EVENING THE ODDS
Bacon, David
Evening the odds Cross-border organizing gives labor a Chance BY DAVID BACON Just before the AFL-CIO's February executive-council meeting in Los Angeles, Congressman Richard Gephardt took a...
...production and investment...
...Despite numerous efforts to ro.ake.jH work, NAFTA's labor side-agreement Mb no teeth to force government action a« no jurisdiction over employers...
...On the first day of my period, I came back...
...In 1994, the United Electrical Workers and the Authentic Labor Front gained enough support among workers at a General Electric plant in Juarez to file a petition for a union election...
...The plants supply car seats to General Motors...
...In both cases, Hernandez was released after the state government of Baja California admitted it had no evidence she had committed any crime...
...Mexico's traditional common front among government, unions, and employers is beginning to fracture...
...It has already documented extensive discrimination against pregnant women at three Juarez factories belonging to FAVESA, a subsidiary of Lear Industries...
...The first effort got under way in 1993, when workers tried to form an independent union at Plasticos Bajacal, a maquiladora that produces coat hangers for the garment industry and is owned by Carlisle Plastics of Boston...
...workers have lost their jobs due to the agreement...
...This wasn't a junket to the bars or a golf date in the desert sun...
...They propose to democratize the unions and to organize a fight against the declining living standards of Mexican workers...
...The land doesn't seem very desirable...
...The growth of the maquiladora industry is transforming life for the two million people in Tijuana...
...Many unions moved from concern based on self-interest to an understanding that workers living in two different countries have similar interests, face similar employers, and similarly impoverishing economic policies...
...Instead, it was an effort to get a close look at what NAFTA has wrought—and to glimpse a new strategy for fighting free-trade abuses: cross-border organizing...
...The Mexican telephone workers and the Authentic Labor Front are part of a new grouping of Mexican unions—the Forum for National Unionism...
...According to David Johnson of the United Electrical Workers, the company fired those employees and threatened to close the Juarez plant and blacklist workers in order to intimidate people before the election...
...Alcoa CEO Paul O'Neill at first insisted, "You can eat off the floors of these plants...
...And just over the hill from the barrio, you can see a new industrial development, the Florido Industrial Park...
...On April 16, 1997, two days before a scheduled hearing on the complaint, Maxi-Switch recognized the independent workers' union...
...The nurse was there and she said, 'Let's see it...
...The San Diego Committee and the Border Workers Support Committee had more success supporting workers at a factory belonging to National O-Ring, whose plant was closed in 1995 when they protested that its owner had forced female employees to put on bikinis and parade for his video camera...
...D.B...
...Workers filed a sexual-harassment suit in Superior Court in Los Angeles...
...Based on the numbers on workers' ID cards, it appears that in seven years over 7,600 workers have passed through a plant that only employs 1,500," Cota says...
...Hyundai has subcontracted out its most problem-plagued operations to nearby factories...
...It's not unusual today to hear voices in union halls declare, "We're all going to go up or down together...
...Labor opponents of NAFTA are still wary...
...Residents are fighting for their homes—and for their rights on the job...
...It's a question of changing the thinking of rank-and-file union members...
...The National Administrative Office held a hearing on the Sony case, and issued a report criticizing the company and the government...
...With the Center's help, and that of the San Diego committee, the workers have petitioned the Mexican government to recognize a new, independent union...
...Especially since the Plasticos election, maquiladora workers here are afraid to organize independent unions openly," says Tong...
...This is a project of the Authentic Labor Front (the only union federation in Mexico that opposed NAFTA) and two U.S...
...That's why they don't hire pregnant women and why they fire women who get pregnant...
...Maclovio Rojas sits on a dry, flat, sandy lowland, surrounded by treeless hills...
...There's not the fervor in labor about Chile that there was about Mexico...
...The union lost the vote...
...But the unions representing construction workers, public employees, and service employees did not want to fight over NAFTA's extension...
...The problem," says Eric Meyers dLwk Coalition for Justice in the MaquuadoJB "is that this path of economic develOM ment, of which NAFTA is a part, oR which emphasizes trade liberalization IjB foreign investment at any cost, is basiCHP incompatible with the protection of ers' rights...
...When I was being hired, after the interview, they asked me when I would have my next period," one worker explains...
...The San Diego committee raised enough money to make up their lost wages, while the fired workers organized their workmates full time...
...Dozens of workers were fired...
...Plasticos Bajacal fired twelve workers for attempting to organize a separate union...
...Our problem these days is making things happen fast enough...
...The workers quickly discovered that they already belonged to a company union, Mexico Moderno, with close links to the maquiladora association...
...That could challenge the relationship between the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party, upsetting more than one applecart...
...Last fall, the Border Womett Workers Committee and the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras set up a center in Matamoros that exposed health and safety dangers at Alcoa Fujikura Ltd...
...There they met with Hortensia Hernandez Men-doza, who has been jailed repeatedly for her attempts to stop corporations from grabbing land and expelling the barrio's residents...
...companies...
...It is also overcoming hostility to immigrants...
...Maclovio Rojas, on the eastern edge of Tijuana, is home to 1,300 people...
...In an unprecedented move, the judge accepted jurisdiction and the company settled out of court...
...Mexkai workers "were betrayed [by an agrtl£ ment] which was supposed to guaran^# their rights," says attorney Levinsoa,a| trustee of the International Labor Rigf| Fund...
...They flooded the office of Governor Hector Teran with protest telegrams...
...The Laymex strikers, the fired Daewon workers, and the residents of Maclovio Rojas marched together to Hyundai's main factory later that month...
...Hernandez and her companions spent sixty days behind bars...
...Labor Secretary Robert Reich met with then-Mexican Labor Minister Santiago Onate, but agreed only to study the problem of registering new unions in Mexico...
...When Hernandez and her companions walked out of prison, they owed their freedom in large part to two groups: the Border Workers Support Committee in Tijuana and the Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers in San Diego...
...The record in Mexico is even worse...
...Jerome Levinson, lead attorney in the case, called Reich and Onate's agreement "cynical in the extreme...
...That year's devaluation of the peso cut the standard of living in half for most Mexican workers...
...In last fall's election, the federation spent $35 million to boost its leverage with the Clinton Administration and Congressional Democrats...
...At the Los Angeles meeting of the AFL-CIO executive council in February, labor was divided over the extension...
...Some of the most progressive unions on both sides of the border have made a commitment to it...
...A few decades ago, this was a small, honkytonk tourist town...
...Evening the odds Cross-border organizing gives labor a Chance BY DAVID BACON Just before the AFL-CIO's February executive-council meeting in Los Angeles, Congressman Richard Gephardt took a group of international union presidents to the U.S.Mexico border...
...When the company union would not fight to hike wages above the weekly $37-$48 level, employees went to the Workers' Center in Maclovio Rojas, funded in part by the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union...
...But in the end we were persuaded that the Administration would never agree to these conditions...
...Half of the residents work in maquiladoras...
...On April 12, 1994, Sony fired eighteW workers who tried to run for office agaii8f entrenched officials of the plant union,l| branch of the government-affiliated Con-' federation of Mexican Workers...
...After Clinton rammed NAFTA through with the votes of many supposedly pro-labor legislators, union halls erupted with members swearing it was time to abandon Clinton and the new Democrats and look for an alternative...
...It's not just a question of giving that campaign the strength of ten million union members...
...Its supporters then organized an independent union, and tried, unsuccessfully, tq register it with the government...
...Martha Ojeda, the leader of the workers in the Sony plant since the factory opened in 1979, was threatened with imprisonment for organizing the protests...
...side, the AFL-ClO's new leadership has begun to dismantle labor's Cold War defense of U.S...
...Not all the battles are about independent unions...
...They said I couldn't actually start work until I had my period...
...The New NAFTA Fast Track Despite NAFTA's disastrous effects on workers, the Clinton Administration wants to expand the agreement to Chile this year...
...There is a tremendous power when maquiladora workers, labor groups, and religious shareholders stand together to hold companies accountable," concludes the Reverend David Schilling, program director of New York's Interfaith Committee for Corporate Responsibility, which coordinates shareholder actions...
...The workers' slate lost the election...
...McEntee is a Clinton Administration supporter, as is Sweeney's assistant, Gerald Shea, who argued against provoking a battle with the Administration on the extension of NAFTA...
...No election was ever held...
...She fled to Texas...
...When Sony workers made a second attempt to register, the Mexican labor board again refused to recognize the union...
...A supervisor also beat the workers' leader, eighteen-year-old Alicia Perez-Garcia...
...Both the Teamsters and the United Electrical Workers contribute money to the Authentic Labor Front...
...NAFTA and the devalued peso inspired this building boom...
...Gephardt took his delegation to the Tijuana barrio of Maclovio Rojas...
...Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, lauded the appearance of Vice President Al Gore at the executive-council meet-Big, even though Gore had championed NAFTA...
...In Chilpancingo, a small barrio next to the U.S...
...The San Antonio-based Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras—an alliance of unions, community organizations, and church groups on both sides of the border—tried to make the labor side-agreement work...
...It charged Sprint with the 1994 firing of 200 Latino telemarketers in Ssft Francisco...
...The independent union lost...
...NAFTA's labor side-agreement has proven all but useless...
...In the end, the AFL-CIO position stated, "International economic policies which simply promote open markets, unregulated capital mobility, export j^owth, and the protection of private property are inadequate to address the complexities of the global economy...
...Its detailed report last October documented extensive sexual discrimination in maquiladoras...
...It called for opposing the fast track only if there were no commitment to "enforcement mechanisms for addressing workers' rights, labor standards, and environmental protection, [which are] part of the core agreement and subject to the same dispute-settlement procedures...
...Both groups helped organize a march from Tijuana to the state capital in Mexicali to demand the release of the prisoners...
...On the mesa above Chilpancingo sits a closed battery-recycling plant...
...At one of the plants, Daewon, sixteen workers were fired in industrial unrest last July...
...Cross-border organizing is booming in other cities as well...
...David Bacon is an associate editor at Pacific News Service and a documentary photographer...
...The growth of such industrial parks threatens to displace communities like Maclovio Rojas...
...border, organizers began counting children who were born without brains, a condition called anen-cephaly...
...Another example of cross-border labor clout occurred in November, when the U.S...
...Health and safety issues are also urgent...
...employers are increasingly using the threat to relocate production in Mexico as a lever to extract concessions from workers and undermine organizing drives, says Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner...
...Robert Barton...
...Together with the International Labor Rights Fund, the American Friends Service ComrnitteedMB Mexico's National Association of DdH cratic Lawyers, it brought a complaini|H fore the National Administrative OffksM 1995...
...But after a subsequent investigation, the company agreed that a series of gas poisonings had gone unreported in 1994, and fired Alcoa Fujikura's president...
...The United Electrical Workers, the Teamsters, and the Authentic Labor Front filed the first complaint under NAFTA's labor side-agreement...
...In 1993, NAFTA came closer to provoking a permanent break between unions and the Democrats than any issue since the Marshall Plan and the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which curtailed the power of organized labor...
...Members of the Communications Workers at a Maxi-Switch warehouse in Arizona traveled to the Mexican plant to pressure Maxi-Switch management...
...What we do is even the odds faced by workers who get into fights with factory owners and the government," says Mary Tong of San Diego's Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers...
...Barrio leaders Hortensia Hernandez, Artemio Ozuna, and Juan Regalado were arrested the following day...
...At another, Laymex, ninety-one workers walked out of the plant in August...
...The Mexican government admits the loss of more than a million jobs in 1995 alone...
...The complaint accused the Mexican government of failing to obey its own labor laws at the General Electric and Honeywell plants...
...The latest action took place on June 2, when 125 workers struck another Hyundai subcontracting plant, Han Young de Mexico...
...At the same time, we're trying to educate people north of the border about the problems people face in Tijuana...
...In the first three months of 1996, a year after the devaluation of the peso and two years after the treaty passed, 134 new factories began production along the U.S.-Mexico border...
...Many experts think that number is a vast understatement...
...In the three years since NAFTA was signed, the Department of Labor has certified that more than 100,000 U.S...
...These unions have borne the brunt of job and wage losses due to free trade...
...At that maquiladora, 13,250 workers make automobile harnesses...
...Communications Workers of America filed a complaint with the NAFTA labor board over union busting at the Mexican factory of Taiwan-owned Maxi-Switch, in Hermosillo, Sonora...
...Show me the sanitary napkin.' They accepted me that same day...
...In imitation of George Bush, Clinton is asking for fast-track authority from Congress to expand NAFTA...
...That same year, the Authentic Labor Front cooperated with the Teamsters in an effort to organize a union at Honeywell's big plant in Chihuahua...
...In 1993, six children were born with the same awful defect, and in 1994 there were thirteen...
...Eleven new plants started up in March 1996 alone...
...foreign policy and corporate interests...
...Millions of working Americans realized that both Republicans and Democrats were pushing the same trade policy that puts corporate profitmaking above workers' jobs in any country...
...On the U.S...
...Turnover is high...
...But the cost is not just in jobs going south...
...It was Hernandez's second imprisonment in two years...
...Market forces then drive down the standard of living, providing a bonanza for corporate investors...
...Nor was it simply a stunt by Gephardt for union support in his coming campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination...
...General Electric fired a handful of union supporters after they appeared on The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour...
...To buy votes for NAFTA's passage, Clinton had promised that a labor agreement would protect workers' rights...
...A renewed NAFTA debate could lead to strong grassroots labor support for a break with the whole Democratic-Republican economic consensus...
...Tong says that lead and other heavy-metal deposits have been measured in the soil there at concentrations 40,000 times over safe levels...
...These new maquiladoras employ 10,336 new workers, and represent a total investment of $126 million, according to the Mexican government...
...Organizer Ed Feigen believes that the AFL-CIO "not only can't stand in the way of these new initiatives, it doesn't want to...
...Now it is home to 700 maquiladoras...
...Political operatives in the AFL-CIO dodged the issue at the New York convention that elected John Sweeney the federation's president...
...trade policy reinforces low Mexican wages and poor working conditions, providing a magnet that draws U.S...
...The Mexican telephone-workers union also filed a complaint against the United States under the NAFTA labor side-agre*-ment...
...They point out that trade agreements and their enforcers— the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization—eliminate government expenditures and laws protecting workers, the poor, and the environment...
...The door is open now...
...In Ciudad Juarez, which boasts the largest concentration of maquiladoras on the border, a three-union alliance opened the Center for Labor Studies in September...
...Foremen have hit workers, and employees have lost fingers and hands in many shop-floor accidents...
...In May 1996, Ojeda became the first Mexican director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras...
...labor movements...
...The director of the Center for Labor Studies, Guillermina Solis, charges that the companies want to avoid offering government-mandated maternity benefits...
...The Coalition drafted the compljH with the help of the AFL-CIO's field odB nizer on the border, Ed Feigen, and filefl on behalf of workers at Sony Corpora tion's maquiladora in Nuevo Laredfl south of Laredo, Texas...
...unions, the Teamsters and the United Electrical Workers...
...in nearby Ciudad Acuna...
...While anti-NAFTA unions forced the council to come out for placing conditions on fast-track authority, it's pretty clear that some labor leaders would prefer to avoid a fight entirely...
...But on the other side of the dirt road at the edge of town looms the warehouse of the Hyundai Corporation, one of Tijuana's largest export factories, or maquiladoras...
...The Center is an outgrowth of joint campaigns the three unions have waged to organize workers at factories in Juarez and Chihuahua...
...Their houses are made of old pallets, unfolded corrugated shipping cartons, and other castoffs from the factories...
...Then-U.S...
...I was still three weeks away, so I had to wait...
...But business support isn't as strong, either...
...At the AFL-CIO executive-council meeting, industrial unions lined up behind Representative Richard Gephardt, who is leading the fight against NAFTA's extension to Chile...
...The National Administrative Office in the Labor Department held a hearing on the complaint, but recommended no action on the charges...
...Tactics that don't depend on theJB bor side-agreement are more eflS tive...
...The factory, which makes the chassis for shipping containers, lacks safety equipment and has a history of industrial accidents...
...After the> firings, workers sat in at the plant gatf Sony brought in riot police, who beat, them...
...When the election was held, workers voted in the street in front of the plant, under the watchful eyes of company managers and representatives of the company union...
...Cross-border solidarity is becoming crucial to the survival of unions and the preservation of millions of jobs both in the United States and in Mexico...
...If Congress grants it, the Administration will negotiate the extension with Canada, Mexico, and Chile, and then submit it to Congress, which will be barred from amending any of its provisions...
...Fearing bad publicity might drive away foreign investment, the local political boss in 1995 prevented activists from making a new count...
...Some workers who had supported it were blacklisted from Tijuana's other factories...
...The funds help organize workers in factories belonging to U.S...
...Once you grant fast-track authority, it's easy for the Administration to make promises," warns Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union president Bob Wages...
...In any case, we're in no position to argue with the person who's carrying water in Congress...
...This is the story of NAFTA and Mexico...
...There's a deep division among the affiliates over this issue," says AFL-CIO research director Thea Lee...
...Her allegations are supported by the Women's Rights Project of Human Rights Watch...
...Freed from regulation, capital flows to areas where it produces higher profits for corporations, and slimmer wages and benefits for workers...
...Now Clinton's proposal for NAFTA's extension threatens another bitter fight...
...The debate over NAFTA taught workers that U.S...
...The real question, though, is whether there will be a grassroots labor campaign against NAFTA...
...As before, no government Mt tion resulted...
...The groups brought workers to the annual Alcoa stockholders meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they described their exposure to toxic gasses...
...According to Jaime Cota of the Workers' Information Center in Tijuana, terrible conditions at Hyundai have sparked protests...
...Transnational companies that could spend fewer dollars on Mexican wages had a corresponding increase in profits...
...The company had fired a number of activists and signed a sweetheart contract with a government-affiliated union...
...The odds facing maquiladora workers and cross-border activists are improving because of changes in both the Mexican and the U.S...
Vol. 61 • July 1997 • No. 7
