger, June 27, 1975...
...On the top level are the offices of the U.S...
...economy under capitalism cannot exist without foreign investment...
...Most active in fighting the legislation were the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce of the U.S., the Emergency Committee for American Trade and the American Importers Association...
...p. 125...
...4. A stable Government does exist, with a healthy and positive attitude toward American investment and Americans in general...
...Well, of course we didn't know them, so we kicked them out and put our workers in...
...New York Times, Sept...
...Common Sense, March 1975...
...and Mexican governments, U.S...
...Now it's easier to sit down and find a solution...
...2 S The Mexican Government continues a "nothing is too good for the maquiladora companies" attitude...
...But in the factory we don't have this protection...
...p. 36...
...In Mexico's northern Pacific coast area, where 1/3 of all the country's irrigated lands are found and wage laborers represent nearly 2/3 of the agricultural workforce, 2 7 the penetration of U.S...
...Cam Duncan, op...
...4 In 1963, widespread discontent fostered the formation of a left-wing peasant confederation near the border, the Central Campesina Independiente (CCI), largely to pose a radical alternative to the government-dominated peasant union...
...NACLA interview with Fidel Valdez, Feb...
...2 55,920 511,360 254,240 140 28,000 64,000 Chihuahua n.d...
...After a year some of the companies gave a bonus, but most of the girls didn't last that long, and those that did had to get glasses to help their failing eyes...
...Part III of the bill dealt most directly with the problem of U.S...
...This is particularly true of the smaller firms which do not have the maneuverability of the large multinationals...
...NACLA interview with Humberto Camacho, Feb...
...companies themselves are represented...
...had initiated a less ambitious but equally hopeful border program, called Programa Nacional Fronterizo (PRONAF...
...2 6 These men and women have become Mexico's reserve army of unemployed, thousands of them migrating to the cities in search of industrial employment...
...to integrate it with the rest of our territory...
...2): Secretaria de Industria y Comercio, in Mexican-American Review, March 1975...
...corporations moved so much of their manufacturing overseas for the purpose of exporting back to the American market...
...1975...
...Before going to Mexico, Sarkes had established assembly operations in low-wage areas of Tennessee and Arkansas...
...3, 1975...
...Journal of Developing Areas, July 1970, p. 501...
...companies rank with these in importance though fewer workers: Hughes Aircraft, Levi-Strauss, Kayser-Roth, etc...
...Since large numbers of workers are concentrated in assembly, this is the area which is removed from the parent plant...
...companies have turned the vegetable industry into "one of the most mechanized of the area" with an "increasing trend" toward use of capital, even on the smaller farms...
...foreign investment (including sections 806.30 and 807 of the Tariff * Aft& Dubinsky purged the communists and gained control of the 450,000 member ILGWU in 1932, he preached harmony of labor and management for 37 years until his retirement...
...Most of the maquiladoras on the border are getting away with many things they couldn't do in the U.S...
...Unemployment along the border has been particularly high among males who find few job opportunities in the maquiladoras...
...When Griffith is not supervising Mexican women on the Mexicali assembly lines, he offers his time as sheriff's deputy in the Imperial Valley surrounding Calexico, where law enforcement officers are consistently used to break the U.F.W.-led strikes of farm workers who are predominantly Mexican...
...Erwin said it would have cost the company $800,000 to indemnify the remaining 600 workers and $200,000 in bribes to get their equipment out of Mexico...
...3, 1975...
...Powerful enough to ensure that his "friends" in the union received well-paid jobs and other favors, Perez Ibarra is considered to be a "charro," or labor bureaucrat, of the first order...
...Tijuana's population has mushroomed from roughly 20,000 in 1940 to 165,000 by 1960, and is projected to top 604,000 by 1980.30 Mexicali's population more than doubled between 1950 and 1970, while Ciudad Juarez has had a population growth of 700% in the past thirty years...
...Like the Bracero Program, the BIP also makes it relatively simple for employers to discard workers as soon as they are no longer needed...
...leader in Nuevo Laredo since 1956...
...Tariff Code (articles 806.30 and 807), through which U.S.-owned corporations can re-import certain items assembled in their foreign plants free of duty except on the value added by foreign labor...
...Mexican Newsletter, op...
...21, 1974...
...And as a tightly-knit ethnic group, they began to organize effectively for higher wages...
...Sooner or later there will be A former Mextel employee (r...
...It has already shown its willingness to sell out the country's workers in order to keep the companies in Mexico...
...But most simply maintained close contact between the Mexican assembly plant and the U.S...
...town of Calexico and rides his bicycle to and from the factory across the border...
...In no other industry have U.S...
...3 The maquiladoras contributed about $443 million in value added to Mexico's exports in 1974, about six percent of the nation's total exports of goods and services...
...Unlike the other immigrant groups, the large majority of the Mexicans never became citizens and did not remain in the United States...
...But we had to leave that work during the period of Lyndon Johnson because they sent salty waters over here and it ruined the lands...
...In the first half of 1974, stocks of several of the major electronics firms increased by 140 percent...
...investigate the problems of the maquiladoras, and their report, widely publicized in the Mexican press, was that Mexican labor was "killing the goose...
...Rank and file workers have responded to the runaway strategy with protests and strikes, often sporadic and shortlived but other times with effective organization...
...This process reveals the unity of imperialism...
...Workers arrived at the Mextel plant in Mexicali one day in 1970 to find that the company had signed a "sweetheart" contract with CTM officials in Mexico City, without the workers' knowledge...
...17, 1971...
...Just the reverse is true of the wetbacks...
...Secretaria de Industria y Comercio, Perfil Economico de la Peninsula de Baja California, Mexico, Dec...
...McNally & Loftin, Santa Barbara, 1964...
...See "Country-Hopping") Packard-Bell and Magnavox have both closed their border operations and moved to Taiwan.19 Wherever their new destination, the companies are in agreement on the source of the problem in Mexico...
...In this area of high unemployment, the large U.S...
...They give ten minutes for the latecomers, but after that they send us home...
...Down below Teresa and 600 women and men assemble transistors, tubes, fuses, and hundreds of tiny wires into circuit boards that move down long conveyor belts...
...The integrated circuit is the heart of modern electronic equipment and is found all over the "modern home...
...What will I do...
...At the Tijuana plant of Solitron, U.S...
...In other situations, deportations had been difficult because the temporarily superfluous labor force would be needed again once the crisis was over.14 But Mexicans have always been right next door to the United States and could be brought back easily...
...However, the political climate has recently become overcast by rank and file-led strikes and slowdowns along the border...
...1 7 In 1942, the U.S...
...In March, Sarkes manager Tom Erwin explained, the market collapsed and the company considered closing the plant...
...industries in Mexico...
...Ibid...
...cit.30 ELECTRONICS 1. Direccion General de Estadistica, Secretaria de Industria y Comercio, Zona Fronteriza Norte de Mexico: Viabilidad Industrial, p. 99, Mexico, 1974...
...3. Interview by Runaway Shop Project, U.C...
...truckers be allowed to deliver directly to the plants...
...since the AFL and the CIO joined forces in 1955, union membership27 dropped from 35 percent of the non-farm workforce to about 27 percent...
...By October 1974, several companies had already closed down operations on the border and others were laying off large numbers of workers...
...The action was a crucial step toward the building of a farm workers' union in the United States, but its impact on the border was immediate and dramatic...
...Arriving at the electronics shop - a large, grey building of corrugated steel - they laugh with a dozen other young girls and wait for the siren blast which orders the morning shift to work...
...6 By 1850 the stage was nearly set for the rapid capitalist development which was to take place in the western areas of the United States...
...At a different level, the proximity to the United States permits the U.S...
...In the agreement, each worker received one month's pay, about $160, rather than their full indemnification, which would have amounted to an average of $1200 per person...
...1 3 SINCE WE'RE NEIGHBORS...
...Nine or ten hours a day they work hunched over often obsolete sewing machines in dilapidated and dimly lit sheds that have neither heating during the winter nor air conditioning during the summer - a contrast to the antiseptic atmosphere of the larger U.S...
...While some companies are moving to the interior of Mexico, others are talking of Asia, Central America and the Caribbean...
...It's not a choice of building a product in the United States or going to Taiwan or some other area to try to find cheap labor...
...The remaining workers are "temporary," and earn no seniority regardless of the length of their employment...
...Government to "induce" corporations to expand along the border.' Shortly afterwards Johnson created a joint border commission and named as U.S...
...This latter fact has also helped solve the industry's problem of boredom and high turnover rates among U.S...
...Employment is also affected by the rapidly changing technology of the electronics industry in general, as new products are constantly being developed and others eliminated...
...industries facing competition from lower-cost products of Europe and especially Japan...
...n.d...
...90,000 Mexicali 67 5,127,520 28,966,800 18,128,640 7,738 174,000 396,000 Tecate 10 479,440 2,253,760 1,590,000 823 8,000 18,000 Tijuana 96 3,877,120 26,580,320 17,063,200 7,233 154,000 341,000 Sonora 54 7,618,880 35,231,920 20,767,840 11,157 290,000 1,099,000 Agua Prieta 10 595,680 6,160,080 3,649,280 2,653 10,000 23,000 Nogales 42 6,912,160 28,560,480 16,864,320 8,364 24,000 53,000 San Luis R.C...
...By 1880, Chinese workers represented between 1/3 and 2/3 of the state's agricultural labor forces and became "a despised minority employed at sub-subsistence wages" by the California growers.9 By the 1890s, however, the effects of the first great depression were being felt strongly in California, by small manufacturers and farmers as well as by labor...
...A few years from now, when their eyesight begins to fail from the strain of their work on the assembly line, they may be back in the fields, or in the streets selling trinkets to the tourists...
...and Secretaria de Industria y Comercio, (SIC), Zona Fronteriza Norte de Mexico: Viabilidad Industrial, Mexico, 1974...
...For example, Arthur D. Little's Richard Bolin, who was instrumental in designing Puerto Rico's "Operation Bootstrap" more than 15 years ago, was the Mexican government consultant in setting up the BIP and served as chairman of the Maquiladora Advisory Council of the AmCham in Mexico...
...Clearly the first option in many border workers' minds is to cross into the United States, where they will join the thousands of unorganized workers so often abused and manipulated by agribusiness and industry...
...6. Maquiladora Newsletter, op...
...supplied half of the BIP jobs...
...Mexico, the ever reliable "good neighbor," was one of the countries singled out as a prime site for these runaway industries...
...In the Baja California towns of Mexicali and Tijuana, employment in the U.S.-owned plants is down by more than 30 percent.' And when Mextel - the Mattel Toys subsidiary in Mexicali - closed down in February of this year, nearly 3,000 workers were left jobless...
...Although the railroads in Mexico have long been nationalized, a 1966 report by Arthur D. Little noted that Southern Pacific Co...
...Many of the plants inside the industrial parks operate under a special system by which Mexican customs inspections of raw materials and finished products are done at the plant site itself...
...consulting firm Arthur D. Little outlined a strategy by which the reserve army of labor could be further expanded: The present industrial labor pool of about 25,000 (in Tijuana, Ensenada, Tecate area) can increase rapidly several-fold through greater use of female labor (only 1/5 of the labor pool is female at present), through the conversion to industrial work of low income agricultural and commercial labor, and through the attraction of further immigration from central Mexico.' 5 THE TOP 25 (Maquiladoras with more than 500 workers - 1973)* U.S...
...COMPANY American Hospit Audio Magnetics Burroughs Coilcraft Electronic Contr Essex Internatioj Figure Flattery I General Instrum Globe Union Griffith Electric GTE Sylvania IBA, Inc...
...As one author who has seen the border from both sides suggested, "Today, it is on the international level that a working class strategy must look for the 'weakest link in the chain' of imperialism...
...The majority of our parts come from Japan...
...components processed abroad and re-exported to the United States, sending nearly $450 million in "added-value" to the U.S...
...Ibid...
...4. Cam Duncan interview with Robert Boysen, July 1, 1975...
...The anger of thousands of garment and electronics workers who had seen their jobs taken abroad was thus given an outlet, but the AFL-CIO leaders who ran the campaign channeled their frustrations in the wrong direction...
...Profit remittances and other payment abroad estimated by taking known ratio of these to added value...
...Before closing down their Mexicali plant, Mattel employed 10,000 workers worldwide at peak season...
...These girls are very accurate...
...Bolin's vision is "international": for him, it is simply a question of where the average hourly cost per worker is lowest...
...Much of the above information on Perez Ibarra and the Longorias comes from the magazinePunto Critico, No...
...1975...
...If the maquiladora workers lose their fight, so do we, and if we should lose it will also be their loss...
...Government was the so-called "wetback problem...
...7. Mackinnon, op...
...Transportation: Most of the cargo is carried to and from the border by U.S...
...and Mexican companies, through which North American corporations have retained control of the Mexican economy while using Mexican capital...
...an effective strategy against the runaway shop will not come from a fossilized AFL-CIO union bureaucracy...
...p. 23...
...It would not be the last time that the AFL-CIO would raise the threat of protective legislation (several such bills are now pending in Congress),1 0 but for the time being, they had proved just how far they would go in opposing what business thought was good for the nation...
...1 2 The anti-labor cynicism and racism seems all the greater contrasted to the hope and solidarity bred by current organizing struggles...
...The realization that the family unit was not enough to defend oneself against the abuses of the companies and the staggering inflation which continues to undercut their living standard, led many workers to organize into unions...
...Seventeen pro-Perez Ibarra workers at Videocraft Mexicana (a subsidiary of Pemcor, Inc., of Chicago) petitioned the Labor Arbitration Board to hold a new union election and were quickly fired by the new union leadership...
...The report noted "frictions" caused by unemployment and trade restrictions and advised that the key to solving the border problem was "increased employment with private industry," and urged the U.S...
...The pressures are coming from these domestic companies which have the shelter of these big cereal companies over them...
...Attitudes expressed by the Mextel strikers are indicative of the developing consciousness of workers along the border...
...5. Shipping facilities are excellent...
...Ibid...
...Chief among these was the availability of unorganized, low-cost labor...
...The experience of the Mexican border is important not only for what it shows about the consequences of such investments in underdeveloped nations, but also for the lessons the runaway shop provides U.S...
...Under the new rules of the game: - The dismissal of "inefficient" workers without severance pay is to be permitted...
...9. Ibid...
...corporations abroad...
...8 * Though even in the more progressive unions men still often dominate the leadership, women - who make up nearly 90 percent of the maquiladora workforce - have taken on an increasingly important role in recent years...
...levels.' 3 (According to the manager of Zenith's assembly plant in Matamoros, even with the wage hikes the company still saves $7.5 million a year by being in Mexico...
...9. Newsweek, Jan...
...5. NACLA interview with Richard Ives, Feb...
...al., El Perfil de Mexico en 1980, Vol...
...The plant reopened in January on a 3-day work week...
...Some U.S.-owned plants fire workers who make more than three errors in a day.15 'I A - UWVImTmI TTT AVTAW7E - ItL'MAILFi .. I J. - LU . I.'W.LI D0 From Manhattan to the Rio Grande The owner of the small Calexico garment shop stared from behind his horn-rimmed glasses at the reporters who had asked too many questions about the garment industry...
...Firms Cross the Border...
...However, where renting was undesirable and control of property was more important, American corporations frequently utilized two methods to gain more control of land and buildings...
...jobs at all if it were not for foreign investment and the cheaper labor available abroad...
...businessmen from industrial development committees and chambers of commerce from nearby U.S...
...That way, should he ever wish to close down Sel-Mex, the other Sarkes plants would not be vulnerable to embargo...
...p. 129...
...But the crucial factor in the eyes of those companies deciding to pull out of the border is labor...
...Rodolfo Stavenhagen, "Social Aspects of Agrarian Structure in Mexico," in R. Stavenhagen (ed...
...Estimated using ratio of payments abroad to value added, as determined in Maquiladora Newsletter, October, 1974...
...Chui used to work with her family picking cotton for the large agribusiness operations like Anderson Clayton - that was before the salinity from the Colorado River destroyed the Mexicali Valley...
...The Mexican population in California increased from 121,000 in 1920 to 368,000 in 1930,12 but these figures do not begin to reflect the magnitude of the Mexican workforce that was used in the Southwest...
...NATURE OF THE INDUSTRY The high technological level of the electronics industry, combined with its labor-intensive nature, makes running away to cheap domestic and foreign laborhavens particularly simple and profitable...
...1 I n 1972, sales by U.S...
...20, 1973...
...And while Mexican Social Security slapped a $40,000 suit on Videocraft for overdue payments, Erwin says the Mexican Federal Government is now working on a reduction in the Social Security payments required of maquiladoras...
...Farah Strike Committee Leaflet, Sept...
...market...
...Foreign control in the border region was also facilitated by the adjustment of land ownership laws for foreigners...
...1966...
...A new technique for exploiting the reserve army of labor had been found: the runaway shop...
...See "Border Crisis 1975" below) MAQUILADORA INVESTMENT BY AREA (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) Wages, Maquiladora Value Salaries, Number of Number of Investment Added Social Benefits Maquiladora Total Total Location Maquiladoras (dollars) (dollars) (dollars) Workers Workforce Population (1973) (1974) (1973) (1973) (1973) (1970) (1970) BORDER TOTAL 448 $63,675,440 $177,476,480 $107,692,960 56,734 n.d...
...And true to predictions, money seems to be making the monkey dance...
...and Mexico to fight for the rights of these workers...
...CHEAP LABOR" Aside from its proximity to the United States, the Mexican BIP fulfilled certain conditions required by labor-intensive U.S...
...2. Ibid...
...and some observers think it would have eliminated the BIP altogether...
...2) the introduction of modern methods of manufacturing and acquisition of technical skills and training...
...52 The Mexican Foreign Trade Institute called the companies' accusations "intentionally misleading, but easy to refute," pointing out that wages in Mexico were still well below U.S...
...VIDEOCRAFT In July 1974, Perez Ibarra tried to regain control over one of the independent unions...
...An exemption of 100 percent for the first 10 years and 50 percent for the next 10 years is the most favorable yet granted...
...Every established semiconductor firm in the area of Palo Alto, for example, is "doing some form of overseas assembly operation...
...It is now facing at least six different class action suits by stockholders...
...companies came to the border, however, not to solve the unemployment problem, but precisely because there was a massive reserve army of unemployed...
...Instead of explaining that runaway shops are a necessary development of U.S...
...They took the injured girl to the hospital and 10 minutes later she was back in the factory, working...
...workers...
...workers, caused by the very nature of the work...
...According to Luis Zufiiga, owner of an electronics maquiladora in Nuevo Laredo, (Meridian Industries), Mexico City lawyer Francisco Brena, who represents many of the large electronics plants in the BIP, is a member of this minimum wage commission...
...The protestors were fired from their jobs by Perez Ibarra...
...We pay duty only after the finished product is exported back to the U.S...
...garment workers slipped well below the national average...
...We've worked for them a long time...
...Capitalism "requires for its free play an industrial reserve army independent of those natural limits...
...Riverside...
...unions (including the United Auto Workers) and a number of European unions (most notably the International Federation of Chemical and General Workers Unions) began to develop strategies for international union bargaining with multinational corporations...
...Embassy, Mexico, State Department Airgram #A-478, "Mexican In-Bond Industry Program," Sept...
...2. A skilled labor force with excellent work attitudes is abundant and available at a remarkably low cost...
...2 0 As another manager put it, "The real medicine we need to cure our present illness is a method bf pushing labor costs back to the 1973 levels...
...73, 81...
...more than 200,000 braceros were suddenly faced with unemployment or the risk of crossing the border illegally...
...Erwin said that Governor Cardenas had instructed the firms to stop paying the 4 percent Federal sales tax, anticipating Federal approval of this concession to the maquiladoras...
...Wall Street Journal, Sept...
...Van Fleet explained that the only recourse left to the workers if they don't accept the proposal is to seize the plant and auction the equipment...
...And despite the Bracero Program, the growers continued to actively recruit the undocumented workers who were even more vulnerable to their exploitation than those under contract...
...But instead of utilizing the power and resources of the unions to organize these new plants and educate the workers about the companies, the union leadership chose not to rock the boat...
...down there we pay 454 an hour...
...Copyright @ 1975 by the North American Congress on Latin America, Inc...
...The U.S...
...And Nixon was given a blank check to push U.S...
...This protectionist bill was a far cry from the AFL-CIO's previous support for free trade and the unrestricted expansion of multinational corporations during decades of unchallenged U.S...
...Initially the contrast between the young women's former lives and the environment of a shiny new factory did create certain attitudes of loyalty and conformism - attitudes which the companies worked hard to foster through the organization of company soccer teams and beauty contests...
...Ibid...
...Semiconductors are used in memory banks for computers and have helped "revolutionize" police information systems...
...FUTURE OF THE INDUSTRY Despite its fluctuations, industry executives claim electronics has a bright future...
...p. 4 and Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Fields, pp...
...Rick Jurgans, "Company Move Prompted Shiprock Takeover," for Pacific News Service, March 6, 1975...
...Many of the principals of the defunct firms are also involved in the new ones," reported the U.S...
...In the Mexicans, the agribusiness empire of the Southwest had found the "ideal" supply of labor, one which could be turned on and off at will...
...To avoid being caught off-guard by the sudden market fluctuations, electronics companies which use semiconductors maintain large stockpiles of this vital component in their warehouses...
...After all the propaganda the AFL-CIO had done about the desperate situation of U.S...
...U.S.-MEXICO BORDER FRICTION The Mexican border assembly plan came as no surprise to the U.S...
...There was a lot of unemployment, so I would shine shoes...
...Embassy, Mexico, Department of State Airgram # A-265, "Border Industry Program," June 4, 1971...
...Incentives were provided to U.S...
...jobs...
...5. Ibid...
...They'll just say, 'and so young...
...Some government spokesmen made meager attempts to counter the companies' campaign with "equal time" press coverage charging the real cause of the border crisis was the U.S...
...105-06...
...Chui spends over half of her $48 on food...
...2 3 As U.S...
...Mexican labor laws seemed sufficient to these workers to insure justice...
...2 0 TAX AND TARIFF CONCESSIONS Still another inducement that the BIP offers U.S...
...More than 75,000 Mexicans were deported from Los Angeles alone in 1931, "but when the harvest season once again came around, the growers dispatched their 'emissaries' to Mexico, and again recruited thousands of Mexicans...
...here it's 724 - that's about a 33 percent difference right there...
...See "Nuevo Laredo") Their actions have left tens of thousands jobless and have seriously weakened the unions of those who are still employed.23 Once again the border has been thrown into crisis - this time by a weakened U.S...
...ELECTRONICS RUNAWAYS American electronics corporations began shifting their labor-intensive production to Europe, Korea, Taiwan, and Mexico in the late 1950s and early 70s, with Japanese penetration of the transistor radio and portable television market...
...3 1 The bulk of these newly arrived men and women came to depend on employment in the United States - particularly through the bracero program - as their main source of income...
...The unions most affected held flag-waving demonstrations in dozens of U.S...
...5. SIC, op...
...The striking women and men demonstrated that third world workers in labor-intensive industries like the garments will no longer wait to be "organized" by established unions, but will take the lead in organizing themselves - pressuring unions like the Amalga- mated Clothing Workers for assistance on terms established by the workers...
...Thus, the runaway strategy is based on maximizing the most anti-developmental aspects of those countries...
...7. Venceremos, Runaway Shops in Electronics, p. 3, Palo Alto, no date...
...The labor-intensive U.S...
...Faced with crisis-level unemployment, soaring inflation, government repression and company abuse, they will either continue helplessly to be battered by the forces of imperialism, or they will channel their anger and experience into controlling their own lives...
...However, in the early sixties, progressive forces in labor, the church, and the Congress - most notably Cesar Chavez' budding farm workers movement - began to organize against the abuses of the state-run labor contracting system...
...14-15...
...Sinko said he has received requests from other firms for copies of his contract...
...RANK AND FILE In recent years a new labor movement has been growing in the United States, kindled by the still-warm coals of Ludlow, the Haymarket riots and the early cries of the CIO, and nurtured by the new experiences of Attica, Vietnam and renewed cries of strike and huelga...
...A "glamour company" during the 1960s, according to company Vice-President Frank Buting, Transitron had its share of problems in Nuevo Laredo...
...The U.S...
...Dominican workers who a few years ago got the jobs formerly held by Puerto Rican workers (hourly wages in the Dominican Republic are 1/3 to 1/4 those of Puerto Rico) are ndw being thrown out of work, as the multinationals move on to Haiti, where labor is even cheaper and less organized...
...Telles began an extensive "inspection" of the border area and laid the groundwork for the U.S...
...Labors Response: Chauvinist or Internationalist...
...very rarely are local workers trained in these positions...
...p. 59...
...In the fields," explained Chui's brother, "we worked as a family, and there was protection, each helping the other...
...The support mounted was so strong that eventually even the AFL-CIO threw its weight behind the boycott...
...Top executives of Texas Instruments, Motorola, and National Semiconductor all agree that the "semiconductor industry is on the threshold of a major revolution, one that will help the industry more than double its U.S...
...And he's going to cover his ass, like anybody else...
...BORDER CRISIS 1965 1. NACLA interview, Feb...
...Only such a movement will be capable of forging alliances with workers of the exploited countries which presently serve as havens for runaway shops...
...More than 23,000 workers have been laid off in less than ten months - 5,000 in the small town of Nogales alone, representing nearly a fifth of its total workforce...
...We're exploiting the people, that's what it's all about...
...Ibid...
...3, p. 11...
...brand names are actually produced abroad...
...But I feel like my arm is all cramped inside - it's like it was asleep...
...Jorge Farias Negrete, Industrialization Program for the Mexican Northern Border, Banco Comercial Mexicano, S.A...
...In April of this year, the Mexican Government ordered troops to quell a demonstration of angry workers at the Bowmar Instrument plant in Nogales," and in June the government responded to organized pressure by the companies to grant attractive new concessions...
...Often-times, they will not demand higher wages and better working conditions for fear of deportation and loss of their jobs...
...So and so is your Secretary General and these are your representatives...
...1969...
...Prensa, Nuevo Laredo, May 21, 1975...
...We have to put out the work for 9/2% hours, not talk, but sometimes we do anyway when the manager isn't looking...
...Raw Materials: Despite Mexican Government efforts to encourage the use of national resources, very few of the raw materials and components used in the assembly operations come from Mexico...
...border and the possibility of working as a bracero in the "promised land," hundreds of thousands of Mexico's unemployed workers - rural and urban - have migrated to the northern cities, now among the fastest growing urban centers in the world...
...The Burke-Hartke experience was but one of many demonstrations to working people in the United States that26 "The long row to hoe" is more than a metaphor for agricultural, industrial and service workers who are organizing in the U.S...
...The AFL-CIO agreed to drop the Burke-Hartke bill and swing its weight behind Nixon's own bill - the Reform Trade Act of 1973...
...See "Border Crisis 1975") In Nuevo Laredo, political maneuvering by local officials of city government and organized labor, combined with economic recession, have resulted in massive layoffs, the closing of some six plants from September 1974 to April 1975, and a serious weakening of maquiladora unions...
...If a girl gets more than three errors in one day she is given a warning...
...Multinationals which during the 1960s moved offshore from the United States to the Mexican border and Puerto Rico have found in the 1970s that labor is cheaper in poorer and less developed countries...
...One of the most widely used semiconductors is the integrated circuit...
...In order to mobilize this support, the AFL-CIO orchestrated a nationwide "Buy American" campaign, urging Americans to reject foreignmade shirts, televisions and baseball gloves and demand the passage of the Burke-Hartke bill...
...electronics corporations with assembly plants in Mexico includes the nation's largest: General Electric, Fairchild, Litton Industries, Texas Instruments, Zenith, RCA, Motorola, Bendix, National Semiconductor, General Instruments, and many others...
...The U.S...
...Business Week, Dec...
...Arthur D. Little, Inc...
...farm workers, electronics assemblers, garment and other workers do not become aware of the need for their alliance with Mexican and all third world workers, they will soon find themselves isolated from the international working class movement, and expendable in the new international system of production...
...7. "Labor's Protectionist Swing," New York Times, Jan...
...They seem more like a group of school girls than the modern, industrial workforce they in fact represent...
...Now, it's better to work without a contract than have no work at all...
...Mexico, 1972...
...Embassy, Mexico, Department of State Airgram #A-478...
...See "Border Crisis 1975" below...
...Peter Baird Photos by Gil Treviio-Ortiz and Ed McCaughan NACLA...
...In their wake, the runaways leave an inflated reserve army of labor...
...Because here things are going to get very critical...
...p. 56...
...According to the Mexican Government, 31.7 percent of the border population is made up of immigrants, and the maquiladoras have provided jobs for less than 3 percent of the new arrivals...
...Lured by the higher wages along the U.S...
...3. Union problems simply do not exist in Haiti...
...have time clocks...
...Market, p. 13...
...Las Maquiladoras como explotacion neocolonial...
...The errors are recorded on a quality control chart that is tacked at eye level in the booth where each assembler works...
...If they prefer to have others speak for them...
...Ibid...
...In place of the restrictions Burke-Hartke would have placed on multinationals, Nixon argued for an "open system of international investment" with certain limited reforms on multinationals...
...The chief characteristic of the garment industry has been instability: 37 firms were disbanded and 53 others established in 1971...
...Although negotiations had not begun by mid-July, manager Romo felt confident that the union would give in and eliminate the permanent worker category...
...In Mexico, seniority is spelled out in a contract which specifies the number of workers who must receive job security and who are considered permanent employees...
...Nogales is a short one hour drive from Phoenix, while Ciudad Juarez lies back-to-back with El Paso...
...Examined more closely, what has been created is not a model of healthy regional development, but a new kind of enclave completely tied to the United States which contributes little to the Mexican economy...
...In 1974, of the nearly $1 billion exported from the border industries, $550 million represented the value of U.S...
...In 1967, "an average projection for plants on the border [called] for an investor to get 120 percent on his money in two years," according to a consulting firm which helped set up Fairchild Camera and other maquiladoras in Tijuana.' 8 In addition to keeping down wages, the abundance of labor has permitted the U.S...
...The 3,000 workers immediately set up a round-the-clock guard duty at the plant to prevent Mextel from removing its * Mattel is the largest toy company in the United States with about 10 percent of U.S...
...2 3 The development of the highly capitalized commercial sector and the continued concentration of agricultural lands has actually left an increasing number of the rural population without lands of their own, forcing them into the wage-labor market...
...3 And now they have crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico...
...An indication of its difficulties is that Transitron had 13 general managers in its first seven years of operation in Nuevo Laredo...
...2. U.S...
...6 The corporations call this profitable strategy "offshore production...
...Retail Trade: It has been estimated that workers on the border spend 60-75 percent of their earnings in the United States.1 2 U.S...
...However, there are indications that as workers around the world continue to demand decent wages, the largest companies will try to further cut costs through automation...
...As the AmCham's business journal explained: The maquiladora operations are tightly tied...
...2 0 In short, contrary to the government's stated goals, the Border Industrialization Program has neither solved the unemployment problem nor made any lasting contribution to integrated development in the region...
...Should the products of these industries encounter a prolonged slump in the U.S...
...No currency restriction or limitation of any kind...
...Figures for 1966-1972 from Maquiladora Newsletter, October 1974...
...One of the main concerns of the U.S...
...Ibid...
...Ambassador to Mexico during these years, Fulton Freeman, wrote: * Several years before the creation of the BIP another President, Adolfo Lopez Mateos...
...In spite of the low wages in the New York area that remained unchallenged by the ILGWU and other established unions, the garment industry went to the South and Southwest to find even cheaper labor...
...imperialism was challenged in Asia, the stability of the Mexican Government seemed to guarantee a higher degree of political tranquility, especially when backed up by the economic and military might of its "good neighbor...
...She drew water from their outside faucet and shook her head: At my age, who's going to hire me...
...By late 1974, 83 assembly plants had already set up in the interior - 60 of them in 1974 alone - employing more than 12,850 workers.'6 Burroughs, Motorola and General Instruments all have operations in Guadalajara, and Fairchild Camera moved its large semiconductor plant from the border to the Mexico City area, continuing their long history of runaway operations.* Tracor, an Austin, Texas-based electronics firm, with plants in Puerto Rico, Great Britain, Germany, Taiwan and Haiti, as well as in Piedras Negras on the border, is also planning to move into interior Mexico: "We hope to close the Piedras Negras plant as soon as we can move to Morelos," explained plant manager Richard Van Fleet: * Fairchild has also looked to the southwestern United States for cheap labor...
...Source: U.S...
...225 MEXICAN AGRICULTURE & THE RESERVE ARMY OF LABOR While the growers were actively organizing for the mass importations of Mexicans into the fields of the Southwest, developments in Mexico made available the millions of workers who were marching north as part of America's reserve army of labor...
...2 ' Hands often turn tortillas by night and assemble semiconductors by day since the arrival of the maquiladoras.9 Any attempt by the Mexican Government to boost corporate taxes has been met with organized resistance of the U.S...
...capitalist expansion into Mexico - especially Texas - had already begun, as traders, entrepreneurs and waves of North American colonists moved into the Mexican territories...
...side of the border...
...In England in the 1850s, agricultural wages were rising and prices falling, so the farmers introduced more machinery, undercutting employment opportunities and wages...
...By 1973, Fairchild was the United States' largest private employer of American Indians, as well as the largest industrial employer in the state of New Mexico...
...and 3) an increase in the consumption of Mexican raw materials and reduction of Mexico's trade deficit.6* But the key to the BIP lies in a crucial loophole of the U.S...
...literally overnight without paying indemnization...
...It's all over...
...Christine Choi, U.S...
...As unemployment in the Southwest soared- worsened by the migration of over a million people into California from other parts of the United States between 1930 and 1940 - as urban Mexican communities such as Los Angeles began to rebel, and as farm labor strikes flared up throughout California, the rate of deportations increased...
...This unity is further indicated by the participation of some of the same U.S...
...a Motorola Corporation, with factories in Nogales and Guadalajara, claims to be interested in developing local sources of supply for its operations...
...market...
...In fact, there was only one brief strike in the union's New York stronghold during all these Some U.S...
...1 5 Less than a year later 125 Chinese women struck the Great Chinese American Sewing Co...
...p. 638...
...When faced with the very real possibility that the company would leave, their attitude, as expressed by Rios Rivas, was: "We'll form a cooperative...
...managers claim that high quality and productivity, along with innovation, specialization and price cutting are essential for the highly competitive electronics industry...
...s The "bright future" of the industry would seem to indicate that new job opportunities - unstable as they might be - will be on the rise...
...A long-time resident of Tijuana spoke of a relative who had worked at an electronics maquiladora and suffered severe eye strain: Her job was to wind copper wire on to a spindle by hand...
...Embassy in Mexico recognizes the "basic characteristic of instability" caused by the complete reliance on the North American market: The heavy predominance of electronics and textiles makes operations quite sensitive to changes in U.S...
...It recently was able to restructure payments of an $86.8 million debt over the next five years...
...The union accused their leader of having accepted a $50,000 bribe for signing the agreement and the fired workers blocked the plant entrances in protest...
...As early as July 1974, the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) of Mexico* - the principal business organization to which U.S.-owned maquiladoras belong - began a systematic campaign designed to force the Mexican Government to make new concessions...
...ORGANIZED LABOR Because it is located in the state of Tamaulipas, considered a birthplace of organized labor in Mexico, Nuevo Laredo has a relatively strong labor movement...
...Rather than organize the lowest paid workers to defend themselves from the runaway shop, the AFL-CIO had first promised them legislation, and then sold them out when the time was right...
...NACLA interview with Charles Nelson, Feb...
...The firm has been the largest employer in Nuevo Laredo, with a peak workforce of nearly 3,000 in early 1974, and has also experienced the most labor militancy...
...According to Rich Abraham of Motorola, Up until now cost-cutting efforts have been concentrated on going overseas for hand labor...
...Only a few years back, managers of border plants were praising their "easily disciplined and directed" young women workers who "develop(ed) a spirit of loyalty toward their companies...
...6. Ibid...
...economy...
...In large part, according to managers along the border, it is due to the recession in the United States which has seriously undercut the market for their products...
...But they know what the hell they're doing," grumbled the manager of a Union Carbide plant in Matamoros...
...There are many numbers and a map which show where all the wires and parts go, then you find the parts and place them in as fast as you can...
...Government...
...The companies which obey the law shouldn't have any fear of unions," explained the union president...
...The AmCham sent representatives to the border to * See "Golden Ghetto," NACLA Report, Vol...
...The oldest and still most effective weapon against the runaway shop is to organize the unorganized, thereby strengthening the workforce where it is most vulnerable...
...Mexican firms more familiar with Mexican law follow the successful example of the Longoria family - known for maintaining all workers on 28 day contracts - by allowing only a small fraction of their workforce to gain permanent status...
...employees of BIP companies or are recruited from other areas of Mexico...
...Among the pioneers were Litton Industries, Transitron, Motorola, Fairchild, Hughes Aircraft, and General Electric...
...Workers were fined by the union if they were driven to work by friends or family...
...9. Forbes, April 15, 1973...
...Once again the growers began to clamor for the importation of farm labor...
...2 The reserve army of labor was created by the very process of capital accumulation itself, as capital became concentrated in large corporations, allowing for the introduction of large-scale, labor-saving technology...
...Meanwhile, Videocraft manager George Sinko proposed to the Nuevo Laredo Association of Maquiladoras that they hold a one-day lockout to emphasize the seriousness of the situation...
...2 0 But this link will break only where the working class is the strongest and the most advanced in its international solidarity...
...6. Raul Fernandez, The United States-Mexico Border: Interpretive Essays in History and Political Economy, introduction, p. 10...
...Through well-placed articles in the leading daily newspapers of the country, the Chamber threatened that recent wage hikes were undermining the competitive position of Mexico's maquiladoras - particularly vis a vis lower-wage countries such as Formosa, Colombia and the nations of Central America...
...Then another girl puts on the terminals, and another the connectors, and another solders them...
...Transportation costs for the off-shore assembly are relatively low since most electronic components are small, light and easily transported...
...The Government had to find another escape valve to keep the millions of landless peasants from organizing a revolutionary opposition...
...Meany and "friend" Richard Nixon after the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in February 1973...
...leader Perez Ibarra, who had recently taken control over the unions...
...When developing such supply operations, Motorola encourages the establishment of joint ventures between U.S...
...Interview by Cam Duncan, May 21, 1975...
...While an electronics assembler earned $5,350 per year in Motorola's Phoenix plant, assemblers in their Nogales shop received only $1,060 - resulting in a $4 million-a-year saving for Motorola when multiplied by the 1,000 jobs affected...
...border city - away from the unpaved streets, polluted water, and overcrowded schools that are the lot of his employees on the Mexican side...
...About a month later the work ended and she was laid off along with many others...
...Charts with three check marks hanging in empty stalls gave testimony that for U.S...
...A lot of good it did her...
...The electronics industry has several centers in the United States: the Palo Alto-Stanford area in California, Boston, Phoenix and Dallas...
...Whether the deal made by the AFL-CIO represented a compromise to get certain trade reforms into law, or a conscious manipulation of the runaway shop issue to gain political power, one result was clear: criticism of multinationals stopped...
...managers presented a list of "suggestions" to the government for solving the border crisis...
...In March 1975, however, responding to a slump in demand for electronic components, the company laid off 140 workers at the Shiprock plant...
...She lives with her sisters and brothers in a cardboard house on the outskirts of Tijuana...
...When no agreement was reached after a few days, the workers arrived at the plant on December 10 to find themselves locked out...
...They can't just tell us to get lost now...
...11, 1972...
...The braceros returned to Mexico with some concept of our type of democracy, with a knowledge of modern agricultural methods, and with positive friendly feelings about the United States...
...The political machine for this control is the PRI ruling party, a vast centralized organization of business interests and labor bureaucrats headed by a powerful president...
...See "Border Crisis 1975") TRANSITRON Transitron Mexicana, a subsidiary of Transitron Electronics of Wakefield, Massachusetts, built a $1.5 million plant in Nuevo Laredo in 1966...
...Why no place where they can hide...
...market, operations of the border firms would undoubtedly be substantially reduced.' Spin-off Industries: The Mexican Government had hoped that one of the advantages to the program would be its spin-off effects on other industries...
...semiconductor markets, Transitron manufactures integrated circuits, diodes, and transistors in Nuevo Laredo and supplies major consumer electronics and computer firms such as Westinghouse, IBM, etc...
...This has been a major issue between maquiladora workers and the companies in the past two years.19 Erwin closed the plant for one month in April at the same time that Videocraft's two plants were temporarily shut down...
...In Mexico, U.S...
...Few workers saw complete control of their workplace and the economy as necessary for preventing the sort of havoc brought to the border by the maquiladoras...
...companies has meant the introduction of labor-saving technology, severely undercutting industry's ability to absorb the growing urban work force...
...Richard Ives, of the Warwick plant in Tijuana, recently showed a visitor the variety of parts from all over the world which fill the giant warehouse...
...By 1966 unemployment in several border cities ran as high as 40 to 50 percent...
...Whereas in some border cities, such as Nogales, there is no organized labor movement, and in others labor is only partially organized, all maquiladora plants in Nuevo Laredo are under contract with the Mexican Workers' Federation (C.T.M...
...In order to counter widespread use of prestanombres, a second method was developed in 1971 in which the company may establish a trust agreement with a private or public Mexican bank, giving the foreign company complete control for up to 30 years, as well as the right to proceeds made on its sale after that time...
...Beginning in the early 1950s several U.S...
...Traditionally the AFL-CIO has accepted the reasoning that foreign investment creates more wealth and more U.S...
...The first and oldest method was through a "name-lender" or prestanombre - a Mexican citizen who fronted for the actual owner...
...GARMENTS 1. U.S...
...Between 1966 and 1971, estimates the AFL-CIO, 900,000 jobs and job opportunities were lost to the runaway shops.' Those hardest hit were semi-skilled workers in the apparel and electronics industries-the majority of them women, Black, Latino, poor white and recent immigrants...
...Though Mexican workers had been used for years in both the fields and the construction of the railroads, particularly in Texas, Arizona and the southern parts of California, it was not until World War I that the major influx of Mexicans into the fields began...
...4,541,000 Baja California 177 13,958,130 58,016,720 36,935,840 15,876 222,000 870,000 Ensenada 4 138,240 215,840 154,000 82 n.d...
...News & World Report, July 1, 1968, "Things Look Up for Mexico as U.S...
...2 2 POLITICAL CONTROL In 1967, Business Week pointed to another explanation for the rapid rise of U.S...
...And if I beg...
...However, they must be weighed against other factors...
...And if the maquiladoras pull out completely, what then...
...and Mexican investors to build commercial centers on the Mexican side of11 the border...
...Inflation and unemployment were getting worse, and many workers seemed resigned to Perez Ibarra's renewed control and to the loss of work benefits for which they had fought...
...4 As in Europe, development of the southwestern United States depended upon the creation of a reserve army of labor...
...RE-RUNAWAYS Despite the recent concessions, many companies have chosen to pack up and run away once again to areas of lower wages, including central Mexico...
...5. Punto Critico, Feb.-March 1974...
...1 9 thus many factories serve a hot meal in the morning before work to maximize production...
...Gail Grynbaum Minute semiconductors (inset) undergo rigorous inspection...
...The maquiladoras are here for profit, and they are profiting 100 percent...
...I didn't say anything because they can fire me...
...In 1972, for example, the Mexican Treasury announded a 4 percent tax hike on the Mexican components in BIP exports...
...This is particularly clear in the U.S.-Mexico border area where runaway shops and runaway crops have been used as a tactic against organizing efforts by Chicano and Mexican workers in garments, electronics, and agriculture...
...hegemony (1945-65...
...Designed to preserve "the U.S...
...Los Angeles Times, Nov...
...The Wall Street Journal reported in 1963, In organized drives, squatters' brigades have invaded big cattle ranches in parts of the state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico...
...Ibid...
...Instead, she and her mother worked separate shifts and passed the children from one to the other as Chui left work and her mother entered...
...p. 88...
...he is currently advising the government of El Salvador in its maquiladora program...
...according to the ILGWU's own records, the membership between 1956 and 1968 grew by only 2 percent.5 Thus when the garment industry began to go to Taiwan and Mexico in the mid 1960s, the traditional union structure was even less capable of preventing it, and the wages of U.S...
...Before Mattel closed their toy operations in Mexicali in February 1975, they were the single largest employer along the border...
...David T. Lopez, "Low-wage Lure South of the Border," in AFL-CIO American Federationist, June 1969...
...5. Ernesto Galarza, Merchants of Labor, The Mexican Bracero Story, p. 13...
...He then telegraphed President Echeverria requesting military intervention to open his plant and threatened publicly to move his two plants away from Nuevo Laredo if the situation was not resolved...
...Personal relationships, power, and prestige are important factors for successfully conducting business in Mexico, as elsewhere" advises the principal guide to investors in the BIP...
...Only at this point did the AFL-CIO move to a position that was even mildly critical of foreign investment...
...We decided we wouldn't reopen the plant permanently...
...3, 1975...
...The war had provided the U.S...
...p. 634...
...instead they have adopted the policy of the past president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), David Dubinsky:* "Don't ask too much of business, or it will go away and leave us with nothing...
...Still another positive feature of the work force to foreign capital is the Mexican labor union structure, in which leaders of the three main unions represented in the border areas are chosen by the Government...
...Because of its relatively weak bargaining position and its decision not to organize workers to fight the companies, the AFL-CIO Executive Council in 1967 called upon the U.S...
...The raw materials and components are sent to the Mexican plant for assembly under a bonding agreement with the Mexican Government, and then returned to the U.S...
...Protestors denounced the illegal layoffs and the opportunist union leaders, calling them "traitors, thieves who have conspired with the companies...
...p. 52...
...IMEC Corp...
...1975...
...In spite of Willie Farah's reminders that "there are 2 billion foreigners out there willing to work for 10 cents an hour,"' 1 and his threats to remove the plant a few miles south into Mexico, the strikers did not give in...
...companies closing up shop...
...and foreign workers...
...With the young worker, the Chicano and Black, they are less and less satisfied with the settlements that the unions have made...
...Our idea is to offer an alternative to Hong Kong, Japan and Puerto Rico for free enterprise," Mexican Minister of Commerce Campos Salas told the Wall Street Journal in 1967.s Indeed the runaway assembly shops already established in those countries did provide the model for the Mexican BIP and the standards under which the Mexican program would have to compete...
...10 - Agriculture: A 1974 study by the Mexican Government reported that sales of basic food products to the border cities - such as corn, wheat, rice, beans and oils - were increasing with industrial development in the area...
...I think the Abels and Meanys will be gone in the near future, not by their own resignation, but by the forces of new people who are rebelling against the old leadership.17 The husky and affable organizer - himself a recent immigrant from Mexico who began as a production worker in a record factory - is aware that trying to organize electronics workers in his area will cause more runaway shops, and requires therefore solidarity and cooperation with workers from Mexico and other countries: We've got to say to the companies, o.k., we'll follow you down to Mexico, we'll go, we'll boycott you there...
...world hegemony, but ironically they were losing their privileged position by the very attempts of the multinationals to maintain that hegemony...
...However, the unions in the labor-intensive sector for the most part have not countered with a strategy of their own...
...6a Accordingly, hotels, trailer camps and parks were constructed to attract a greater number of U.S...
...Embassy, Mexico, State Department Airgram #A-478, Sept...
...BORDER CRISIS 1975 1. Expansion, April 16, 1975, "Las interrogantes de la maquiladoras...
...The runaways in Nuevo Laredo had apparently won another victory...
...Edmundo Villasenor, Macho, pp...
...counterpart for finishing and shipping...
...This Report is part of an ongoing NACLA-West Mexico Project which will produce a pamphlet on Mexico in 1976...
...We know that they've laid off many workers at the Transitron plant in Wakefield, Mass., and they're in the same boat we're in...
...and Jorge Martinez Rios, "Los campesinos mexicanos: perspectivas en el proceso de la marginalizacion," in Jorge Basutro, et...
...The union voted to strike on December 19, but three weeks later the Arbitration Board declared the strike illegal because the firings only affected part of the union...
...The multinationals view Latin America - in fact the world - as one preserve, where borders are forever flexible...
...66-67...
...10...
...The number of workers in the women's apparel industry alone (80 percent of them women) dropped 50,000 between 1956 and 1971...
...The "unspoiled workforce" which lured companies to the border ten years ago has undergone some changes...
...The minimum daily wage is only $1.30 and in the industrial sector, the average wage ranges between $1.30 and $2.50 per day...
...It also causes a great deal of eye strain on the assembly-line workers...
...Today, 16% of Mexico's farm units control 51% of the cultivable land...
...But on the other hand, their concept of union-building seldom went beyond the need for self-protection within the given legal framework of Mexican labor laws...
...Bantum, 1973...
...3. Gus Tyler, "Labor's Multinational Pains," Foreign Policy # 12, Fall, 1973, p. 114...
...play: mass immigration from the less developed regions helped maintain a surplus population of workers for the economies of Europe...
...business, but this time on the Mexican side of the border...
...Finishing could mean little more than pasting on a label," reported the AFL-CIO...
...21 Indeed the companies have stopped at little in their efforts to crush the growing labor movement along the border...
...electronics maquiladoras...
...and still profit on...
...Mexican In-Bond Industrialization Program," June 30, 1972, p. 6. 23...
...Expansion, op...
...Fisher, op...
...Eighty thousand new jobs were created - nearly 90 percent of them for women - providing some $12.5 million in wages, salaries and fringe benefits...
...They are followed by Quaker Oats, which recently purchased Fisher-Price and Marx Toys, and by General Mills which has acquired Parker Brothers, Lionel Trains, Kenner Products and others...
...garment, electronics and toy companies moved quickly into the border area...
...Excelsior, Nov...
...Whatever affects one side affects the other too...
...29 REFERENCES RESERVE ARMY OF LABOR 1. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol...
...wage rate, and contribute virtually no taxes or import duties to the Mexican Government...
...garment industry began moving its shops from New York, Southern California and other areas to the Mexican border in 1965 with the inception of the BIP...
...p. 5. 17...
...the workers call it "runaway shops," and by the mid-1960s the industry had moved its assembly operations abroad en masse...
...Strike notices were filed by unions at all three plants, and contract negotiations began between the companies and C.T.M...
...representative Raymond Telles, a former mayor of El Paso, Texas, and later Ambassador to Costa Rica...
...As mentioned above, most of the third-country imports for the border industries are shipped, not through Mexican port facilities, but in-bond through San Diego or Los Angeles...
...SIC, 1974, op...
...At the same time, the Mexican government, with the help of North American advisers, began planning a new solution to the problems of Mexico's unemployment and the United States' need for cheap labor...
...The electronics industry, whose growth was spurred by massive government spending on aerospace and defense programs during and since World War II, has had a history of seeking low-wage areas for its assembly operations...
...companies in Latin America and about 10 percent of total sales by U.S...
...Ya looking for a message are ya...
...But while PRONAF cleaned up the appearance of some of the border cities and set a high level of official rhetoric, it did nothing to lay the basis for economic development.7 Mexico's Border Industrialization Program offers a notable opportunity for providing Mexicans with jobs and reducing the incentive for them to enter the United States as wetbacks...
...According to Marx, the process of capital accumulation depended upon an ever-ready supply of labor-power, so that "great masses of men" could be thrown "suddenly on the decisive points [of the expanding economy] without injury to the scale of production in other spheres," and without raising wages...
...It was not uncommon to hear a young worker describe her work place with enthusiasm: "The atmosphere here is real nice - there are dances, trips, and you can go shopping every day on the other side...
...Farmers in Northern California were supplied with braceros from contracting centers 800 miles away on a 48-hour notice...
...1. ESTIMATED VALUE ADDED AND PAYMENTS ABROAD FOR MAQUILADORA INDUSTRY (millions of dollars) Year 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1. 2. a. b. c. Added Value' n.d...
...I, Chapter XXV, Section 3, p. 632...
...Many smaller companies have also set up along the border, though as in the industry in general, the trend has been towards their elimination as the larger companies come to dominate a large share of the market...
...The company made some settlements with the tribe, but soon after Fairchild closed the plant down completely, only to open another in Djakarta, Indonesia, where the going rate for unskilled labor is 104 an hour.22 Country-Hopping to the Caribbean In order to appreciate fully the absurdity of the maquiladora as a "development" strategy for the Mexican border or any other area of Latin America, one need only see its brief appearance and demise in one country after another...
...components used in the operations...
...In December, faced with the need to get rid of 200 more, the company and union agreed that, rather than firing the 200, they would introduce rotating layoffs whereby half the workforce would work two weeks and the other half work the following two weeks...
...5 s In the late 1960s minimum wages along the border ranged from $3.52 to $5.52 per day, as compared with average factory workers wage plus fringe benefits of $25.12 a day in the United States...
...It is joined and increasingly led by Blacks and Asians, women, Latinos and other third world workers who have the hardest and worst paid jobs in the U.S...
...29, 1963...
...p. 6. 11...
...technology and capital, and (3) removed tax subsidies and other incentives that encourage U.S...
...companies have stormed into the Mexican border area to establish assembly operations employing thousands of Mexican workers...
...p. 2. 16...
...19 If U.S...
...19, 1974, p. 6B...
...An illustration of his manipulative use of the union for his personal gain came in December 1973, when a group of maquiladora workers protested the requirement that they use an expensive taxi service (owned by a friend of Perez Ibarra's and from which he received kickbacks) to get to and from work...
...With the establishment of the BIP most foreign companies chose not to make a large investment and simply rented the land and buildings they used, often run-down old sheds...
...Without workers the gold and silver would have remained deep inside the mines of New Mexico and Arizona...
...4. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, pp...
...The future of the border industries was in grave danger...
...workers as dependent on the maintenance of U.S...
...Spurred by the introduction of sugar beet production, however, the growers soon turned to another source of labor: the Japanese...
...It is no accident that the most popular new sites for runaways in Latin America are El Salvador and Haiti - which are also the Latin American nations where hunger and malnutrition are most widespread...
...Mega Industries Memorex Motorola North American RCA Sarkes-Tarzian Solitron Tracor Transitron Warwick Zenith * Several other they employ LOCATION al Supply Ciudad Juarez (Mattel)** Tijuana Guadalajara Ciudad Juarez ol Corp...
...Only one crucial factor was missing: cheap, exploitable labor...
...The defense industry drew heavily upon the labor supply, as did the growing manufacturing, transportation and service industries in general...
...Labor-intensive portions of an assembly operation would be done in the Mexican plant where wages are low, whereas the capital-intensive production and machinery, or portions for which special tariff advantages are not available, remained in the United States...
...2. Ibid...
...International Publishers, New York, 1974...
...Then to the anthill of men came the coyotes (slang for sharp legal crooks), and they came with promises to get papers processed in eight days' time...
...But, as one study of the border reports, "the jobs which are most technical in nature are either done by U.S...
...companies...
...And began by the thousands the long journey home...
...7 California did not, in fact, enter the Union as a slave state, but the organized importation of thousands of foreign workers soon provided a labor supply as cheap as a slave force.4 California's labor needs were first met by importing thousands of Chinese to work the mines, build the transcontinental railroads, and harvest the fruit and vegetable crops...
...parent in Los Angeles, Kansas City or Boston...
...Charles Nelson, manager of Warwick's plant in Tijuana explained, As time went on, especially in the black & white television, competition just got keener and keener and it became very hard to produce a black & white set which you could market in the U.S...
...THE AFL-CIO AND BURKE-HARTKE The AFL-CIO responded to the first hints of the Mexican border plans not with strikes, but with angry charges of "runaway shop tactics" and "greedy profitmaking" by U.S...
...These Mexican cities have been shaped by history to depend upon the U.S...
...Joseph B. Mackinnon, "Investment at the Border - the Maquiladoras," Mexican-American Review, March 1975...
...Since 16 percent of all the border companies are in this sector, 1 0 it merits closer examination...
...The Farah strikers, like the United Farm Workers, did not limit their strategy to one city or state, but rallied supporters through a nationwide boycott of Farah pants to put economic pressure on the company...
...Thus when demand rises they neither have to worry about being overcharged by the semiconductor producers nor about a sudden shortage...
...business in that British Colony and seem to have given impetus to the industrial buildup in northern Mexico...
...manager and technicians, and a large cafeteria equipped with television...
...416 Border Crisis 1975 Workers Strike, Shops Move On Between October 1974 and April 1975, thirty-nine U.S.owned assembly plants closed down operations along the Mexican border, while many others cut their workforce by as much as 50 percent...
...7. Established banking facilities...
...has given rise to unique historical variations, the basic phenomenon is the same as that discussed by Marx and Lenin decades ago in their studies of capitalist development in Europe...
...By bribing customs officials, Kantex was able to do the same in Reynosa in May 1975, leaving 47 workers without severance pay...
...VIII, No...
...These failures have shown that an effective strategy must include U.S...
...6 There is only one child care center in that town - one more than in most border cities - and babysitters are relatively expensive...
...IX, No...
...A year and a half after the program started, a total of $32 million of U.S.-made products were imported into the border area.14 Labor: The creation of jobs has always been given as the major reason for the establishment of the BIP, and it did create, in fact, nearly 80,000 new jobs by the end of 1974...
...One hundred workers were left without jobs, machinery or other recourse when Procesos Industriales illegally snuck their equipment out of Juarez overnight in September 1974...
...When Transitron opened its plant in Nuevo Laredo, employing 1,500 electronics assemblers, the Kansas City plant of the same company lost 45 percent of its work force...
...runaway shops wherever they go...
...It is also getting a larger share of the market for use in telephones, traffic control, fire and burglar alarms, billing machines, credit card verifiers and cash registers...
...sales, to around $4 billion in the next few years...
...runaway shops that passed through the Mexican border like a hurricane also left a wake of broken lives and broken promises among workers in the United States...
...garment and electronics workers, these were the crumbs that the AFL-CIO had accepted...
...Spencer Boise, a Mattel executive in Los Angeles, claims the "severe competition" has made them extremely cost conscious: "That's why Mexicali is important to us from the cost point of view...
...Looking to increase profits and meet new challenges from Japan and other developed countries, U.S...
...industry at the expense of U.S...
...Often called the "computer on a chip," this tiny plastic wafer - the size of a fingernail - contains as many as 10,000 transistors hooked together to transmit electrical current...
...In March, Transitron workers organized a demonstration of 1,000 workers, fired from various maquiladoras, at the Arbitration Board office...
...Meanwhile, the company assured the mayor that the layoff was only temporary and that production and employment would expand rapidly in the coming year.20 One striker represented the feelings of the fired workers when he said, We know who is responsible for the signing away of our rights, and we will elect a union leadership who can represent our interests...
...Accordingly, George Meany gave his blessing to the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, and boasted, "We can compete with anyone because we have the skill and know-how to do it...
...In response, the seventeen locked the plant for two weeks...
...3. Donald Baerresen, The Border Industrialization Program of Mexico, p. 35, D. C. Heath Co...
...By the mid-1960s, the runaway shop had become the major strategy of the non-monopolized, labor-intensive U.S...
...industry attracted to the border has been electronics, which accounts for 70 percent of the firms in the BIP...
...However, it has largely been U.S...
...as a consequence it had little chance of passing without the broad support of the North American people...
...controls much of the rest of the city's activities, including City Hall, local police, narcotics traffic, the health department, the Labor Arbitration Board, etc...
...A number of U.S...
...assembly operations...
...The mid-1974 slowdown in the semiconductor market forced the company to get rid of many of its workers...
...1975...
...3 The advent of monopolistic (as opposed to competitive) capitalism in the late 19th century, and its intensified penetration of the entire world, brought a new factor into * By U.S.-Mexico border area, we mean that socio-economic region which extends far beyond both sides of the border itself...
...As Robert Boysen of Union Carbide explained, "We just don't have the control over the people that we would like to have...
...plants...
...I might as well roll up my sack and go as an illegal...
...Some of the circuits have 385 wires and they have to be tied in place...
...Chui Garcia made $48 a week before she was fired by Mextel in Mexicali, yet she would have had to pay a baby sitter $10 to $11 a week...
...We would like to thank the following people for their help in preparing this issue: Cam Duncan (LAPAG), Raul Fernandez (University of California, Irvine), photographer Gilberto Ortiz, and Gail Grynbaum and Susanne Jonas of NACLA...
...3, 1975...
...cities also usually form part of this clique, and can provide similar services on the U.S...
...Largely as a result of pressure from state Governor Cardenas, who personally participated in the negotiations, and with the collaboration of Perez Ibarra, in May "every worker received a token indemnification in exchange for signing away their rights . . . it was a real victory," according to Video's Sinko...
...tourists, and commercial complexes were promoted to sell them Mexican-made goods...
...manager and his family to continue living in These women outside the Hughes' Aircraft plant in Mexicali assemble delicate electronic equipment under U.S...
...managers to hand-pick the most agile workers...
...7 In both the electronics and garment industries, much of the raw material comes from other countries, especially Japan...
...The U.S.-Mexico border area (see map)* has been characterized by one of the most spectacular migrations of workers in the history of mankind, as the process of capital accumulation and expansion in both countries has demanded the creation of an abundant, accessible supply of cheap labor...
...2. American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico, Maquiladora Newsletter, Nov...
...industry had found a new way of saving on labor costs, and in the process had exported nearly one million jobs from the U.S...
...The delegates at the California Constitutional Convention of 1849 were well aware of the labor scarcity in California, but were sharply divided over the best way of securing that labor...
...Unpub...
...And most important, the contract eliminates all permanent personnel - each worker will henceforth be hired on a 28-day basis, and the company will be free to shorten its work week, alter working conditions, and adjust its workforce at will...
...Rick Jurgans, The Electronics Industry, unpub...
...NACLA interview with Spencer Boise, 2/13/75) than 40 maquiladoras, there were fewer than 11,000 dwellings in 1970 for a population of more than 70,000...
...Congressional Record, May 16, 1975...
...And if we're late three times in a month, we're fired...
...corporations that came to the border after 1965 started plants on the Mexican side and then built a smaller "twin-plant" on the U.S...
...plants in 1967,9 they had grown to 147 in 1969, 273 by 1972,1' jumped to 426 in 1973," and reached 665 in late 1974.12 In a few short years Mexico became the largest assembler of U.S...
...Mattel has been in serious financial trouble since a diversification spree when the toy company acquired a number of other divisions, including Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus and a movie company...
...p. 15...
...The "advantages" of the program for Mexico were officially seen as: 1) new jobs, larger incomes and increased living standards...
...The next time it happens she is suspended for the day without pay and sometimes fired...
...One study of the BIP puts productivity for routine electronics assembly work in Mexico at 10-25 percent higher than in similar plants in the U.S...
...and the Longoria family...
...Mexico's primary competitive advantage over Hong Kong and other foreign cheap-labor havens is its 2000 miles of shared border with the United States...
...Kenworth de M6xico isn't unionized, but they pay what's fair...
...And when the bottom dropped out of the market again in late 1974, thousands of workers were laid off across the globe...
...1 But the "natural increase of population" was not always sufficient to meet the needs of production under capitalist expansion...
...Between 1950 and 1960, well over 3 million Mexican nationals were employed in more than 20 states throughout the country - the bulk of them in Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona and Arkansas...
...9. NACLA interview with Spencer Boise, Feb...
...I work on the large circuits...
...maquiladoras, through organizations such as the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico...
...Two days later 8,000 striking maquiladora workers attended a meeting at which Perez Ibarra was repudiated and a new board of union representatives was elected...
...The new "contract" removes all benefits, including 2 percent of wages paid monthly as savings, Christmas bonus, two week vacation pay, and all fringes not required by law...
...Only a year after the BIP was created, a report by the prestigious U.S...
...Here the Americans set up offices and a temporary camp for processing the braceros on their way to work in the U.S...
...4 Draped on the walls over the workers' heads are a dozen 20-foot-long banners that shout "EVITEMOS ERRORES Y EQUIVOCACIONES" (Avoid errors & mistakes), "LA CALIDAD ES LO QUE CUENTA" (Quality is what counts) and other production slogans...
...Embassy in 1971, "as companies are often formed when a contract is obtained and dissolved on its completing...
...The CCI gained 50,000 members before government harassment and an internal split severely weakened the movement, but its existence echoed like a pistol shot in the seat of government far away in Mexico City...
...This mistake migration undertook to correct.s Long before the Mexican-American War, which resulted in Mexico's surrender of over half her territory, the process of U.S...
...Workers are hired and fired by the companies as the new products demand changes in the assembly line operations...
...A manager of one of the largest electronics firms along the border pointed out that for his competitive industry, there would be no U.S...
...Ibid...
...And with a huge market and garment-production area centered in Los Angeles, many of the garment maquiladoras are concentrated in nearby Tijuana and Mexicali...
...Typeset by Archetype...
...During World War II, the vegetable growers of California and Arizona's Imperial Valley - the same who fought to establish the bracero program - moved into Mexico's northwest coast area to produce winter vegetables for the U.S...
...3, 1975...
...The Border Industrialization Program was conceived, a plan through which U.S...
...imperialism...
...EARLY IMMIGRANTS The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which in 1848 ended the war between the United States and Mexico, left the toilers on one side of the border, the capital and best land on the other...
...p. 245...
...Their hands move quickly and precisely, but their faces reflect the tension and boredom of the job...
...One month after the agreement was reached, Videocraft had 170 workers in its two plants (down from 400 before the shut-down) and Sarkes had rehired 60...
...Electronics, April 17, 1975...
...maker of pocket computers, a Mexican vice-manager oversees the workers and handles all the paperwork with the Mexican Government, while a team of U.S...
...we know how to run it...
...Haiti, after Mexico, is the closest off-shore location to the United States...
...The move of garment shops to Mexico is but the latest chapter in a century-long flight from higher wages and organized workers...
...By 1971, Fortune reports, the following products were produced outside the United States for re-import: 54 percent of black & white TVs, 18 percent color TVs, 32 percent phonographs, and 91 percent radios...
...In fact, between 1960 and 1970, the rate of unemployment along the border actually increased by about 87.2 percent...
...3. Ibid...
...government to stem the tide of jobs to foreign countries with legislation...
...pledged support for the striking Chicanas and noted parallels between their own community and the Farah plants: Similar conditions exist for Asian women...
...The guards remained throughout the more than two months of negotiations, until in early February of this year, Mextel decided to shut down permanently rather than pay the fired workers...
...Galarza, op...
...The industry responded by laying off 400,000 workers...
...The U.S...
...16 By 1974, according to conservative estimates, there were more than 210,000 unemployed along the border.17 One argument made in favor of the BIP is that it creates a "skilled" workforce...
...imperialism...
...I asked her, "Didn't you just have an accident...
...D. C. Heath Co., 1971...
...2 4 At the local level these factors are brought together in the form of powerful political cliques, which provide professional, technical and political support for the BIP investors...
...In order to attract private capital to the BIP, the Mexican Government "clarified" its foreign investment law to assure that assembly plants designed for export could be 100 percent foreign owned and managed...
...However, much of these increased sales are going to large U.S...
...They produce semi-conductors, television tuners and receivers, magnetic cassette tapes, electronic memories, audio equipment and a variety of other products...
...Mattel also has plants in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States...
...American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico, Maquiladora Newsletter, March 1975...
...Used in hand calculators and the digital watch, it also controls the range and the oven, the clothes dryer and the tape recorder...
...Why, after ten years of apparently successful operations, are these U.S...
...Nearly 4,000 workers were employed by Matell Toy Co...
...Baerresen, op...
...4. Michael Myerson, "The ILGWU: A Union That Fights for Lower Wages...
...Thousands of workers have organized into unions, and, partly through their efforts, wages in Mexico have risen considerably in the past couple of years...
...7. New York Times, May 7, 1967...
...8. U.S...
...3 Now the managers are complaining about "these people [who] put on a front of being simple peasants...
...8 Even the U.S...
...The 19-month boycott gathered international support, including actions by workers in Farah's Hong Kong plant and the Japanese Textile Workers Union, and a message of solidarity from striking garment workers in Cuernavaca, Mexico...
...The depression of the 1930s meant unprecedented deportations of Mexican workers from the U.S...
...No, I can't," she told me, "when I went to the hospital my sister got sick, and since she went and they need the work I am doing, they won't let me leave...
...Reprinted from Ramparts by New England Press...
...foreign investors are always concerned with controlling their investment, and this is especially true for assembly shops that may want to move from Ciudad Juarez to El Salvador overnight...
...which simply moved its Phoenix assembly operation a scant 200 miles south to Nogales, Sonora...
...Business Latin America, 10/9/69 What we're doing is not for the good of Mexico but for the U.S...
...Finally, the state Attorney General settled the dispute in favor of the new independent leadership, and the plant reopened...
...While the companies are required to pay Mexican federal taxes on profits and gross sales, state taxes vary and, in general, tend to be very low, since each border state competes with the others to attract industry...
...8. NACLA interview with Charles Nelson, Feb...
...LABOR 1. Gus Tyler, "Labor's Multinational Pains," Foreign Policy # 12, Fall 1973, p. 115...
...Sarkes' peak employment in Nuevo Laredo was nearly 1,000 workers in early 1973, with about 800 classified as permanent and the rest temporary workers.* As the U.S...
...Ten years ago many of them worked the fields as children, bent alongside their parents in the stark, white heat of cotton, salty earth, and summer sun...
...4. Wall Street Journal, Jan...
...And for us, nothing is impossible...
...At a March 1975 meeting in Chihuahua, attended by Nelson and other representatives of business and government, U.S...
...When the Arbitration Board would not accept this as a valid reason for firing the workers, the company then laid off 500 workers gradually over a two-month period without notifying the Board and without indemnization...
...imperialism that must be fought against as part of an entire system, the AFL-CIO preached that mere excessive greed had caused runaway shops and, consequently, they could be controlled by protective legislation...
...16, 1974...
...Wages were held in line.21 When the war was over, the growers weren't willing to give up their labor supply, and they lobbied in Washington for Public Law 78 which was enacted in July 1951, making the bracero contracting system a permanent institution...
...Confronted by the economic and political implications of this massive unemployment in a geographical area with little if any industrial base, the Diaz Ordaz government, in 1965, made the first proposal for a new kind of bracero program...
...They are waiting for the bus which carries them daily from the parched and salty lands of their parents' ejido (state-owned, collectively farmed lands) into town where they hurry to work at one of the hundreds of new U.S.-owned assembly plants...
...Eighty-five percent of those hired are young women from 16-22 years, and mostly unmarried, since families mean added expenses to the companies...
...Many have been purely economic battles for wages, while others have included political struggles against the corrupt charros (labor bosses) of the government controlled unions like the CTM, CROC, and CROM...
...firms with shops on the Mexican border, inviting them to move to Haiti...
...Though the government did not give in to requests for export subsidies and the reduction or abolition of sales and income taxes, it did shift the burden of the crisis further onto the workers by seriously undermining the legal rights of employees...
...Mexican In-Bond Industry Program," Sept...
...Who used whom...
...The need to further cut costs of the company's worldwide operations was the main reason given by a Mattel spokesman during an interview in Los Angeles: Wages there [Mexicali] have reached parity with other parts of the world, so we can go to other places...
...Such action is virtually impossible...
...Under public pressure, Congress voted not to renew the bracero program in 1964...
...For a study of the Farah strike, see Union Drive in the Southwest, Chicanos Strike at Farah by the San Francisco Bay Area Strike Committee, United Front Press, P.O...
...Garment workers comprise 20 to 30 percent of the maquiladora workforce and live and work under the same system of exploitation as farm workers, service workers, industrial and construction workers and the marginally employed along the border...
...This is especially crucial to assembly operations in which labor accounts for 50-90 percent of the total costs...
...It's so bad that there is a constant turnover.' 2 Equipment in the small electronics subcontracting shops is often rudimentary, subjecting employees to many on-the-job dangers.14 INSTABILITY AND EMPLOYMENT Many industry spokesmen and economists claim that semiconductor and other electronic assembly business is on the rise and relatively safe and, therefore, should be encouraged in developing countries to alleviate unemployment...
...in Southern California until 1967, when the company moved its entire production process to Mexicali, B.C., for reasons of "competition...
...21,452,480 n.d...
...This effort, known as "el Grito de Alerta," was the first major union walkout in Nuevo Laredo in more than a decade and an important step in building union democracy within the tightly government-controlled C.T.M...
...Under the twin plant model one manager and one staff can direct and provide the support functions for both factories...
...Ibid...
...109,000 electronics jobs (54 percent women) were lost from 1966 to 1972, and the number of jobs in the shoe industry (64 percent women) fell from 233,000 to 200,000 from 1968 to 1973.2 By January 1975 the total recorded unemployment for the United States hit crisis proportions of 8.2 percent, soaring to 17.6 percent among garment workers, 12.9 percent among electrical equipment workers and 38 percent among Black teenage women.3 Besides leaving thousands of unemployed, the runaway shop has undermined wages, weakened unions and accentu- ated divisions between skilled and non-skilled, white and non-white, men and women, young and old...
...8. Fortune, March 1973, "Labor's Big Push for Protectionism," pp...
...Figure from Mexican-American Review, March, 1975...
...Of course, the reason for going there is the labor...
...A sham union election supervised by the Arbitration Board (controlled by Perez Ibarra) was held the following week but was not ratified since the majority of the union boycotted the election...
...Tijuana, on the western end of the border, is only ten minutes from San Diego and two hours drive from Los Angeles...
...For Chui and for the thousands of other maquiladora workers, the new assembly shops have not significantly improved the conditions of daily life...
...PANACEA DOESN'T PAN OUT 1. Mexican Newsletter # 41, July 31, 1974...
...McWilliams, op...
...The Burke-Hartke bill in fact would have hampered the free movement of U.S...
...ISS, Inc...
...that is their right...
...Markets: The border industries export almost 100 percent of their production to the United States...
...I have two things thought out," explained Inocencio, a former Mextel worker: If I can't get into the United States, I think I'll go to a port like Campeche and get on a fishing boat...
...imperialism...
...1975...
...manager directs the entire operation by phone or periodic visits from the parent plant in San Diego...
...To remain competitive, the companies MAQUILADORA INVESTMENT BY INDUSTRY U.S.-MEXICO BORDER (in dollars) Electric/Electronic Textile Leather & Footwear Food Products Sporting Goods and Toys Wood Products Miscellaneous Source: Secretaria de Industria Mexican-American Review, March 1975...
...One family . . . has operated at least seven different textile assembly firms during the past three years.' 2 As a consequence, work in the needle trades is erratic and temporary, meaning no job security or severance pay and little protection from state-run Social Security...
...The process is very time-consuming and accounts for a large proportion of the industry's production costs...
...p. 11...
...5 July-August 1975 Published monthly, except May-June and July-August when it is published bi-monthly, at 160 Claremont Ave., New York, NY 10027...
...Pedro Perez Ibarra has been the local C.T.M...
...With the increasing tendency of U.S...
...5. Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1967...
...2 In fact, many feel the goose is already dead, and that it is only a matter of time before the bustling border cities become ghost towns...
...4. Banco de Mexico figures in American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico, Maquiladora Newsletter, May 1975...
...he asked, pausing to look out across the ravine that separates the United States from Mexico, onto the dusty shacks that line the opposite rim...
...Instead of eliminating 806.30 and 807 to keep industry from moving abroad, Nixon proposed softening the "unnecessary hardships" on U.S...
...This has cut transport time to one day in most border areas...
...Santa Barbara, 1971...
...Moises T. de la Pena, El Pueblo y su tierra, mito y realidad de la reforma agraria en Mexico, p. 721, Mexico, 1964...
...What will be the Mexican Government's response this time...
...In 1971, more than three-fifths of the $500 million produced by the BIP shops reentered the United States under articles 807 and 806.30 of the U.S...
...As of 1971, sixty companies (40 electronics, 10 textile, 10 toys, furniture, misc...
...LOS MEXICANOS Of all the foreign workers who were brought into the southwestern United States, however, none came in such numbers as the Mexicans...
...And men came in from all over Mexico, and this little town of a couple of thousand grew overnight into a desperate anthill of fifty thousand...
...And when the Warwick Electronics Company shut down its plants in Forest City, Arkansas, and Zion, Illinois, and moved them to Mexico and Taiwan, 3,300 North American workers lost their jobs...
...1966...
...Then everyone to their work place, their booth, and we begin work at exactly 8:00...
...3 The Warwick television assembly plant in Tijuana, where Teresa works, is a huge two-story structure...
...Again it offered "cheap" labor to U.S...
...True to government claims, by the end of 1974, the program had attracted more then $63 million to the border, a little over half of this in electronics assembly plants...
...These two factors led to the growers' "disenchantment" with the Japanese and to the active recruitment of East Indian, Armenian, and other nationalities as farm workers...
...Embassy, op...
...Because of their highly mobile nature, the runaway shops are less vulnerable to nationalizations and changes of government than other forms of foreign investment, but State control still remains a crucial factor in regulating the work force...
...corporations like Anderson Clayton which have invested heavily in the food industry...
...Which of these two views is more accurate...
...Yet it is moving forward, learning important lessons for the future...
...Why have the companies so quickly changed their tune...
...The past five years have seen a concentration of the toy industry into fewer large companies, and increased competition has seriously undercut Mattel's lead...
...p. 27...
...Her sister was working there also and had very delicate nerves, and was so shocked by the accident that she got sick and had to go home...
...4. NACLA interview with Luisa Duran, Feb...
...4. Ibid...
...standard of living," the bill would have (1) given power to government to impose greater quotas on foreign imports, (2) increased restraints on the export of U.S...
...Three months later, as the crisis on the border worsened, the government granted many of the concessions suggested by the companies...
...retailers along the border claim that 40 to 60 percent of their retail sales are to Mexican shoppers.' 3 In 1972, the Mexican Government undertook to correct this situation by formulating programs which would "accelerate the economic integration of the border region into the rest of the country...
...Arthur D. Little, Manufacture in Mexico for the U.S...
...We're the workers, and we know everything about the plant...
...According to a company spokesman, "Having two plants in different Mexican states means it's harder to be dictated to...
...A striking example is the letter from the Haitian Assembly Industry Association, SONACOA, to U.S...
...1 4 ) --21 These women joined hundreds of other Mattel toy assemblers in a three-month, around-the-clock guard duty to prevent the company from removing its equipment and running away...
...There you're just a single worker...
...I said...
...Along with their pressure on the government and the constant threat of running away, companies have used speedups, lockouts, company unions and even police intervention against the workers over the past months...
...The "degree of risk" classification of each company may be modified on a case by case basis, thus reducing the company payments to the social security fund...
...6. NACLA interview with Charles Nelson, Feb...
...p. 18...
...1 3 The Farah strikers also demonstrated that with dedication and organization a successful strike is possible even in an area like the U.S.-Mexico border with its massive reserve army of labor...
...95-96...
...Ibid...
...2. Joseph B. Mackinnon, "Investment at the Border - the Maquiladoras," Mexican-American Review, March 1975...
...In Nuevo Laredo, for example, six electronics plants employ nearly two-thirds of the entire maquiladora workforce...
...Beginning with 72 authorized U.S...
...Longoria is said to boast that "Nuevo Laredo is mine...
...4 In Baja California, over half of the state's 1974 industrial output came from the new assembly shops...
...To solve these thorny problems will also require increased cooperation between workers on both sides of the border...
...While the Revolution's agrarian reform did result in the transfer of large amounts of land from the oligarchy to the peasants in the form of ejidos, it left the best lands in the hands of a highly-concentrated, commercial sector dominated by U.S...
...19, 1967...
...Then the companies are going to have to face the problems they themselves have created.' 8 As in industry, efforts of farm workers to organize will be challenged by "runaway crops" as well as complicated by the arrival of thousands of immigrants pushed north by the current crisis in Mexico...
...industry could set up assembly operations along the Mexican border...
...Well, yes," she told me, "they already gave me a shot...
...1 4 Border investment is further facilitated by the existence of Mexican Government-sponsored industrial parks, where cheap rents, low electricity and water rates, and transportation facilities are offered to attract companies...
...However, when asked who will enforce those laws, they expressed serious doubts about their government's ability to act independently of the companies...
...Agrarian Problems & Peasant Movements in Latin America, p. 241...
...Forbes, May 20, 1975, "Hello Flash Gordon," pp...
...Then the Mextel factory arrived and we all wanted to get in...
...electronics firms like Warwick, "quality" is the only thing that counts...
...the courts of the new state apparatus quickly secured those lands for the North American capitalists, and the California Gold Rush created both capital and markets...
...Address all correspondence to Box 57, Cathedral Station, New York, NY 10025 or Box 226, Berkeley, CA 94701...
...MONEY MAKES THE MONKEY DANCE" Since union activities in the maquiladoras have not been part of a more integrated political struggle for workers' control in Mexico, the unions have relied heavily on the Mexican Government to solve the current crisis...
...Management is allowed to increase or diminish the personnel, the work day, the work week, and even the salaries, provided the company's situation so requires...
...The Farah garment workers demonstrated that strikes, boycotts and union solidarity are not outdated, and gave great hope to workers in other parts of the country - in particular to Chinese immigrant workers in San Francisco's sweatshop garment district...
...On the Mexican border, in Puerto Rico, in the Dominican Republic - in any area where the maquiladora strategy has been touted as the panacea for unemployment - the result over time has been higher unemployment...
...See "The Electronics Industry...
...By 1973, there were 108 shops sewing together swim suits, shirts, golf bags and undergarments.' Some are directly run by big clothing makers like Levi-Strauss, Puritan, Kennington and Kayser-Roth, but an even larger percentage are small fly-by-night sweat shops who do subcontract work for U.S...
...By the mid-60s, there were about two million permanently unemployed farm workers, and another two or three million facing seasonal unemployment...
...We've made them rich...
...The guys that know how to run down here get a good lawyer, they understand each other...
...But for now they are part of the thousands of young Mexican women who, in the past few years, have left the tradition of home and agriculture to venture into the world of industrial employment...
...3, 1975...
...A principal factor affecting this was immigration...
...production faltering because of strikes and work slow-downs...
...McWilliams, op...
...127-28...
...From the California Gold Rush of the 1840s to World War II, from the bracero labor-contracting system of the 1950s to the establishment of Mexico's Border Industrialization Program in 1965, life in the U.S.-Mexico border area has been jolted by the absorption and expulsion of labor as dictated by the needs of the U.S...
...By 1973, the border had 168 electronics plants, outranking Taiwan and Hong Kong as the principal site for U.S...
...As one striker said, "los billetes hacen bailer el chango" - money makes the monkey dance, and the companies have the money...
...And if I beg...
...NACLA interview, Feb...
...More than half of the Mexican labor force is still engaged in agricultural activities, and over half of those are landless laborers...
...80.9 101.9 164.7 180.56a 450.00b Profit Remittances & Other Payments Abroad 2 0.5 0.7 2.1 4.4 6.5 8.1 13.2 14.4c 36.0c Added value for 1966-1972 from Maquiladora Newsletter, October 1974...
...8 ' The electronics plants started moving to the Mexican border with the inception of the Border Industrialization Program in 1965...
...The Navajos reacted to the cutback with an armed takeover of the plant...
...Cam Duncan interview with Robert Boysen, July 1, 1975...
...We will highlight those historical changes, spurred by the expansion of U.S...
...Electronics assemblers at Warwick's Electronica de Baja California plant in Tijuana.6 Border Crisis 1965 The Maquiladoras Arrive All of us in the family used to work as day laborers in the cotton fields of Mexicali...
...And grown men with calloused hands and knives in their belts fell down and cried...
...During the several weeks we spent along the border earlier this year, we were able to observe first hand the serious economic and social dislocations caused by the maquiladoras, as the assembly plants are called in Mexico...
...Eight days...
...Jorge Martinez Rios, op...
...in 1974, or 11 percent of the total for all countries in the 806/807 trade program...
...Robert Lindsey, "Mexican Border Workers Embittered," New York Times, May 26, 1975...
...economic hegemony...
...1975...
...Coahuila 22 2,636,640 10,189,200 5,928,160 4,751 283,000 1,115,000 Ciudad Acuna 7 294,640 4,038,400 2,600,400 2,235 14,000 33,000 Piedras Negras 15 2,342,000 6,150,800 3,327,760 2,516 22,000 47,000 Tamaulipas 99 22,329,200 30,506,480 21,198,240 12,892 383,000 1,457,000 Reynosa 10 9,056,160 1,250,320 695,520 526 67,000 192,000 Matamoros 55 9,959,280 19,581,280 12,090,800 7,208 88,000 186,000 Nuevo Laredo 32 3,183,440 9,674,080 8,411,920 5,158 67,000 151,000 (1) (3) (4) (5): Direccion General de Estadisticas, Secretaria de Industria y Comercio, 1973...
...And on the eastern end of the border, Nuevo Laredo serves as a gateway to San Antonio and Houston...
...Peregrine Publishers, Inc...
...workers no longer had a monopoly on skills or know-how...
...You do your job and give it all you're worth so it turns out good, but you feel the work doesn't belong to you, and less so when it leaves here stamped "Made in USA...
...This program was extended in 1973 to include all underdeveloped areas of Mexico, nevertheless, most of the investment remains along the border...
...There the manager took out the needle with some pliers...
...from page 17) One of the Mextel strikers commented that "a bad boss is worth more than no boss at all...
...Manuscript to be published by Notre Dame Press...
...n.d...
...For example, between 1969 and 1971, a general economic slump caused a 15 percent drop in semiconductor sales...
...In spite of its progressive nature and several successful agreements for rubber and auto workers, this strategy is severely limited since it can only involve workers from the monopolized industries and since the unions involved are only marginally responsible to their rank and file members...
...In one outbreak, five rioters were killed before soldiers could put down the uprising...
...demand...
...Subscriptions: $10 per year for individuals ($18 for two years), $16 per year for non-profit institutions ($30 for two years), $25 per year for profit-making and government organizations ($48 for two years...
...and foreign The 2000-mile international border will continue to be used to divide U.S...
...8. Ibid...
...At another level, attempts at international bargaining by established unions hold little hope for workers most affected by the runaway shop.* Effective strategies will only come from a U.S...
...4, 1975...
...They'll just say, "and so young...
...For they were attorneys and knew how to deal with these gringos and get things done the American way...
...Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1970...
...a U.S...
...In 1974, 4,000 garment workers (85 percent Chicana women) won a 21-month long strike for union representation against Farah Clothing Co...
...THE SELL-OUT The heated debate over foreign investment filled the mass media until February 1973, when the 35-member AFL-CIO Executive Council met with President Nixon and worked out a deal...
...In the past ten years, hundreds of U.S...
...and U.S...
...Sale in the domestic market by maquiladoras will now be considered on a case by case study - allowing each company to present arguments for such a request...
...Those in favor of slavery based their arguments on the "need for a cheap and docile labor supply in order to realize the potentialities of California agriculture...
...The main research centers, and often the main plants, are centered around these cities...
...What pleased the growers most about the Mexicans was that, unlike the Asians, Europeans, and Filippinos, they could easily be deported during times of economic crises or labor organizing...
...Producing for both the European and U.S...
...You're going to earn so much...
...Since Perez Ibarra maintained some support within the maquiladora unions and was still the legal representative on the contract for some time after the incident, companies took advantage of the jurisdictional struggle to get rid of "troublemakers" and "inefficient workers...
...5 Such figures may seem impressive evidence of the success of the BIP...
...toys sales and 2 percent of worldwide sales...
...air and ground transport, and the companies are now asking that U.S...
...1 The Mexican minimum wage is regulated by a commission on which the U.S...
...In some cases, the process of proletarianization has caused new tensions that many workers had not anticipated...
...Beginning in the late 1850s, the Mexican Government initiated structural changes to break up Mexico's feudal-type land structure, and in the process threw millions of peasants off the land and into the job market...
...alienation, speed-ups, racism, inflation, layoffs - the AFL-CIO painted the runaway shop as an isolated problem...
...they inevitably develop enmities towards the system that outlaws them and deports them.s With the impetus, then, from both the U.S...
...garment and electronics jobs running away to Mexico...
...Everybody gets as much work out of them as they can - it's the same here as on the Mexican side, only over there they pay 'em by the hour but work 'em like it was piece-rate...
...It was launched in 1961 to modernize and beautify the eye-sore border cities, to make them "become the outposts of the country's decorum, grandeur and technical abilities...
...Why are you here...
...Baerresen, op...
...Nogales Ciudad Juarez Nogales Ciudad Juarez Nogales Tijuana Nogales Tijuana Nogales Nogales, Guadalajara Rockwell Mexicali Ciudad Juarez Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Zaragoza, and Ciudad Acuna Tijuana Piedras Negras Nuevo Laredo Tijuana, Reynosa Matamoros U.S...
...assembly plants in Mexico: Harassment and terrorist tactics by Chinese Communists in Hong Kong have caused some worries about the future of U.S...
...3,000 workers were left jobless when this Mattel Toys subsidiary in Mexicali moved its plant out of the country rather than meet workers' demands...
...Transitron followed the lead of Sarkes and Videocraft by closing its plant on June 3, 1975, and the union put up strike flags...
...Embassy, Mexico, State Department Airgram #8655, "Border Industry Program," Dec...
...13, 1975...
...We leave home in the morning and go to the factory where we wait for work time at 8 o'clock...
...According to Mexico's Constitution of 1917, ownership of real property by foreigners was prohibited within 60 miles of the international border and 30 miles of the seacoast...
...2 Teresa is one of approximately 30,000 electronics assembly workers in U.S.-owned maquiladoras along the border...
...This is what hasn't happened in the United States...
...electrical firms in Mexico (including both electronics and electrical machinery) represented about 1/3 of all electrical sales by U.S...
...manuscript...
...Because the assembly process on the border is generally only a small part of a larger multinational operation, decisions about sourcing of raw materials are based on the profit needs of the parent company, not the development goals of Mexico...
...Workers do not obtain the status of permanent employee until after 90 days employment, rather than the previous thirty - thus allowing companies to fire a greater number of "temporary" workers without full severance pay...
...Something had to be done to prop up the sagging economy along the northern frontier...
...A. B. Conrad, in The Packer, Jan...
...President of the labor federation George Meany made it very clear that the impetus to change this trend will not come from his leadership: Why should we worry about organizing groups of people who do not appear to want to be organized...
...Between 1942 and 1950, over 430,000 contracted laborers entered the United States through the three principal recruitment centers in Mexico: Hermosillo, Chihuahua, and Monterrey.'S One of the bracero recruitment centers was at Empalme on the Sea of Cortez, about 700 miles south of the U.S...
...As the leader of one "rebel" union in Mexicali said: I'm a simple worker, but one thing I know: beatings make one wise...
...Fisher, op...
...Land and income redistribution, the obvious answers, were out of the question for a bourgeois Government heavily dependent on foreign capital...
...p. 635, emphasis added...
...In an effort to stay in the black & white business, Warwick went on a search for an off-shore location that had all the advantages we were looking for: cheap labor, quality control, and close to our base...
...This time the response was more systematic: In 1942 the spontaneous and irregular migration that had prevailed gave way abruptly to one that was supervised and regulated by government...
...As one woman said, shrugging her shoulders, "We didn't have a strong enough leadership to defend our rights...
...Inocencio, 21, a maquiladora worker' By the mid-sixties there was a serious unemployment crisis along Mexico's northern border as a result of the end of the Bracero Program in 1964...
...I think if you're an honest businessman, you're going to go broke...
...Companies are now authorized to act as customs agents in their own plants...
...It was during this period that the agricultural industry made its choice in favor of governmentally administered migration of Mexicans...
...Problems are further complicated by a recent order from the Security Exchange Commission to appoint a majority of non-company directors to its board because of serious discrepancies in the company's financial statements for 1971 and 1972...
...35,127,920 4,330,080 7,782,960 1,063,840 2,142,960 1,526,080 10,701,600 Total $63,675,440 y Comercio figures seek to reduce production costs - and in a labor-intensive industry like electronics, that means cutting wages and worker benefits...
...Tariff Act...
...CONTROL OF INVESTMENT U.S...
...30, 1974...
...The smaller companies are often involved in subcontracting or manufacture of a single special device, and are under even greater pressure than the large companies to save on production costs...
...Sonora is one of the poorest and least developed states along the border, and accordingly offers the largest exemptions...
...workers also were left without jobs back in 1967 when Mattel first fled Southern California to the then attractive border.US...
...On the one hand they have gained a sense of self-reliance and confidence through their struggles against the company and for democratization of the union...
...Cam Duncan (cont...
...MEXICAN BORDER ----------------------------- -OSANTA FE I I ALBUQUEROUE i I IIZONA NEW MEXICO PHOENIX TucyIn eing TEX S %,-- Columbus TEX oaes Doug a I Paso La$ Cludad Juarez Nog les Aga Palomas Preta I SONORA C y Del o rI CHIHUAHUA AJ-na NACLA'S LATIN AMERICA & EMPIRE REPORT Vol...
...market...
...here anyhow...
...He's a member of the PRI ruling party, that's the strong party here that (laughter) usually comes out the winner...
...2. Benjamin Taylor and M. E. Bond, "Mexican Border Industrialization," MSU Business Topics, Spring, 1968, p. 36...
...But there was little action until 1971 when the AFL-CIO sponsored the Burke-Hartke "Foreign Trade and Investment Act of 1972" in Congress...
...An interesting example of this were the "twins of Transitron," electronic manufacturers which, up until late 1974, employed 1500 workers in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and 75 in Laredo, Texas...
...The Mexican Government, however, has continued to defend the program as a means "to give impetus to the development of the region...
...Octaviano Longoria Jr...
...A. D. Little, op...
...Novedades, Nov...
...Nearly 3,000 U.S...
...You know, a little education sometimes is dangerous...
...24, 1972, "Big Deal at the Border...
...p. 5. 13...
...As a movement struggling within a superpower, its history has been marked by class collaboration and special oppression of national minorities and women...
...engineers oversees the assembly operations and a U.S...
...4 LABOR UNREST In fact, many changes have taken place in the labor movement along the border in the past decade...
...They're brought in-bond from Japan into Los Angeles or San Diego, and then into our plant here in Mexico...
...During the rank and file struggle for control of the Video Craft union in Nuevo Laredo (See "Nuevo Laredo"), for example, two women, Consuelo Aguilar and Teresa Rock, headed the "rebel" and bureaucratic forces, respectively.17 Along the border, housing, schools, and health facilities are poor and inadequate for the rapidly growing population...
...9. Donald Baerresen, The Border Industrialization Program of Mexico, p. 33, D. C. Heath Co., 1971...
...8. NACLA interview with Mextel Union officials, Feb...
...6. Ibid...
...Tracor claims that to terminate its 247 workers in Piedras Negras legally would cost the company about $161,000...
...6) (7): 1970 census figures from Secretaria de Industria y Comercio, Industrial Possibilities for Assembly In-Bond Plants, Mexico, 1973.The Panacea Doesn't PanOut Unemployment and Underdevelopment The solution chosen by the Mexican Government has been in effect to separate the border zone from interior Mexico, allowing the economy to be tied closely to the U.S...
...For her employment and income were directly dependent upon there being a "patron" for whom she could work...
...asked her daughter, "At my age, who's going to hire me...
...electronics market fell in late 1974, Sarkes gradually laid off 300 workers, paying about 100 full severance...
...1 9 For every bracero who managed to get papers, a dozen more were turned away...
...This study, we hope, will help illustrate why workers in the United States must stand alongside people of the oppressed nations in their struggle against U.S...
...The railroads, which would link the United States from coast to coast, could only be built by labor...
...it ended nearly a year later with an ILGWU contract.' 6 FISTS ACROSS THE BORDER In contrast to the examples given by workers at Farah and Jung Sai, hundreds of factories from Brooklyn to Palo Alto were too divided and disoriented to respond adequately to layoffs, speedups and runaways...
...Marx, op...
...Reports from the 1930s estimate that an average of 58,000 Mexican workers a year were brought into California alone during the decade between 1920 and 1930,13 and the figures were probably even higher for Texas...
...Government cooperation with the BIP that would follow...
...Behind their story lie the forces of capitalist development in North America which, since the early 1800s, have transformed the dusty plains and valleys of Mexico's northern frontier into the home of a massive reserve army of labor to be used, abused and discarded at will by U.S...
...Enrique de Jesus Rios Rivas, who became president of the Mextel union through the rank and file struggle against the union bureaucracy,* explained: They just told us, "now you have a union...
...Box 40099, San Francisco, Ca., 1974...
...Though wages along the border are higher than elsewhere in Mexico, food costs are often even higher than in the United States, so most workers cross into the U.S...
...agribusiness interests...
...1971...
...In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson received a confidential, government-commissioned report on political tension between the United States and Mexico, especially along the border...
...unions launched a chauvinist "Buy American" campaign years.6 which sowed division between US...
...Alma, his mother, also worked at Mextel...
...Just how lucrative were these investments for Motorola and the other U.S...
...The 1910 Revolution completed the process with the triumph of a more industrially-oriented bourgeoisie over the more feudal sectors of the landed oligarchy, breaking their hold over the agricultural labor force...
...This study attempts to provide a close-up picture of the daily effects of these operations as well as a broader analysis of the runaway shop phenomenon...
...9 SEMICONDUCTORS Many of the larger electronics plants along the border - those employing more than 500 people - are involved in the assembly of semiconductors...
...118 NUEVO LAREDO: A Case Study The Border Industrialization Program (BIP) has had a turbulent history in the past two years...
...And faced with strikebreaking by undocumented workers and green card commuters from across the border, the strikers responded by organizing them too into effective supporters...
...The AFL-CIO leaders continued to regard the higher salaries of U.S...
...During the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz in the late 1800s, North American investors had already begun to penetrate northern Mexico: growers acquired enormous acreage of arable land in the Mexicali valley and cattle magnates and mining companies moved deep into the states of Sonora and Sinaloa...
...Donald Baerresen, The Border Industrialization Program of Mexico, p. 35...
...Why aren't you working...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, NY.3 The Reserve Army of Labor Dust swirls around the weathered sign - "Eiido Emiliano Zapata" - while three young women stand at dawn along the main highway leading into Mexicali...
...NACLA interview with Charles Nelson, Feb...
...firms "have undoubtedly been disturbed by the cloud cast by mounting union pressures coupled with wage increases and new fringe benefits," and "run the risk of...
...aren't you working?' What will I do...
...The manager of Warwick industries, a local representative of the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico, described in an interview his "close relationship" with Governor Enrique Cardenas Gonzales of the border state of Tamaulipas where the company recently had set up a new plant: I met a gentleman several years ago through working here (Tijuana) who was the Undersecretary of the Treasury at the time...
...17 One of the early multinationals to take advantage of the wage difference was Motorola Inc...
...20-21...
...9. McWilliams, ibid...
...The production of semiconductors is a labor-intensive operation, requiring the placement of fiber-thin wires on a plastic chip by rows of workers who sit hunched over microscopes...
...recession - "and in no way the result of recent wage increases...
...In San Francisco Chinatown, federal minimum wage and hour laws are not enforceable because the factories do not...
...p. 124...
...7. NACLA interview, Jan...
...Mextel announced that it was going to lay off 562 workers due to economic problems.* The local union demanded that the company compensate the fired employees with full severance pay, but Mextel refused...
...Government control of the labor union apparatus, manipulation of minimum wage laws, monopolization of the electoral process, centralized control of all state and municipal officials, and a thorough police, military and para-military system are just some of the means the Mexican state uses to maintain this apparent calm...
...Fairchild Camera alone reduced its workforce by 9,000...
...Rather than import workers, the United States would export the industries...
...nearly a third of those were in Mexicali...
...However, Charles Nelson, manager of the Warwick plant in Tijuana and an active participant in the AmCham's campaign, explained that Mexico does not compete with the United States for assembly operations, but with low-wage countries all over the world: If Mexico reaches a point where we can't be competitive, then we've got to go somewhere else, but that somewhere won't be the U.S.' 5 The message was clear...
...7 Years after the marriage of convenience between the AFL-CIO and the multinationals, the labor bureaucrats awoke to find that with the enormous export of capital and technology in the last decade, U.S...
...6, 1973...
...What's left doesn't go very far...
...Overall8 productivity in the maquiladoras is reputed to be 25-40 percent higher than in the United States, squeezed out of the workers by double and triple the number of supervisors per worker used in the U.S...
...Few examples illustrate more graphically the need for international cooperation and solidarity between working people in the United States and workers abroad...
...Ibid...
...These groups formed a political coalition which launched a violent campaign to drive the Chinese from the fields...
...Baerresen, op...
...industry to export jobs in order to compete with European and Japanese imperialism, working people in the United States are finding themselves more and more the victims - not the beneficiaries as some once believed - of the fight to maintain U.S...
...But here, too, the penetration of U.S...
...For different reasons both perceived the Chinese as a threat to their existence: organized white labor because it saw the Chinese undermining the wage rates, and the small capitalist because, unlike the large landowners, he could not take advantage of the large numbers of Chinese workers...
...agribusiness has further aggravated unemployment...
...consequently, the semiconductor companies cut production and lay off workers they no longer need...
...So they can either take this, or end up with nothing...
...A North American quality control engineer paces the isles behind the workers and gestures paternally at the young workers...
...Russell Griffith, a chief technician at Hughes' electronics assembly plant in Mexicali, lives with his family in the U.S...
...J. R. Landman, M. D. Boulsen, "Economic Impact of the Mexican Border Industrialization Program: Agua Prieta, Sonora," Special Study # 10, Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State Univ., May 1972...
...and Mexican governments negotiated the first of a series of emergency agreements to import thousands of Mexican braceros to meet the feared labor shortage...
...Not a crop was lost...
...manufacturing base and the U.S...
...The standard explanation was the rising cost of labor...
...s The "glamour" and status associated with working for the new companies often has worn off quickly, however, especially for the estimated 35 percent of the women workers in Nogales who are single mothers...
...By the late 1800s, workers from Austria, Italy, Russia, Poland and Spain flocked by the thousands into Germany, France, and the United States where the process of capital accumulation increased the demands for labor...
...And little by little, through our experiences and books, we have learned...
...Cam Duncan interview with Rich Van Fleet, June 5, 1975...
...Imperialism and Its Effects on the Economy of the U.S.-Mexican Border, June 13, 1974...
...multinationals has been the steady diet of tax breaks, special treatment to American owners and outright subsidies...
...business consultants at various stages...
...2 In less than ten years, the maquiladoras came to employ nearly 13 percent of the border's economically active population, and in some states, such as Tamaulipas and Coahuila, half of the industrial employment was provided by these plants...
...Nationalize...
...San Diego Union, Nov...
...18 Perhaps most important is that employment in the BIP is dominated by a few large U.S...
...Industry leader Texas Instruments, with a worldwide workforce of 56,000, laid off some 17,000 workers - more than 3,000 in Texas alone.'" Along the border, many of the electronics plants were running at 50 percent employment by February of this year, and more than 20,000 workers were fired between October 1974 and March 1975.14 Employment instability is also aggravated by the practice of "stockpiling" semiconductors...
...cont...
...Transitron tried to lay off some 1400 workers in June 1974 under the pretense of firing those who had participated in a May work slow-down protesting the lack of air conditioning in one section of the plant...
...Stavenhagen, p. 245...
...manuscript...
...manuscript...
...Within the seasonal migrant labor force, nearly one out of every two jobs came to be held by a contracted Mexican...
...Assembly and testing are the steps usually moved offshore, because they are the most routine and labor-intensive steps whereas research, design, and manufacture of the products for assembly are more risky and technical and are usually kept in the United States...
...After the BIP was established, the company shifted production to two assembly plants in Mexico, which offer "more flexibility in scheduling" than does their Taiwan plant...
...Expansion, op...
...in 1969 it leased a plant from the Navajo Tribe in Shiprock, New Mexico...
...1973...
...side...
...Whereas temporary workers may be fired at will with no severance pay, the layoff of permanent employees must be preceded both by notification of the Arbitration Board of the reason for the layoff and by payment of at least three months severance pay...
...Instead of linking the issue of multinational runaways with the other problems faced by working people in the U.S...
...713 Now You See Them, Now You Don't Practically all radio sets, tape recorders, cassettes, and most black & white TVs sold in the United States under U.S...
...That was when we began to change work...
...defense contracts as well as digital watches for the U.S...
...3 What worried the conservative Mexican Government of Diaz Ordaz was not just the growing number of destitute families, but their growing militancy and organization in the absence of land, jobs or a means of survival...
...Galarza, op...
...Some 70,000 workers - most of whom had never stepped inside a factory - were brought into the industrial workforce of the BIP, and in the process their lives and consciousness have changed...
...In Nogales, site of more The long struggle between Mextel and the union is typical of the changes which have taken place and which have ultimately led many companies to look elsewhere for a more "docile" workforce...
...These are experiences upon which to build...
...3. SIC, ibid...
...17, 1973...
...This incident, along with "an endless string of abuses, vulgarity, fines, quotas, thefts, and immoral behavior harmful to the maquiladora workers" (workers claim that he required "favors" of the women who sought maquiladora jobs), created an explosive situation on December 6. That night, 2000 workers at Transitron Electronics walked out in solidarity with the fired workers...
...As in the United States, nearly all garment workers are women, and as a young Mexicali seamstress explained in an interview, they are subject to management manipulation and many on-the-job dangers: There was a girl that was new at work and before 10 minutes she got two needles stuck in one finger...
...And so men lined up in a line of tens of hundreds and gave their money to these men in suits in the shade of a big beautiful umbrella with the Mexican flag on one side and the American flag on the other side, and these men took three hundred pesos (twenty-four dollars) from each single man as fast as they could all day long and into the night for six straight days, and then, on the seventh day, they didn't come back...
...And we don't have it," said Van Fleet: To survive, we told them that all we could possibly pay is the seniority pay, which comes to $52,000...
...labor a few years ago - is killing the goose...
...Never has it been clearer that the fate of workers on both sides of the border is inextricably linked...
...Recent experiences of workers in the United States reveal both the possible solutions and the pitfalls of the movement to bring the multinational runaways under control...
...Cam Duncan, Economic Relations on the United States-Mexico Border, p. 24, unpublished manuscript...
...While the particular process of capitalist development in the southwestern U.S...
...Richard Bolin, "The First Billion Dollar Year," Mexican American Review, June 1974...
...industry and agribusiness...
...Lloyd's Mexican Economic Report, June 1975...
...On the other hand, when demand drops, the manufacturer dips into his stockpile rather than placing new orders for the components...
...The list of U.S...
...And, since electronics assembly work is broken down scientifically into repetitive and tedious tasks, it is quite simple to train a new, previously unskilled workforce in Third World countries like Mexico...
...Embassy, Mexico, Department of State Airgram # 388...
...The law bans foreigners from investing in areas of vital national interest - petroleum, railroads, nuclear power, electricity, etc...
...He has served terms as Federal Deputy and city councilman, and was the recognized leader of the maquiladora unions since their inception in the late 1960s...
...equipment during the night as other companies had done.* "We're not here to be made fools of," the union president said...
...Immediately, Perez Ibarra sent goon squads to physically attack a meeting of strikers, but the goons ("matones") were rousted...
...Japan just about took over the market...
...The semiconductor industry has regularly registered annual growth rates of 15 percent to 30 percent or more, and markets in Europe and Japan are rapidly expanding...
...corporations on both sides of the border which have benefited from the new investments...
...Rick Jurgans, "Company Move Prompted Shiprock Takeover," for Pacific News Service, March 6, 1974...
...Figure from Excelsior, November 30, 1974...
...companies responded quickly, alleging the tax was illegal, and in 1973 won a favorable ruling from the Mexican Supreme Court...
...7. Lloyd Fisher, The Harvest Labor Market in California, p. 4. Harvard Press, 1953...
...And I must say, those girls in Morelos who've never known what a factory is, never have been inside a plant, are doing a marvelous job .. they haven't learned any bad habits Xet...
...Market, p. 3. Arthur D. Little, Inc...
...Ibid...
...The BIP is nothing more than the stop-gap measure of a government confronted with crisis-level unemployment, yet unable and unwilling to undertake the necessary structural changes.12 ELECTRONICS RUNAWAYS: By far the most important U.S...
...3. Arthur D. Little, Manufacture in Mexico for the U.S...
...6. Lic...
...on page 20) * Other firms have been able to move their machinery back to the U.S...
...However, these are only the domestic centers of worldwide operations...
...The practice of stockpiling can also undermine the effectiveness of a strike by semiconductor workers, by delaying its effects on the rest of the industry...
...But that is getting less advantageous...
...For the discarded worker, there is no such thing as unemployment or welfare...
...rent and electricity take another quarter...
...Many of these returned to their small villages in southern Mexico, but thousands remained in the northern cities, waiting for a chance to cross into the United States...
...2. Survey of Current Business, August 1974...
...Even if we have to send food caravans over there we'll do it...
...border...
...And instead of linking the miserable wages forced upon foreign workers by U.S...
...From this shared experience must grow a unified strategy for ending the process...
...Excelsior, Nov...
...semiconductor firms at least will have to automate.16 In short, the electronics industry is highly erratic with extremely unstable employment conditions - hardly the industry to be promoted by developing nations like Mexico which are seeking to solve unemployment problems...
...20, 1973...
...The latter will not happen spontaneously, but through a long, disciplined struggle, directed by men and women who have developed clear strategies for fighting imperialism on all fronts...
...A 1973 leaflet entitled "Asians: Boycott Farah...
...Production is often hampered by malnutrition, North American managers admit, noting that "many new workers lack the energy required for a full day's work...
...But this same process is also creating a basis for unity among the workers of different Latin American countries, who share a common experience with many of the same employers...
...1974...
...Last year there were six girls that didn't make one error...
...25, 1968...
...Workers were needed to clear the California river valleys of oak and shrub, transforming them into the richest agricultural land in the world...
...Such a group often includes a local government official, lawyer, accountant, banker, customs broker, labor contractor and in most cases the owner of factory land and buildings...
...workers...
...A half of one of the needles was still sticking in her finger when they took her to the workshop of the mechanics...
...2 8 For Mexico as a whole, expenditures on farm machinery grew from 6% of the total cost of agricultural production in 1940 to 11% by 1960, while expenditures on wage labor dropped from 22% to only 7%.29 Clearly the unbalanced capitalist development of agriculture in Mexico has had enormous impact on the labor force, sending millions of rural unemployed to Mexico's urban centers in search of jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors...
...Most of these companies that can't do that just won't have a product - they'll be out of business...
...In 1910, they "fled the union in Manhattan to cross the waters into Brooklyn, and later to cross the Delaware into Pennsylvania and later to cross the Mason-Dixon line to Mississippi...
...In return, Nixon promised to "get tough" on foreign trade and, in the words of Fortune magazine, "achieve labor's ends - protecting jobs - through negotiation and through threats of retaliation...
...We are like two hands on the same body here on the border," explained Fidel Valdez, a lettuce cutter under UFW contract who has two sisters that work in U.S.-owned assembly plants in Mexicali, B.C...
...officials feared that the closure of the Bracero Program in 1964 would open a floodgate of uncontrollable immigrants...
Vol. 9 • July 1975 • No. 5
