Maquiladoras: Explotación y Resistencia

Sindicalismo en la frontera norte de México

2012-01-04T12:23:00.000-08:00

Ponencia 1977

Cirila Quintero

Ponencia preparada para la Mesa de Trabajo Frentes culturales: Investigación e interpretación a lo largo de la frontera México-Estados Unidos de Latin American Studies Association XX International Congress, Guadalajara, México, a celebrarse del 17 al 19 de abril de 1997)

Esta ponencia tiene tres propósitos: primero, postular una categorización de la conducta sindical en las plantas maquiladoras de la frontera norte; segundo, delinear los rubros más importantes en los que pueden apreciarse los principales simililtudes y diferencias entre las variantes sindicales, finalmente, postular algunas de las principales escenarios laborales y perspectivas sindicales que se perciben en el futuro de la región fronteriza.

El análisis está basado en el estudio empírico de siete ciudades fronterizas, . Asimismo, dado el dominio del sindicalismo oficial mexicano, se concentra en la reestructuración que este tipo de sindicalismo ha experimentado al interior de las maquiladoras.

El sindicalismo en las maquiladoras: La persistencia de lo local en la globalización

2012-01-04T11:12:00.000-08:00

Cirila Quintero Ramírez

Saberes y Razones, CIESAS, 2006

Este artículo presenta al sindicalismo actual en las maquiladoras en el norte de México como el resultado de la interacción entre las condicionantes laborales locales y los requerimientos productivos internacionales. La respuesta de estas organizaciones a las necesidades de las maquiladoras ha sido la conformación de dos alternativas sindicales bien definidas: una tradicional, que trata de mantener su tarea histórica de defensa de los trabajadores; y otra que se ha constituido en la subversión de dicha función, es decir, en una organización laboral subordinada a las decisiones empresariales que margina la defensa de los trabajadores. La pertenencia sindical a una u otra vertiente ha dependido de la fortaleza o debilidad sindical y de las características regionales de las plantas. La estructura gubernamental —preocupada por incentivar las inversiones— y la organización empresarial han actuado a favor de la vertiente subordinada del sindicalismo, lo que ha desembocado en la precarización laboral de un porcentaje importante de trabajadores de este sector económico.

Maquiladora Industry InformationInformación de la industria maquiladora

2011-12-31T08:10:00.000-08:00

INEGI: Maquiladora en Números

El Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI), con el objetivo de proporcionar información estadística que permita un conocimiento amplio y oportuno sobre la evolución del sector maquilador de exportación en México, elabora y publica en forma mensual la estadística de la Industria Maquiladora de Exportación. En México esta industria tiene sus inicios a mediados de la década de los sesentas, bajo la promoción del Programa de Industrialización de la Frontera Norte, con el fin de proporcionar las condiciones necesarias para la creación de empresas maquiladoras en esa región del país. De esta forma, con el establecimiento de las dos primeras empresas (dedicadas a la manufactura de televisiones y de plásticos), surgen paralelamente dos parques industriales: el primero fue en Juárez y el segundo en Nogales. Posteriormente, aparecen otros a lo largo de la frontera, entre los que sobresalen los ubicados en Mexicali, Tijuana, Reynosa y Matamoros.

Industria manufacturera, maquiladora y de servicios de exportación: Datos 2007-2010
Estadisticas de la Industria Maquiladora de Exportación

INEGI

INEGI: Síntesis Metodológica de la Estadística de la Industria Maquiladora de Exportación
El Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI) presenta la Síntesis Metodológica de la Estadística de la Industria Maquiladora de Exportación, en la cual se describen en forma resumida, las características metodológicas, conceptuales, técnicas y operativas de este proyecto que permitan a los informantes y usuarios conocer el proceso de elaboración de los resultados de este importante proyecto.
Ir al estudio

Crece turismo fronterizo 6.3%: CNT

2011-12-23T04:02:00.000-08:00

Julio Reyna Quiroz

Periódico La Jornada
Viernes 23 de diciembre de 2011, p. 26

El turismo fronterizo será el segmento que evite registrar números negativos en la totalidad del número de viajeros internacionales con pernocta que arribarán al país al cierre de este año, de acuerdo con previsiones del sector privado.

La Confederación Nacional Turística estimó que la llegada de viajeros internacionales al cierre de 2011 alcanzará un volumen de 22 millones 641 mil turistas, debido al aumento en el sector fronterizo, el cual crecería 6.3 por ciento.
Por su parte, el Consejo Nacional Empresarial Turístico (CNET) sostuvo que el turismo fronterizo mantiene una tendencia de recuperación y alcanzó niveles observados a principios de este siglo. Ese crecimiento puede explicarse por la decisión de los viajeros que cruzan la frontera hacia México con la intención de retornar a Estados Unidos el mismo día (excursionistas), de ampliar su estancia en el territorio nacional. Es decir, los excursionistas fronterizos se convirtieron en turistas fronterizos, señaló el CNET en el Panorama de la Actividad Turística en México.
Respecto al turismo de internación –el de mayor derrama económica en México– su recuperación sigue estando limitada desde los últimos meses de 2010 por factores económicos externos y por los efectos de la inseguridad.

De acuerdo con datos del Banco de México, el número total de turistas creció a 18 millones 324 mil entre enero y octubre pasado, un aumento de 1.03 por ciento frente a igual lapso de 2010.

Dicha cifra es la suma de los turistas fronterizos y los de internación. Estos últimos se caracterizan por arribar al país vía aérea, básicamente, y por su mayor derrama económica durante su estancia.

Al cierre de octubre, el banco central reportó 8 millones 215 mil turistas fronterizos, un incremento de 5.7 por ciento. Sin embargo, la cifra de turistas de internación cayó 2.4 por ciento en el mimso periodo al contabilizar 10 millones 109 mil personas.

Si bien hay incrementos de dos dígitos en los arribos vía aérea de turistas brasileños, rusos o canadienses, entre otros, la cifra es insuficiente para compensar la caída en las llegadas de viajeros estadunidenses.

Los turistas de Brasil, Rusia, India y China representan apenas 2.7 por ciento de los 8 millones 408 mil 843 extranjeros que arribaron vía aérea entre enero y octubre pasado.

Por el contrario, la cifra de turistas de Estados Unidos que ingresaron vía aérea cayó a 4 millones 720 mil 324 al cierre de octubre, lo cual significó un descenso de 5 por ciento frente a igual periodo de 2010.

Nissan rompe récord de producción nacional

2011-12-23T03:56:00.000-08:00

Llegó unidad 600 mil en menos de un año

Juan Carlos Miranda

Periódico La Jornada
Viernes 23 de diciembre de 2011, p. 29

Nissan Mexicana batió récord histórico en la producción nacional de vehículos en el país, al producir, este miércoles, la unidad número 600 mil en este año, algo que nunca había sido hecho por ninguna otra armadora.

La empresa es el mayor productor de vehículos en el país con una participación de 23.6 por ciento.
Según la Asociación Mexicana de Distribuidores de Automotores (Amda) de las 600 mil unidades producidas en todo el año sólo 164 mil 791 (es decir 27 por ciento) se vendieron en territorio nacional, mientras que el resto se exportó.
La compañía japonesa dijo que Nissan Mexicana es un punto de referencia para otras plantas de Nissan alrededor del mundo.

Precisó que la producción de noviembre alcanzó 57 mil 592 unidades, lo que representó un aumento de 19.2 por ciento comparado con el mismo mes de 2010.

Destacó que aun en un año donde la producción de Nissan a nivel global se vio impactada por los efectos del terremoto y tsunami de Japón, así como de las inundaciones de Tailandia, la empresa en México rompió récord con más de 600 mil unidades producidas, que han coadyuvado a concluir 2011 con 30 meses de liderazgo nacional.

El desempleo ha crecido 60% en este sexenio

2011-12-23T03:47:00.000-08:00

La desocupación es 60% superior a la registrada al comienzo del sexenio de Calderón

Reporta Inegi más de 2 millones 550 mil desempleados en noviembre

La subocupación repuntó de 7.1 a 9 por ciento de la población económicamente activa

Juan Antonio Zúñiga M.

Periódico La JornadaViernes 23 de diciembre de 2011, p. 24

La tasa nacional de desocupación repuntó 7.95 por ciento en noviembre sobre la registrada en octubre de este año, con lo cual el universo de personas en infructuosa búsqueda de empleo afectó a más de 2 millones 550 mil integrantes de la población económicamente activa (PEA) del país, durante el penúltimo mes del año.

De acuerdo con la información difundida por el Instituto Nacional de Geografía y Estadística (Inegi), la dimensión actual de la desocupación en México es 60 por ciento superior a la registrada al inicio de esta administración, y su magnitud implica un incremento de 178 por ciento en el transcurso de los dos gobiernos surgidos del Partido Acción Nacional (PAN).

La tasa nacional de desocupación de noviembre fue de 5.16 por ciento de la PEA, según los datos depurados del organismo, frente a la de 4.78 por ciento reportada en octubre. Las cifras originales, sin eliminar las distorsiones ocasionadas por eventos estacionales como días festivos y puentes de asueto, fue de 4.97 por ciento, como porcentaje de la población económicamente activa.

En tanto que la subocupación, constituida por aquella población con empleo que manifestó la necesidad y disponibilidad de trabajar más horas para completar su ingreso, tuvo un incremento anual de 26.7 por ciento, al pasar de 7.1 en el penúltimo mes del año pasado, a 9 por ciento en noviembre de 2011 como proporción de la población ocupada.
El reporte del organismo sugiere que en México existe una especia de desocupación ilustrada. Indicó que 28.8 por ciento de las personas desempleadas no completó los estudios de secundaria; en tanto que 71 de cada 100 desempleados ostentan los mayores niveles de instrucción académica.

La población desempleada en el país hacia el cuarto trimestre de 2000, cuando inició sus funciones el primer gobierno federal surgido del PAN, la desocupación afectaba a 915 mil 400 personas. Pero ese universo se expandió 75 por ciento durante los siguientes seis años, hasta ascender a un millón 601 mil habitantes que buscaban empleo y no lo hallaban al término de la administración presidida por Vicente Fox Quesada. En ese sexenio, unas 685 mil personas ampliaron el universo de la desocupación.

Pero otras 949 mil personas más se han sumado a las filas del desempleo en México durante los cinco años de la actual administración gubernamental, cuya magnitud rebasa los 2 millones 550 habitantes que buscan, sin encontrar, una ocupación que les permita un ingreso constante.

Según el informe del Inegi sobre la evolución de este fenómeno, las entidades del país con mayores tasas de desocupación coinciden con aquellas donde se registran los más graves hechos de violencia criminal, con una tasa de desocupación superior al promedio nacional.

Entre esas entidades figuran Chihuahua, con una tasa de desempleo de 6.95 por ciento; Tamaulipas, donde 6.67 por ciento de su población económicamente activa está en plena desocupación; Nuevo León con 6.50 por ciento; Baja California con 6.63 por ciento; Sonora con 6.26 y Zacatecas con 5.89 por ciento.

Por lo que se refiere a la desocupación que afecta las 32 principales ciudades del país, el Inegi informó que la tasa de desocupación fue de 5.94 por ciento de su PEA, una vez eliminados los efectos estacionales y de 5.93 en su versión original.

Cayó 6.5% la inversión extranjera directa en 2011; México, en el lugar 15 de la OCDE

2011-12-22T03:31:00.000-08:00

Producción de vehículos Chevy en la planta de General Motors de CoahuilaFoto José Carlo González

De 13 mil 429 mdd captados, 4,765 millones corresponden a nuevas inversiones, informa Economía

China encabeza la lista de mayores receptores de capital foráneo, con 111 mil millones de dólares

Enrique Méndez

Periódico La JornadaJueves 22 de diciembre de 2011, p. 22

La inversión extranjera directa (IED) de México cayó 6.5 por ciento en 2011, equivalente a 933 millones de dólares respecto a 2010, reportó la Secretaría de Economía –por medio de Gobernación– a la Comisión Permanente del Congreso de la Unión.

En el informe sobre la variación de la IED, se detalla que sólo 47.2 por ciento de los 13 mil 429 millones de dólares del total de capitales del exterior corresponden a reinversión de utilidades, por 6 mil 339 millones, y 35.5 por ciento –4 mil 765 millones de dólares– a nuevas inversiones.

Estas cifras colocan a México en el lugar 15 –después de Austria– entre los países de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE). China, que no es miembro del organismo, es el mayor receptor, con 111 mil millones de dólares, cuya participación porcentual en ese foro subió de 15.9 a 18.6 por ciento entre 2010 y 2011, mientras la economía mexicana pasó –en ese indicador– de 2.6 a 1.8 por ciento.

Se detalla que en la composición total de la inversión extranjera, si bien aumentó la reinversión de utilidades, las nuevas inversiones prácticamente se desplomaron.

Esto es, que de los 14 mil 361 millones de IED en 2010, 8 mil 904 millones correspondieron a nuevas inversiones; 2 mil 423 millones a reinversión, y 2 mil 34 a cuentas entre compañías.

Para el ejercicio fiscal que está por concluir, esos factores cambiaron. Así, de los 13 mil 429 millones de inversión foránea, las nuevas inversiones bajaron a 4 mil 765 millones, las reinversiones crecieron a 6 mil 339 millones y las cuentas entre compañías ascienden a 2 mil 324 millones.

Mientras que por sector, la mayor parte del capital foráneo se focalizó en la industria manufacturera y servicios financieros, con 41.5 y 18.3 por ciento, respectivamente, en el sector de la construcción fue de únicamente 6.9.

Sectores industrial y de electricidad, de los más afectados

Los sectores donde la IED cayó son: industrial, electricidad y agua, manufacturas, servicios inmobiliarios y de alquiler, servicios de apoyo a los negocios, educación, salud y hotelero.

En tanto que por país, el reporte de la Secretaría de Economía señala que 65.5 por ciento de la inversión tiene su origen en empresas de Estados Unidos, 13.25 de compañías españolas, 9.4 de Suiza, 2.6 de Japón, 1.4 de Canadá y Brasil, y otras naciones, 6.5 por ciento.

La caída se dio a pesar de que a septiembre, la Comisión Nacional de Inversiones Extranjeras autorizó 12 nuevos proyectos de inversión por 939.7 millones de pesos, en actividades extractivas, sectores de la construcción, comunicaciones y transportes, y otros servicios.

Hasta 2005, México se colocó con una participación de 2.5 por ciento en la recepción de flujos mundiales de capital extranjero, indican los cuadros enviados por Economía a la Comisión Permanente.

Se redujo hasta 1.4 por ciento en el último año de gobierno de Vicente Fox, repuntó una décima en el primer año de la administración de Felipe Calderón y se mantuvo así en 2008.

Sin embargo, volvió a bajar a 1.3 por ciento en 2009 y repuntó ligeramente dos décimas en 2010, debido a que, además, perdió posiciones en el índice de naciones seleccionadas como de confianza, tendencia que empezó desde el arranque del gobierno de Calderón.

De acuerdo con las tablas presentadas por Economía, en 2008 México se ubicó en el lugar 15 de principales países receptores de IED, lugar que en 2009 ocupó Brasil, el principal competidor en la región, y México pasó al 21 en 2009. A pesar de que en 2010 recuperó dos lugares y llegó a la posición 19, Brasil subió hasta el lugar cinco, sólo debajo de Estados Unidos, China, Hong Kong y Bélgica, según los mismos datos de la dependencia.

Para adquirir canasta básica se requiere salario mínimo de 180.92 pesos: UNAM

2011-12-22T03:23:00.000-08:00

En 30 años acumula pérdida de 82 por ciento, señalan expertos

Emir Olivares Alonso

Periódico La JornadaJueves 22 de diciembre de 2011, p. 17

En lo que va de este sexenio el nivel adquisitivo de los trabajadores ha descendido drásticamente, el incremento al salario mínimo no supera 28 por ciento, en tanto que los precios de los alimentos básicos se han incrementado por lo menos al doble, subraya el Centro de Análisis Multidisciplinario de la Facultad de Economía de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

En su reporte de fin de año, el grupo de investigación advierte que para poder adquirir la canasta alimentaria recomendable, en 2012 es necesario un minisalario de 180.92 pesos, y el más reciente incremento a este ingreso fue apenas de 4.2 por ciento, para colocarse en 62.33 pesos; por ello, los trabajadores tendrían que laborar casi 24 horas al día sólo para alimentarse.

Los académicos señalan que 65.45 por ciento de la población ocupada en el país percibe menos de tres salarios mínimos y carece diariamente del ingreso para adquirir los alimentos suficientes, por lo que está condenada a vivir en niveles de desnutrición.

El análisis reporta que entre 2006 y 2011 los precios de algunos alimentos de la canasta básica se duplicaron, mientras que el salario mínimo creció de 48.67 a 62.33 pesos por una jornada de ocho horas diarias.

Agregan que de acuerdo con la Ley Federal del Trabajo y la Constitución, el salario mínimo debe garantizar los niveles necesarios para que el trabajador pueda subsistir dignamente. Sin embargo, los incrementos raquíticos incumplen con la ley.

Resaltan que una familia no sólo tiene que alimentarse, sino cubrir otras necesidades básicas, como vestido, calzado, vivienda, salud, pago de servicios, educación y entretenimiento, para lo cual actualmente se necesitaría un ingreso diario de aproximadamente 850 pesos.

El grupo de investigación, conformado por Luis Lozano Arredondo, Irma Otero Fonseca, Nallely Vázquez Sandoval y David y Javier Lozano Tovar, calcula que, aunado a lo anterior, de 1982 a la fecha el salario mínimo presenta una pérdida acumulada de 82 por ciento.

United States-México Border Health Commission

2011-09-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

HHC here

The United States-México Border Health Commission (BHC or Commission) was created as a binational health commission in July 2000, with the signing of an agreement by the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States and the Secretary of Health of México. On December 21, 2004, the Commission was designated as a Public International Organization by Executive Order of the President.

The mission of the United States-México Border Health Commission is to provide international leadership to optimize health and quality of life along the U.S.-México border.

The Commission is comprised of the federal secretaries of health, the chief health officers of the ten border states, and prominent community health professionals from both nations. The BHC has the unique opportunity to bring together the two countries and its border states to solve border health problems. The Commission provides the necessary leadership to develop coordinated and binational actions that will improve the health and quality of life on the border.

The United States-México Border

The border between the United States and México in some places is marked by a river, in other areas it is merely a line in the sands of the desert. Throughout history the border has been remapped by wars, politics, and nature. It has gone from an isolated, nearly uninhabited environment, to a bustling region of commerce and activity with a total combined population of nearly 12 million.

On a normal day, millions of trade items cross the line north and south. More than 800,000 people crisscross legally everyday, not counting the thousands who find illegal ways to enter the United States. Those who do find their way may risk their lives to rattlesnakes, scorpions and blistering heat or extreme cold. The lure of the north has brought millions of residents from the interior of México and other Latin American countries, to swell the border region past its economic limits and resources. The economic burden on the two countries is staggering. Much of the border is poor and health resources are scarce.

This rapid population growth is putting further pressure on an already inadequate medical care infrastructure, which further decreases access to health care. The border is impoverished and has a double burden of disease to bear. Like many emerging nations, it struggles with serious chronic diseases such as respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments. The large and diverse migrant population increases the incidence of communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, as well as chronic illnesses such as diabetes, certain cancers, and hypertension. In addition, the problems and concerns affecting the border region have broad repercussions for both nations. Travelers, migrants and immigrants, who are crossing the border every day, are taking their health problems with them to other parts of the United States and México.

Although both nations cooperate in specific health areas such as tuberculosis and immunizations, until now, the border region lacked a sustainable process for addressing and improving the health of its population. A high-level binational commission was needed to effectively address these issues.

The Establishment of the United States-México Border Health Commission

In recognition of the need for an international commission to address border health problems, the United States Congress passed Public Law 103-400 in October 1994. This law authorized the president of the United States to reach an agreement with México to establish a binational commission to address the unique and severe health problems of the border region. In 1997, Congress approved funding for a commission through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of International and Refugee Health. In July 2000, the U.S.-México Border Health Commission was created by the signing of an agreement by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Health of México.

The Binational Agreement

On July 14, 2000, United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala signed the agreement establishing the Commission in Washington, D.C. Secretary of Health of México, Lic. Jose Antonio González Fernández signed the agreement on July 24, 2000 in México City.

The agreement is in effect for five years and will be automatically extended for additional five-year periods unless either party gives notice of withdrawal.

The mission and character of the United States-México Border Health Commission is to provide international leadership to optimize health and quality of life along the U.S.-México border.

The BHC was created to serve all the people who reside within 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, on either side of this international boundary line. The border area is comprised of six Mexican states and four states in the United States. Due to its binational character, and the membership of the chief health officers and community health professionals from all ten of the border states, as well as from both federal governments, the Commission serves the unique role of providing the necessary leadership to coordinate actions that will improve the health and quality of life of border residents.

The Commission is comprised of twenty-six members who are deeply committed to border health improvement. Each section, one for the United States and one for México, has thirteen members. The Commissioner of each section is the Secretary of Health from that nation. Each Commissioner may designate a delegate. The chief state health officer of the ten border states is a statutory member of the Commission, and the other fourteen members are appointed by the government of each nation.

Sandak, regreso al siglo XIX

2011-08-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

La Jornada

13 Agosto, 2011

Arturo Alcalde Justiniani

De un día para otro, la empresa Calzado Sandak despidió a sus más de 300 trabajadores de la planta Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala. No hubo aviso previo ni justificación alguna, existe materia de trabajo y han ampliado su mercado. Al despedirlos, les informaba que ahora podrían laborar en sus domicilios o establecer una maquila; para ello les proporcionaría maquinaria y materia prima; eso sí, no tendrían salario fijo, pues ganarían según la producción; tampoco seguridad social, prestaciones ni sindicato. La conducta de esta empresa es representativa de la impunidad con la que se conducen las trasnacionales en nuestro país. Ignoran que, conforme a la ley, un cierre de esta naturaleza debe ser justificado ante la autoridad laboral a través de un conflicto colectivo de naturaleza económica; sin embargo, confían en que esta autoridad se convierta en su cómplice para abaratar el costo y las condiciones de trabajo, al crear una cadena productiva a domicilio, que consiste en encargar a ex empleados o a maquilas caseras distintas etapas del proceso, como costura y corte, recoger la producción, obteniendo así el producto terminado. Una auténtica cadena de explotación supuestamente superada por nuestra legislación social. Todo es una simulación: en realidad estamos regresando al pasado.

Sandak pertenece a la trasnacional Bata Internacional, cuyo origen se remonta a 1894 en Checoslovaquia. A principios de los años 40, traslada su centro de operaciones a Canadá. Actualmente se ostenta como la más grande productora de calzado del mundo, con operaciones en 70 países, en los cuales establece una planta matriz y centros de trabajo que califica de satélites. Cuenta con 5 mil tiendas de distribución. En México inicia operaciones en julio de 1958, estableciendo distintas plantas y una amplia red de maquila a domicilio. Con el cierre en Calpulalpan pretende concentrar operaciones en una planta en Iztapalapa, Distrito Federal, y otra ubicada en Chalco, estado de México, con la denominación Coscorsa SA de CV; con esta razón social tiene registrada la maquinaria y el equipo para protegerse de cualquier conflicto laboral.

La estrategia productiva de Sandak está sustentada en la diversificación de centros de trabajo con sindicatos y contratos colectivos distintos, las prestaciones también son diferentes y las utilidades las fija en una sola unidad productiva; para el periodo 2009-2010 declaró que tenía mil 800 trabajadores.

El impulso para canalizar su producción por la vía de la maquila domiciliaria fue acelerada en los últimos cinco años con motivo de la llegada a México de un nuevo director general, Carlos Casanelo, quien desde un inicio manifestó que su misión era reducir el costo salarial al máximo; para ello diseño una política tendiente a destruir al combativo sindicato independiente en Calpulalpan. Poco a poco fue sustrayendo áreas productivas de la planta fomentando el establecimiento de maquilas y trabajo a domicilio, donde los trabajadores se ven obligados a laborar jornadas extenuantes, a integrar a la familia, incluyendo los menores, para lograr las cuotas productivas y un ingreso de sobrevivencia; al no tener seguro social, la atención médica y accidentes corren a su cargo. Los centros de trabajo están plenamente identificados: basta ir a las comunidades de Francisco Villa y San Felipe, Hidalgo, ambos en Tlaxcala, donde encontraremos las maquilas Olrafe, Angiemant, Candy, Sinaí, además de diversos domicilios particulares convertidos en pequeños talleres. A pesar de las denuncias, las autoridades federales y locales se han hecho de la vista gorda. La inspección laboral está siempre ausente.

Para limpiar su imagen, Bata Internacional presume un código de ética, su pertenencia a campañas en favor de la responsabilidad social empresarial, incluso cuenta con una fundación denominada Bata Children’s Program, que en nuestro país se reduce a distribuir algunas piezas de calzado en la delegación Iztapalapa y dar contribuciones al jardín de niños Cuauhtlahuac.

La política de desplazamiento a la maquila domiciliaria se agudizó la madrugada del 6 de diciembre de 2010, cuando la empresa redujo su planta de Calpulalpan a la mitad. El pasado 18 de julio dio el golpe final intentando sustraer toda la maquinaria de la empresa. El sindicato, con el apoyo de la comunidad en Calpulalpan, se lo impidieron. Hoy, los trabajadores se encuentran en plantón en las afueras de las instalaciones y crece el apoyo nacional e internacional a su reclamo de que sea reabierta por ser una importante fuente de empleo en esa zona.

Las autoridades de trabajo han hecho causa común con la empresa para desesperar a los trabajadores y forzarlos a aceptar las reducidas liquidaciones que les ofrecen mediante volantes y comunicados en la zona. La parcialidad de la Junta Local de Conciliación y Arbitraje de Tlaxcala y de su presidenta, Karina Edith Torres Vázquez, ha quedado evidenciada al rechazar en repetidas ocasiones todas las gestiones legales de los trabajadores. El primer emplazamiento de huelga con motivo de la suspensión laboral lo rechazó con el argumento de que no aparecían las firmas del comité en todas las hojas del documento; cuando éstas fueron recabadas, su explicación fue distinta, ahora relacionada con la toma de nota que a la propia junta le corresponde expedir. Indica que el comité ejecutivo no está debidamente integrado y que primero deben subsanar diversos aspectos estatutarios antes de dar trámite alguno a la gestión; eso sí, se ofrece como intermediaria para lograr la inmediata liquidación de los obreros.

Ante la complicidad de las autoridades locales de Tlaxcala, los trabajadores buscan solidaridad y exigen al gobernador Mariano González Zarur que intervenga, no para buscar liquidaciones, como pretenden Sandak y la presidenta de la junta, sino para preservar la fuente de trabajo y evitar que se amplíe la cadena de esta nueva forma de esclavitud que constituye la maquila a domicilio.

DECLARACIÓN DE LOS ÁNGELES, 2011

2011-08-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

Declaración de los Angeles, 2011

Ver declaración

Aquí abajo se encuentra la Declaración de los Angeles producida por organizaciones de trabajadores y trabajadoras de México y Estados Unidos reunidos en la Ciudad de Los Angeles, California. También aquí se transcribe la reseña periódistica publicada en Los Angeles Times.

Declaración de Los Angeles

Las organizaciones sindicales de trabajadores y trabajadoras reunidos en la Ciudad de Los Angeles, CA, ante la situación de crisis por la que atraviesa el sistema capitalista, y ante la profundización de sus políticas contra los trabajadores y los sindicatos en el mundo, y, en particular, en esta región, declaramos lo siguiente:

Las iniciativas de reformas en materia laboral implementadas en los estados de Ohio y Wisconsin (Estados Unidos) y los proyectos impulsados por el Partido Revolucionario Institucional y el Partido Acción Nacional en México, se han convertido en una verdadera amenaza para la estabilidad en el empleo, el salario, la libertad sindical y la democracia.

Estas iniciativas pretenden abaratar el costo de la mano de obra de las y los trabajadores, individualizar las relaciones laborales, trastoca la estabilidad en el empleo abaratando los costos del despido y mantiene intocado el régimen de control corporativo, además se presenta en un momento en que a los trabajadores se encuentran más preocupados por tener empleos estables, por la situación que hoy se vive de inseguridad en el país: nadie puede asegurar que tendrá trabajo en los próximos días.

Para nadie es desconocido, que en muchas empresa la subcontratación es una práctica común en un centro de trabajo donde co-existen trabajadores de “primera” con un nivel de salarios y prestaciones un poco mejores y de “segunda” y otros los trabajadores que son proporcionados por otra empresa con condiciones mínimas de ley, con contratos de trabajo diferentes unos de otros, pero participando todos en el logro de los objetivos de producción de la empresa. El caso más grave para evadir responsabilidades se da en empresas en donde sólo el gerente es empleado directo del corporativo, por ejemplo Bancomer, y todos los demás son mano de obra subcontratada por empresas sin respaldo económico para afrontar los costos laborales generados.

Entendemos que las leyes actuales no contemplan trabajadores con contratos a prueba, eventuales o por capacitación. Sin embargo, en México en los últimos años encontramos que en muchos centros de trabajo, de manera ilegal, los contratos a prueba se prolongan por meses y hasta por años. La reforma laboral pretende legalizar lo ilegal.

En materia de democracia, transparencia y rendición de cuentas, las iniciativas impulsadas en México, están pensadas para mantener el sistema de control corporativo, sustento de los contratos de protección patronal. Con estos contratos, para los trabajadores es prácticamente imposible aspirar a tener un sindicato democrático:

1. Se introducen criterios patronales de flexibilidad laboral: libertad para subcontratar, para ampliar los contratos temporales (capacitación por 60 días, los contratos a prueba para principiantes por 30 días y el trabajo por temporada), que permiten abaratar los despidos, al no permitir la generación de derechos laborales por antigüedad.

2. Con la iniciativa del PRI se legítima las prácticas irregulares de subcontratación –outsourcing-: permite la simular en las relaciones de trabajo, ocultando la responsabilidad del verdadero patrón, quién recibe el servicio, se reduce el salario, se pierde la relación de responsabilidad y derechos laborales, pues la empresa subcontratista no cuenta con los recursos para garantizar el cumplimiento de los derechos laborales propios de toda relación obrero patronal; se pierde el principio de trabajo-igual, salario-igual. La subcontratación debería existir sólo en casos excepcionales, cuando el trabajo subcontratado no sea parte sustancial del proceso de trabajo de la empresa, que se incluyan mecanismos que permita ser supervisada e inspeccionada para evitar simulaciones en detrimento de los derechos laborales, la seguridad social, evitando debilitar a la institución misma del IMSS y la evasión fiscal, debiendo reconocerse la solidaridad patronal entre la empresa beneficiaria del servicio y la subcontratista, respecto de las obligaciones laborales.

3. Se pierde por completo la estabilidad en el empleo, abaratando los despidos y anulando cualquier beneficio y prestación con el despido injustificado. Cualquier trabajador podrá ser despedido de manera injustificada, cumpliendo con la regla de indemnizar como máximo un año de salarios caídos.

4. El Artículo 388 del proyecto es una nueva limitación a la libertad sindical, ya que obliga a afilarse al único sindicato que legalmente podrá establecer un CCT, desapareciendo en la práctica la existencia de los sindicatos gremiales: taxistas, pilotos o sobrecargos, entre otros.

5. El artículo 25 de la iniciativa destroza la CCT al permitir que en labores complementarias o conexas, se pacten condiciones diferentes a lo convenido en los CCT.

6. El proyecto del PRI fortalece el control corporativo de los trabajadores al plantear nuevos requisitos para los juicios de titularidad de CCT, pues exige una certificación del padrón de afiliados, previa al propio juicio, exponiendo a los trabajadores inconformes con su situación sindical, a la represión directa por parte del patrón y del sindicato al que se pretende demandar.

7. Se pretende introducir en la Ley el pago por horas. Sin embargo en las condiciones laborales actuales, se hace necesario una serie de transformaciones jurídicas que permitan el pleno ejercicio de la libertad sindical, la democracia participativa en los sindicatos, la no intervención del poder ejecutivo en materia de justicia laboral, y la desaparición del sistema de control corporativo sobre los sindicatos por parte del Estado y los patrones.

En nuestros países, sobre todo en México donde no se respeta los principios elementales de Libertad Sindical, se necesitan cambios drásticos en materia laboral, pero encaminados a garantizar derechos laborales, amparados por la Organización Internacional del Trabajo:

1. La constitución del Registro Público Nacional de Sindicatos y Contratos Colectivos (desaparición de la Toma de Nota).

2. Penalización a empleadores y sindicatos que pacten contratos colectivos de protección patronal.

3. Establecimiento de reglas que garanticen el funcionamiento democrático y representatividad de las organizaciones sindicales y empresariales (voto universal directo y secreto, entre otras medidas).

4. Establecimiento de cláusulas referentes a los sistemas de capacitación y productividad.

5. Homologación a la alza de los salarios mínimos, desaparición de la CNSM Y definición de mecanismos democráticos e incluyentes para la determinación de los mismos.

6. Federalización de la Justicia Laboral, es decir, la competencia exclusiva de la Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social en lo administrativo y de los jueces federales de lo laboral en lo jurisdiccional.

7. Sustitución de las juntas por jueces de lo laboral.

8. Eliminación de la requisa y de todos los ordenamientos legales que nulifican el derecho de huelga.

9. Eliminación del apartado "B" por su carácter limitativo de los derechos laborales.

10. Garantías plenas al derecho de asociación sindical y a la autonomía de las organizaciones de los trabajadores.

11. Garantías plenas a la estabilidad en el empleo.

PRONUNCIAMIENTOS SOLIDARIOS

• Rechazamos la Reforma Laboral y la Reforma de Seguridad Nacional en México

SINDICATO MEXICANO DE ELECTRICISTAS (SME)

• La reinstalación inmediata de los más de 16 mil trabajadores del SME que se mantienen en resistencia en defensa de su derecho al trabajo y contratación colectiva.

• La entrega inmediata de la Toma de Nota a los 26 miembros del Comité Central del SME, recién electos por voto universal, directo y secreto.

• Exigimos la libertad de los 13 presos políticos del SME.

SINDICATO NACIONAL DE TRABAJADORES MINEROS, METALURGICOS Y SIMILARES DE LA REPUBLICA MEXICANA (SNTMMSRM)

• Solución a las huelgas de las secciones: 17, Taxco, Guerrero; 65 Cananea, Sonora y 201 San Martín Sombrerete, Zacatecas.

• Expedir Toma de Nota al Lic. Napoleón Gómez Urrutia.

• Descongelamiento de cuentas del sindicato, respeto a la autonomía sindical y derecho a la huelga.

COORDINADORA NACIONAL DE TRABAJADORES DE LA EDUCACION (CNTE)

• Exigimos la realización inmediata del Congreso para la Sección Novena del Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE).

• Nos pronunciamos en contra de Elba Esther Gordillo por su complicidad en la imposición de las políticas neoliberales en México.

COMITÉ FRONTERIZO DE OBRER@S (CFO)

• Solidaridad con los trabajadores de la Sección 307 de la Empresa Arneses y Accesorios de México, S.A. de C.V., en Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila.

CENTRO DE APOYO AL TRABAJADOR (CAT)

• Alto a la criminalización de la lucha social y a los ataques en contra de defensores y defensoras de Derechos Humanos.

Robin Alexander, International Labor Affairs Director, United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE)

Manny Armenta, Sub- district Director, United Steel Workers (USW), District 12

Margarita Avalos, Coordinator, Colectivo Ollin Calli-Tiuana / San Diego Maquiladora Workers' Solidarity Network (Colectivo Ollin Calli)

David Bacon, Independent Journalist

Sergio Beltran Reyes, Secretary, Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores Mineros, Metalúrgicos y Similares de la República Mexicana (SNTMMSSRM)

Garrett Brown, Coordinator, Maquiladora Health and Safety Support Network (MHSSN)

Julie Butcher, Regional Director, Southern California Public Service Workers, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 721

David Campbell, Secretary-Treasurer, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675

Enrique Dávalos, Academic/Activist, San Diego Maquiladora Workers' Solidarity Network / Colectivo Ollin Calli

Fernando Herrera, Research Professor, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa

Guadalupe Ibarra, Director, Activista de la Coordinadora Nacional de los Trabajadores de la Educación, Seccion 9 del SNTE.

Benedicto Martínez Orozco, Co-President, Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT)

Mary Mendez, Mexico Program Coordinator , Enlace

Humberto Montes de Oca, Secretary of the Exterior, Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME)

Peter Olney, Organizing Director, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU)

Julia Quiñonez, Coordinator, Comité Fronterizo de Obrer@s (CFO)

Estela Rios, Lawyer

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, Project Director, Institute for Transnational Social Change (ITSC)/ UCLA Labor Center

Sergio Sánchez, Research Professor, Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS)

Chris Tilly Director, UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (UCLA IRLE)

Blanca Velázquez, Director of the Worker Assistance Centre in Puebla, Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador (CAT)

Goetz Wolff, Lecturer, Urban Planning, UCLA

Sindicatos se unen en lucha binacional

La Opinión

25 de Julio, 2011

Líderes del movimiento sindical en México y Estados Unidos se reunieron este fin de semana en Los Ángeles para compartir experiencias de resistencia ante los embates que están sufriendo por gobiernos que impulsan la agenda de las corporaciones en detrimento de los trabajadores.

Durante tres días los sindicalistas participaron en un foro en el UCLA Labor Center para establecer una declaración en conjunto que rechaza las iniciativas de reforma laboral que se están instrumentando en California, Ohio y Wisconsin, y los proyectos impulsados en México por el PRI y el PAN.

Esas propuestas de ley, consideraron, se han convertido en una amenaza para la estabilidad en el empleo, salario, libertad sindical, contratación colectiva y la democracia.

"La idea es compartir las experiencias que hemos tenido aquí organizando a los trabajadores latinos, cómo hemos enfrentado los problemas, cómo hemos ganado y cómo hemos perdido, cómo creemos que vamos avanzando, y cuál es la conexión que podemos hacer con el otro lado de la frontera", dijo María Elena Durazo, dirigente de la central sindical AFL-CIO.

Explicó que se trata de sumar esfuerzos para que el movimiento sindical independiente en México crezca.

"Ya hemos tenido varias reuniones, hemos visto el problema de los mineros en México, hemos hecho viajes a México para reuniones con el gobierno mexicano, hemos intentado hacer esa conexión, pero para ser más efectivos tiene que ser más consistente y más formal a nivel de los sindicatos nacionales", dijo Durazo.

En México, apuntó, debe haber más democracia sindical para poder enfrentar a las empresas, e independencia del gobierno para trabajar claro en favor de los trabajadores.

Benedicto Martínez, miembro de la Coordinación Nacional del Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT) en México, dijo que el gobierno del presidente Felipe Calderón, apoyado por los legisladores del PRI, está impulsando una reforma laboral que quitaría derechos a los trabajadores.

"Aquí buscamos la solidaridad de las fuerzas progresistas, tenemos relación con sindicatos de Canadá y Estados Unidos, y queremos compartir las experiencias, conocer las luchas de otros y vincular los lazos de solidaridad para un movimiento más amplio", dijo el representante del FAT.

Recalcó que en México la lucha sindical es desigual por una agresión muy fuerte de los empresarios y de un gobierno de derecha que está tratando de quitar libertades, además de que son las corporaciones las que imponen su agenda y el gobierno la sigue con el supuesto de generar empleos.

"Pero ni se logra eso de crear empleos y sí se está empobreciendo más a la gente", remató.

Dijo que al interior de los sindicatos hay luchas que se están llevando a cabo en contra de los liderazgos perpetuos que le hacen más daño a los trabajadores al establecer alianzas con el gobierno.

"Es una lucha en contra de esas prácticas gangsteriles como la de Elba Esther Gordino con los maestros y la de Carlos Romero Deschamps con los petroleros, donde se trata de un sistema corporativo que favorece al gran capital y con poca participación de los trabajadores", dijo Martínez.

Para Humberto Montes de Oca, secretario del exterior del Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME), el punto es defender los contratos colectivos y la libertad sindical ya que hay gobiernos que están promoviendo legislaciones que privatizan los servicios públicos en perjuicio de la población.

"En México se está privatizando el servicio de energía eléctrica con el cierre de Luz y Fuerza dejando en la calle a 44 mil trabajadores, violentando el marco jurídico para generar intervención del capital privado", mencionó.

Gaspar Rivera Salgado, del UCLA Labor Center, indicó que durante el foro se redactó un documento llamado "Declaración de Los Ángeles 2011", que expone la preocupación por la reforma laboral en México, ya que les quitaría muchos derechos a los trabajadores.

Tres graves riesgos de la reforma laboral

2011-08-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

Por Arturo Alcalde Justiniani

La Jornada

30 de Julio, 2011

Todo parece indicar que, presionados por el Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, el gobierno federal y el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) han convenido la reforma laboral, y que intentarán aprobarla en un periodo extraordinario durante la segunda quincena de agosto. Conviene enfatizar cuáles son sus aspectos más lesivos, orientados a abaratar el costo de la mano de obra, precarizar las condiciones de trabajo e incrementar la indefensión obrera.

La máxima prioridad está centrada en el tema del outsourcing o trabajo en régimen de subcontratación, contenido en un nuevo artículo 15 bis del proyecto del PRI de marzo de 2011. La intención es acabar con el principio toral de la legislación laboral, que reconoce el carácter de patrón a quien recibe y se beneficia del servicio personal subordinado. Esta responsabilidad original es base del modelo laboral y de las instituciones que le dan sustento: salario remunerador, jornada máxima, respeto de la integridad y dignidad de la persona que trabaja y, obviamente, los derechos colectivos, incluyendo los de libre asociación, contratación colectiva y huelga.

El régimen de subcontratación propuesto convierte en mercancía al trabajo a pesar de que la ley expresamente lo prohíbe, al autorizar la venta de los servicios de trabajadores, obligando tan sólo al respeto de los derechos mínimos. Se trata de legalizar prácticas que contravienen el marco jurídico vigente.

Para convencer de las bondades de esta nueva normatividad, los abogados de la Coparmex, redactores de esta iniciativa, afirman que es necesaria para mejorar la competitividad y la inversión productiva, alegando que ya existe en otros países, y llegan al extremo, sin acreditarlo, de afirmar que su finalidad es evitar abusos, pues con el nuevo sistema se respetarán al menos los derechos fundamentales. Su filosofía se sostiene en la tesis de que más vale un mal empleo que estar desempleado. Mediante este engaño se busca suprimir de tajo la responsabilidad del verdadero patrón beneficiario del servicio, evitar la fiscalización del Estado e impedir que los trabajadores puedan organizarse en defensa de sus intereses. Todo en paquete. El tema tiene tal trascendencia que el representante legal de la Coparmex admitió publicamente: Si nos conceden este punto, lo demás sale sobrando.

No se puede negar que en los procesos productivos se justifique, bajo ciertas condiciones, la contratación de mano de obra externa, pero debe regularse, como se ha hecho en otros países, distinguiendo la subcontratación positiva de la depredadora, y tomando en cuenta los siguientes criterios: 1) Tener un carácter excepcional; en consecuencia, no debe subcontratarse la totalidad de una empresa o centro de trabajo, como sucede actualmente con las llamadas empresas de servicios. 2) Debe justificarse el insumo adicional especializado que se agrega al proceso productivo con la mano de obra externa, la cual a la empresa beneficiaria no le sería rentable contratar por sí misma. 3) Garantizar el principio de igualdad entre los trabajadores cuando realizan el mismo trabajo. 4) Registrarse ante el Estado para ser objeto de inspección periódica y evitar la simulación. 5) Debe sancionarse, en caso de abuso, al verdadero patrón, que es la empresa beneficiaria, y no solamente a la subcontratista. 6) Debe garantizarse el respeto a los derechos colectivos.

Un segundo tema en el que ha hincado el diente la Coparmex es el relacionado con el despido libre o barato, que limita el pago de los salarios caídos hasta por un año. La propuesta busca justificarse frente a la absurda realidad de la duración de los juicios laborales de hasta cinco años. Es claro que esta lentitud no tiene justificación, ya que lesiona tanto a trabajadores como a patrones. Sin embargo, el problema no se resuelve castigando a los trabajadores por una tardanza que no les es imputable. La solución está en crear las condiciones para que los juicios se tramiten en un corto tiempo; ello es absolutamente posible, y así lo ordena nuestra Carta Magna. Aceptar esta propuesta patronal invitará al despido y a incumplir la ley, alargará aún más los juicios, porque el costo se congelará a un año, presionará a los trabajadores a aceptar cualquier pago en demérito de sus derechos y colocará las formas colectivas de defensa laboral en mayor grado de postración.

El tercer riesgo se refiere a las restricciones a la libertad sindical. La Coparmex ha buscado, a través de la reforma laboral, consolidar el sistema patronal de mantener al sindicato de su preferencia. Para ello, intenta restringir la posibilidad de emplazamientos por firma de contrato colectivo de trabajo o demandas de titularidad tendientes a que los trabajadores cambien de sindicato. Es un viejo sueño para cerrar el círculo del control. En la iniciativa panista se incluyeron los llamados requisitos de procedibilidad para obstruir estas posibilidades de los trabajadores mediante un proceso administrativo previo de autorización o certificación de los padrones de socios por parte de la autoridad. Hoy, la inciativa priísta retoma esta misma intención, encubriéndola con la limitación al derecho de voto en los recuentos, a los que solo podrán acceder trabajadores sindicalizados, esto es, los que estén previamente autorizados en los padrones oficiales y en las nóminas patronales.

Por último, por encargo de los empresarios de las líneas aéreas de bajo costo, tendiente a impedir la expansión de los sindicatos democráticos de sobrecargos y pilotos (ASSA y ASPA), se adiciona al artículo 388 de la Ley Federal del Trabajo una restricción a los sindicatos para reclamar la titularidad de un contrato colectivo aun cuando la mayoría de los trabajadores de su profesión así lo pretendan.

Debemos impedir a toda costa, antes de que sea demasiado tarde, que estas agresiones a los derechos humanos laborales adquieran carácter de ley. Más allá de su carácter inconstitucional, son una afrenta a los hombres y mujeres quienes, a pesar de sus bajos salarios y agobios cotidianos, dan vida a este país.

Tijuana’s Maquiladoras: Producing Resistance

2011-07-24T21:24:00.001-07:00

Emilia Pool

Rebeldia, Vol. 5, No. 60, 2008 (Original in Spanish)

Tijuana is loaded with struggles and stories of denunciation. If you begin with the wall, you see migration, police abuse toward migrants, separation of families and the Border Patrol. You can follow the wall to the barrios where it stops them from growing any farther. In the heart of the barrio is resistance. In the distance are the maquiladoras and their world: 47 industrial parks with 200,000 workers who, in shifts sometimes from three to eight, sometimes two shifts of twelve hours, continue production 24 hours a day.

It’s a maquilapolis, like the title of the documentary that narrates the geography of a city that, more and more, lives and grows for the maquiladoras. In the neighborhoods is the demand for housing, water, electricity; the organizing of the residents. And closer in to the center of the city the organizations: a graphic rebellion, a feminist collective, labor organizations. The stories of Tijuana are found, their struggles, many led by women, accompany and strengthen each other.

I. Maquiladoras

Tijuana: The Mexican Dream?

“OUTSIDE: OTAY INDUSTRIAL PARK, TIJUANA – LATE AFTERNOON

Images with buses, streets, the exodus of workers from their workplaces, where they spend 8 to 10 hours daily, from Monday to Saturday. Images of maquiladoras, of bridges, of streets full of lights and dust, of conglomerations of people who board buses or taxis, of people who ride standing up in the buses and disappear in the sea of vehicles of public transportation. Images of advertisements they see every day. Images of men and women who arrive tired to their homes, the fatigue evident. Images of men and women who are received by their children with hugs…” FADE OUT

(FRAGMENT OF A SCRIPT WRITTEN BY A FEMALE MAQUILADORA WORKER)

Mago: I’m from Puebla.

Manuel: I come from Chiapas.

Carmen: I was born in Tapachula.

Rogelio: I’m from Michoacan.

All work or worked for many years in the maquiladoras and form part of the Information Center for Working Women and Men (CITTAC), a collective affiliated with the Zapatista Other Campaign in Tijuana.

Another Manuel: I’m from Tlaxcala.

Another Rogelio: From Motozintla, Chiapas.

Hugo: From Acapulco.

They tell how them came here, to the northernmost part of the country, attracted by the stories that are told of Tijuana: “that here they don’t bother to pick up dropped dollars from the floor, that here there’s an abundance of well paid work,” says Mago. Manuel, the one from Tlaxcala, adds, “They tell us that here one can get a good car for almost nothing, that one will have work, a house, everything. It was the ‘American dream,’ only without the risks of crossing to the other side, the American dream in Mexico.”

Rogelio, not the one from Michoacan, but the one from Chiapas, tells how they were brought up here by people from the maquiladoras: “Buses arrived to Motozintla and we were invited to work at the northern border, they told is we’d earn a lot. I was earning 30 to 40 pesos farming in Chiapas, and that’s why I came. The bus I got on was brought from a maquiladora, by a woman, and that’s how 40 of us from where I’m from came, also my in-laws came. They have both ends of the business, because the woman of the bus also was renting apartments in Tijuana for those of us who came from far away.”

“But the dream crashed really quickly,” Mago assures.

Just as in other jobs, generally in the service sector (restaurants, transportation, sex trade), the men and women who work in the maquiladoras come from other parts of Mexico- “the south,” as they say in Tijuana about any other part of the country: Monterrey is the south, Sinaloa is the south, not to mention Oaxaca, Chiapas and Veracruz.

Mago was a farmworker and then later a domestic worker in Puebla. “There were so few possibilities that we dreamed, who doesn’t, of a better life with good health, housing and education. They told me that rich people from the United States would come to Tijuana and that, in the nightclubs, they’d drop money when they paid, and that’s why they say that in Tijuana they sweep up dollars. Many of us came because someone from the family or people we knew had already come here. I came because I had a cousin here.”

“I felt and said, when I arrived in Tijuana to work in the maquiladoras, ‘Finally! Now I’m going to be able to obtain what I’ve always deamed of,’ but the reality is that the maquiladoras don’t fulfill your dreams and the salaries aren’t necessarily good,” explains Mago. “As a domestic worker I would eat leftovers, worked around the clock, what that mean is that I was always at the disposition of the owners of the house. Since then I’ve always dreamed of having enough to buy my own house, and with that idea I came to Tijuana. And I began to work hard in the maquiladora. I was used to working hard and would even work double shifts, and I remember others would tell me, ‘no matter how hard you work, you won’t get rich, that’s how it is with maquiladoras.’ But I didn’t understand that, I wanted to work, more and more… but after a few years passed I realized that I was more tired, downtrodden and without money for building a house. I began to see that I was fed up, I saw that they’d fooled me, that I didn’t have my own life, that I was dependent on what the boss said. The maquiladoras steal our lives from us and destroy our dreams,” Mago says. This led her to fight.

A Rewarding Job

In spite of how difficult it’s been, Mago thinks that: “our lives won’t ever be the same after participating in the struggle’” and that it’s a mistake to feel defeated when things “are slower than what you’d like.” Mago, with the experience that being a farm worker and a maquiladora worker has given her, is now a legal advisor in CITTAC: “the work is rewarding because I’m learning, and not working for a company, but rather for justice. That is, my bosses are not at CITTAC; my bosses, those who I work for, are the working women and men.”

“Here we totally respect the decisions of the workers. We don’t do anything that they don’t want,” says Mago, and she tells how she got here: “It all began through a process of reflection: Where do I want to be?, On which side?, and my decision was to be under and to the left, as the Zapatistas say, because that’s where I come from, because that’s what I am. I want to work for my fellow workers, with my people,” and she says that she will never again, “see things with rose colored glasses. I am understanding capitalism more, that’s my enemy, not my fellow worker, not the machine…I won’t ever again be someone who doesn’t know what her rights are.”

CITTAC, Mago explains, accompanies the workers in their struggles, but doesn’t lead them: “it’s the power of the workers that strengthens CITTAC, the workers’ struggles in the maquiladora came before this organization. I remember reading about struggles from decades ago, before CITTAC existed and before I was born, because even though we don’t know our rights, there is something instinctive that makes you see that things aren’t right.”

Rogelio is from Michoacan and works in the maquiladora. He came to Tijuana after spending some time in Mexico City with his family. He knew that one of his brothers was living somewhere around here, but he hadn’t heard anything about him, and that’s how the whole family came in search of this lost brother and of a better future: “We found my brother, and my parents and other family members came, and we all lived on top of each other in a little room that was 2 meters x 3 meters in size, we suffered, we didn’t have electricity, we didn’t have water, but we put up with it, thinking: ‘we’ve taken the first step, and the future will be better.’ Because if we would return, we would return to the same, to the bad situation that we had before. But here there was a future, an uncertain one, but with hope that sooner or later we were going to find something better.”

Rogelio doesn’t deny that he had planned to go to the United States, but he thought that it was necessary first to have some savings because, “Why go through the hills if I can go through the door?” He never went and he stayed and worked in the maquiladoras, and he’s worked at eight different companies. “But also, a long time ago I began to fight for my rights and I stopped being afraid, because we’re scared to speak out because you don’t want to lose the little that you have, you think you’ll lose your job, and then where will you get food for your kids. If you lose your job, you have to start all over. But you have to speak out, even if you get fired: it’s like when you don’t know how to swim, you have to get started and practice… I’ve stopped being afraid, you have to stop being afraid.”

He tells how, sometimes, “you think you’re alone, and you get overwhelmed: you see that the maquiladora exists on one side, the government on another, and on another… me. Then I thought, ‘If I protest, who’s going to help me? How can I fight against this if I’m alone? Then you realize that you aren’t alone and that the rest of the workers are fighting also” Rogelio continues: “One realizes that the bosses are pushing us to produce and produce, and meanwhile they’re standing there with their hands on their waists. The maquiladora has a psychological power, they do things to make you feel important, like you are part of a family, and for that reason we end up competing against each other.”

“When I started working in the maquiladora I began to really try hard, as they say, ‘I got on board,’ but you start to realize that they take you for a fool. I rose up to higher positions, but they never raised my salary. Then I thought, ‘If you are going to pretend lyou’re paying me, I’m going to pretend I’m working,’ I’m not going to kill myself for nothing any longer, and I began to work slower,” explains Rogelio. “That’s what hurts them, and I slowed down on the assembly line. They think that we don’t realize, that we’re stupid, they treat us as if they were doing us a favor by giving us work.”

Rogelio tells how the workers began to organize during his time working at the company Sohnen. “Suddenly we got together, we began to talk after work, then we started meeting Saturdays at a park, discussing things that we’d been thinking about. At first there were 15 of us, then 20, and later there were about 40 workers.” The results, says Rogelio, were satisfying even though not with the strength that he would have liked. “When things move slowly, when you begin the process of suing and all that, a lot of people become dissatisfied and they leave, but it’s a process.”

“A long process,” says Mago, and she adds, “Organizing in the maquiladora is very complicated, but even so, there have been some successes, it really is possible… What happens is the maquiladora takes away your strength, you leave tired, and if you have children, you have to leave work running to pick them up from school, or to feed them, to clean house… When is there time to think about organizing?”

But even still, explains Mago, “We’re in this, looking for and forming networks of solidarity, of communication, learning from the experiences of other fellow workers.” She once had the experience of being fired from a textile maquiladora for demanding el reparto de utilitdades [Mexican labor law requires companies to pay ten percent of the profits to their workers every year.] Due to their organizing, the two shifts united in the struggle, “connecting with other workers, making plans”, and calling for “work stoppages” on both shifts. They were fired. But, really, Mago sees this as the fruits of a fight and not a defeat. “The company didn’t count on our organizing, it didn’t occur to them, and no, our lives are not going to be the same after fighting back.”

In CITTAC, giving legal advice and carrying out cases “is only a small part of our work, an important part, but a small part. What we do is political work, the idea is that the workers will no longer have to come to CITTAC, and we’ve already seen this, workers who learn how to defend themselves legally and to carry out their own cases. Also, here we have workshops about labor health and safety, about human rights, about labor rights… We try to organize, to strengthen the struggle, make connections of solidarity among ourselves, the workers.” And she concludes, “We workers can do so much without the bosses, and they can’t do anything without us.”

Against the ways of the maquiladoras

Bety works for the business Munekata. In a city focused on the production of televisions, this factory is dedicated to producing the casings that contain them. Bety entered this plant 4 years ago, and came 12 years ago to Tijuana with her husband Jorge, from an indigenous Huasteca community in Veracruz. For Jorge Zapatismo attracted his interest “from the start because it’s not about being poor or not, or light skinned, but about a way to think, to resist against the government. We had many points in common, the humbleness, doing thngs for others, to do things for oneself, not expecting help from the government.” For several years Jorge has worked with CITTAC, but for Bety it was different. Four years after beginning with Munekata, they gave monthly labor contracts and after 6 months they laid her off with the promise that they would call her when she was needed. They gave her no severance pay nor did they pay her for the last week she worked.

After this she decided to turn to CITTAC. After reading the manual of “Worker’s First Aid” which they had prepared she said, “I couldn’t believe it was true. I went to a meeting and it was brought to my attention and I still haven’t given up. Now only if they run me off will I leave the factory; they try to do it subtly and let you go without your owed severance pay.

This is the story of many other women and men workers also. Many of the members of CITTAC arrived at the center after a problem at work. In order to share the stories of the workers the organization produces the Boletin Maquilero. They distribute the publication in the maquiladoras under cover; they hand them out to people in other factories, above all where there is labor unrest, and better when the workers leave rather than enter their workplaces, because sometimes they search in the purses and pockets of the workers. “If there are problems in a factory they go to others where there are more activists to leaflet. It lights a fire where they go – ‘yes, it is true,’ they say -. People come to CITTAC when they see in the Boletin where it is and they arrive if they have problems in order to ask for help in their cases.” The maquiladoras assert that information about the factory should not be published outside the business, and they promote the belief that it is not possible to publicize anything which happens inside the factory.

In the maquila is waged “a daily battle with the supervisors, against their over bearing ways. The wages never go up, and if you say anything they say to you: ‘there is the door.’ It is a fight to no longer allow the bosses to make us slaves. Because we have a history and must continue to make our history.” They speak of a battle to not accept what the owners and the business want to impose upon them. “When I began at the company the supervisor would shout at us, he would make everyone cry. They would call us dummies, good for nothing, they would insult our mothers, they would humiliate us. They wouldn’t let us sit down and, since no one else was in charge, they would do whatever they wanted. We sent letters to Munekata and they were published in the Boletin. The workers were saying, ‘Yes, yes this all happens’. And with the letters, they put someone else in charge too.”

This supervisor “one time wanted to scold me, but he couldn’t; he had to respect me,” explains Bety. The same thing has happened with others, because they are not used to workers talking back to them, making them see that if something happens, they are the ones responsible for it (because if something comes out wrong, they suspend the worker but not those in high places). Another supervisor made a head of a line become incapacitated due to stress, after being in charge for only one week. Bety said to her fellow workers, “we’re not going to be shaking from fear just because we have her as our supervisor.” Bety also is head of a line. “There are other workers who are bothered by the way I am.” They say, “If you are the leader you ought to yell,” and I don’t yell. Others just compare the words with what is written in the Boletin, or want me to be fired or want me to quit. I always answer them but always with a reason.”

Many workers who form part of CITTAC work in their own legal defense and help others carry out their cases, in addition they hold workshops on labor rights, workplace health and safety, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Even though it is those with the most experience that conduct cases before the Board, everyone learns the legal procedure and they carry this learning with them if they change factories or cities. Other workers come to the organization, not just those from the maquiladoras, and even those who have not come in some time, who for some time have not been to meetings, form a part of the group. “We are making a network. So, even if workers change places, workplaces or change cities, they continue the work. There they are.”At times the meetings and workshops are held in houses or common spaces. So the homes become part of the space for struggle and the workers organize themselves not just with fellow workers on the job but also with their neighbors.

As workers in the maquilas and with CITTAC the comrades have learned of other struggles. In this way they learn what happens, recognize spaces in which to struggle, maintain communication and motivate each other. “It is important to encourage others and in return be encouraged by others.” Now they explain, the rhythm has diminished, they have fewer resources to go to meetings outside Tijuana and less communication, but they are organizing projects “so that we will not lose steam, so we do not continue like that. If not, it is as if we were in favor of the government’s plans.” The comrades have the idea to collect funds to create a camp with children of the city, with children of workers of the maquiladoras and others from Baja California in the end of July or the beginning of August. The idea is to camp in Tecate where the children will learn of the National Indigenous Congress and of the indigenous peoples and that they will participate in workshops organized by The Graphic Revolt and by BACU.

Time and movement

In the maquiladora, a sarcastic comment about a ridiculous pay raise made during the visit of an executive from the company’s foreign headquarters is enough to get you fired from the company. The pressure is constant and the work, they say, must be done a certain way, the correct way. “It’s frustrating that they time you when you go to the bathroom, or to see how long it takes your brain to react when telling your hand to move. With all this about time and movement, which they put a lot of importance on, they have you tied, and they use it to punish you,” explained workers of the Sohnen maquiladora in 2007.

The struggle of the workers of the maquiladora is about time, says Jaime Cota of CITTAC. “Even though it seems like a minor issue to some, or something simple, the struggle of the workers is about time, because in the maquiladoras everything is regulated by the clock: the time for going to the bathroom, the time for eating, the time for producing…” They take away your time from your family, your time to organize with other workers, they are seeing how they can steal even a few seconds from you… One worker was even punished for arriving 35 seconds late. That’s why there isn’t time to go to the bathroom, so they don’t lose a few seconds on the production line.”

Manuel explains how at Sohnen there is a traffic light that measures time against a standard. “A traffic light that pressures you. You are always working against the light. You have a chart that you have to follow, 35 seconds to unscrew a top, 15 seconds for the next operation… and there were workers who wouldn’t go eat so that they’d have time to meet the standard, because if you didn’t, there would be punishments or they’d call attention to you. If the light turned red, a buzzer would sound to make it clear that you hadn’t reached the goal.”

In the daily struggle, of working like an ant, some workers, such as Rogelio, have decided to lower the goal, to work slower, as a stance against the robbing of your time that happens in the maquiladora: “ This, about the time, is a mental blow: and do it quickly, don’t make a mistake, because they’ll take points away from you… the idea is to take more and more away from you, produce more and more, times and movements have to be adjusted, synchronized, and, from above, the bosses looking for where things are getting held up on the production line, where they can steal more seconds and make adjustments.”

“It’s time” says Carmen. When the male and female workers of the maquiladora speak about their work and their struggles, they always do it while imitating – they imitate the multiple movements that they do thousands of times per day.

From one end to the other

The passenger bus from Tapachula, Chiapas, to Tijuana, like the one that Carmen Duran took, takes four nights and three days. From the southern border, where “poverty is big,” Carmen traveled to the northern border in search of something better. In Tapachula, her mother died, and her father was a soldier who later emigrated to the United States. Carmen also went with her brother across the border. A little while later, they were detained and accused of being immigrant smugglers because they were with a friend who didn’t have papers. She was deported and spent some time at the youth detention center in Tijuana. Then she began working in the maquiladoras. In thirteen years she has worked in nine different ones.

Tijuana, which grows at an accelerated pace because of the number of people who come here from southern Mexico, grows in a disorderly way, like the barrio where Carmen lives – it was land that was occupied by those who now live there, 16 years ago, when there weren’t any city services. Carmen’s neighbors “all work in the maquiladora and come from Michoacan, Morelos, Sinaloa, Oaxaca, Veracruz… those you see there with a better house or with cars, it’s because they work across the border.”

Carmen’s struggle for her rights as a worker overlapped with the struggle in her barrio, known as Lagunitas, for the legal ownership of the land and the demand for basic services like water and electricity. “If you can achieve things by fighting for them, then you realize that it goes for outside the maquiladora too, also in the barrio where you live. Of course it’s difficult, but when you know your rights, you keep fighting, and we know it requires patience, because a struggle is a long term thing… We’ve gone against the current, especially the women, but it’s been a good experience, the experience of meeting people who have the same ideology, of learning, of learning how to defend your rights in the factory and not just here. Many friends have told me that the struggle has transformed their lives. Before the managers thought that it was easy to control the working women, but not any more, now they see.”

Carmen and her fellow workers managed to organize a walkout at the Piedras del Pacifico maquiladora, which produces decorative stone for walls from compressed rock dust. In the factory the workers have to paint “quickly, without a break” hundreds of stone kits. Before, Carmen worked in Sanyo where she got sick from breathing in lead every day. “I couldn’t even stand up, I had a rash all over my body, and the medical exams showed that I had lead in my blood.” She also got fired from Panasonic, with a short and firm statement: “You are no longer part of the Panasonic family.”

There are many barrios like Carmen’s. They are known as “belts” that grow and grow far from the center of Tijuana, where “not even the politicians visit during their campaigns.” They are “abandoned barrios,” small cities within the city. The majority of, if not all, its habitants are immigrants, some new arrivals and some second or third generation “whose destiny is already laid out” as Reynaldo, a resident of one of these barrios, puts it, “to work in the maquiladoras.”

Maunel also came from Chiapas. He’s been a member of CITTAC for years and is in charge of publishing the Boletin Maquilero magazine that CITTAC periodically puts out about the struggles of workers in maquiladoras. Manuel was fired from Sohnen, but unlike the vast majority of cases, after only three months of work at Sohnen he obtained a severence payment of twenty thousand pesos. This is easier to understand when you know his story, when you know that he actually started working there in order to support the workers in their organizing. “The company realized that this was a real challenge. It was strong for two years and it still exists. Many weren’t reaching the production quota, many sued the company, there were a lot of flyers passed out. They removed the strongest members. In the three months that I was there, the struggle was really heating up. Then the company wanted to get rid of me.” The company fired Manuel with an offer of 800 pesos of severance pay, but he sued to b reinstated. And got it… for forty minutes. As soon as he returned to work they made him sign some papers and a guard escorted him to the door. Manuel returned the next day. “I told everyone that I had been reinstated.” He sued again, and finally they offered him a higher severance payment. The struggle in Sohnen was one of the biggest maquiladora struggles.

ii. Watch out for the feminists

Being a woman in Tijuana is difficult. Being a feminist is also difficult. “There is a lot of prejudice. Many think that being a feminist means being lesbian, even within the left and the counterculture movements. Many say, ‘Watch out! She’s a feminist. They don’t like men.’ We still need to define feminism. To me, it means looking for equity, for equality in the differences,” Ines explains. She relates, “I wasn’t born a feminist. I believed, like everyone else, that they were against men. Over time I realized that wasn’t the case. Now I’m comfortable with my feminism. I understand a lot, and I stay away from people who know they’re going to have a problem with me. It’s not that being a feminist means being conflictive, it’s that you don’t let anyone walk over you. It’s hard to have a feminist friend. It’s a way of life. To achieve equality, we need to re-educate, starting with children.” Ines is young. She and a companera are the editors of the fanzine Madame Anatema, and she is also a member of the Colectiva Feminista Binacional (Bi-national Feminist Collective).

Several organizations arose from the struggle in the maquiladoras. The Colectiva Feminista was formed four years ago by members who had been part of the group Factor X. Housewives, activists, the unemployed, young people, students, college graduates, female workers and ex-workers of the maquiladora together make up this group, which organizes workshops for female maquiladora workers about sex and health, and that recently began a cocina colectiva (a collective catering business). They organized a workshop on the Zapatista Sixth Declaration and the patriarchy, about how it is present in different situations, in the workplace, at home, at school, at church. “When you understand that it’s everywhere, you are aware of it, you change reality. Talking about the anti-patriarchy is a way of demanding that we be taken into account, of demanding a place.” Some women of the Feminista Colectiva are also participating in Lady Fest.

“Lady Fest began during ’94 and ’97, with four women from Olympia, the Riot Girls. At first it was one day, then two. It promotes women’s rights and events in which only women participate. We’ve been organizing it for one year and it’s going to last three days. We want bands to play that have at least one woman, or honest men, not sexists. There are very few women here who are serious musicians. There are almost no all-female bands.” Ines is in a band. There will also be art exhibits of female artists, documentaries about struggles in Tijuana, food, stands of local artists and workshops.

Some events were held to raise money for Lady Fest, including a workshop about masculinity. The question, “Is your life based on equality?” was the basis of the workshop, although a lot of time was spent discussing what it means to be a feminist. “Our plan wasn’t for us to be right, or for us to tell them what the alternative was. The plan was to listen to each other and think about this. We wanted to have workshops in the barrios, with maquiladora workers, with CITTAC, with people of the organization Colectivo Chilpancingo for Environmental Justice. We thought we should first talk among ourselves. The workshop was also helpful for this. There I saw and heard my friends say things that I’d never imagined. I think women are alike in certain ways and so are men. We have things in common. We want to live freely. There are things we think no one else goes through, but in the workshop you realize there are atavisms that have to be destroyed. Genders limit our lives. We have to deconstruct them.”

It’s interesting that young men are also beginning to discuss their masculinity, as Ray and Gordo have done. With fanzines such as the one called Hombres hablando de hombres y sexismo (Men Talking about Men and Sexism), and by participating in workshops open to everyone, they reflect on their actions and feelings and start working for changes. “We are obviously influenced by our female friends, feminists, and we are beginning to talk about what we feel and how to act, that sexism is nothing more than discrimination based on gender and that men can fight against this discrimination” Ray explains. In El Gordo it says, “It’s tough to rid yourself of machismo, but it’s possible, and not for moral reasons, not to please my friends, but because you’re convinced, you have to change your insight, and that’s a process.”

Punk music and literature has been an inspiration for them to begin this process of “political consciousness, to create their own base” for social change. They tell about how their first workshop had lots of participants, from only passing out flyers and putting up signs, and many, mostly young, people from Mexicali and Ensenada turned out. In the next Lady Fest there will be a new workshop about masculinity and gender equality.

From the barrio to the maquiladoras, in Tijuana the various struggles of women run side by side. They meet up, meet again, and share goals. From Tijuana, where work is set up in a way to prohibit organizing, where there aren’t places for young people to go, where it’s dangerous to be a woman, where it seems that for children there is no alternative to violence and drugs… there are companeras and companeros, there are stories to hear, there is movement.

Solidarity with Samsung Workers, Mexico <> Solidaridad con Trabajadoras de Samsung en Manzanillo

2011-07-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

July 16, 2011

ACCIÓN URGENTE: Solidaridad dramática protesta de trabajadoras en Manzanillo, México, contra transnacional Samsung

Trabajadoras despedidas injustificadamente, víctimas de malos tratos dentro de sus labores, se mantienen enjauladas, en huelga de hambre, los labios cosidos y la amenaza de una de ellas de inmolarse. --versión en español: ver abajo

=== English versión ==

Samsung workers in Mexico on hunger strike - Solidarity needed

Four female workers, unfairly fired and victims of workplace abuse, have caged themselves and sewn their lips shut as they launch a hunger strike and one threatens to burn herself alive in a dramatic protest against the multinational corporation Samsung.

Jul 16, 2011

By: Libcom.org Lib.Com

Spanish original: Kaos en la Red

More info (Spanish): CILAS, El Militante

UNHEARD-OF VIOLATION OF THE LABOUR AND HUMAN RIGHTS OF WORKERS OF THE KOREAN BUSINESS

WE MUST PREVENT THIS RIGHTFUL PROTEST BECOMING A TRAGEDY

Four female workers, unfairly fired and victims of workplace abuse, have caged themselves and sewn their lips shut as they launch a hunger strike and threatens to burn herself alive in a dramatic protest against the multinational corporation Samsung, funded by Korean capital which is currently constructing a plant for the extraction of natural gas in the Mexican port of Manzanillo, in the state of Colima.

Madaí Díaz Rodríguez, Sandra Gómez, Lourdes Zamora y Elvira Orozco worked in the kitchen of the Ingeniería Civil construction company, subcontracted by the multinational and whilst working were victims of constant abuse and mistreatment which escalated to daily verbal and physical violence from their Korean bosses and foremen. To these facts there can also be added multiple instances of arbitrary treatment and labor abuses such as the imposition of 12-hour days, with no pay for the extra hours which were their legal right. This situation is a daily reality for the hundreds of workers who lend their services to the aforementioned company.

The inhuman and degrading conditions imposed on both male and female workers have already resulted in a diversity of protests, including a strike, without any affect on the violation of human and labour rights. On the 3rd June of last year, Madaí Díaz, a single mother workign as a cook, initiated the protests against the abitrary sacking and beatings dealt out to her by Korean employees. In the first instance she locked herself in a cage and sewed shut her lips, before days later caging herself again along with her two children, after which she officially denounced her aggressors, an accusation that has not had any effect.

Last July 6 the compañera Madaí, who had been reinstalled, was once again attacked and thrown out of work; failing to receive a positive response to her demands for justice from either the labor authorities or her union, she returned to the cage, accompanied by her workmates who had also been fired. They are currently on hunger strike and have sewn their lips shut. Furthermore, Madaí has declared her readiness to take the extreme action of setting herself on fire in the event of receiving an unsatisfactory answer to her demands.

It must be mentioned that the construction of the gas plant in Manzanillo has itself provoked multiple instances of rejection, both for the serious environmental effects it will impose on the coastal and lagoon region into which it will be embedded, and for those that it will cause to the economy and life of the fishing towns of the zone.

As can be observed, this is a situation of serious conflict and the potential exists or it to worsen, with even greater effects on the health, physical integrity and life of the compañeras in protest. All this is caused, needless to say, by the violatory and merciless infringement of every human and labor norm on the part of the transnational business and its representatives.

Faced with the events related herein, the solidarity of all organizations is an urgent necessity. Coordinated and determined action is required to oblige the bosses of this transnational to desist from their arbitrary actions, to demand that the governmental authorities that cease their indolence and intervene to achieve a solution and, above all, to prevent a dramatic end to this conflict.

We ask all organizations to declare their demands through the sending of communiqués to the following:

C. Mario Anguiano Moreno

Gobernador Constitucional

Estado de Colima

México

gobecol@col.gob.mx

C. Gustavo Adolfo Buenrostro Cabello

Presidente Municipal

Manzanillo, Colima

México

gbuenrostro@hotmail.com

(Sample letter reproduced below in Spanish and English)

A nombre de nuestra organización, (___________), queremos comunicarle que hemos sido enterados de la difícil situación de conflicto por la que atraviesan las trabajadoras Madaí Díaz Rodríguez, Sandra Gómez, Lourdes Zamora y Elvira Orozco, quienes se encuentran en huelga de hambre y realizando una protesta por el despido injustificado y los abusos de que han sido objeto por parte de la empresa Ingeniería Civil y, por medio de esta, de la empresa transnacional Samsung.

Por este conducto manifestamos nuestra más enfática solidaridad con las compañeras y su protesta, así como nuestro rechazo a las ilegales prácticas de que han sido objeto ellas y sus compañeros trabajadores. Por tal motivo nos permitimos solicitar a ustedes su inmediata intervención para:

•La solución satisfactoria e inmediata de las demandas de las trabajadoras

•El cese a las violaciones a los derechos laborales y humanos de ellas y de quienes laboran en las empresas mencionadas

•El castigo legal a las y los responsables de las agresiones a que hemos hecho referencia; y,

•Sobre todo y de manera urgente, evitar que el asunto que nos ocupa tenga un desenlace lamentable que afecte aun más la integridad física y la salud de dichas trabajadoras.

Con la seguridad de recibir mediante su pronta acción una atención positiva a lo aquí planteado, quedamos de ustedes

ATENTAMENTE

(Nombre del responsable y de la organización)

---------------------

On behalf of our organization, (___________), we wish to communicate that we have been made aware of the difficult situation of conflict that confronts the workers Madaí Díaz Rodriguez, Sandra Gómez, Lourdes Zamora and Elvira Orozco, who are currently on hunger strike in protest at the unwarranted dismissal and the abuses to which they have been subjected by the business Civil Engineering and, through this, by the transnational business Samsung.

The extreme measures to which the dismissed workers have been forced are, according to our information, due to the situation of generalized violation of their human and labor rights that they have suffered, the same that has arrived at acts of violence, harassment and other aggressions and that is also suffered by the workers employed in the construction of the gas plant in the Port of Manzanillo.

By these means we hereby declare our most emphatic solidarity with the compañeras and their protest, as well as our rejection of the illegal practices to which they and their fellow workers have been subjected. For such motive we request your immediate intervention for:

•An immediate and satisfactory solution to the workers' demands

•The cessation of all violation of human and labor rights of the workers concerned and of all those working in the aforementioned companies

•Legal redress for those responsible for the aggressions to which we have made reference; and,

•Above all, and as a matter of urgency, that you act to ensure that this situation does not end tragically and affect still further the physical integrity and health of said workers.

In the expectation of receiving a swift and positive response from yourselves to that laid out above, we remain attentively yours,

(Name of official and organization)

====== Versión en español

ACCIÓN URGENTE: Solidaridad dramática protesta de trabajadoras en Manzanillo, México, contra transnacional Samsung

16 de Julio, 2011

Publicado por Kaos en la Red

Más información: CILAS, El Militante

Cuatro trabajadoras despedidas injustificadamente y víctimas de malos tratos dentro de sus labores, se mantienen enjauladas y en huelga de hambre, con los labios cosidos y con la amenaza de una de ellas de inmolarse, en una dramática protesta en contra de la empresa transnacional Samsung, de capital coreano, misma que construye actualmente una planta regasificadora en el puerto mexicano de Manzanillo, en el estado de Colima.

Madaí Díaz Rodríguez, Sandra Gómez, Lourdes Zamora y Elvira Orozco laboraban en la cocina de la constructora Ingeniería Civil, subcontratada por la transnacional y, en ese trabajo, eran víctimas constantes de malos tratos que llegaban cotidianamente a la violencia física y verbal por parte de patrones y capataces coreanos. A esos hechos se sumaban también múltiples arbitrariedades y abusos laborales como la imposición de jornadas de 12 horas diarias, sin el pago de las horas extras que legalmente les corresponderían. Esta situación es vivida cotidianamente por los cientos de trabajadores que prestan sus servicios a la citada compañía.

Las condiciones inhumanas y degradantes que se imponen a las y los trabajadores han motivado ya diversas protestas, entre ellas un paro de labores, sin que hasta la fecha se hayan remediado las violaciones a los derechos humanos y laborales. El 3 de junio pasado, Madaí Díaz, madre soltera y quien se desempeñaba como cocinera, inició las protestas contra el despido arbitrario y las golpizas que le propinaron empleados coreanos. Primero se enjauló y se cosió los labios y días más tarde se encerró nuevamente con sus dos hijos, luego de lo cual levantó una denuncia contra sus agresores, denuncia que no ha tenido efecto alguno.

El pasado 6 de julio la compañera Madaí, quien había sido reinstalada, fue de nueva cuenta agredida y echada de su trabajo; al no tener ni por parte del sindicato ni de las autoridades laborales una respuesta positiva a su exigencia de justicia, regresó a la jaula, acompañada por sus compañeras también despedidas. Al momento se encuentran en huelga de hambre y se han cosido los labios, además de que Madaí ha manifestado su decisión de llegar al extremo de inmolarse prendiéndose fuego en caso de no recibir respuesta satisfactoria a sus demandas.

Cabe mencionar que la construcción de la regasificadora en Manzanillo ha provocado igualmente múltiples muestras de rechazo, tanto por las graves afectaciones ambientales que causará a la región lagunera y costera en la que estará enclavada, como por las que ocasionará a la economía y vida de los pueblos de pescadores de la zona.

Como puede observarse, la situación de conflicto es grave y puede profundizarse, incluso con mayores afectaciones a la salud, integridad física y vida de las compañeras en protesta. Todo ello se ocasiona, sobra decirlo, por la actuación despiadada y violatoria de toda norma laboral y humana por parte de la empresa transnacional y sus representantes.

Frente a los hechos narrados, la solidaridad de todas las organizaciones es una necesidad urgente. Se requiere una acción coordinada y decidida para obligar a que cesen las arbitrariedades de los patrones de la transnacional, para exigir a las autoridades gubernamentales que cesen en su indolencia e intervengan para lograr una solución y, sobre todo, para impedir que el conflicto tenga un desenlace dramático.

Pedimos a todas las organizaciones se manifiesten mediante el envío de comunicados a las siguientes direcciones:

(Anexamos propuesta de texto)

C. Mario Anguiano Moreno

Gobernador Constitucional

Estado de Colima

México

gobecol@col.gob.mx

C. Gustavo Adolfo Buenrostro Cabello

Presidente Municipal

Manzanillo, Colima

México

gbuenrostro@hotmail.com

Las extremas medidas a las que se han visto obligadas a llegar las trabajadoras despedidas obedecen, según la información a que hemos tenido acceso, a la situación generalizada de violación de sus derechos humanos y laborales que han padecido, misma que ha llegado a actos de violencia, hostigamiento y otras agresiones y que es sufrida también por las y los trabajadores empleados en la construcción de una planta regasificadora en el puerto de Manzanillo.

• La solución satisfactoria e inmediata de las demandas de las trabajadoras

• El cese a las violaciones a los derechos laborales y humanos de ellas y de quienes laboran en las empresas mencionadas

• El castigo legal a las y los responsables de las agresiones a que hemos hecho referencia; y,

• Sobre todo y de manera urgente, evitar que el asunto que nos ocupa tenga un desenlace lamentable que afecte aun más la integridad física y la salud de dichas trabajadoras.

Con la seguridad de recibir mediante su pronta acción una atención positiva a lo aquí planteado, quedamos de ustedes

ATENTAMENTE

(Nombre del responsable y de la organización)

San Diego busines and maquiladoras

2011-07-16T16:48:00.000-07:00

City of San Diego Website

Maquiladoras/Twin Plants

Many companies with manufacturing plants in the Tijuana, Mexico, area have administration or operations facilities in San Diego County. The facilities contribute greatly to the local economy and add to the region's importance as a manufacturing area.

Some of the companies with twin plants located in the San Diego area include Casio Manufacturing Corp., Healthcare Products Co., Hitachi Home Electronics of America Inc., Honeywell Inc., Hyundai Precision America Inc., Kendall Pioneer Speakers Inc., Matsushita Television Co., NSK Safety Technology Inc., Saft America Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., and Sanyo North America.

Maquiladoras

Maquiladoras (also known as "twin plants") are manufacturing plants in Mexico with the parent company's administration facility in the United States. Maquiladoras allow companies to capitalize on the less expensive labor force in Mexico and also receive the benefits of doing business in the United States. Companies operating in the United States can send equipment, supplies, machinery, raw materials, and other assets to their plants in Mexico for assembly or processing without paying import duties. The finished product can then be exported back to the United States or to a third country.

History

The concept was created by the Mexican government in 1965 to stimulate industrialization in northern Mexico. The idea was formulated in response to rising unemployment and growing global demand for low-cost production. Through maquiladoras, Mexico's primary objectives include job creation, technology transfer, and generation of foreign exchange. There are now more than 570 maquiladora plants operating in Tijuana, providing more than 100,000 jobs.

Maquiladora Benefits

Maquiladoras allow for one plant to perform labor intensive processes and another plant to perform capital intensive processes. The following are other advantages of the maquiladora industry by country:

United States

U.S. firms become more competitive in world markets by combining American advanced technology with the lower costs of Mexican labor and materials.

Mexico offers lower wage rates than many Asian countries.

The average company can save nearly $1 million a year in labor costs.

The United States experienced an increase in employment opportunities for skilled workers in warehousing, product finishing, and administration.

Mexico

Maquiladoras create employment opportunities and additional income in the border region.

Exportation of maquiladora products brings needed foreign exchange into Mexico.

Commercial deficit with the United States is reduced.

Plants in Mexico that manufacture for export can temporarily import foreign components without payment of customs duties.

How Companies Can Participate in the Program

There are three ways companies can participate in the maquiladora program:

100 Percent Ownership

This option allows a Mexican company to be established, carrying out the manufacturing and assembling operations with direct control assumed by a foreign-based parent company. This parent company can be 100 percent foreign (not Mexican) owned.

In this instance, managers in the Mexican plant are employees of the parent company with special permits that allow them to work in Mexico. Other Mexican managers are hired enabling the company to hire the workforce, lease the building, and contract for services. Maquiladoras are merely extensions of the parent company that serve as assembling or manufacturing subsidiaries.

Subcontracting

This option utilizes the less expensive Mexican labor force to reduce manufacturing costs. A Mexican firm produces assembled parts for a foreign firm with a negotiated per-item-price. The Mexican firm acts as a subcontractor of the U.S.-based company.

Usually, the Mexican firm will import the component part for manufacturing and export that item back to the U.S. company. Most subcontracting plants are specialized and have permanent employees with specialized expertise.

Shelter

A shelter simply provides U.S. companies with some protection from Mexican financial and legal exposure. These types of maquiladoras accept technology, capital equipment, and component parts from a non-Mexican firm for assembly in Mexico and subsequent exportation. The sheltering entity provides plant space, Mexican transportation, Mexican brokerage, daily administration of Mexican employees, and daily plant operations. The sheltering entity bills the prime contractor on a fully-burdened hourly basis.

Maquiladoras' Effect on San Diego

BUILDING A CULTURE OF CROSS-BORDER SOLIDARITY

2011-07-15T23:35:00.000-07:00

Americas Program
Institute for Transnational Social Change - UCLA
July 2011

By David Bacon

Contents
Introduction
The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity
Labor Law Reform – A Key Battle for Mexican Unions Today
The Rebirth of Solidarity on the Border
Growing Ties Between Mexican and U.S. Labor
Immigration and the Culture of Solidarity
In Conclusion

Introduction

In the period since the North American Free Trade Agreement has come into effect, the economies of the United States and Mexico have become more integrated than ever. Through Plan Merida and partnerships on security, the military and the drug war, the political and economic policies pursued by the U.S. and Mexican governments are more coordinated than they’ve ever been.

Working people on both sides of the border are not only affected by this integration. Workers and their unions in many ways are its object. These policies seek to maximize profits and push wages and benefits to the bottom, manage the flow of people displaced as a result, roll back rights and social benefits achieved over decades, and weaken working class movements in both countries.

All this makes cooperation and solidarity across the U.S./Mexico border more important than ever. After a quarter century in which the development of solidarity relationships was interrupted during the cold war, unions and workers are once again searching out their counterparts and finding effective and appropriate ways to support each other.

This paper is not a survey of all the efforts that have taken place, especially since the

NAFTA debate restarted the solidarity process in the early 1990s. Instead, it seeks to set out some questions, and invite responses and contributions from people involved in this cross border movement. Among these questions are the following:

What is the history of cross-border solidarity? How can we discard the blinders forged by the cold war, and expand our vision of what is possible?

How is the political context changing on both sides of the border? Why is solidarity a necessary response to political and economic challenges?

One of our biggest advantages is the movement of people from Mexico to the U.S. and back.

What part do migrants and the struggle for their rights play in solidarity between workers of both countries?

How can we develop new ways of reaching across the border?

The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity

2011-07-15T22:04:00.000-07:00

By David Bacon

Published by the Americas Program on: May 22, 2011

http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4606

Editor's Note: This is the first installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website.

Introduction

This paper is not a survey of all the efforts that have taken place, especially since the NAFTA debate restarted the solidarity process in the early 1990s. Instead, it seeks to set out some questions, and invite responses and contributions from people involved in this cross border movement. Among these questions are the following:

What is the history of cross-border solidarity? How can we discard the blinders forged by the cold war, and expand our vision of what is possible?

How is the political context changing on both sides of the border? Why is solidarity a necessary response to political and economic challenges?

One of our biggest advantages is the movement of people from Mexico to the U.S. and back. What part do migrants and the struggle for their rights play in solidarity between workers of both countries?

How can we develop new ways of reaching across the border?

The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity

The working class movements of the U.S. and Mexico both began in the decades after the seizure of Mexican territory in the War of 1848, its incorporation into the territory of the U.S., and the unequal relationship cemented by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

After the turn of the century, cross-border solidarity became an important political movement, as Mexicans began migrating to the U.S. as railroad workers, miners and farm laborers. The Flores Magon brothers, on the run from the regime of Porfirio Diaz, began organizing what became the uprising in Cananea and the Liberal Party in the communities of railroad workers in Los Angeles, St. Louis and elsewhere north of the border.

The two were active participants in the radical socialist and anarchist movements of the day, and were associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. After the Cananea rising, J. Edgar Hoover pursued them in his first campaign of organized anti-labor and anti-left repression. The brothers were caught, tried and sent to Leavenworth Federal Prison, where Ricardo died.

Today in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, on the wall of the longshore union hall, hangs a banner dated 1906, declaring the union part of the Casa Obrera Mundial. The Casa Obrera Mundial was a Mexican group associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the banner testifies to the links that existed between workers of the two countries at that time, and their internationalist outlook. Later, members of the IWW fought in the Mexican Revolution itself.

The roots of the cross-border solidarity movement are very deep, going back more than a century. They are part of the labor culture of workers and unions, and have been almost since the beginning of our two labor movements.

During the 1930s, strong cross border relationships developed between workers on both sides. In Mexico and the U.S., their challenge was the same - to organize the vast bulk of workers in the largest enterprises, especially the basic industries.

Through the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexican labor had a government that depended on a strong, albeit politically controlled, union movement. Communists and socialists organized the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), and began supporting the beginnings of labor movements in other countries through the Confederation of Workers of Latin America (CTAL), headed by Vicente Lombardo Toledano.

In the U.S., the New Deal was a product of the upsurge in labor organizing led by the left, and in turn it also created a favorable environment in which many industrial workers were able to organize.

From that period to the present, the relationships between workers in the U.S. and Mexico grew closer when the left was strong, both in terms of organized political parties, but also as a set of ideas that were supported by large numbers of workers. From the beginning, the strongest relationships have existed between industrial workers - miners, railroad workers, factory workers, farm workers, longshore workers and others.

During the period of the labor upsurge of the 1930s and 40s, most solidarity activity was organized by Mexican unions in support of workers in the U.S. In part, this was due to a point of view among those unions that saw Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, especially along the border, as part of their own constituency. They sought to protect and defend the interests of people they viewed as their own paisanos.

In 1937 5000 workers marched to the bridge in Laredo during an onion strike in the Rio Grande Valley. The major working class organizations of the border states were present - the Congreso de Trabajo, the railroad union and the Mexican Communist Party. Vicente Lombardo Toledano came from Mexico City to speak.

Together with grassroots unions organized by left-wing workers on the U.S. side, the groups cooperated in setting up the Asociacion de Jornaleros (the Agricultural Workers Union) in Laredo, Texas. In the following years, Mexican unions increased their organizing activity in Texas. The CTM held Conventions of Mexican Workers in Dallas in 1938, in San Antonio in 1940, and in Austin in 1941.

The program of these gatherings emphasized the fight for civil rights for Mexican Americans in the southwest. That battle goes on today in Arizona and other states. Other demands included stopping local authorities from dropping Mexicans from the relief rolls during times of high unemployment. Today immigrants, even with permanent residence visas, still can't get most kinds of Social Security and welfare benefits.

As the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) began to grow, Mexican unions and organizers cooperated in efforts to organize Mexican workers on the U.S. side. The CTM set up committees among Mexican workers in the southwest. After Lombardo Toledano and others established the Universidad Obrera in Mexico City, Mexicans living in the U.S. were sent for training. Emma Tenayuca, the young Communist who led the most famous strike of Mexican women of the time, the pecan strike in San Antonio, got her organizer training beforehand at the Universidad Obrera.

In U.S. copper mines 60% of the workers were Mexican or Mexican American. The Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Union, with roots in the Western Federation of Miners and the IWW, used border alliances to build union locals in mining towns. This was a logical and necessary step, since the same families worked in mines on both sides of the border. They shared a similar union history, in which the fight against the inferior Mexican wage as a central demand in both Mexican and U.S. mines, which belonged to the same companies.

On May Day in 1942 500 Mine Mill members marched with 10,000 Mexican workers in Ciudad Juarez. Humberto Silex, Mine Mill's leading organizer, established Local 509, which became the union's most important local. Silex addressed the rally. The following July 4, Toledano traveled from Mexico City to speak in El Paso's Independence Day celebration.

Solidarity went beyond speeches and conventions. CTM organizers coordinated with U.S. organizers during the first strikes by Mine Mill in El Paso, especially during the key battle to organize its giant smelter. In 1946 Mine Mill struck 14 ASARCO plants to gain national bargaining. The CTM donated money, and pledged to stop Mexicans from crossing the border to break the strike.

In Los Angeles, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union established Local 26 for southern California warehouse and light manufacturing workers. The union used Mexican organizers, including Jess Armenta and Bert Corona. Corona, a leftist born in Ciudad Juarez, became local president. Later Humberto Camacho, a Mexican organizer for the United Electrical Workers, helped establish UE Local 1421.

Corona and Camacho became the two most influential leaders of the immigrant rights movement through the 1970s, not just in Los Angeles, but nationally. Their labor and solidarity activity created a base for fighting for immigrant rights. That core of activists and their militant program called for defending the rights of undocumented workers. They made the modern immigrant rights movement possible.

Corona, Camacho, and their generation of solidarity and labor activists saw that unions in both countries had a common interest. Labor, they believed, should try to raise the standard of living in both countries, and stop the use of immigrants as a vulnerable labor supply for employers.

Immigration laws in the U.S. were constantly used against strikes by Mexican workers. From 1930 to 1935, 345,839 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. As the cold war started, deportations were used to try to break this cross-border movement. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (ICE's predecessor) arrested and tried to deport Humberto Silex. He became one of the most famous anti-deportation cases of the McCarthyite period.

Luisa Moreno, an organizer of garment workers in Los Angeles, was deported to Guatemala. Another political deportee of the cold war was Refugio Martinez, a leader of the United Packinghouse Workers in Chicago. Martinez helped build community organizations in Mexican barrios, including El Frente Popular Mexicano, the Toledano Club, and the Asociacion Nacional Mexicano Americano. Armando Davila, of the United Furniture Workers in L.A., was also deported. The government tried to deport Lucio Bernabe, a leader of the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers who led organizing drives in San Jose canneries. His deportation was stopped. But Rosaura Revueltas, the Mexican movie actress, was deported after playing a role in Salt of the Earth, the movie written by blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters documenting the role of women in the strike by Mine Mill at the Empire Zinc mine.

Many of the deportations were fought by the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, a left-wing immigrant rights organization based in Los Angeles. The deportation wave marked the rise of cold war hysteria. They were not isolated, but part of the context of the repression of Mexican immigrants generally. In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, the combination of enforcement and bracero contract labor reached a peak. In 1954 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. And from 1956 to 1959, between 432,491 and 445,197 braceros were brought in each year.

As a political weapon, deportations were part of a general wave of repression that included firings, and even prison for left-wing and labor activists. At the same time, the labor movements on both sides were purged of left-wing leaders. In the U.S., the CIO expelled nine unions, charged with being Communist. In Mexico, independent movements like that of the railroad workers were crushed, and its leaders, also accused of being Communists, were sent to prison.

As a result, the people who had organized the solidarity movement of the 1930s and 40s were fighting just for their survival. Unions that were its base, like the miners or farm workers, were attacked and in some cases destroyed. The labor movements in both countries became more nationalistic. In the U.S. a cold war labor leadership defended U.S. foreign policy goals, especially anti-communism. Anti-communism provided a common ground with the charro leadership of the CTM and other Mexican unions, who feared any independent movement challenging them from the left.

The American Institute for Free Labor Development, funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, had an office in Mexico City. But the office did not organize solidarity efforts to defend workers against U.S. corporations and the wars and interventions that supported them. Instead, U.S. labor/intelligence agents helped in the suppression, imprisonment and even murder of militant unionists throughout Latin America. When solidarity efforts began again years later, the distrust and suspicion engendered by that history took years to overcome, and in some areas still exists today.

Even during the worst times, however, there were still relationships among progressive activists and union locals. When miners went on strike in Cananea in the 1960s, a Mine Mill leader, Maclovio Barrajas, organized food and money for them from the U.S. side. When Mine Mill went on strike later, the Cananea miners reciprocated.

During the 60s, as the introduction of container technology transformed work on the waterfront, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) invited Mexican longshore workers to come work in the L.A. harbor and learn to drive the cranes. Today there are still retired members of the Federation of Stevedores in Mexican Pacific coast ports who remember that experience of worker-to-worker solidarity.

Corona and Camacho, and ILWU Local 26 and UE Local 1421, supported some of the first efforts in Tijuana to organize independent unions in the maquiladoras, as the industry started to mushroom. A critical strike at Solidev and Solitron in the late 1970s was supported both by Tijuana's left, including veteran Communist Blas Manriquez, and a network of activists on the U.S. side led by Camacho.

After the repression of the student movement in Tlatelolco in 1968, and especially in the years just before the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) became the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM) and eventually the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), left-wing worker activists moved from Mexico City to Los Angeles to organize what had become a huge population of Mexican workers living there. Some became organizers for the UE, and eventually other unions as well, helping to spark the city's labor upsurge of the 1980s and 90s.

Corona helped build that same activist base through the Centro de Accion Social Autonoma (CASA). It single-mindedly fought for the rights for undocumented workers, urging workers to join unions, fighting to get unions to defend them, and organizing workers on its own when labor was unresponsive.

Today unions are often so busy just trying to survive that looking at the history of earlier solidarity efforts seems a luxury. But it is important to know that the movement for solidarity among workers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico didn't begin with NAFTA. Those earlier efforts are an important reservoir of experience. They show that solidarity is an integral and indispensable part of the history of the labor movement in both countries. Earlier worker activists and leaders have given unions today a rich, although little-known, store of knowledge of tactics, strategy, and above all, politics. They often paid heavily, so their contributions should not be lightly set aside or ignored.

One important conclusion of those earlier years is that solidarity has always been a two-way street. Mexican unions especially played a key role in the organization of US unions, some of which would not exist today without that early support, particularly in the southwest.

Those early efforts met success by concentrating on the key role of Mexican workers in the U.S. Today's circumstances are different, but the migration of people is just as important to solidarity today as it was eighty years ago.

Solidarity has always been a project of the left in each country. A strong left produced a base for developing common action. It popularized political ideas that helped workers understand that internationalism was necessary to confront transnational corporations and the governments and policies that supported them. Conversely, the cold war, nationalism, and anti-immigrant hysteria in the U.S., and repression on both sides of the border, were the tools used to break those bonds and proscribe those ideas. Today those threats are growing again. Ties between workers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico must grow stronger to defeat them.

David Bacon is a California writer and photojournalist. His latest book is Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.

The Institute for Transnational Social Change (ITSC) is a hub for cross-border collaboration among key worker-led organizations (independent unions, worker centers, NGOs, and academics) in Mexico and the United States. The institute seeks to address the needs of a low-wage workforce that is often hard-to-reach - migrant workers, women in the garment industry, farm workers, miners, and other workers in industries dominated by highly mobile transnational corporations - and to increase opportunities for cross-border collaboration. The present report is part of a series of publications sponsored by ITSC. For more information about the ITSC, contact Gaspar Rivera-Salgado at UCLA, grsalgado@irle.ucla.edu.

Labor Law Reform - A Key Battle for Mexican Unions Today

2011-07-15T21:04:00.000-07:00

by David Bacon

Published by the Americas Program on: May 26, 2011

http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4654

Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website.

Changing Mexico's labor law threatens the lives of millions of workers. It would cement the power of a group of industrialists who have been on the political offensive for decades, and who now control Mexico's presidency and national government. "Labor law reform will only benefit the country's oligarchs," claims Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who most Mexicans think won the last presidential election in 2006, as candidate of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution. Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, head of the miner's union who was forced into exile in Canada in 2006, says Mexico's old governing party, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), which lost control of the presidency in 2000, "is trying to assure its return by making this gift to big business, putting an end to labor rights."

In part, the change is drastic because on paper, at least, the rights of Mexican workers are extensive, deriving from the Revolution that ended in 1920. At a time when workers in the U.S. still had no law that recognized the legality of unions, Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution spelled out labor rights. Workers have the right to jobs and permanent status once they're hired. If they're laid off, they have the right to severance pay. They have rights to housing, health care, and training. In a legal strike, they can string flags across the doors of a factory or workplace, and even the owner can't enter until the dispute is settled. Strikebreaking is prohibited.

A new labor law would change most of that.

Companies would be able to hire workers in a six-month probationary status, and then fire them at the end without penalty. Even firing workers with 20 or 30 years on the job would suddenly become much easier and cheaper, by limiting the penalty for unjust termination to one year's severance pay. "That's an open invitation to employers," according to Arturo Alcalde, Mexico's most respected labor lawyer and past president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers. "The bosses themselves say the PRI reform is the road to a 'paradise of firings.' It will make it much cheaper for companies to terminate workers."

The justification, of course, is that by reducing the number of workers at a worksite, while requiring those remaining to work harder, productivity increases and profits go up. For workers, though, a permanent job and stable income become a dream, while the fear of firing grows, hours get longer, and work gets faster, harder and more dangerous.

The PRI labor law reform proposal deepens those changes. The 40-hour workweek was written into the Federal Labor Law, which codified the rights in Article 123. That limit would end. Even the current 7-peso/hour minimum wage ($5/day) would be undermined, as employers would gain the unilateral right to set wages. The independent review of safe working conditions would be heavily restricted.

Mexican workers aren't passive and organize work stoppages and protests much more frequently than do workers in the U.S. Greater activity by angry workers, therefore, wouldn't be hard to predict. So the labor law reform takes this into account as well.

Even in union workplaces with a collective agreement setting wages and conditions, an employer could force workers to sign individual agreements with fewer rights or lower wages. Companies could subcontract work with no limit, giving employers the ability to find low-cost contractors with no union to replace unionized, higher-wage employees. And it would become much more difficult to go on strike.

THE proposed labor law reform is the fourth in a series of basic changes in Mexico's economic, legal and political framework over the last decade. A fiscal reform began the process of privatizing the country's pension system, much like the Social Security privatization plans proposed for the U.S. Teachers charge that Mexican education reform is intended to remove their influence over the curriculum, which still espouses values that would seem very progressive in a U.S. classroom. In many cases, they say, it will remove them from their jobs also. Current Mexican President Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN) proposed an energy reform aimed at privatizing the national oil company, Pemex. Fierce opposition, however, was able to restrict it to some degree.

All the reforms have been part of a program of economic liberalization opening Mexico to private, domestic, and especially foreign capital. Lopez Obrador calls the labor law reform "part of a series imposed on Mexico from outside over the last two decades, including the energy reform, fiscal reform and education reform." The World Bank pressured Mexico to adopt an earlier labor law reform after the PRI lost the presidency in 2000, and Calderon's predecessor, Coca-Cola executive Vicente Fox, won it. The two labor law reform proposals are very similar. Both reflect the surging power of corporate employers in Mexico, and the way the PRI and PAN often trade places, pursuing the same political and economic agenda.

"At the same time," Lopez Obrador notes, "the fight against inequality and poverty is not on the national agenda." Mexican poverty contradicts claims by its leaders, who insist its economic growth merits a seat in the "first world." Changing labor law would make poverty more permanent, however, as well as rendering unions more impotent to challenge it. Juan Manuel Sandoval, a leader of the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade, predicts, "We will become part of the first world - the back yard."

In 2010 Mexico had 53 million people living in poverty, according to the Monterrey Institute of Technology. The CIA says half the country's population lives in poverty, and almost 20% in extreme poverty. The government's unemployment figures are low - 5-6% - but a huge number of working-age Mexicans are part of the informal economy, selling articles on the street or working in jobs where the employer doesn't pay into the official funds (the basis for counting employed workers.) Some estimate that there are more workers in the informal sector than in the formal one.

Even formal jobs don't pay a wage capable of supporting a family. According to the Bank of Mexico, 95% of the 800,000 jobs created in 2010 paid only $10 a day. Yet when a maquiladora worker buys a gallon of milk in a Tijuana or Juarez supermarket, she pays even more than she would on the U.S. side. Prices are a little lower further south, but not much. The price of milk used to be fixed and subsidized, along with tortillas, bus fare and other basic necessities. Previous waves of economic reforms decontrolled prices and ended consumer subsidies, as Mexico was pressured to create more favorable conditions for private investment.

Investors have done very well. In one of the recent diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks, the U.S. government admits "The net wealth of the 10 richest people in Mexico - a country where more than 40 percent of the population lives in poverty - represents roughly 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product." Carlos Slim became the world's richest man when a previous PRI President, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, privatized the national telephone company and sold it to him. Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who owns TV Azteca, is now worth $8 billion, and Emilio Azcárraga Jean, who owns Televisa, is worth $2.3 billion. Both helped current Mexican President Felipe Calderon get elected in 2006.

German Larrea and his company Grupo Mexico got concessions to operate some of the world's largest copper mines. Grupo Mexico was accused of industrial homicide by miners' union president Gomez Urrutia after 65 people (many of them contract workers) died in an explosion at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in February 2006. Since June 2007 the Grupo Mexico copper mine in Cananea has been on strike. Last year Larrea and the Mexican government cooperated in using armed force to open its gates and bring in strikebreakers.

MUCH of the PRI's labor law reform is already the reality on the ground in Cananea, at other mines, and among maquiladora workers near the U.S. Mexico border. For years the rights of workers in northern Mexico, even the rule of law itself, have been undermined by the growing power of corporations.

The corporate transformation of the Mexican economy began long ago, moving the country away from nationalist ideas about development, which were dominant from the end of the Mexican Revolution through the 1970s. Nationalists advocated an economic system in which oil fields, copper mines, railroads, the telephone system, great tracts of land, and other key economic resources would be controlled by Mexicans and used for their benefit.

Under President Lazaro Cardenas in the late 1930s, Mexico established a corporatist system in which one political party, the PRI, controlled the main sectors of Mexican society - workers, farmers, the military and the "popular" sector. PRI governments administered a network of social services, providing healthcare and housing, at least for people in those organized sectors. Cardenas also nationalized Mexico's most important resource - oil - in a popular campaign.

National ownership of oil, and later electrical generation, was written into the Constitution. Land redistribution and nationalization had a political as well as economic purpose - the creation of a section of workers and farmers who would defend the government and its political party, into which their unions and producer organizations were incorporated.

After World War Two, Mexico officially adopted a policy of industrialization through import substitution. Factories produced products for the domestic market, while imports of those products were restricted. The purpose was to develop a national industrial base, provide jobs, and increase the domestic market. Large state-owned enterprises eventually employed hundreds of thousands of Mexican industrial workers in mines, mills, transportation and other strategic industries. Unions had their greatest strength in the public sector. Foreign investment was limited.

Enrique Davalos, professor and teachers' union activist at San Diego City College, calls the system "nationalism in rhetoric, selling out the country in practice." Under successive PRI administrations a vast gulf widened between the political and economic elite, who managed the state's assets and controlled government policy in their own interest, and workers and farmers, especially those not in the formal sector. To protect this elite, the country's political system became increasingly repressive.

In the 1970s, to finance growth while the price of oil was high, Mexico opened up its financial system to foreign capital (mostly from the U.S.), and the country's foreign debt soared. Managers of state enterprises, like the oil company, ran private businesses on the side, along with politically connected union officials. Rackets and corruption proliferated while labor and campesino leaders who challenged the system were imprisoned or worse.

The debt and the hold it gave to foreign financial interests spelled the end of nationalist development. Oil prices fell, the U.S. Treasury jacked up interest rates, and in 1982 the system collapsed when Mexico could no longer make debt payments. The government devalued the peso in what is still infamously remembered as the great "peso shock."

In the Constitution Mexicans still had the right to housing, healthcare, employment and education, but millions of people went hungry, had no homes, were sick and unemployed, and couldn't read. The anger and cynicism felt by many Mexicans toward their political system is in great part a product of the contradiction between the constitutional promises of the revolution a century ago, plus the nationalist rhetoric that followed, and the reality of life for most people.

In a desperate attempt to generate jobs and revenue for debt payments, the government encouraged the growth of maquiladoras, the foreign-owned factories on the northern border. By 2005 over 3000 border plants employed over 2 million workers making products for shoppers from Los Angeles to New York. In 1992 they already accounted for over half of Mexican exports, and in the NAFTA era, became the main sector of the economy producing employment growth.

Maquiladora development undermined the legal rights of workers in the border area, and any laws viewed as discouraging investment. The government had a growing interest in keeping wages low as an attraction to foreign corporations, instead of high enough that people could buy what they were making. The old official unions, including the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), controlled restive workers rather than organizing them to win better conditions.

ONE of the most important methods of control is the protection contract. Cooperative unions sign agreements with factory owners, who pay "dues" for workers who often have no idea that the union and contract even exist. They find out quickly, however, when they try to organize any independent effort to raise wages or improve conditions. The company and official union claim a contract is already in place. If workers try to protest, they're forced into a process before "tripartite" labor boards dominated by business owners, politicians dependent on them, and the official unions.

Labor history in Mexico for decades has been dominated by valiant battles fought by workers to organize independent unions and rid themselves of protection contracts. Thousands have been fired, and some even killed. Despite defeats, organizations like the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM), the Border Committee of Women Workers (CFO), Enlace, and the Workers Support Committee (CAT), have helped workers challenge this system. Some of these battles, fought together with independent unions like the Authentic Labor Front (FAT), have won union contracts, slowly building an independent and progressive sector of Mexican labor.

The FAT and the National Union of Workers, to which it belongs, have made their own proposals for labor law reform. They've suggested making all contracts public to let workers know what union they belong to, and to shine a light on the corruption of the present system. They see the tripartite labor boards as so compromised that they'd do away with them, while removing some of the government controls used to punish independent unions.

The PRI proposal would not make protection contracts public or limit them, nor would it change the labor boards or enhance union rights. Instead, it takes direct aim at those independent unions, some of which have been organized in fierce fights against shutdowns and privatization, like the recent one at the government-owned Mexicana Airline. New private businesses don't want to see these unions spread, organizing their workers. A new private airline, Volaris, for instance, recently started service to the U.S. Now that the government has forced Mexicana into bankruptcy and laid off its workers, Volaris hopes to take over the old airline's routes, and perhaps even its assets. What it doesn't want is the Mexicana union.

The PRI labor law reform would restrict unions to the one company or enterprise where they began. Industrial, or even craft, unions, representing workers at many employers, would become impossible to organize. New private businesses, like Volaris, would face no challenge by a union seeking to set a base wage for a particular industry. Unions would have much greater difficulty in organizing solidarity among workers, in any effort like the ones that led to the large industrial unions in the U.S. and Mexico.

Progressive unions in Mexico today are fighting for their survival. The state institutions that enforce Mexican labor law are already heavily stacked against them. PRI's reforms would turn the struggle for survival into a desperate labor war.

David Bacon is a California writer and photojournalist. His latest book is Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.

The Rebirth of Solidarity on the Border

2011-07-15T20:04:00.000-07:00

by David Bacon

Published by the Americas Program on May 31, 2011

http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4697

Editor's Note: This is the third article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent stories were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website.

The growth of cross-border solidarity today is taking place at a time when U.S. penetration of Mexico is growing - economically, politically, and even militarily. While the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico has it's own special characteristics, it is also part of a global system of production, distribution and consumption. It is not just a bilateral relationship.

Jobs go from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico in order to cut labor costs. But from Mexico those same jobs go China or Bangladesh or dozens of other countries, where labor costs are even lower. As important, the threat to move those jobs, experienced by workers in the U.S. from the 1970s onwards, are now common in Mexico. Those threats force concessions on wages. In Sony's huge Nuevo Laredo factory, for instance, that threat was used to make workers agree to an indefinite temporary employment status, even though Mexican law prohibited it.

Multiple production locations undermine unions' bargaining leverage, since action by workers in a single workplace can't shut down production for the entire corporation. The UAW, for instance, was beaten during a strike at Caterpillar in large part because even though the union could stop production in the U.S., production in Mexico continued. Grupo Mexico can use profits gained in mining operations in Peru to subsidize the costs of a strike in Cananea.

The privatization of electricity in Mexico will not just affect Mexicans. Already plants built by Sempra Energy and Enron in Mexico are like maquiladoras, selling electricity into the grid across the border. If privatization grows, that will have an impact on US unions and jobs, giving utility unions in the U.S. a reason to help Mexican workers resist it. This requires more than solidarity between unions facing the same employer. It requires solidarity in resisting the imposition of neoliberal reforms like privatization and labor law reform as well.

At the same time, the concentration of wealth has created a new political situation in both countries. In Mexico, the PRI functioned as a mediator between organized workers and business. PRI governments used repression to stop the growth of social movements outside the system it controlled. But the government also used negotiations in the interest of long-term stability. The interests of the wealthy were protected, but some sections of the population also received social benefits, and unions had recognized rights. In 1994, for instance, the government put leaders of Mexico City's bus union SUTAUR in prison. But then it proceeded to negotiate with them while they were in jail.

The victory of Vicente Fox and the PAN in 2000 created a new situation, in which the corporate class, grown rich and powerful because of earlier reforms, no longer desired the same kind of social pact or its political intermediaries. The old corporatist system, in which unions had a role, was no longer necessary. Meanwhile employers and the government have been more willing to use force. Unions like the Mexican Electricians Union (SME) and miners face not just repression, but destruction.

In the U.S. a similar process took place during the years after the Vietnam War, when corporations made similar decisions. After the Federal government broke the air traffic controller's (PATCO) strike, the use of strikebreakers became widespread. Corporations increasingly saw even business unions as unnecessary for maintaining social peace and continued profits. Union organizing became a kind of labor warfare. A whole industry of union busters appeared, making the process set up by U.S. labor law in the 1930s much less usable by workers seeking to organize.

Labor law reform, national healthcare, and other basic pro-worker reforms became politically impossible in the post-Vietnam era, even under Democratic presidents whom unions helped elect. Public workers did succeed in organizing during this period, however, and eventually U.S. union strength became more and more concentrated in that sector. But much as the public sector in Mexico came under attack, the U.S. public sector became the target for the U.S. right, for similar reasons. This too changed the landscape for solidarity, giving the most politically powerful section of the U.S. labor movement, at least potentially, a greater interest in solidarity with Mexican labor.

In both countries, the main union battles are now ones to preserve what workers have previously achieved, rather than to make new gains. Mexican unions are enmeshed in the state labor process, in which the government still certifies unions' existence, and to a large degree controls their bargaining. In the U.S. labor is endangered by economic crisis, falling density, and an increasingly hostile political system. This leads to a rise in nationalism and protectionism, creating new obstacles for solidarity.

As the attacks against unions grow stronger, solidarity is becoming necessary for survival. Unions face a basic question on both sides of the border - can they win the battles they face today, especially political ones, without joining their efforts together? Fortunately, this is not an abstract question. Enormous progress has taken place over the last two decades.

THE U.S. labor movement had to be dragged by its base into opposing NAFTA. The AFL-CIO's international apparatus in Washington DC had a history during the cold war of supporting free trade and U.S. foreign policy. But the unions it supported in Mexico, especially the CTM, lined up behind the Mexican government, and therefore supported the treaty.

Individual U.S. unions began looking across the border for themselves, seeking new contacts with unions opposed to the free trade agreement. The FAT's Benedicto Martinez traveled the US in the free trade caravan, organized by the Teamsters Union, to build rank and file opposition to NAFTA. He spoke in many meetings of the United Electrical Workers. He remembers, "NAFTA shocked a lot of US unions out of their inertia - not so much their national leaders, but people in local unions. They're the ones who began pushing the structure to move on globalization, to form new international relations and look for solidarity. That's what moved their leaders to pay attention to the border. It was people in local unions that began building the bridges across the border to unions in Mexico. The more local unions got involved, the broader this movement became."

The NAFTA debate provoked discussion about the relationship between workers in Mexico and the US. Many union members responded by supporting efforts to organize independent unions in the border plants. "It was a kind of school," Martinez recalls. "It was not so easy anymore for someone to say that Mexicans were stealing jobs. They could see there was a real problem."

The border provided an area for experimenting with new ways to organize workers. The following decade saw an explosion of activity on the border. The maquiladora organizing drive at Plasticos Bajacal in 1993 first highlighted for U.S. unions the reality of public union representation elections and the lack of the secret ballot. The San Diego Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers raised enough money to pay lost time for fired workers, so they could continue organizing the factory.

The AFL-CIO's Ed Feigan and religious orders set up the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras in the late 1980s, which was dominated at the beginning by U.S. unions and organizations. As it began to coordinate campaigns all along the border - CustomTrim/AutoTrim, Duro Bag, Lajat/Levi's and others, the role of organizations within the coalition changed. Women from the local plants and communities became more assertive, while large unions and organizations grew uncomfortable, feeling they could no longer hold the coalition accountable.

The worker rebellion at the huge Sony factory was the first major battle under NAFTA, and the first place where the false promises of its labor side-agreement became obvious. Hundreds of workers were beaten in front of the plant when they ran candidates in their CTM union's election. When that door was closed, they tried to form an independent union, and were blocked by the company and Mexican government. NAFTA's labor side agreement did nothing to change the situation.

The leader of the Sony workers, Martha Ojeda, was smuggled by her coworkers across the Rio Grande to Texas, and she eventually became director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras.

In the late 1990s two strikes at Tijuana's Han Young factory led to killing fast track authorization in the U.S. Congress for the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The independent union there became one of the first to successfully force the government to give it legal status. Los Angeles' big oil union, later a local of the Steel Workers, was a major source of support for the strikers. An investigation by the Maquiladora Health and Safety Support Network documented dangerous conditions and lack of inspections that violated Mexican law, as the network also did at CustonTrim/AutoTrim. Those experiences in maquiladoras were the precursors of the later investigation into silicosis among striking miners in Cananea.

The Comite Fronterizo de Obreras organized workers at Alcoa Fujikura, and even forced Alcoa's CEO to negotiate over conditions there. Enlace, a unique coalition of Mexican and U.S. unions and non-governmental organizations, supported living wage campaigns among maquiladora workers in north Mexico, and battles for independent unions at Sara Lee. It became the support base for SITTIM, an independent union of workers in Baja California's maquiladora industry. The union first organized garment workers in Korean-owned factories, and then workers in Korean-owned seafood processing plants, in Baja California Sur. Both during the Han Young and SITTIM campaigns the workers made contact with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a significant step since Korean corporations own a significant part of Mexico's maquiladora industry.

Struggles have taken place in maquiladoras for two decades all along the border. Many centers or collectives of workers have come together over those years. Walkouts over unpaid wages or indemnizacion, or terrible conditions, are still relatively common. Local activists still find ways to support them, like the Collective Ollin Calli in Tijuana, and its network of allies across the border in Tijuana, the San Diego Maquiladora Workers Solidarity Network.

Over the years, support from many U.S. unions and churches, and from unions and labor institutions in Mexico City, has often been critical in helping these collectives survive, especially during the pitched battles to win legal status for independent unions. But overall that support has not been constant. Often the worker groups in the maquiladoras and the cities of the border have had to survive on their own, or with extremely limited resources. While workers may whisper in secret about Martha Ojeda, and call her when they're in deep trouble, the resource base for the Coalition has diminished seriously during the current recession. Many organizations have stopped supporting it.

Maria Estela Rios Gonzalez, a CJM board member, former legal advisor to Lopez Obrador when he was Mexico City Mayor, and former president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers, believes greater commitment still faces a perception in Mexico City that the border region is a remote area, far from the places where decisive changes are made in the country's direction. "Local struggles on the border have never been successful in becoming national causes," she charges. The same observation could be made about the way large U.S. unions and organizations see border struggles. In addition, the difficulties of maintaining a cross-border relationship in which unorganized factory workers play a leading role have never been adequately examined.

Despite the flight of many jobs to China, a U.S. economic recession that has caused massive layoffs in border plants, and extreme levels of violence in many border communities, the maquiladora industry in north Mexico is still enormous. Three thousand plants employ over 1.3 million workers. It's not just the size of the industry that makes these plants important. They've been the laboratories for the rightward shift in labor law and labor relations, now being applied to workers across Mexico. The states are a stronghold of political conservatism and corporate power, because of the disenfranchisement of their working population.

A vibrant and strong labor movement on the border would change Mexico's politics. The influence of the maquiladoras on U.S. employment and runaway production over the years is undeniable, and strong unions there would have a tremendous impact on U.S. labor too. The growth of labor solidarity in the last two decades between the U.S. and Mexico owes a lot to the border labor wars. It was there that U.S. unions first acquired a clear vision of the importance of their relations with Mexican workers. The decline in activity in border factories over the last few years, and in the support from major unions and institutions in both countries for it, is a real weakness in the efforts to build a culture of labor solidarity.

When Oaxacan migrants were striking in Sinaloa and Baja California fields in the 1980s, support from U.S. farm worker unions could have helped their movements survive. That, in turn, might have given the U.S. unions leverage in bargaining with those employers on the U.S. side. And when those Oaxacan migrants showed up in U.S. fields, they would already have had a history of friendship and cooperation with U.S. unions.

David Bacon is a California writer and photojournalist. His latest book is Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.

Growing Ties Between Mexican and U.S. Labor

2011-07-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

Americas Program

July 2011

by David Bacon

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. All articles in the series were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change’s report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, click here.

IN Mexico, the NAFTA debate led to the organization of the Action Network Opposing Free Trade (RMALC), which in turn helped to spark the relationship between the U.E. and the Authentic Labor Front (FAT). That relationship, examined in detail in several books, remains a model for solidarity between two unions, based on equality and mutual interest, preserving each union’s ability to make its own decisions autonomously. It has been a relationship based on real campaigns on the ground – organizing drives, strikes, and resistance to proposals like the PRI labor law reform. Rank-and-file workers in both unions have played an important part in those efforts.

In the solidarity upsurge of the late 1990s onwards, other unions also have found counterparts across the border, and tried to develop ongoing relationships. The Communications Workers first supported efforts by maquiladora workers in a small Cananea factory, and then established a close relationship with the Mexican Telephone Workers. The ILWU sent delegations, first to Veracruz when its longshore union was smashed, and then to Pacific Coast ports as they were being privatized. The union has a relationship with the Federation of Stevedores there, part of the Revolutionary Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM). The PRI affiliation of this old, official union, however, is very different from the leftwing culture of the ILWU. While they have a common interest facing their mutual employers — huge shipping companies — neither union has been able to put forward a plan for mutual action.

Frustrated with the slow pace of union organizing in Mexico, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center assisted the formation of the Workers Support Center (CAT) in Puebla, which led to pitched battles in the state’s maquiladoras, and some important victories. The first came at Mex Mode (Kuk Dong), where the CAT helped set up an independent union. The United Students Against Sweatshops then successfully pressured Nike Corporation into forcing the sweatshop’s management to recognize it and bargain. Subsequent campaigns at clothing plants met with heavy repression. But recently, the CAT helped workers organize at a Johnson Controls plant. The UAW in the U.S., which had earlier organized plants of the same company, pressured it into recognizing the union in Puebla.

The CAT drives developed a sophisticated strategy using cross-border leverage against Mexican and U.S. employers in a well-defined geographical area, producing for the U.S. market. Those campaigns only received lukewarm support from the Mexican independent labor movement for the first few years. Recently, however, that has changed. The Puebla union at Johnson Controls joined the Mexican miners union after it won recognition. The mineros, who have begun a process of merging with the United Steel Workers, are locked in an all-out conflict with the Mexican government and Grupo Mexico. Yet the union is committed to offering resources to Puebla maquiladora workers, and the workers in turn are unafraid to join a union engaged in fierce battles.

The decision by the mineros and USW to draw together rises from their joint struggles in the mines along the U.S./Mexico border, especially the strike in Cananea. Workers in U.S. and Mexican mines have a long history of mutual support, even family relationships. While the Cold War restrained such support activity for some years, the Cananea strike in 1998 restarted relationships. Mexican miners came up to Arizona, and their appeals led to caravans of trucks filled with food going south. Support came from the Tucson labor council, headed by Jerry Acosta, and from USW mine locals in Arizona.

When Napoleon Gomez Urrutia became president of the mineros, and increasingly challenged Grupo Mexico and the Mexican government, the USW support efforts increased. Grupo Mexico bought ASARCO, giving the two unions a common employer. Then in June 2007, the mineros struck the Cananea mine, and Gomez Urrutia was forced into exile. The USW offered him a home in Vancouver, Canada, and the union became a critical source of support for the Cananea strikers, contributing food and money. It organized U.S. health and safety experts to go to Cananea to expose the dangers of silicosis in the mine, one of the reasons for the strike. The USW brought the AFL-CIO into its support activity, and together they pressured both the U.S. and Mexican governments.

USW legal and political assistance, coordinated by Manny Armenta, helped the mineros win a series of court decisions upholding the legality of the Cananea strike, and defending the mineros’ leadership against government legal charges and repression. After three years the government and Grupo Mexico finally used armed force to reopen the Cananea mine, but they had to do it in the face of numerous decisions declaring such action illegal. Reopening the mine is one of the clearest examples of the unwillingness of the Mexican government and large corporations to respect the rule of law. The conflict may grow even more intense when the USW contract with ASARCO expires. During the last negotiation of that agreement, Grupo Mexico, although it was the owner of the bankrupt U.S. employer, could not control it in bargaining. Now Grupo Mexico will face the USW directly. After years in which the union has defended Gomez Urrutia from the corporation’s attacks, and supported the strikers in Cananea, a sharp conflict is almost inevitable.

Since 2009, the two unions have discussed a merger of their organizations. The idea raises important questions about how such an organization would function under different labor law systems. It also poses challenging questions about how a binational organization would ensure the autonomy of its members in each country, and their ability to act in their own interest. Given the Cold War history of U.S. intelligence operations in Mexico, it’s not a question that Mexicans are likely to take lightly.

The support by U.S. unions for independent union campaigns in maquiladoras has always been attacked by rightwing Mexican media, government officials and employers, who have accused the Mexican workers and unions involved of betraying their country. They’ve charged U.S. unions with “trying to make trouble” in order to chase employers who have moved production to Mexico into returning to the U.S.

Progressive Mexican unions have had to fight to redefine what nationalism should mean. They’ve argued that the neoliberal development model itself undermines the true interests of Mexican workers, who have the right to fight U.S. and Mexican employers, and to solidarity from U.S. unions when they do it. Further, they charge, the real betrayal is by Mexican authorities who allow foreign companies to break Mexican labor law. Their position not only defends the historic rights of Mexican workers, but the motives behind the solidarity offered by US unions as well.

“We don’t want to live in a country that’s attracting jobs from other countries like the US and Canada, using the competitive advantage of low wages, the lack of enforcement of labor laws, and even ecological damage,” says UNT and telephone union leader Francisco Hernandez Juarez. “These jobs are bound to be temporary anyway, they don’t give us any permanent benefit, and eventually when there’s some unfavorable event, they move to countries where the labor is even cheaper. The majority of Mexicans are being plunged into poverty. It will get worse if we continue depending exclusively on producing for foreign markets, especially the United States, and if we ignore our domestic market. We won’t accept turning into a maquiladora country that’s attractive simply because of its cheap labor. Through our unions, we want to establish more complex and complete labor relations, that permit us to be competitive in making more sophisticated products.”

THE fight over that political direction is at the heart of the Mexican government’s attack on the Mexican Electrical Workers (SME). Here solidarity efforts from the U.S. are not based on a fight against a common employer, but instead challenge the free trade and free market reforms behind the attack on the Mexican union.

President Calderon declared Mexico’s oldest and most progressive major union “non-existent” in October of 2009. He dissolved the state-owned Power and Light Company for central Mexico, and fired all of the SME’s 44,000 members who worked there. Most Mexicans believe this is a prelude to privatizing the electrical industry. Already, despite the constitutional prohibition, almost half of the electricity generated in the country comes from private producers. Despite the attacks, the union has been able to win back its legal recognition, and is fighting for the rights and jobs of the 16,000 members who have refused to accept their termination.

U.S. unions stayed out of previous fights over privatization, especially around electrical generation, in part because the SME is still affiliated to the World Federation of Trade Unions. The WFTU was organized when the UN was founded, originally with CIO participation. But almost all U.S. unions later abandoned it at the beginning of the Cold War. The WFTU became the rival of the AFL-dominated International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

In Mexico, however, that Cold War barrier began to soften after the leadership of the AFL-CIO changed, and John Sweeney became president. “There’s more discussion with the SME,” said Stan Gacek, a staffer at the International Affairs Department in the early 2000s. “It’s on a de facto basis, although not on any grand scale. But a number of WFTU affiliates are talking to us because they’ve gotten over the Cold War and so have we. There are broader and more important common objectives.”

As the Mexico/U.S. labor solidarity movement grew, so did the number of U.S. activists who saw the important role the SME plays in Mexican politics. They respected its democratic structure and strong contract. In earlier confrontations with Mexican administrations, unions like the U.E., whose relationship with the SME goes back decades, mobilized U.S. support.

When Calderon launched his attack in 2009, that network was mobilized. The UE’s website, Mexican Labor News and Analysis, became a main source of news as the union fought to maintain picket lines at installations, and launched a hunger strike in the Zocalo, at Mexico City’s heart. News also came from the Solidarity Center’s Ben Davis, who was already putting out daily bulletins for the mineros. Progressive journalists began covering the fight, in the complete absence of any mainstream U.S. media coverage.

In the meantime, delegations of SME leaders, including Humberto Montes de Oca and Pepino Cuevas, came to the U.S., hosted by the San Francisco chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and local labor councils. Their efforts led eventually to press conferences and meetings between SME and AFL-CIO leaders in Washington DC, and complaints at the ILO and under NAFTA’s labor side agreement. Los Angeles unionists sent a delegation to the Mexican consulate, as did other areas.

In February five international union bodies, the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM), International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), UNI Global Union, and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), cooperated in organizing actions in 40 countries. Over 50,000 workers, students and human rights activists demonstrated at Mexican consulates or otherwise showed their public opposition to the reform. Twenty-seven actions took place in Mexico itself.

The international federations and Mexican unions formed a coalition, which agreed to press the government to abolish the protection contract system and to stop the use of force against strikers at the Cananea mine, the Power and Light Company, and in other similar situations. The unions demanded an end to repression against the miners union and the SME; and that government officials be held responsible for the explosion at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine.

U.S. solidarity activists used several arguments to win U.S. labor support. With power workers, they explained that the destruction of SME and privatization of generation would lead eventually to Mexican power exports to the U.S., using low wages and a lack of unions to undercut U.S. production costs. This argument also helped win support from fair trade organizations.

The solidarity effort with the SME did not have a base in a particular U.S. union, however, as the FAT has with the UE or the mineros with the USW. That limited the Mexican union’s ability to plan and carry out a long-term cross border campaign. But after the struggle had gone on for a year, the U.S. Utility Workers Union organized a tri-national conference of unions in the electrical generation industry. SME leaders made a successful appeal for support, and have hopes for creating a more permanent relationship. The struggle against privatization is still not a high priority in U.S. labor, but many U.S. utility unions represent workers at public utilities and understand the threat. In addition, the current attack against U.S. public workers has created a labor audience more sympathetic to appeals to defend public workers in Mexico.

THE big turn away from the Cold War in U.S. labor came when John Sweeney was elected AFL-CIO president in 1995. Richard Trumka, then secretary-treasurer and now AFL-CIO president, called for dropping the Cold War prohibition on relations with leftwing unions like the SME, and declared that solidarity should be based on cooperation between unions facing common employers, regardless of their politics. The USW/mineros relationship is based in part on that idea.

Cross border solidarity in U.S. labor is still oriented towards private industry, and mutual support during confrontations with huge corporations. It’s less focused on opposition to the neoliberal policies pursued by both the U.S. and Mexican governments, regardless of which political party is in power. U.S. unions often see their own needs first. A heightened sense of solidarity requires fighting the battles prioritized by other unions, not just fighting your own battles in someone else’s country. U.S. unions are still learning what it would mean to Mexican labor and progressive movements if the SME were destroyed. They would find it much more difficult to develop Mexican allies in a climate of growing repression and a weakened left.

When many U.S. workers think about Mexico, they envision it as the place their jobs have gone. If U.S. workers have lost those jobs, then Mexican workers must have gotten them. Ross Perot captured their imagination by referring to Mexico as “the giant sucking sound.” The message from Perot and rightwing broadcaster Lou Dobbs is that Mexican workers are the enemy, the ones who “stole your job.”

In the U.S., most workers don’t understand displacement, or the enormous impact NAFTA and neoliberal policies have had on Mexicans. When Mexicans, as a result, cross the border looking for work, many U.S. workers often don’t understand who they are or why they’ve come.

The labor movements on both sides are paying a heavy price for giving a low priority to the education of their members. Anti-immigrant hysteria and hostility towards solidarity go hand in hand, and unions must take education more seriously. In the U.S., former AFL-CIO education director Bill Fletcher initiated a program called “Common Sense Economics” — an effort to teach union members about globalization and the way it affects them. The program was terminated, however, and Fletcher was reassigned. That effort has to begin again, but so far no such plans are underway. This is a serious brake on winning a mass base for solidarity activity among rank-and-file workers.

A culture of solidarity asks workers to take a long-term view of their interests. It asks them to look beyond getting a contract tomorrow for their own union or getting a card signed so the union can start bargaining. Both are necessary. But so is a better understanding of their stake in helping workers beyond their country’s borders. Solidarity means knowing that workers in one country can’t keep their contracts or jobs if workers across the border are losing theirs.

David Bacon is a California writer and photojournalist. His latest book is Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.

The Institute for Transnational Social Change (ITSC) is a hub for cross-border collaboration among key worker-led organizations (independent unions, worker centers, NGOs, and academics) in Mexico and the United States. The institute seeks to address the needs of a low-wage workforce that is often hard-to-reach – migrant workers, women in the garment industry, farm workers, miners, and other workers in industries dominated by highly mobile transnational corporations — and to increase opportunities for cross-border collaboration. The present report is part of a series of publications sponsored by ITSC. For more information about the ITSC, contact Gaspar Rivera-Salgado at UCLA, grsalgado@irle.ucla.edu.

Immigration and the Culture of Solidarity

2011-07-15T18:04:00.000-07:00

Americas Program

July 2011

By David Bacon

Editor’s Note: This is the final article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. All articles in the series were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change’s report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, click here.

ONE indispensable part of education and solidarity is greater contact between Mexican union organizers and their U.S. counterparts. The base for that contact already exists in the massive movement of people between the two countries.

Miners fired in Cananea, or electrical workers fired in Mexico City, become workers in Phoenix, Los Angeles and New York. Twelve million Mexican workers in the U.S. are a natural base of support for Mexican unions. They bring with them the experience of the battles waged by their unions. They can raise money and support. Their families are still living in Mexico, and many are active in political and labor campaigns. As workers and union members in the U.S., they can help win support from U.S. unions for the battles taking place in Mexico.

This is not a new idea. It’s what the Flores Magon brothers were doing for the uprising in Cananea. It’s why the Mexican left sent activists and organizers to the Rio Grande Valley in the 1930s, and to Los Angeles in the 1970s. All these efforts had a profound impact on U.S. unions and workers. The sea change in the politics of Los Angeles in the last two decades, while it has many roots, shows the long-term results of immigrants gaining political power, and the role of politically conscious immigrant organizers in that process.

Today some U.S. unions see the potential in organizing in immigrant communities. But most unions in Mexico, in contrast to the past, don’t see this movement of people as a resource they can or should organize.

What would happen if Mexican unions began sending organizers or active workers north into the U.S.? In reality, active members are already making that move, and have been for a long time. Yet there is no organized way of looking at this. Where, for instance, will the people displaced in today’s Mexican labor struggles go? In 1998, almost 900 active blacklisted miners from Cananea had to leave after their strike that year was lost. Many came to Arizona and California. In Mexico City, 26,000 SME members took the indemnizacion and gave up claim to their jobs and unions. Many of them will inevitably be forced to go to the U.S. to look for work.

Cananea miners and Mexico City electrical workers have a wealth of experience and a history of participation in a progressive and democratic union. They can help both workers in the U.S. and those they’ve left back home, building unions in the places they go to work. But to use their experience effectively, unions on both sides of the border need to know who they are and where they’re going, and see them as potential organizers.

SOLIDARITY and the migration of people are linked. The economic crisis in Mexico is getting much worse, with no upturn in sight. With a 40% poverty rate, the government still has no program for employment beyond encouraging investment with lower wages and fewer union rights. And since the maquila sector is tied to the US market, it experiences even worse mass layoffs than other Mexican sectors, with the waves of unemployed then crossing the border just a few miles away from their homes.

Six million Mexicans left for the U.S. in the NAFTA period, a flow of people that now affects almost every family, even in the most remote parts of country. Migration has become an important safety valve for the Mexican economy and also relieves pressure on the Mexican government. It uses the tens of billions of dollars in remittances to make up for social investment cut under pressure from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Teachers’ strikes, like the one in Oaxaca in 2006, mushroom into insurrections because there is no alternative to migration and an economic system increasingly dependent on remittances.

Economic reforms and displacement create unemployed workers – for border factories, or for U.S. agriculture and meatpacking plants. Displacement creates a reserve army of workers available to corporations as low wage labor. If demand rises, employers don’t have to raise wages. In a time of economic crisis, unemployed people are used to pressure employed workers, making them less demanding, and more fearful of losing their jobs.

Displacement and migration aren’t a byproduct of the global economy. The economic system in both Mexico and the U.S. is dependent on the labor that displacement produces. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said on a recent visit to California, “You have two economies. One economy is intensive in capital, which is the American economy. One economy is intensive in labor, which is the Mexican economy. We are two complementary economies, and that phenomenon is impossible to stop.”

To employers, migration is a labor supply system. U.S. immigration policy is not intended to keep people from crossing the border. It determines the status of people once they’re in the U.S. It is designed to supply labor to employers at a manageable cost, imposed by employers. It makes the laborers themselves vulnerable, especially those who come through guest worker programs where employers can withdraw their ability to stay in the country by firing them.

The economic pressure that produces migration has a big impact on relations between U.S. and Mexican labor. Today, for instance, governments and employers on both sides of the border tell unions that support for labor supply, or guest worker, programs is part of a beneficial relationship. Any movement for solidarity has to address this corporate pressure. A union alliance with employers on immigration policy, based on helping them use migration as a labor supply system, creates a large obstacle to any effort to defend the rights of migrants.

Instead, U.S. and Mexican unions need a common program on trade, displacement and investment, which calls for increasing the security of workers and farmers, and reducing displacement and forced migration.

ANTI-IMMIGRANT policies were part of cold war politics in the U.S. labor movement. As late as 1986, the AFL-CIO supported employer sanctions, the section of U.S. immigration law passed in 1986 that essentially made work a crime for people without papers. They argued that that if undocumented workers couldn’t support their families, they’d deport themselves.

The growth of the cross-border movement coincided with rise of the immigrant rights movement. In the 1990s, as labor activists pushed for support for unions in Mexico, they also organized to repeal sanctions. First the garment unions called for repeal, then SEIU, the California Labor Federation, and others. They argued that employers used the law to threaten and fire undocumented workers to keep them from organizing unions. Unions trying to organize and grow began to see immigrants as potential members — workers who would strike and organize. They therefore opposed the idea of pushing Mexicans back across border, because they wanted them to become active in the U.S. They saw immigrants not just as a force on the job, but in politics. As people gained legal status and then became citizens, they could also vote and elect public officials who would act in workers’ interests.

Today, unions criticize the racial profiling law SB 1070 in Arizona for the same reason — not just that it leads to discrimination, but that it’s wrong to make workers leave.

In 1999 the AFL-CIO reversed itself and called for repealing sanctions, for amnesty for the undocumented, for protecting the organizing rights of all workers, and for family reunification. The federation already had a longstanding position calling for ending guest worker programs.

Gradually, unions have seen the importance of workers with feet planted on both sides of the border. This is an important part of building a culture of solidarity. Some unions, like the UFW, have gone further and tried to develop strategic partnerships with progressive organizations in the immigrant workforce, such as the Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binacionales (FIOB). It has hired Oaxacan activists, fluent in indigenous languages, as organizers, and supported indigenous Oaxacan communities in protests against police harassment in cities like Greenfield in the Salinas Valley.

OAXACAN immigrants today are an important and growing section of many immigrant communities in the U.S., especially the rural areas where people work in farm labor. The FIOB is one of many organizations among Oaxacans that people have brought with them from their home state, or have organized as migrants on their travels. Many of its founders were strike organizers and social activists in Oaxaca and the fields of north Mexico. Years ago they saw the organizing possibilities among people dispersed as a result of displacement, but whose communities now exist in many places in both Mexico and the U.S.

For over half a century, migration has been the main fact of social life in hundreds of indigenous towns spread through the hills of Oaxaca. That’s made the conditions and rights of migrants central concerns. But the FIOB and its base communities today also talk about another right, the right to stay home. Asserting this right challenges not just inequality and exploitation facing migrants, but the very reasons people migrate.

According to the 2000 census, Hispanic American Indians (the category used to count indigenous Mexican migrants) in California alone numbered 154,000 — undoubtedly a severe undercount. These men and women come from communities whose economies are totally dependent on migration. The ability to send a son or daughter across the border to the north, to work and send back money, makes the difference between eating chicken or eating salt and tortillas. Migration means not having to manhandle a wooden plough behind an ox, cutting furrows in dry soil for a corn crop that can’t be sold for what it cost to plant it. It means that dollars arrive in the mail when kids need shoes to go to school, or when a grandparent needs a doctor.

“There are no jobs here, and NAFTA pushed the price of corn so low that it’s not economically possible to plant a crop anymore,” says Rufino Dominguez, former binational coordinator for the FIOB, and now head of Oaxaca’s Institute for Attention to Migrants. In the 1980s, Dominguez was a strike organizer in Sinaloa and Baja California. “We come to the U.S. to work because we can’t get a price for our product at home. There’s no alternative.”

Without large scale political change most local communities won’t have the resources for productive projects and economic development that could provide a decent living. “We need development that makes migration a choice rather than a necessity — the right to not migrate,” explains FIOB coordinator Gaspar Rivera Salgado, a professor at UCLA. “But the right to stay home, to not migrate, has to mean more than the right to be poor, the right to go hungry and homeless. Choosing whether to stay home or leave only has meaning if each choice can provide a meaningful future.”

At the same time, because of its indigenous membership, FIOB campaigns for the rights of migrants in the U.S. who come from those communities. It calls for immigration amnesty and legalization for undocumented migrants. It campaigned successfully for translation and language rights in U.S. courtrooms, and protested immigration sweeps and deportations. The FIOB also condemns the proposals for guest worker programs. “Migrants need the right to work, but these workers don’t have labor rights or benefits,” Dominguez charges. “It’s like slavery.”

Today there is increasing interest among U.S. farm worker unions in activity in Mexico, much of it concentrating on workers recruited into H-2A guest worker programs. In the past, farm worker unions opposed the programs on principle, arguing that the workers recruited were vulnerable to extreme employer exploitation, and deportation if they struck or protested. Today unions like the UFW and FLOC argue that they can organize these workers to win contracts, better conditions, and protection for their rights. But this comes at a price. Some no longer call for the elimination of guest worker programs, which exploit far more workers than those represented by unions. And if unions recruit guest workers themselves, how can they then strike or use jobsite actions against the employers hiring them?

While farm worker unions and organizations like the FIOB disagree about guest worker programs, they do agree about the rights of workers. “Both peoples’ rights as migrants, and their right to stay home, are part of the same solution,” Rivera Salgado says. “We have to change the debate from one in which immigration is presented as a problem to a debate over rights.”

For many years the FIOB was a crucial part of the political opposition to Oaxaca’s PRI government, until the PRI was defeated in the elections of 2010. Juan Romualdo Gutierrez Cortez, a schoolteacher in Tecomaxtlahuaca, was the FIOB’s Oaxaca coordinator and a leader of Oaxaca’s teachers union, Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union, and of the Popular Association of the People of Oaxaca (APPO).

The June 2006 strike by Section 22 started a months-long uprising, led by the APPO, which sought to remove the state’s then-governor Ulises Ruiz and make a basic change in development and economic policy. The uprising was crushed by Federal armed intervention, and dozens of activists were arrested. To Leoncio Vasquez, a FIOB activist in Fresno, “the lack of human rights is a factor contributing to migration from Oaxaca and Mexico, since it closes off our ability to call for any change.”

During the conflict, teachers traveled to California from Oaxaca, and spoke at the convention of the California Federation of Teachers. Solidarity efforts between U.S. and Mexican teachers have barely started, but with the vast number of Mexican students in California schools, and with many immigrants themselves now working as teachers, the basis is growing for much closer relationships. Mexican teachers, members of Latin America’s largest union, have also organized a leftwing caucus that now controls the union structure in several states, including Oaxaca.

During the 2006 uprising, the state government issued an order for Gutierrez’ arrest, because he’d been a very visible opposition leader already for years. In the late 1990s he was elected to the Oaxaca Chamber of Deputies, in an alliance between the FIOB and Mexico’s leftwing Democratic Revolutionary Party. Following his term in office, he was imprisoned by then-Governor Jose Murat, until a binational campaign won his release. His crime was insisting on a new path of economic development that would raise rural living standards, and make migration just an option, rather than an indispensable means of survival.

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado believes that “in Mexico we’re very close to getting power in our communities on a local and state level.” He points to Gutierrez’ election as state deputy, and later as mayor of his hometown San Miguel Tlacotepec, and finally to the election of Gabino Cue as governor. The FIOB’s alliance with the PRD is controversial, however. “First, we have to organize our own base,” Rivera Salgado cautions. “But then we have to find strategic allies. Migration is part of globalization, an aspect of state policies that expel people. Creating an alternative to that requires political power. There’s no way to avoid that.”

FIOB presents an important example of another kind of binational organizing and solidarity that complements efforts by unions. It has a strong base among communities on both sides of the borders. It has a carefully worked-out program for advocating the rights of migrants and their home communities, discussed extensively among its chapters before it was adopted. And it sees the system as the problem, not just the bad actions of employers or government officials.

In Conclusion

THE interests of workers in the U.S. and Mexico are tied together. Millions of people are a bridge between the two countries, and their labor movements. A blacklisted worker in Cananea one year can become a miner in Arizona the next, or a janitor organizer in Los Angeles. Who knows better the human cost of repression in Mexico than a teacher from Oaxaca in 2006, or an electrical worker who lost his or her job and pension in 2009?

Raquel Medina, a Oaxacan teacher, spoke at the 2007 convention of the California Federation of Teachers. She did more than appeal for support for Section 22. She helped teachers from Fresno and Santa Maria understand why they hear so many children in their classrooms speaking Mixteco. She helped them see that the poverty in her home state, the repression of her union, the growing number of Oaxacan families in California, and the activity of those migrants in California’s union battles, are all related. She connected the dots of solidarity. Educators should go back to their schools and union meetings, she said, and show people the way the global economy functions today – how it affects ordinary people, and what they can do to change it.

The historic slogan of the ILWU (and of many unionists beyond its ranks) is “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Today, an updated version of it might say, “An attack on a union in Mexico is an attack on unions in the U.S.” Or it could say, “An attack on Mexican workers in Arizona is an attack on workers in Mexico.” Or it could say, “Organizing Mexican workers at carwashes in Los Angeles will help unions in Mexico, by increasing the power of those willing to fight for the mineros and SME.”

David Bacon is a California writer and photojournalist. His latest book is Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.

The Institute for Transnational Social Change (ITSC) is a hub for cross-border collaboration among key worker-led organizations (independent unions, worker centers, NGOs, and academics) in Mexico and the United States. The institute seeks to address the needs of a low-wage workforce that is often hard-to-reach – migrant workers, women in the garment industry, farm workers, miners, and other workers in industries dominated by highly mobile transnational corporations — and to increase opportunities for cross-border collaboration. The present report is part of a series of publications sponsored by ITSC. For more information about the ITSC, contact Gaspar Rivera-Salgado at UCLA, grsalgado@irle.ucla.edu.

mecanismo que busca disminuir la rotación del personal, las faltas y promueve el compañerismo

2011-07-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

El Mexicano

14 Julio 2011

Capacita la IP a los trabajadores

Unos 5 mil empleados, principalmente de la industria manufacturera y el sector comercial y de servicios se capacitan al año con el taller desarrollo humano laboral centrado en la persona, un mecanismo que busca disminuir la rotación del personal, las faltas y promueve el compañerismo.

por Lucía GÓMEZ SÁNCHEZ / EL MEXICANO

jueves, 14 de julio de 2011

Se publicó en: Edición impresa

TIJUANA.- Unos 5 mil empleados, principalmente de la industria manufacturera y el sector comercial y de servicios se capacitan al año con el taller desarrollo humano laboral centrado en la persona, un mecanismo que busca disminuir la rotación del personal, las faltas y promueve el compañerismo.

Mónica García Brunn, delegada de la Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social en Tijuana, Tecate y Playas de Rosarito, explicó ayer lo anterior al entregar reconocimientos a la empresas que lo promovieron en su plantilla laboral durante el primer semestre del año.

Afirmó que la dinámica ayuda a las personas a desenvolverse como seres humanos mediante la automotivación, promueve el liderazgo y el trabajo en equipo gracias a dinámicas prácticas en las que participan trabajadores de las diferentes áreas de una compañía, desde las gerenciales hasta las de intendencia.

El requisito es que sea grupos de 25 personas, pero con perfiles laborales distintos para propiciar la convivencia y el intercambio de puntos de vista, insistió.

Reconoció la buena disposición de las compañías para que sus trabajadores reciban esta capacitación que es gratuita, pero requiere de doce horas del tiempo de jornada de cada empleado.

Durante los cursos surgen iniciativas del recurso humano, como la de crear mecanismos para mantenerse más informados en la comunidad laboral a través de periódicos murales o revistas de circulación interna, concluyó.

200 mdd para la industria aeroespacial en Tijuana

2011-07-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

Mexicano

14 Julio, 2011

Del 20 al 22 de julio se llevará a cabo en la ciudad el Segundo Foro de Proveedores del Clúster Aeroespacial 2011

Por Edgar JUÁREZ USCANGA / EL MEXICANO

jueves, 14 de julio de 2011

Se publicó en: Edición impresa

TIJUANA.- Del 20 al 22 de julio se llevará a cabo en la ciudad el Segundo Foro de Proveedores del Clúster Aeroespacial 2011, con la participación de más de 120 empresas del ramo, en donde se promoverá la realización de negocios con industrias bajacalifornianas, en el cual se pretende atraer inversiones del orden de los 200 millones de dólares.

En conferencia de prensa en el Consejo de Desarrollo Económico de Tijuana (CDT), el secretario de Desarrollo Económico del XX Ayuntamiento, Miguel Velasco Bustamante, informó que durante la realización de este evento internacional se tiene contemplado concretar más de 500 reuniones de negocios con compañías líderes en el ramo tales como Eaton, Aerospace, Zodiac, Tyco Electronics, Delphi, Parker, Honeywell, Goodrich, Gulfstream y GKN, entre otras.

Explicó que la intención de este Segundo Foro es que las empresas locales proveedoras del sector posicionen sus productos y servicios con las grandes industrias, ya que al evento asistirán 20 compañías compradoras y 100 proveedoras de insumos.

El encuentro de empresas de negocios se llevará a cabo en el hangar de Matrix y estará dirigido a gerentes del área de ventas, de ingeniería y de compras, así como a directores de operaciones.

Velasco Bustamante dijo que Baja California cuenta con 50 empresas aeroespaciales que representan el 35 por ciento del total que operan en México, mismas que se encuentran principalmente en Tijuana y Mexicali.

Destacó que de acuerdo a información obtenida a nivel nacional, en los últimos 10 años las exportaciones han crecido más de 15 veces, desde 270 millones de dólares en 2001 a 5 billones de dólares en 2010.

Por otro lado, el titular de la Sedeti mencionó que durante el foro expertos internacionales impartirán conferencias, se contará con un área de exhibición de productos, mesas redondas para informar sobre las oportunidades que ofrece Baja California y el día 22, se hará un recorrido por empresas ubicadas en Mexicali.

Por su parte, el presidente del Consejo de Desarrollo Económico de Tijuana (CDT), Miguel Padilla Ojeda, manifestó que a través de este encuentro se mostrará al mundo que Tijuana es una ciudad que brinda ventajas para invertir en el ramo aeroespacial, tales como la experiencia de más de 50 años en el manejo del concepto de la industria maquiladora y la existencia de mano de obra calificada. (eju).

The Murdered Women of Juarez

2011-06-12T23:11:00.000-07:00

Posted on: 20/01/2011 by Laura Carlsen

Americas Program

Marisela Escobedo’s life changed forever in August 2008 when her 16-year-old daughter Rubi failed to come home. What was left of Rubi’s body was found months later in a dump — 39 pieces of charred bone.

Rubi became one more macabre statistic in Ciudad Juarez’s nearly two-decade history of femicide. The murder of young women, often raped and tortured, brought international infamy to the city long before it became the epicenter of the Calderon drug war and took on the added title of murder capital of the world.

But Rubi never became a statistic for her mother. Marisela knew that a former boyfriend, Sergio Barraza, had murdered her daughter. As authorities showed no interest in investigating the case, she began a one-woman crusade across two states to bring the murderer to justice. The Mexican magazine Proceso recently obtained the file on her case. Marisela’s odyssey tracks a murderer, but it also tracks a system of sexism, corruption, and impunity.

It’s an odyssey that ends with Marisela–the mother–getting her brains blown out on December 16, 2010 as she continued to protest the lack of justice in her daughter’s murder two years earlier.

Trail of Impunity

Marisela Escobedo eventually tracked down Barraza. She had him arrested and brought to trial, and finally saw a chance for the hard-sought justice that could at least allow her to move on with her life.

But in Ciudad Juarez, the term “justice” is a bad joke, especially if you’re a woman. Despite the fact that Barraza confessed at the trial and led authorities to the body, three Chihuahua state judges released him. Marisela watched as the confessed assassin of her daughter left the courtroom absolved of all charges due to “lack of evidence.”

As pressure from women’s and human rights organizations mounted, a new trial was called and Barraza was condemned to 50 years in prison. But by that time, he was long gone and still has not been apprehended, despite Marisela’s success in discovering his whereabouts and providing key information to police and prosecutors.

The story doesn’t end there. Every day, Marisela fought for justice for her daughter and sought out the killer. She received multiple death threats. She responded saying, “If they’re going to kill me, they should do it right in front of the government building so they feel ashamed.”

And they did. Marisela took her demands for justice from the border to the state capital where a hit man approached her in broad daylight, chased her down, then shot her in the head.

A family’s story had come full circle. By all accounts, Rubi’s death came at the hands of an abusive boyfriend. Marisela’s death, however, was caused by an abusive system that sought to protect itself from her determination to expose its injustice. The gunman’s identity is unknown, but responsibility clearly lies with members of a state at best incapable of defending women and at worst culpable of complicity in killing them.

Gender Violence and Drug Violence

Ciudad Juarez in recent years has been described as a no-man’s Land, where legal institutions have lost control to the armed force of drug cartels. The femicides show us, though, that the causal chain is really the reverse.

Seventeen years ago, Ciudad Juarez began to register an alarming number of cases of women tortured, murdered, or disappeared. Over the decades, national and international feminist organizations pressed the government for justice. The government in turn formed commissions that changed directors and initials with each new governor. They all shared one distinct feature: never getting anywhere on solving the crimes of gender violence, much less preventing them. Recommendations to the Mexican government piled up alongside the bodies: missions from the United Nations and the Organization of American States provided over 200 recommendations on protecting women’s rights, with fifty for Ciudad Juarez alone.

Marisela’s murder marked a year since the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a ruling calling the Mexican government negligent in the murders of young women. The ruling on the “Cotton Field” case–named after the lot where the bodies of three women were found on Nov. 21, 2001– includes a list of measures and reparations, most of which have been rejected or ignored.

Since the cases analyzed in the Court ruling, the drug war in Ciudad Juarez waged by the Mexican government with the support of the U.S. Merida Initiative has led to a record number of 15,273 homicides in 2010 (with a total of 34,612 over the four years since Calderon launched the offensive). The strategy has focused on violently confronting drug cartels to interdict shipments and capture drug lords. It relies on the militarization of the city, which has brought more violence to the region than anyone imagined.

Ironically, President Felipe Calderon says the goals of the drug war are to increase public safety and strengthen legal institutions. But the history of gender crimes and government response reveals the fundamental flaws of the current counter-narcotics efforts and of a system that practically guarantees impunity through a combination of institutional corruption, sexism, racism, incompetence, and indifference.

Given that background of institutionalized injustice, the drug war in Juarez short-circuited from the start. The logical sequence of investigation, arrest, prosecution and punishment simply does not exist in the absence of a functioning justice system. By destabilizing the drug cartels’ cross-border business and setting off turf wars, the government unleashed a storm of drug-related violence that can’t be dealt with by police and legal institutions because those institutions are dysfunctional. In the absence of supporting institutions or a coherent strategy, the resulting explosion from this direct confrontation with drug cartels could have been predicted. If the tragedy of the pink crosses erected in the desert to mark the unsolved cases of murdered women showed us anything, it was that the fundamental problem in Juarez traces back to the government itself. Until impunity ends, the region will continue to attract crime–common, organized, or just plain perverse.

In this environment, the femicides in Juarez have not only never been solved, they’ve risen dramatically — to nearly 300 in 2010 — alongside overall homicide rates. The government’s drug war has stimulated more gender violence instead of less. It shelters those who commit murder and other barbarities against women by making murder a normal part of daily life. It promotes an armed society where people too poor to move have no choice but to bunker down against all sides. Not only does Juarez shelter murderers, torturers, and rapists of women, it attracts them.

Women’s vulnerability increases. For years, impunity gave free rein to women-killers who found women workers at the maquiladoras to be particularly easy targets for torture, acts of sadism, rape and murder and other acts possibly related to snuff films and international crime rings, all covered up by government officials. Lately women human rights defenders have become the targets. Shortly after Marisela’s assassination, Susana Chavez was found murdered with her hand cut off. Chavez was a feminist poet who coined the phrase “Not One More Death!” — which became the slogan of the Juarez women’s movement. Women activists feel as though open season has been declared on them.

Civil Society Responds

The only ray of light has come from the response of Mexican civil society. Following Marisela’s murder, a former head of one of the government commissions, Alicia Duarte, wrote in an open letter to President Calderon:

"Three years ago, when I quit my post as Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Related to Acts of Violence Against Women of the Attorney General’s Office, I noted clearly that I did it out of the shame I felt for belonging to the corrupt system of justice of our country. Today that shame comes back and burns in my skin and conscience, so I must join in the indignation of all women in this country who, when they found out about the assassination of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz and the attacks on her family of the recent days, demand justice…"

Women and men have demonstrated throughout the country to demand that Marisela’s and Rubi’s cases be solved, to call for an end to the impunity that protects murderers in hundreds of other cases, and to force the government to comply with recommendations to protect women and prevent more deaths. Their protests have united with a new nationwide citizens’ movement called “No More Blood” to reject the current drug-war strategy. A tipping point has finally been reached.

Marisela’s murder practically at the steps of the State Capitol symbolizes the relationship between gender violence in the private and the public spheres, between the lethal sexism of men who kill women and of governments who let them get away with it, between an out-of-control counter-narcotics war and the long-boiling situation of unpunished gender crimes.

No one in the Mexican government acknowledges these relationships. The same holds true for the U.S. government. The last State Department report gave Mexico a pass on human rights to authorize more Merida Initiative support for the drug war. The current indignation over Marisela’s murder and the new “No More Blood” campaign demonstrate that the Mexican public has had enough excuses for the violence it has been forced to live with.

Until both governments turn their sights to the hypocrisy of their legal systems and policies, the downward spiral of violence will only continue. To honor Marisela and all the others who have dared to defend human rights and justice in Mexico, it is time for civil society on both sides of the border to demand an end to bloodshed.

Laura Carlsen (lecarlsen@gmail.com) is a FPIF Columnist and director of the CIP Americas Program.

Mexico: A Labor Law Bosses Would Love

2011-04-21T18:18:00.000-07:00

April 14, 2011

By David Bacon

In These Times, web edition

http://www.inthesetimes.org/article/7209/a_labor_law_bosses_would_love

MEXICO CITY (4/14/11) - Changing labor law sounds like some technical modification, a subject lawyers argue about in musty hearing rooms. In Mexico it's been front-page news for weeks. Changing the country's labor law would transform the lives of millions of workers. It would cement the power of a group of industrialists who have been on the political offensive for decades, and who now control Mexico's presidency and national government.

"Labor law reform will only benefit the country's oligarchs," claims Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who many if not most Mexicans think actually won the last presidential election in 2006, as candidate of the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution. Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, head of the miner's union who was forced into exile in Canada in 2006, says Mexico's old governing party, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), which lost control of the presidency in 2000, "is trying to assure its return by making this gift to big business, putting an end to labor rights."

In part, the change is drastic because on paper, at least, the rights of Mexican workers are extensive, deriving from the Revolution that ended in 1920. At a time when workers in the U.S. still had no law that even recognized the legality of unions, Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution spelled them out. Workers have the right to jobs and permanent status once they're hired. If they're laid off, they have the right to severance pay. They have rights to housing, health care, and training. In a legal strike, they can string flags across the doors of a factory or workplace, and even the owner can't enter until the dispute is settled. Strikebreaking is prohibited.

The new law would change most of that.

Companies would be able to hire workers in a six-month probationary status, and then fire them at the end without penalty. Even firing workers with 20 or 30 years on the job would suddenly become much easier and cheaper for their employers, by limiting the penalty for unjust termination to one year's severance pay. "That's an open invitation to employers," according to Arturo Alcalde, Mexico's most respected labor lawyer and past president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers. "The bosses themselves say the PRI reform is the road to a 'paradise of firings.' It will make it much cheaper for companies to terminate workers."

The justification, of course, is that by reducing the number of workers at a worksite, while requiring those remaining to work harder, productivity increases and profits go up. Meanwhile for workers, though, a permanent job and stable income become a dream, while the fear of firing grows, hours get longer, and work gets faster, harder and more dangerous.

The labor law reform proposal deepens those changes. The 40-hour workweek was written into the Federal Labor Law, which codified the rights in Article 123. That limit would end. Even the current 7-peso/hour minimum wage ($5/day) would be undermined, as employers would gain the unilateral right to set wages. The independent review of safe working conditions would be heavily restricted.

Mexican workers aren't passive and work stoppages and protests are much more common than they are today in the U.S. Greater activity by more angry workers, therefore, wouldn't be hard to predict. So the labor law reform takes this into account as well.

Even in union workplaces with a collective agreement setting wages and conditions, an employer could force individual workers to sign individual agreements with fewer rights or lower wages. Companies could subcontract work with no limit, giving employers the ability to find low-cost contractors with no union to replace unionized, higher-wage employees. And it would become much more difficult to go on strike.

The proposed labor law reform is the fourth in a series of basic changes in Mexico's economic, legal and political framework over the last decade. A fiscal reform began the process of privatizing the country's pension system, much like the Social Security privatization plans propose for the U.S. Teachers charge that Mexican education reform is intended to remove their influence over the curriculum, which still espouses values that would seem very progressive in a U.S. classroom. In many cases, they say, it will remove them from their jobs also. Current Mexican President Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN) proposed an energy reform aimed at privatizing the national oil company, Pemex. Fierce opposition, however, was able to restrict it to some degree.

All the reforms have been part of a program of economic liberalization opening Mexico to private domestic, and especially foreign capital. Lopez Obrador calls the labor law reform "part of a series imposed on Mexico from outside over the last two decades, including the energy reform, fiscal reform and education reform." In fact, the World Bank pressured Mexico to adopt an earlier labor law reform after the PRI lost the presidency in 2000, and Calderon's predecessor, Coca-Cola executive Vicente Fox, won it. The two labor law reform proposals are not identical, but very similar. Both reflect the surging power of corporate employers in Mexico, and the way the PRI and PAN often trade places, pursuing the same political and economic agenda.

"At the same time," Lopez Obrador notes, "the fight against inequality and poverty is not on the national agenda." Mexican poverty is already a scandal for a country whose leaders insist its economic growth merits a seat in the "first world." Changing its labor law would make that poverty more permanent, however, as well as rendering unions more impotent in challenging it. Juan Manuel Sandoval, a leader of the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade, predicts, "We will become part of the first world - the back yard."

In 2010 Mexico had 53 million people living in poverty, according to the Monterrey Institute of Technology. Even the CIA says half the country's population lives in poverty, and almost 20% in extreme poverty. The government's unemployment figures are low - 5-6% -- but a huge number of working-age Mexicans are part of the informal economy, selling articles on the street or working in jobs where the employer doesn't pay into the official funds (the basis for counting employed workers.) Some estimate that there are more workers in the informal sector than in the formal one.

Even the formal jobs don't pay a wage capable of supporting a family, however. According to the Bank of Mexico, 95% of the 800,000 jobs created last year paid only $10 a day. Yet when a maquiladora worker buys a gallon of milk in a Tijuana or Juarez supermarket, she pays more than she would on the U.S. side. Prices are a little lower further south, but not much. The price of that gallon of milk used to be fixed and subsidized, along with tortillas, bus fare and other basic necessities. Previous waves of economic reforms decontrolled prices and ended consumer subsidies, as Mexico was pressured to create more favorable conditions for private investment.

And investors have done very well. In one of the recent diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks, the U.S. government admits "The net wealth of the 10 richest people in Mexico -- a country where more than 40 percent of the population lives in poverty -- represents roughly 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product." Carlos Slim became the world's richest man when a previous PRI President, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, privatized the national telephone company and sold it to him. Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who owns TV Azteca, is now worth $8 billion, and Emilio Azcárraga Jean, who owns Televisa, is worth $2.3 billion. Both helped current Mexican President Feiipe Calderon get elected in 2006.

German Larrea and his company Grupo Mexico got the concessions to operate some of the world's largest copper mines. Grupo Mexico was accused of industrial homicide by miners' union president Gomez Urrutia after 65 people (many of them contract workers) died in an explosion in February 2006. Since June 2007 the Grupo Mexico copper mine in Cananea has been on strike. Last year Larrea and the Mexican government cooperated in using armed force to open its gates and bring in strikebreakers.

In reality, much of the PRI's labor law reform is already the reality on the ground in Cananea, at other mines, or among maquiladora workers near the U.S. Mexico border. For years the rights of workers in northern Mexico, and even the rule of law itself, have been undermined by the growing power of corporations.

Enrique Davila, professor at San Diego City College, calls the system "nationalism in rhetoric, selling out the country in practice." Under successive PRI administrations a vast gulf widened between the political and economic elite, who managed the state's assets and controlled government policy in their own interest, and workers and farmers, especially those not in the formal sector. To protect this elite, the country's political system became increasingly repressive.

In the 1970s, to finance growth while the price of oil was high, Mexico opened up its financial system to foreign capital (mostly from the U.S.), and the country's foreign debt soared. Managers of state enterprises like the oil company ran private businesses on the side, along with politically connected union officials. Rackets and corruption proliferated while labor and campesino leaders who challenged the system were imprisoned or worse.

Maquiladora development undermined the legal rights of workers in the border area, and any laws viewed as discouraging investment. The government had a growing interest in keeping wages low as an attraction to foreign investment, instead of high enough that people could buy what they were making. The old official unions, including the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) controlled restive workers, rather than organizing them to win better conditions.

One of the most important methods of control is the protection contract. Cooperative unions sign agreements with factory owners, who pay it "dues" for workers who often have no idea that the union and contract even exist. They find out quickly, however, when they try to organize any independent effort to raise wages or improve conditions. The company and official union claim a contract already exists. If workers try to protest, they're forced into a process before "tripartite" labor boards dominated by business owners, politicians dependent on them, and the official unions.

The FAT and the National Union of Workers, to which it belongs, have made their own proposals for labor law reform. They've suggested making all contracts public to let workers know what union they belong to, and to shine a light on the corruption of the present system. They would reform the labor boards, making its process more usable to workers, and remove some of the government controls used to punish independent unions. The PRI proposal would not make protection contracts public or limit them, nor would it change the labor boards or enhance union rights.

Instead, it takes direct aim at those independent unions, some of which have been organized in fierce fights against shutdowns and privatization, like the recent one at the government-owned Mexicana Airline. New private businesses in aviation and other industries don't want to see these unions spread by organizing their workers. A new private carrier, Volaris, for instance, recently started service to the U.S. Now that the government has forced Mexicana into bankruptcy and laid off its workers, Volaris hopes to take over the old airline's routes, and perhaps even its assets. What it doesn't want is the Mexicana union.

The new labor law reform would restrict unions to the one company or enterprise where they start. Industrial, or even craft, unions, representing workers at many employers, would become impossible to organize. The new private businesses in Mexico would face no challenge by a union seeking to set a base wage for a particular industry, for instance. Unions would have much greater difficulty in organizing solidarity among workers, in any effort like the ones that led to the large industrial unions in either the U.S. or Mexico.

Progressive unions in Mexico today are fighting for their survival. The state institutions that enforce Mexican labor law are already heavily stacked against them. PRI's reforms would make turn the struggle for survival into a desperate war.

The miners union has been forced out of many mines by government-sponsored company unions. Its leader is still in exile in Canada. President Calderon declared Mexico's oldest and most progressive major union, the Mexican Electrical Workers (SME) "non-existent" in October of 2009. He dissolved the state-owned Power and Light Company for central Mexico, and fired all of the SME's 44,000 members who worked there. Most Mexicans believe that is a prelude to privatizing the electrical industry. Already, despite the Constitutional prohibition, almost half of the electricity generated in the country comes from private producers. Nevertheless, the union has been able to win back its legal recognition, and is fighting for the rights and jobs of the 16,000 members who have refused to accept their termination.

Meanwhile, unions in the U.S. and other countries have tried to find ways of supporting Mexican unions. In February five international union bodies, the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), UNI Global Union, and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), cooperated in organizing actions in 40 countries. Over 50,000 workers, students and human rights activists demonstrated at Mexican consulates or otherwise showed their public opposition to the reform. Twenty-seven actions took place in Mexico itself.

In April unions, community organizations, and even churches and farmers filled Mexico City's main avenue, the Reforma, in a huge march to the central plaza, the Zocalo. Agustin Rodriguez, general secretary of the union for workers at the national university, STUNAM, warned them, "It is clear that they are trying to modify and reform the Federal Labor Law to turn workers into slaves. That will not happen." In the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, legislators from the PRD announced they would begin holding "days of information" in neighborhoods, helping ordinary people understand the changes that await them.

As the presidential election of July 2012 draws closer, politicians increasingly try to calculate the way the reform might influence it. For the PAN, having the PRI introduce the proposal helps cement a political alliance against the left, and makes the PRI complicit in the government's anti-labor crusade. This causes problems in the PRI, however. Even some official union leaders, affiliated with the PRI, seek to defend themselves against accusations from their base that they're betraying their union and history. A few have even called the bill an "aggressive attack on workers," while others advocate more meetings to discuss the proposal, echoing the call by the PRD.

Carlos Navarrete, PRD coordinator in the Senate, ridiculed the secrecy in which the PRI proposal was introduced. "The country needs good-paying jobs, with secure benefits and a level of technology that makes them competitive," he argued, "not stealth initiatives made with no public debate." The longer the debate goes on, however, the closer the elections approach. Some PRI candidates, at least, would rather not have to defend an unpopular reform, fresh in the memory of voters. They'd like to see a vote as soon as possible. "The PRI and PAN deputies will try to pass it during holy week, when people are on vacation," predicts Lopez Obrador.

On the defensive or not, though, the independent unions and left wing activists are far from beaten. They've defeated previous efforts, and popular support is on their side. If they can mobilize it effectively, they can still defeat the present proposal and hold the government at bay. July of 2012 is not that far away.

________________________________________

For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org

See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)

Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008

http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575

See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html

__________________________________

David Bacon, Photographs and Stories

http://dbacon.igc.org

Happy May Day! If you have an 8-hour work day – Celebrate!

2011-03-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

May 1, 2011

OB Rag

Ken Secor / Activist San Diego

May 1st is observed as International Labor Day by most of the countries of the world. The reason most people believe that May Day is a communist holiday is because corporate America doesn’t want you to even wonder why that day was chosen. It’s because 4 union members were hung in Chicago in 1886 for fighting for the 8-hour day that you take for granted today. If you read this you will know something that probably less that one American in 400 has ever heard about.

On May 1, 1886, there were massive strikes all over America. Months before, The Knights of Labor, the largest union of that day, had said that if their members didn’t get the 8-hour day 6-day week by that date they would call for a nation-wide strike. 20,000 workers actually had it so it was not an impossible dream.

On that day in Chicago 190,000 people demonstrated for the 8-hour day. There were 340,000 people demonstrating nation-wide.

The newspapers were screaming that all unions were communist conspiracies and that the whole idea of an 8-hour day was a foreign conspiracy and an attack on the sanctity of the home. They wrote that it would lead to the degeneration of family life, debauchery, lower wages, increased poverty and social degradation for the American worker. The workers were unimpressed by such warnings.

The press was constantly recommending unlawful violence against any and all strikers. Their solution was to deport the “foreign scum” and take care of the homegrown types with the liberal use of the noose and gattling guns. While newspapers were always calling for “Law and Order” they were often the first to call for citizens to break the law by encouraging them to take the law into their own hands.

An editorial in the Chicago Tribune Nov. 23 1875 said.

“…There is no people so prone as the American to take the law into their own hands. Judge Lynch is an American by birth and character. … Every lamp-post in Chicago will be decorated with a communistic carcass if necessary to prevent wholesale incendiarism or prevent any attempt at it”.

The New York Tribune said in 1885:

“These brutal creatures can understand no other reasoning than that of force and enough of it so to be remembered among them for future generations.”

The Chicago Times, during a strike on the Great Lakes, declared:

“Hand grenades should be thrown among these union sailors . . . as by such treatment they would be taught a valuable lesson, and other strikers would take warning from their fate.”

The columns of these three papers always referred to communists as a German communist. Strikes or demonstrations were always “mobs of foreign scum, beer smelling Germans, ignorant Bohemians, uncouth Poles and wild eyed Russians.”

As the May 1st deadline approached the Chicago newspapers were screaming for a communist carcass for every lamppost. They concentrated their fire on Albert Parsons and August Spies, two of the most prominent people in the Chicago area responsible for workers demanding the 8-hour day.

Even in normal times the Chicago industrialists had a reputation for savagery. According to Henry David, in his authoritative work titled The Haymarket Affair,

“The Chicago police department had long been used as if it were a private force in the service of the employers. It routinely broke up all meetings of workers, clubbing them right and left, jailing labor leaders indiscriminately and using their revolvers after smashing in the doors of union meetings.”

Most officials of the force as well as patrolmen were actually drawing pay from the corporations as well as from the city. They believed that every striker was a foreign born communist plotting the overthrow of the established order . . .. During the two months before May 1, the employers, who actually controlled the local government, made their plans. They mobilized the National Guard, deputized special police and increased the number of people in the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The Pinkerton Agency was notorious for its use of illegal force in breaking strikes. It had killed dozens of workers during previous strikes but had never been convicted.

On May 1st, as a parade started, on side streets and rooftops police, Pinkerton’s militia and special police were stationed with rifles and other instruments of war. There were 1350 members of the National Guard armed with Gatling guns, ready to march on a moment’s notice. A committee of prominent citizens was assembled; all were prepared to save Chicago from the communistic 8-hour day. The parade ended without any mishaps. While the police would have liked to become involved they couldn’t find an excuse to interfere.

The strike spread the following Monday and several thousand Chicago workers, as well as many others across the country, were granted the 8-hour day. The citizens committee demanded that something be done.

The police relieved a little of their frustration by clubbing some of the locked out workers from the McCormick Harvester works as they escorted in 300 scabs. At the end of the shift there was a great crowd of the locked out workers at the plant gates waiting for the scabs to come out. Suddenly, and without warning, the police charged the crowd with drawn pistols. As the crowd fled, the police opened fire. Six were killed outright and many others were wounded. The fact that every one of them was shot in the back as they ran away rules out any argument that the police were under attack. Later that day a decision was made to hold a meeting the following night at Haymarket Square to protest the police brutality.

The weather was cold and the crowd was too small for Haymarket Square. August Spies had pushed a wagon onto a corner of the cobblestone street a half block away to use as a speaker’s platform. Nearby was the Desplaines police station, under the command of Captain John “Clubber” Bonfield. Unknown to Spies there were 180 armed police there, ready to march on the meeting if the occasion arose. Also unknown to him was the fact that the Mayor, Carter Harrison, was in the crowd.

Spies was speaking when he saw Parsons arrive. When the crowd saw him they applauded. Parsons climbed up on the improvised podium and said “I’m not here for the purpose of inciting anybody but to speak out and tell the facts as they exist.” The Mayor slipped out of the crowd and went to the police station. He told Captain Bonfield that the meeting was peaceful and that he could send the police back to their regular duty.

Parsons finished speaking at ten o’clock. It was starting to sprinkle and many of the people left. Parsons, along with his wife, two children, and some others, went to a friendly tavern on a nearby corner known as Zepf’s. There they were laughing and discussing the strike while Fielden plowed on before a dwindling crowd.

Suddenly there were cries of urgent warning. “Look! The police!” Down the street, in regular formation, with their clubs drawn, came the 180 policemen, led by Captain Bonfield and Captain Ward. The crowd began to run as Captain Ward stopped before the wagon and addressing the astonished Fielden said: “In the name of the people of the state of Illinois, I command this meeting immediately and peaceably to disperse.” Fielden gasped, “But Captain we are peaceable.”

There was a moment of silence. Then there was a flash of red and a terrific explosion. A bomb had gone off amongst the police. There was terrible confusion in the darkness. The police were firing wildly in every direction, people were running, many were wounded and later died. Others were being trampled upon. The police were clubbing right and left. One policeman had been killed and seven others were wounded.

The next day the newspapers of the nation called for vengeance. They blamed the strikers for throwing the bomb though to this day no one knows who threw it. There has been speculation that it was actually a police bomb that they intended to throw that accidentally went off.

The national press was unanimous in declaring that it made no difference whether Parsons, Spies, or Fielden had actually thrown the bomb. They should be hanged for their political views and for their words and general activities and if more troublemakers were given to the hangman so much the better.

Typical of the type of imagination that was displayed by some of the newspapers was that of the New York Tribune which reported: ” . . . The mob appeared crazed with a frantic desire for blood and holding it’s ground, poured volley after volley into the midst of the officers.” With that type of misinformation being fed to the public it’s little wonder that most people turned against the workers.

The Chicago Tribune said

“Public justice demands that the European assassins August Spies, Michael Schwab and Samuel Fielden shall be held, tried and hanged for murder . . . . Public justice demands that A.R. Parsons, who is said to have disgraced this country by being born in it, shall be seized, tried and hanged for murder.”

R.H Baugh, writing in the Spectator said that:

“Even though a conviction is certain, even if the unthinkable should happen and the accused men were acquitted, that fact would not save their lives. They would be hanged by a mob. “A Vigilance Committee will take the law into their own hands, and restore social order, by suspending civilization for three days.”

Within a few days Parsons along with Spies, Fielden, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolf Fischer, Louis Lingg, and Oscar Neebe were indicted for the murder of Mathias Deagan, the patrolman who was killed by the bomb. It was obvious that none of those indicted actually threw the bomb because only Spies and Fielden were at the scene when the bomb went off, and Fielden was talking to Captain Ward when the bomb went off. The prosecution never contended that any of the defendants had plotted with others to throw the bomb. The prosecutor claimed that it was because of what they had said and written that caused some unnamed person to throw the bomb.

The reign of terror soon spread to other cities. Labor was its main target. The entire executive board of the Knights of Labor was arrested in Milwaukee and charged with rioting and conspiracy. In New York, the entire executive board of District 75 was arrested and charged with conspiracy while directing the strike against the Third Avenue Elevated. Four union officers in Pittsburgh were arrested and charged with conspiracy.

Parsons went into hiding in another state but voluntarily returned to stand trial with his friends, even though he told friends that he was sure he would be hanged.

Parsons knew what Governor John P. Altgeld of Illinois, seven years later formally found to be a fact. That a stacked jury would try them, and perjured testimony would be used before a judge who was bent on seeing them hang.

The trial began on June 21st before Judge Joseph E. Gary. It was before a packed jury comprised mostly of business people and their clerks. According to the later findings of Governor Altgeld,

“Much of the evidence given in the trial was pure fabrication. When the trial judge in this case ruled that the relative of one of the men killed was a competent juror, and this after the man had candidly stated that he was deeply prejudiced . . . and when in a score of instances he ruled that men who candidly declared that they believed the defendants guilty Š when in all these instances the trial judge ruled that these men were competent jurors . . . then the proceedings lost all semblance of a fair trial.” He went on further to say that testimony was gained from “terrorized, ignorant men” whom the police had threatened “with torture if they refused to swear to anything desired . . . “

These witnesses, some of them bribed and all of them terrified, swore that the defendants were part of a plot to overthrow the government by force and violence and that the Haymarket bomb and Degan’s death was just the first blow in what was to be a general assault on all established order. The problem was that under cross-examination it became clear that their testimony was filled with obvious errors and contradictions. Therefore the prosecutor had to shift gears and abandon that approach in the middle of the case.

All of the national press was represented. The public received thousands of words concerning the proceedings. Armed guards surrounded the courthouse, a theatrical move that was explained to the public by saying it was expected that at any moment the anarchist army would attempt a rescue.

The verdict was a forgone conclusion from the beginning. All were found guilty.

All were condemned to be hung except Neebe who was given fifteen years. He addressed the court and asked that he also be condemned to death, as he was no more innocent than the rest. At that point most people thought it was all over except the hanging.

While their case was being fruitlessly appealed to the Illinois and U.S. Supreme Court, Parson’s wife, Lucy, with their two children in tow, set out on a one-woman crusade. She started a grassroots protest movement that grew to millions worldwide.

The U.S. Supreme court refused to hear the case. If they had heard it they were almost certain to have set the verdict aside.

All around the world there were protest demonstrations against the convictions. In France the Chamber of Deputies asked the governor to set the verdict aside. There were very large mass protest meetings in Italy, France, Russia, Spain, Holland and England where George Bernard Shaw and William Morris worked to save the condemned men’s lives.

The day before the executions were to take place, Governor Oglesby commuted the sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life imprisonment. On the same day, Lingg who was only 22 and couldn’t speak English, was described as not having a friend in the world outside of his native Germany. He either committed suicide or was murdered in his cell.

On the day of the execution, Mrs. Parsons and her two children were franticly trying to get access to the jail to see their husband and father for a last time. She was arrested and along with her children was thrown into a cell.

The four men were led to the gallows. They stood tall and proud. Most reporters said they seemed to stand taller than usual.

As a mask was pulled down over the face of August Spies he said, “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” Fischer said, “This is the happiest day of my life.” Parsons asked if he would be allowed to speak. He said, “Let the voice of the people be heard!” Before he could continue the trap was sprung.

America’s leading man of letters, William Dean Howells, wrote, “I have never believed them guilty of murder, or of anything but their opinions, and I do not think they were justly convicted. This case constitutes the greatest wrong that ever threatened our fame as a nation.”

One prominent Chicago businessman said of the executions:

“No I don’t consider these people to be guilty of any offense but they must be hanged. I am not afraid of anarchy; oh no, it’s the Utopian scheme of a few philanthropic cranks who are amiable withal, but I do consider that the labor movement must be crushed! The Knights of Labor will never dare to create discontent if these men are hanged!”

William Dean Howells wrote,

“The historical perspective is that this free Republic has killed four men for their opinions. All is over now except the judgment that begins at once for every unjust and evil deed, that goes on forever.”

Seven years after the four men were hanged John P. Altgeld was elected governor of Illinois. He had been petitioned by labor and many liberals to release the men held in prison. He went over the record. He said that the four men had been legally lynched and that the three survivors were being imprisoned not for their actions but for their beliefs. Even though he knew that it would be the end of his political career, he pardoned them. It caused a firestorm in the press. His decision was condemned as the ravings of a mad man by the press of his day. He fought on against child labor, anti-union injunctions, and the rights of immigrants and workers. The abuse of the press continued for the rest of his life but historians today say that his decision was a state paper of the first rank.

In 1889 labor leaders from many countries met in Paris. They voted to continue the action for shorter hours for all workers of the world and that May 1st would be designated as International Workers Day. On that day in 1890 workers all over Europe showed their solidarity with the workers of America by taking part in parades, meetings and demonstrations in support of their struggle for the 8-hour workday. That was the first May Day celebration.

If I were to make a guess at who threw the bomb I’d say it was either the police themselves or someone from a newspaper called The Mail. They had set the stage when they wrote in an editorial,

“There are two dangerous ruffians at large in this city; two skulking cowards who are trying to create trouble. One of them is named Parsons; the other is named Spies… Mark them for today. Keep them in view. Hold them personally responsible for any trouble that occurs. Make an example of them if trouble does occur.”

The use of the frame-up was very widely used in those days. It could have very well been the case here. It set our fight for the 8-hour day back by many years. Most of those who had won the 8-hour day as a result of this action later had it taken away.

The U.S. uses a different Labor Day because it doesn’t want people to be reminded of what occurred in this case. It was a successful move because practically no Americans know why International Labor Day is held on May first. That is just one very tiny bit of our ugly labor history that is very deliberately hidden from the American public.

Ken Secor is a member of Activist San Diego and the International Association of Machinists (Retired).

http://www.activistsandiego.org/wwwboard/viewtopic.php?t=18954

Empleo, desempleo, situación del campo, los trabajadores, la explotación laboral, Canasta alimenticia recomendable y deuda 2006-2010.

2011-03-09T17:14:00.000-08:00

14 Octubre 2010

Enlace Zapatista

Centro de Análisis Multidisciplinario (CAM)

Adherente a La Otra Campaña

El 4 de mayo de 2010, en la Clausura de la XXVIII Asamblea General Ordinaria del Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, Felipe Calderón anunció lo que calificó como “el mayor crecimiento en la generación de empleo en México en los últimos 17 años” al dar a conocer que “en el mes de abril se crearon 92 mil 405 nuevos empleos y para el primer cuatrimestre del año ya suman 382 mil plazas de trabajo registradas en el Seguro Social”. Estos datos fueron repetidos incansablemente en la mayoría de los medios de comunicación masivos.

Sin embargo, esto que fue presentado como el mayor logro del gobierno federal en materia de empleo, no es otra cosa que la igualación de estos niveles con los que se tenían en marzo de hace 2 años, algunos meses antes de que, de octubre de 2008 a mayo de 2009, los trabajadores y trabajadoras que cotizaban en el IMSS se redujeran en 701 mil 317 empleos, retrocediendo a niveles comparables con los de mediados de 2006, incluso antes de que Felipe Calderón asumiera la presidencia. De las cifras contabilizadas a julio de 2010 en el IMSS, de las que tanto alardea el presidente del (des)empleo, aún quedan 35 mil 484 empleos por debajo de los que existían en el mismo Instituto en octubre de 2008...

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Suma México déficit de 7 millones de empleos en 15 años: Coparmex

2011-02-28T18:17:00.001-08:00

28 feb 2011

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Gobierno ha sido incapaz de crear 800 mil puestos al año. En 2011 se crearán sólo 600 mil, afirmó.

Notimex

Publicado: 28/02/2011 14:36

México, DF. Desde hace 15 años México tiene un déficit de casi siete millones de plazas laborales, por lo que es necesario revertir el estancamiento de la productividad y multiplicar las inversiones para entrar a una nueva fase de dinamismo, expuso la Confederación Patronal de la República Mexicana (Coparmex).

Tras asegurar que cada año se deberían generar al menos 800 mil empleos, el presidente del organismo, Gerardo Gutiérrez Candiani, refirió que aunque en 2010 se recuperaron las fuentes de trabajo perdidas en 2009, desde 1995 sólo se han generado poco más de cinco millones de puestos laborales.

“De esta forma, podríamos terminar el año con más de 600 mil nuevos empleos y obtener una cifra superior en 2012”, sostuvo en su mensaje semanal.

Dijo que pese a que la estabilidad de precios ha sido clave para contener la merma del poder adquisitivo de la población, los efectos de la recesión en 2009 fueron considerables y actualmente más de 50 por ciento de los mexicanos vive algún grado de pobreza.

“Es preciso revertir el estancamiento de nuestra competitividad y multiplicar las inversiones, los empleos de calidad y las oportunidades, para que entremos a una nueva fase de dinamismo económico, debemos revertir la baja generación de ahorro e inversión y la lentitud del avance de la productividad y el cambio tecnológico”, acotó.

Gutiérrez Candiani expresó además que es crucial abatir la inseguridad pública, el crimen organizado y la corrupción e impunidad.

Opinó que si se aprobaran reformas de fondo en materias fiscal, laboral y energética, sería posible que la inversión como proporción del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) llegara a 26 por ciento, lo que permitiría -agregó- asegurar un crecimiento sostenido de cuando menos 6.0 por ciento anual con un mínimo de 800 mil nuevos empleos al año.

Trabajadores/as de TRW hacen Conferencia de Prensa

2011-02-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

4 feb 2011

Boletín de Prensa

Circulación Inmediata

***

LA COALICIÓN DE TRABAJADORES DE TRW CONMEMORA EL ANIVERSARIO DE LA CONSTITUCION MEXICANA, EXIGIENDO UNA NUEVA VISION DE COMERCIO Y DESARROLLO

***

LA ADMINISTRACION ENTRANTE DEBE RESPETAR LA CONSTITUCION PROMOVIENDO EMPLEOS DIGNOS, NO SOLAMENTE MANO DE OBRA BARATA, Y GARANTIZAR QUE LAS TRASNACIONALES SEAN RESPONSABLES

***

CONFERENCIA DE PRENSA

Este próximo VIERNES 4 de FEBRERO a las 12: OO p.m.

En la Plaza Publica frente a la Presidencia Municipal.

En esta fecha histórica en que México promulgó su constitución el 5 de Febrero de 1917, contemplando la jornada de 8 horas, la libertad de asociación y un salario digno, hacemos un llamado a reivindicar nuestras raíces históricas y recuperar la dignidad de los mexicanos, promoviendo un comercio justo en lugar de un libre mercado, que por 17 años ha explotado la mano de obra barata en el marco del TLCAN, concentrando la riqueza en unos cuantos, incrementado la pobreza y migración y detonando la violencia e inestabilidad social, llevando a los pueblos a una crisis económica a nivel mundial.

TENEMOS PLENA CONFIANZA:

En el Tribunal Colegiado y los Magistrados que revisan nuestro “Amparo”,

Confiamos en que dictaran una sentencia apegada a derecho, y que finalmente imperara la justicia para tantas familias sacrificadas por TRW.

Confiamos en que resolverán la reinstalación de 600 trabajadores con más de 15 años de antigüedad, que TRW sacrificó en aras de la crisis económica, violentando nuestros derechos laborales, humanos y constitucionales despidiéndonos injustificadamente y boletinandonos en las listas negras por defender nuestros derechos.

Tenemos Plena Certeza que nuestros derechos colectivos se respetaran en el juicio de amparo, donde impugnamos legalmente el laudo emitido por la junta de conciliación y arbitraje. POR UNA SENTENCIA CON JUSTICIA Y CONFORME A DERECHO

***

ADEMAS EXIGIMOS QUE EL GOBIERNO FIJE UNA FIANZA A LAS TRASNACIONALES, COMO GARANTIA DE QUE NO DESAPARECERAN SIN INDEMNIZAR A LOS EMPLEADOS, NI VIOLENTARAN SUS DERECHOS, COMO EN EL CASO DE TRW.

***

La crisis económica a nivel mundial se vislumbra como una oportunidad para la inversión extranjera y el desarrollo económico en Reynosa por su ubicación estratégica con el mercado de E.U. Nosotros los integrantes de la Coalición de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de TRW, consideramos que la administración entrante debe pugnar no solo por una infraestructura con buenos puentes y caminos, sino también por empleos y salarios dignos; en lugar de mano de obra barata, empleos inseguros, con bajos salarios y sin beneficios.

Además, creemos que la Secretaría De desarrollo económico deberá de fijar una fianza a las trasnacionales para que estas no actúen impunemente como TRW y no desaparezcan sin indemnizar a los trabajadores o violenten sus derechos fácilmente

***

NO MÁS LIBRE MERCADO, POBREZA Y EXPLOTACION!!

NO MÁS IMPUNIDAD DE TRASNACIONALES COMO TRW!!

NO MÁS CORRUPCION DE SINDICATOS Y AUTORIDADES LABORALES (JCA)!!

NO A LAS LISTAS NEGRAS DE TRABAJADOR@S!!

***

SI AL COMERCIO JUSTO Y EMPLEOS DIGNOS!!

PARA NUESTROS HIJOS, NUESTRAS MUJERES, NUESTRA COMUNIDAD y PARA REYNOSA!!

***

CONTACTO:

Jovita Mendo Valazquez: 899- 111-26 -74.

Olga Martinez Gonzalez: 899-246-68-158.

Antonio Vazquez Zamora : 899-187-93.52

Ernesto Lizcano Ortiz: 899-106-01-34

TRW Workers Press Conference

2011-02-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

Feb 4, 2011

CJM Press Release on behalf of TRW Workers in Reynosa.

Contact: Amelia Simpson- CJM President: Cell: 619.952.5568

Press Release

For Immediate circulation

Challenging the winter storm blast, the TRW Workers’ Coalition in Reynosa

is commemorating the anniversary of the Mexican Constitution by demanding a new vision for trade and development.

The incoming local government should respect the Mexican Constitution by promoting jobs with dignity, not cheap labor and disposable workers, and must guarantee that multinationals will be socially responsible.

Press Conference by TRW Workers’ Coalition

When: Friday February 4th, 2011, at 12:00 (noon)

Where: In the main plaza in front of the City Hall in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

To celebrate the anniversary of the Mexican Constitution, which was promulgated on February 5, 1917, and which recognizes the 8-hour workday, freedom of association, the right to a job and a living wage, we are calling for the vindication of our rights and our history and reclaiming our dignity as Mexicans by promoting FAIR TRADE instead of FREE TRADE. NAFTA has been exploiting people for the past 17 years, concentrating wealth in the hands of a few, increasing poverty and migration, detonating violence and social instability AND leading the world to a global crisis.

We have full confidence:

In the Appellate Court and in the judges reviewing our legal appeal of the Labor Board (CAB) resolution that absolved the TRW corporation three months ago.

We trust that the Court will resolve our case in accordance with the law, and that justice will finally prevail for so many families that were sacrificed by TRW.

We trust that the Tribunal will resolve the dispute by reinstating 600 workers, many with more than 15 years seniority, who were unjustly fired and blacklisted by TRW, thereby violating our labor, human and constitutional rights.

We know that the Tribunal recognizes that our collective rights must be respected, and therefore will rule in favor of the workers and defeat the resolution of the CAB that absolved TRW.

We are looking forward to a positive resolution by the Appellate Court in accordance with labor law and the Mexican Constitution.

In addition, we demand that the Mexican government require that corporations investing in Mexico allocate funding to guarantee that workers’ rights are respected in cases where a company leaves or violates workers' rights.

The global economic crisis is an opening for foreign investment and development in Reynosa because of Reynosa's strategic location near the US market. We, the TRW Workers’ Coalition, strongly believe that the Mexican government should promote not just infrastructure to improve roads and bridges for transporting goods, but also should promote jobs with dignity and living wages, instead of unsafe jobs, cheap labor, poverty wages, and inadequate benefits.

We urge Mexican development agencies to require multinational corporations operating in Mexico to deposit funds to guarantee that workers’ rights are respected.

NO MORE FREE TRADE, POVERTY, AND EXPLOTATION!!

NO MORE IMPUNITY BY MULTINATIONALS LIKE TRW!!

NO MORE CORRUPTION OF LABOR AUTHORITIES (CAB) AND FRIENDLY COMPANY UNIONS!!

NO MORE BLACKLISTS!!

YES TO FAIR TRADE AND JOBS WITH JUSTICE!!

FOR OUR CHILDREN, FOR WOMEN AND MEN WORKERS, FOR OUR COMMUNITY AND FOR REYNOSA!!

TRW Workers’ Coalition –Reynosa, México

CONTACTS:

Jovita Mendo Valazquez: 899- 111-26 -74.

Olga Martinez Gonzalez: 899-246-68-158.

Antonio Vazquez Zamora: 899-187-93.52

Ernesto Lizcano Ortiz: 899-106-01-34

Las asesinadas de Ciudad Juárez

2011-02-05T09:41:00.000-08:00

25 enero 2011

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English version

Laura Carlsen

Americas Program

La vida de Marisela Escobedo cambió para siempre en agosto de 2008 cuando su hija de dieciséis años, Rubí, no volvió más a casa. Meses después fue en un basurero donde se encontró lo que quedaba del cuerpo de Rubí: 39 trozos de huesos calcinados.

Rubí pasó a ser una macabra estadística más en Ciudad Juárez, el lugar con casi dos décadas de feminicidios. El asesinato de mujeres jóvenes, a menudo violadas y torturadas, llevó la infamia internacional a la ciudad mucho antes de que se convirtiera en el epicentro de la guerra contra la droga de Calderón y asumiera también el título de capital mundial del crimen.

Empero, para su madre, Rubí jamás podía convertirse en una estadística. Marisela sabía que un antiguo novio, Sergio Barraza, había asesinado a su hija. Como las autoridades no mostraban interés alguno por investigar el caso, empezó una cruzada de mujer sola por dos estados para llevar al asesino ante la justicia. La revista mexicana Proceso obtuvo recientemente los archivos de su caso. La odisea de Marisela le hizo ir siguiendo el rastro de un asesinato pero también el rastro del sexismo, de la corrupción y de la impunidad.

Es una odisea que termina el 16 de diciembre de 2010 cuando a Marisela -la madre- le volaron la cabeza en castigo a su continuada protesta por la ausencia de justicia para el asesinato de su hija de dos años antes.

Huellas de impunidad

Finalmente, Marisela Escobedo consiguió localizar a Barraza. Hizo que le arrestaran y le sometieran a juicio y vio por fin una posibilidad de que la justicia, que tan penosamente había tenido que buscar, le permitiera seguir adelante con su vida.

Pero en Ciudad Juárez, el término “justicia” es una broma de mal gusto, especialmente si eres mujer. A pesar del hecho de que Barraza confesó en el juicio y llevó a las autoridades ante el cadáver, tres jueces del estado de Chihuahua le liberaron. Marisela tuvo que ver como el asesino confeso de su hija salía del tribunal absuelto de todas las acusaciones por “falta de pruebas”.

Como consecuencia del incremento de las presiones por parte de las organizaciones de mujeres y de los derechos humanos, se abrió un nuevo juicio y Barraza fue condenado a 50 años de cárcel. Pero en ese momento hacía ya tiempo que había desaparecido sin que todavía haya podido detenérsele, a pesar del éxito de Marisela descubriendo su paradero y proporcionando información clave a policía y fiscales.

La historia no terminó ahí. Cada día, Marisela se levantaba para luchar por la justicia para su hija y buscar al asesino. Recibió múltiples amenazas de muerte. Respondía diciendo: “Si van a matarme, deberían hacerlo frente al edificio del gobierno a ver si así sienten todos algo de vergüenza”.

Y así ocurrió, dicho y hecho. Marisela llevaba sus demandas a la justicia desde la frontera de la capital del estado cuando un sicario se le acercó a plena luz del día, persiguiéndola y disparándole un tiro en la cabeza.

La historia de una familia había cerrado su círculo. Según todos los relatos, la muerte de Rubí se produjo a manos de un novio maltratador. Sin embargo, la muerte de Marisela vino facilitada por un sistema abusivo que trató de protegerse ante su determinación para denunciar su injusticia. No se conoce la identidad del sicario, pero la responsabilidad recae claramente en los miembros de un estado que, en el mejor de los casos, son incapaces de defender a las mujeres y, en el peor, culpables de complicidad en los asesinatos.

Violencia de género y violencia de la droga

A Ciudad Juárez se la ha descrito recientemente como Tierra de Nadie, donde las instituciones legales han perdido el control ante la potencia armada de los cárteles de la droga. Sin embargo, los feminicidios nos muestran que la cadena causal es realmente la inversa.

Hace diecisiete años, Ciudad Juárez empezó a registrar un número alarmante de casos de mujeres torturadas, asesinadas o desaparecidas. Durante décadas, las organizaciones feministas nacionales e internacionales presionaron al gobierno para que hiciera justicia. A su vez, el gobierno formó comisiones que cambiaban de siglas y directores con cada nuevo gobernador. Todos ellos compartían un rasgo distintivo: nunca conseguían llegar a parte alguna para resolver los crímenes de violencia de género y mucho menos para prevenirlos. Las recomendaciones al gobierno de México se amontonaban junto a los cadáveres: misiones de Naciones Unidas y de la Organización de Estados Americanos proveyeron de alrededor de 200 recomendaciones para proteger los derechos de las mujeres, cincuenta de ellas referidas sólo a Ciudad Juárez.

El asesinato de Marisela se produjo un año después de que el Tribunal Interamericano para los Derechos Humanos emitiera una resolución en la que se hablaba de la negligencia del gobierno mexicano respecto a los asesinatos de las mujeres jóvenes. La resolución sobre el caso “Campo de Algodón” –llamado así por el solar donde el 21 de noviembre de 2001 se encontraron los cuerpos de tres mujeres- incluye una lista de medidas y reparaciones, la mayor parte de las cuales fueron rechazadas o ignoradas.

Desde los casos analizados en la resolución del Tribunal mencionado, la guerra de la droga emprendida en Ciudad Juárez por el gobierno mexicano, con el apoyo de la Iniciativa Mérida estadounidense, ha producido una cifra record de 15.273 homicidios en 2010 (con un total de 34.612 muertes desde que Calderón lanzara la ofensiva hace cuatro años). La estrategia se ha centrado en el uso de la violencia frente a los cárteles del narcotráfico para interceptar los envíos y capturar a los señores de la droga. Se ha basado en la militarización de la ciudad, lo que ha llevado una violencia a la región que nadie podía imaginar.

Irónicamente, el Presidente Felipe Calderón declara que los objetivos de la guerra contra la droga buscan aumentar la seguridad pública y fortalecer las instituciones legales. Pero la historia de los crímenes de género, y la respuesta del gobierno, revela los errores fundamentales de los actuales esfuerzos de lucha contra el narcotráfico y los fallos de un sistema que prácticamente garantiza la impunidad a través de un cóctel de corrupción institucional, sexismo, racismo, incompetencia e indiferencia.

Dado el historial de injusticia institucionalizada, la guerra contra la droga en Juárez se cortocircuitó desde el principio. La secuencia lógica de investigación, arresto, enjuiciamiento y castigo sencillamente no existe ante la ausencia de un sistema eficiente de justicia. Al desestabilizar el tráfico transfronterizo de los cárteles de la droga y lanzar guerras fuera de control, el gobierno desató una tormenta de violencia en relación con la droga a la que ni la policía ni las instituciones legales pueden hacer frente porque estas instituciones son disfuncionales. En ausencia de instituciones de apoyo o de una estrategia coherente, era de prever la explosión resultante de esa confrontación directa con los cárteles de la droga. Si algo nos muestra la tragedia de las cruces rosas erigidas en el desierto para marcar los casos sin resolver de las mujeres asesinadas, es que el problema fundamental consiste en que, en Juárez, las huellas llevan hasta el mismo gobierno. Hasta que no se ponga fin a la impunidad, la región seguirá atrayendo a la delincuencia, común u organizada, o simplemente perversa.

En ese entorno, los feminicidios en Juárez no sólo no se han resuelto nunca sino que han aumentado de forma espectacular –casi 300 en 2010-, junto con las tasas globales de homicidios. La guerra contra la droga del gobierno ha estimulado más violencia de género en lugar de disminuirla. Acoge a los que cometen asesinatos y otras barbaridades contra las mujeres al hacer del asesinato una parte normal de la vida diaria. Fomenta una sociedad armada donde las personas demasiado pobres para poder marcharse no tienen otra posibilidad que la de meterse bajo tierra para que no las machaquen por todos lados. No sólo Juárez acoge a asesinos, torturadores y violadores de mujeres, también les atrae.

La vulnerabilidad de las mujeres aumenta. Durante años, la impunidad le ha dado carta blanca a los asesinos de mujeres que encontraban que las trabajadoras de las maquiladoras eran objetivos especialmente fáciles para la tortura, actos de sadismo, violación, asesinato y otros actos posiblemente relacionados con las películas sobre asesinatos reales (snuff movies) y las redes internacionales de la delincuencia, todo ello encubierto por funcionarios del gobierno. Últimamente, los defensores de los derechos humanos de las mujeres se han convertido también en blanco. Poco después del asesinato de Marisela, se encontró a Susana Chavez asesinada y con una mano amputada. Chavez era una poeta feminista que acuñó la frase “¡Ni una muerte más!” que se convirtió en el eslogan del movimiento de mujeres de Juárez. Las mujeres activistas sienten como si se hubiera abierto una veda contra ellas.

La respuesta de la sociedad civil

El único rayo de luz ha surgido de la respuesta de la sociedad civil mexicana. Tras el asesinato de Marisela, una de las ex directoras de una de las comisiones del gobierno, Alicia Duarte, escribió una carta abierta al Presidente Calderón:

“Hace tres años, cuando dejé mi puesto de Fiscal Especial para la Atención a los Crímenes Relacionados con Actos de Violencia Contra las Mujeres en la Oficina del Fiscal General, indiqué claramente que lo hacía por la vergüenza que sentía de pertenecer al corrupto sistema de justicia de mi país. En estos momentos, esa vergüenza vuelve a invadirme y me quema la piel y la conciencia, por tanto debo unirme a la indignación de todas las mujeres de este país que, al saber del asesinato de Marisela Escobedo Ortiz y de los ataques contra su familia de hace pocos días, se han puesto a reclamar justicia…”

Mujeres y hombres se han manifestado por todo el país exigiendo que se resuelvan los procesos de Marisela y Rubí, pidiendo el fin de la impunidad que protege en cientos de casos a los asesinos y obligando al gobierno a cumplir con las recomendaciones para proteger a las mujeres e impedir más muertes. Sus protestas se han unido a un movimiento ciudadano de alcance nacional llamado “No Más Sangre”, en rechazo a la actual estrategia de la guerra contra la droga. Se ha llegado finalmente a un momento decisivo.

El asesinato de Marisela prácticamente en los escalones del Capitolio del Estado, simboliza la relación existente entre la violencia de género en las esferas privada y pública, entre el letal sexismo de hombres que matan a mujeres y los gobiernos que les permiten hacer impunemente lo que les viene en gana, entre una guerra contra el narcotráfico fuera de control y la ebullición de una duradera situación de crímenes de género sin castigo.

Nadie en el gobierno mexicano reconoce esas relaciones. Lo mismo podría aplicarse al gobierno de EEUU. El último informe del Departamento de Estado dio un aprobado a México en derechos humanos para que se autorizaran más apoyos a la Iniciativa Mérida para la guerra contra la droga. La indignación actual por el asesinato de Marisela y la nueva campaña “No Más Sangre” demuestran que el pueblo mexicano ha soportado ya suficientes excusas para la violencia en la que le están obligando a vivir.

Hasta que ambos gobiernos cambien de punto de vista ante la hipocresía de sus sistemas y políticas legales, la espiral de la violencia no hará más que continuar. En honor de Marisela y de tantas otras que se han atrevido a defender los derechos humanos y la justicia en México, es hora ya de que la sociedad civil a ambos lados de la frontera exija que se ponga fin al baño de sangre.

Laura Carlsen es directora del Programa de Políticas para las Américas en Ciudad de México. Puede contactarse con ella en: lcarlsen@ciponline.org

Traducido del inglés para Rebelión por Sinfo Fernández

Continental Tire Co. tries to bust Mexico's Rubber Workers Union

2011-02-05T09:33:00.000-08:00

Feb 4, 2011

Go to Enlace Website

Negotiations for the industry-wide master union contract for workers that make tires in Mexico are regulated and coordinated by Mexico’s Secretary of Labor every 2 years.

Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano has summoned Continental, Tornel-JK, Bridgestone-Firestone, Michelin, and the unions representing the workers in those global companies to attend the opening contract bargaining session on February 3, 2011. But a few days ago, in an obvious maneuver to bust its workers’ union, Continental sought legal authority to not participate in the negotiations.

The unions that form the Union Rubber Coalition of Mexico challenge Continental’s maneuver as a heavy handed effort to kill the hard earned law that enables rubber workers to have a union contract.

We must not allow global corporations to continue exploiting workers and undermining worker rights in the countries where they operate. Continental's refusal to bargain could force workers across the rubber industry into a national strike.

Please send a letter to Continental telling them to cease this outrageous behavior.

To: Dr. Felix Gress (Vice-President) E-mail: felix.gress@conti.de ; Dr. Christiane Pfeiffer E-mail christiane.pfeiffer@conti.de ; Dana Zamalloa E-mail: dana.zamalloa@conti-na.com ; copy to Enlace: info@enlaceintl.org

Sample Letter:

Dear Mr. Gress, Pfeiffer and Zamalloa,

I am writing to inform you that, along with the Union Rubber Coalition of Mexico and their allies, I am outraged by your decision to not participate in the national union rubber industry contract negotiations to be convened by the Mexican Secretary of Labor on February 3, 2011.

Mexican law requires that the workers’ unions and employers must participate in the worker-employer negotiation convening. Your representative in Mexico is hindering the legally mandated process by not complying with this requirement.

I ask you to rectify your indefensible position in this matter in accordance with Mexico’s law and your moral responsibility to the workers in this country that have provided so much value to your business.

I will be following this process closely.

Thank you

En forma irregular, edil de Ensenada avaló que Sempra instalara gasera

2011-02-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

Aspecto de la terminal de recepción, almacenaje y regasificación de gas licuado y natural
de Sempra, captado este viernes en Ensenada, Baja California Foto Francisco Olvera

5 febero 2011

Ir a nota

En enero Elvira Quesada defendió ante la Comisión Permanante a la trasnacional

Decisiones “erráticas e ilegales”, detrás de permisos a Sempra

En 2002, el edil de Ensenada pasó por alto al cabildo para autorizar a la firma energética

Roberto Garduño

Enviado

Periódico La Jornada

Sábado 5 de febrero de 2011, p. 7

Ensenada, BC, 4 de febrero. La autorización concedida por el gobierno municipal de Ensenada a la trasnacional Sempra Energy para instalar la regasificadora de gas natural licuado Costa Azul se fundamentó en decisiones “erráticas e ilegales”, que fueron descubiertas hace unos días.

A mediados de 2002, el alcalde panista Jorge Antonio Catalán Sosa pasó por alto la participación que debió tener el cabildo municipal en la elaboración de una opinión técnica que determinara si la solicitud de la trasnacional para instalar la planta respondía a la normativa mínima de seguridad para la población y la preservación ecológica.

Tras asumirse en autoridad omnímoda, el entonces alcalde otorgó los permisos de factibilidad y de uso de suelo, e ignoró al resto de los funcionarios de la municipalidad, como se observa en el oficio PM/154/2002, del 12 de julio de 2002, y en evidente violación de los preceptos urbanos y ambientales del estado de Baja California.

“En referencia a las solicitudes de las empresas gaseras (terminales de regasificación GNL) de instalarse sobre los terrenos de la colonia Costa Azul segunda sección (La Jovita) en nuestro municipio de Ensenada, y una vez analizadas las evaluaciones hechas a través del Cocotren (Corredor Costero Tijuana-Rosarito-Ensenada), me es importante comunicarle que este XVII ayuntamiento que encabezo, una vez revisada la evaluación y haber mantenido relación directa con funcionarios de las empresas Shell y Sempra Energy Solutions, así como haber visitado personalmente las instalaciones de las plantas regasificadoras de Barcelona, España, y Lake Charles, en Luisiana, Estados Unidos, respectivamente, no tenemos inconveniente en otorgar la prefactibilidad (en los lotes 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 y 36 de la colonia Costa Azul, segunda sección, hasta el límite de la carretera escénica) a las empresas antes mencionadas y a las que en el futuro lo solicitaran.

“Cabe mencionar que nos reservamos por convenir a los intereses de este XVII ayuntamiento, el otorgar el permiso de uso de suelo, el cual será analizado por las dependencias que correspondan en las que se tomarán como base los programas comunitarios que tenga la empresa gasera, la tecnología que emplea para la operación y manejo del gas licuado natural, el programa de seguridad de sus instalaciones, el impacto de la derrama económica y muy en especial el impacto ambiental.”

En sistemática violación del reglamento de la Ley de Edificaciones para el municipio de Ensenada, el alcalde panista Catalán Sosa se asumió como la única autoridad, relegando al cabildo. Así, el 12 de agosto de 2003 expidió el dictamen de uso de suelo que beneficiaba a Sempra Energy.

También se descubrieron dos licencias de construcción: la primera fue la concedida a Energía Costa Azul con número de oficio D/259/04 del 27 de octubre de 2004, y licencia de construcción 1768, del 26 de octubre de 2004. En relación con los permisos de operación y los de factibilidad para operar la terminal de gas licuado natural Energía Costa Azul no se encontró ninguno en los archivos de la actual administración municipal.

A la fecha se desconoce información relativa a las valoraciones a las que tuvo que llegar la administración panista de Jorge Antonio Catalán, con objeto de describir la obra y la actividad proyectada; los aspectos generales del medio natural y socioeconómico donde se debía resaltar los aspectos que se consideraron particularmente importantes por el grado de afectación que ocasionaría el desarrollo del proyecto.

También se carece de identificación de impactos ambientales causados por el desarrollo o actividad durante las etapas del proyecto, así como de las medidas de prevención o mitigación de los impactos de la obra o actividad que se provocarían en cada una de las etapas del desarrollo del proyecto.

La gasera no ha cambiado de posición sus tanques de almacenamiento y pondrá otros dos

Roberto Garduño, Enviado

Ensenada, BC, 4 de febrero. Hace tres semanas el titular de la Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Semarnat), Juan Elvira Quesada, defendió a la trasnacional Sempra Energy Solutions –firma que corre el riesgo de ver cerrada su planta regasificadora en este municipio por violar disposiciones legales mexicanas– al argumentar que la empresa podía seguir operando sin riesgo para el entorno humano y ecológico, pues había cambiado de posición sus enormes tanques de almacenamiento de gas natural licuado y ya no requería de un área de amortiguamiento.

En comparecencia ante un grupo de trabajo de la Comisión Permanente del Congreso de la Unión, el funcionario aseguró sin equívoco –cuando había jurado decir la verdad– que Sempra ya no necesitaba la zona de resguardo.

Al publicarse aquella información, su encargado de prensa pretendió corregir el contenido del reporte que se publicó en este diario. Semanas después la realidad ubica al secretario, porque Sempra nunca modificó el sentido de sus tanques de almacenamiento y engañó a Juan Elvira Quesada.

Al revisar los planos de construcción de la planta regasificadora –de los que se tiene copia– se manifiesta el engaño de la empresa y del funcionario. Los de 2004 son exactamente iguales a los de 2008, y hoy día la posición de los dos tanques es la misma.

Más: ya se planea instalación de otros dos grandes tanques en igual posición que los dos primeros.

Elvira Quesada insistió en esa comparecencia en que Sempra sí acata la normatividad y aporta en su desempeño garantías de cuidado y respeto al ambiente.

Aún se recuerda que al concluir la comparecencia referida se le preguntó si revisaría la situación de Sempra y respondió: “Lo que ofrecemos a la Cámara de Diputados es mostrar el estudio de riesgo ambiental. Los lineamientos son jurídicamente viables y ordenados. Si esta empresa cumple distribuyendo gas limpio y natural puede traer resultados positivos al desempeño ambiental de México”.

–¿Y si incumple? –se insistió.

–Por lo menos son cinco visitas de inspección de la Profepa. Se ha multado, se ha cerrado, se ha verificado y, cuando no haya irregularidades, la empresa operará.

“Actividades incompatibles”

Por otra parte, el Programa de Ordenamiento Ecológico de Baja California, elaborado por la Semarnat, acepta que los “problemas o conflictos ambientales no se refieren a cuestiones ecológicas únicamente, sino que debemos considerar que un conflicto ambiental, conforme lo define el Reglamento de la LGEEPA en Materia de Ordenamiento Ecológico, es la concurrencia de actividades incompatibles en un área determinada y que las actividades incompatibles se presentan cuando un sector disminuye la capacidad de otro para aprovechar los recursos naturales, mantener los bienes y los servicios ambientales o proteger los ecosistemas y la biodiversidad de un área determinada”.

En el caso de Baja California la secretaría advierte sobre la presión social alegando afectaciones ambientales; incompatibilidad entre el desarrollo de la infraestructura y el uso de suelo u otras actividades productivas y dificultades legales en procesos indemnizatorios de derechos de vía.

Entre las debilidades que la dependencia identifica para Baja California se encuentran: riesgos por transporte marino y entrega de combustible en CFE y Pemex; descargas de aguas residuales; regasificadora Costa Azul (cuyo rompeolas afectó la dinámica costera).

También atender las violaciones al Cocotren, como: ubicación de Sempra Energy y Zeta Gas; falta de una delimitación de la zona de almacenamiento de combustibles; carencia de una visión integral; afectaciones a la calidad de destino turístico.

Tres visiones de la libertad sindical

2011-01-29T06:13:00.000-08:00

29 ene 2011

Ir a nota

Arturo Alcalde Justiniani / II

La Jornada

En el artículo anterior se subrayó la importancia de identificar las propuestas específicas de PAN, PRI y PRD en materia de reforma laboral y de no caer en el error de hablar de una reforma estructural en el aire. Se destacó que el tema de la libertad sindical era fundamental, considerando que de ella dependía el grado de legitimidad de las representaciones y su papel en la contratación colectiva, elemento clave de cualquier modelo de relaciones laborales. Planteamos que la libertad de asociación tiene al menos tres dimensiones a considerar: frente al Estado, al patrón y dentro del gremio. A partir de ello, se analizó la propuesta del PAN, concluyendo que se limitaba a este último, dejando intocados los otros mecanismos de control.

Por lo que se refiere a la propuesta del PRI, es necesario distinguir sus versiones: una dada a conocer en octubre de 2010, a través de la oficina del diputado Francisco Rojas, y otra, presentada en la Cámara de Diputados el pasado 15 de diciembre. La primera versión contiene varias modificaciones en materia de libertad sindical; destaca la de suprimir la cláusula de exclusión que faculta a los sindicatos a separar del empleo a un trabajador que deje de pertenecer al gremio, en este tema coincidió con el PAN y el PRD.

En esta primera versión, el PRI planteó una propuesta que causó asombro, consistente en la supresión de la conocida “toma de nota”, instrumento que utilizan las autoridades laborales para controlar el registro del sindicato o de las directivas y su funcionamiento estatutario interno. En la exposición de motivos justifica esta medida señalando que “busca acercarse a los planteamientos y compromisos que México ha asumido a nivel internacional en esta materia, para ello, se simplifica el trámite de registro sindical y se elimina expresamente cualquier facultad explícita o implícita, que las autoridades registradoras pudieran haber tenido para inhibir el nacimiento y la vida de los sindicatos”.

Asimismo, en esta versión se propone incluir como prohibición explícita la coacción sobre los trabajadores en materia de organización sindical; también, reconoce en términos más amplios que la actual ley, el derecho de los empleados de confianza a formar sindicatos, si bien, en gremios distintos al resto de los trabajadores. El tema no es menor, considerando que el llamado personal de confianza ha crecido de manera desmedida y que, en realidad, se trata de trabajadores cuya función no corresponde a esa clasificación que se les impone colocándolos en estado de indefensión.

Sin embargo, la segunda versión priísta, dejada de lado después de un regaño del Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (CCE), cambió totalmente el rumbo, suprimió toda referencia al tema de la libertad sindical, en otras palabras, se sostiene que la cláusula de exclusión debe subsistir al igual que la toma de nota, y no se hace referencia alguna al personal de confianza. Se dio marcha atrás en relación con la primera versión. Resulta evidente que se impuso la línea corporativa tradicional, ni una sola propuesta sobre los tres ámbitos de la libertad sindical. El mensaje es claro: tenemos interés en mantener las cosas como están. Por su parte, el PAN parece dispuesto a aceptar las propuestas priístas, sometido a la lógica del sector empresarial, así lo ha ostentado el propio CCE al comunicar “que ya tiene planchada” la reforma al haber llegado a un acuerdo con la CTM. No se tocará un pelo al corporativismo y a los privilegios de los líderes, a cambio, éstos aceptan algunas reglas de flexibilidad, como la subcontratación u outsourcing. Todos ganan, menos los trabajadores y el país.

La iniciativa del PRD, que cuenta con el apoyo de la Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT), organizaciones académicas, la sociedad civil y grupos en defensa de derechos humanos laborales, contrasta sensiblemente de las presentadas por el PAN y el PRI. Es una propuesta enriquecida por un largo proceso de reflexión y análisis, en distintas ramas de industria y zonas del país que se han venido planteando, no sólo para mejorar la condición de los trabajadores, sino también con la finalidad de lograr un desarrollo productivo sustentado en la concertación. La iniciativa atiende al contenido de los convenios 87 y 98 de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT), referidos al derecho de los empleados a organizarse sin distinción y a la contratación colectiva; para ello, suprime los apartados de excepción y el conjunto de obstáculos que se han generado para dividir a los trabajadores mediante reglas especiales. Frente al Estado garantiza la autonomía de los sindicatos con objeto de que puedan adquirir personalidad jurídica sin sujetarla a condiciones que limiten este derecho. Propone crear el Registro Público Nacional de Organizaciones Sindicales y Contratos Colectivos, entidad que tiene la finalidad de operar con autonomía los procesos de registro sindical y resolver con imparcialidad las controversias de titularidad de los contratos colectivos.

En el ámbito interno, garantiza a los trabajadores el derecho a elegir libremente a sus representantes a través del voto secreto y universal, la plena transparencia, rendición de cuentas y la sanción a los actos de corrupción por parte de los líderes gremiales. Frente a los empresarios, fija mecanismos tendientes a impedir la intromisión y el control patronal de las organizaciones, al igual que en otros países democráticos del mundo, pero sobre todo resuelve dos aspectos centrales para hacer realidad las premisas básicas de la libertad de asociación: contar con jueces laborales imparciales y eficientes que den certidumbre jurídica, y recuperar la contratación colectiva como espacio de concertación que permita responder a las necesidades productivas y a la justa exigencia de los trabajadores de mejorar sus salarios y condiciones laborales.

Boletin de "La iniciativa salarios dignos norte y sur" (Lisdinys)

2011-01-28T17:18:00.000-08:00

"Desarrollo sostenible a largo plazo vía homologación gradual de salarios"

Boletín Invierno 2010

Ir a página web de Boletín Lisdinys

Boletin Lisdinys Invierno 2010

Una aproximación comparativa a la brecha de salarios dignos en China: Los salarios manufactureros chinos incorporan a millones al modelo de moderno-trabajo esclavo del capitalismo darwinista actual en una de sus formas más atroces.

La brecha de salarios dignos de La India – Un Entorno Más de Moderno-Trabajo-Esclavo

México Frente a la Escoria Ladrona –Dignidad o Capitulación frente al Secuestro de México por las Mafias Político-Empresariales

¿Dialogar con Ruggie? Cambiar para que todo siga igual... Una valoración de los Informes 2009 y 2010 de John Ruggie.

México: tragedia Obrera en las Maquiladoras– Las maquiladoras, donde se ensamblan los bienes de consumo a lo largo de la frontera México - EUA, s e derrumban. Su fuerza de trabajo carece de derechos, esperanza y, cada vez más, de empleos.

Ir a artículo sobre maquiladoras en México

Brasil: Brecha de salario real digno (1996-2008): La recuperaci[on de los salarios reales de línea de producción manufacturera en Brasil continúa estancada en 2008. Empero hay planes a largo plazo de fuerte homologación.

Otros informes: Brecha de salario real digno en España, entre Estados Unidos y otras doce economías, complicidad empresarial y responsabilidad legal, informe del desarrollo humano, y otros reportes.

Detención ilegal de 4 mineros de El Cubo

2011-01-28T08:40:00.000-08:00

27 ene 2011

ir a nota

Patricia Muñoz Ríos

Periódico La Jornada

Jueves 27 de enero de 2011, p. 36

Cuatro trabajadores de Mineral El Cubo, perteneciente a la empresa Gammon Gold, fueron detenidos en Guanajuato de manera “ilegal y brutal” por la policía ministerial estatal, que pretextó tener una orden de cateo, la cual convirtieron en aprehensión, según informó ayer el Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores Mineros. Tras señalar que se trata de una escalada de acciones de represión policiaca, detalló que la madrugada del miércoles 26 fueron detenidos los trabajadores, con el argumento de que pesaba sobre ellos una acusación de “despojo” por parte de la empresa, lo cual es falso, porque hay una huelga amparada por un juez y eso desmiente la calificación del supuesto delito. Esta organización indicó que los detenidos que fueron sacados de sus casas “en paños menores y descalzos”, con violencia y golpes presentados ante el Ministerio Público, son Juan Andrés Villa Licea, presidente del comité de huelga de la sección 142, de El Cubo; Juan Diego Villa Licea, sobrino del anterior trabajador y que es completamente ajeno a la lucha sindical; Martín Reina, vocal del consejo de vigilancia, y Jorge Ramón Monsiváis, comisionado para el reparto de utilidades. La huelga inició a raíz de que Gammon Gold se ha negado a entregar a los trabajadores su parte correspondiente a las utilidades.

Agentes aduaneros mexicanos roban y detienen a líder minero estadunidense

2011-01-28T08:38:00.000-08:00

27 ene 2011

Ir a nota

El arresto de Manny Armenta busca intimidar a la USW: Gerard

David Brooks

Corresponsal

Periódico La Jornada

Jueves 27 de enero de 2011, p. 35

Nueva York, 26 enero. El poderoso sindicato nacional siderúrgico de Estados Unidos y Canadá condenó hoy la detención de uno de sus representantes internacionales por agentes de aduanas mexicanos cuando cruzaba la frontera para reunirse con representantes del sindicato minero mexicano.

Manny Armenta, director subdistrital del United Steelworkers (USW) en Nuevo México, fue detenido y encarcelado brevemente el lunes en Naco, Sonora, por agentes aduanales mexicanos, quienes lo acusaron de manejar un vehículo robado (el automóvil fue rentado a nombre del sindicato).

Armenta, según el sindicato, presentó documentación comprobando lo opuesto, y los agentes registraron el automóvil con perros. Un agente le solicitó una “multa” de 185 mil pesos, y cuando se negó a pagarla fue arrestado y encarcelado durante la noche y liberado la mañana del martes después de pagar una fianza de 80 mil pesos, informó el sindicato.

El vehículo fue confiscado y no ha sido entregado; la cartera se la regresaron, pero sin unos 700 dólares que contenía.

El sindicato informó que presentará una denuncia ante el Departamento de Estado de Estados Unidos.

Armemta se dirigía a una reunión con abogados del sindicato minero mexicano, al cual el USW ha apoyado en su pugna en Cananea desde hace casi cuatro años contra Grupo México, como también ante lo que considera la persecución de dirigentes sindicales por las autoridades mexicanas.

“Este trato atroz de las autoridades federales mexicanas demuestra el extremo de la corrupción gubernamental. Demandamos que se descarten estos cargos falsos con el retorno inmediato de la propiedad del sindicato junto con lo que le pertenece a Manny”, declaró Leo Gerard, presidente del USW.

Su sindicato ha trabajado de manera conjunta con el gremio minero de Cananea a ambos lados de la frontera, incluyendo esfuerzos binacionales, ya que se negocia un nuevo contrato colectivo con Asarco, productora minera en Arizona y también propiedad de Grupo México. Armenta es jefe del equipo de negociación del sindicato ahí.

Gerard sospecha que la detención podría tener razones políticas. “Al arrestar a Manny, el gobierno mexicano intenta intimidar a los mineros del cobre del USW de ejercer nuestro derecho a la negociación colectiva y demostrar solidaridad con nuestros hermanos y hermanas en México”, afirmó. Señaló, asimismo, que la secretaria de Estado, Hillary Clinton, estaba de gira en México el día del arresto, y concluyó: “espero que el Departamento de Estado invertirá la misma energía en promover la justicia para Manny y los derechos de los trabajadores en Cananea que el que ha mostrado para elogiar al gobierno mexicano”.

El mito de los derechos humanos laborales

2011-01-23T18:12:00.000-08:00

23 enero 2010

Ir a nota

Néstor de Buen

La Jornada

En estos días se habla, con frecuencia, de los derechos humanos. Confieso que la expresión no me hace mucha gracia porque me resulta redundante. No conozco un derecho que no sea de una persona o varias, según el caso.

En materia internacional, el tema asume una importancia especial. Todas las naciones celebran convenios mundiales que tienen como objetivo listar los derechos humanos que, como consecuencia de ello, se convierten en normas de cumplimiento obligatorio. En nuestro país, para ello, el artículo 102 constitucional consagra la obligación del Congreso de la Unión y de las legislaturas de los estados de establecer organismos que protejan los derechos humanos “que ampara el orden jurídico mexicano”.

Nadie ha puesto en duda la facultad de México de participar en las comisiones internacionales que se constituyan para esos efectos y la obligación de crear “organismos de protección de los derechos humanos, que ampara el orden jurídico mexicano (artículo 102 constitucional) que, en efecto, se han constituido de la misma manera que en el orden internacional.

Debo confesar que yo tuve el privilegio de ser designado miembro del Consejo de la primera Comisión de Derechos Humanos para el Distrito Federal y, por tanto, no me falta alguna experiencia en la materia.

Dejando a salvo la observación de que la expresión me parece redundante, porque estoy convencido de que sólo las personas, físicas o morales, son acreedoras de esos derechos que, en caso alguno, corresponden también a los animales.

Hecha esa salvedad, otro tema que me preocupa más aún es el de la supuesta eficacia de esas comisiones en el mundo nuestro o de los convenios internacionales sobre el particular que México ha suscrito. Porque no tengo la menor duda de que esas garantías, listadas en la Constitución, se violan de manera reiterada y no parece que hayamos encontrado el remedio para hacerlas efectivas, independientemente de que en el mismo artículo 102 se establecen excepciones que no dejan de tener importancia.

Pensemos en los convenios internacionales. Todos los días vemos en los medios de comunicación que un determinado país viola sistemáticamente derechos humanos. Y no digamos, sobre todo ahora en que respecto de México las violaciones son casi permanentes, atribuibles a las fuerzas armadas o a las policías.

Pero la pregunta es: ¿Cuál es la sanción?

En el plano internacional se suele considerar que la guerra entre los países afectados puede ser la sanción que esas obligaciones provocan. Pero lo cierto es que en el derecho, la facultad de sancionar no corresponde a las partes interesadas y que, en definitiva, un sistema jurídico que no prevea castigos por la violación a sus normas, será la que se quiera (por ejemplo, un código moral), pero no una disposición jurídica. La guerra internacional no la impone un tribunal, por mucho que haya listado los derechos humanos que claramente se violan por algún país. Lo mismo puede decirse del orden interno. Si no hay un aparato legalmente constituido que haga efectivas las sanciones, los famosos derechos humanos se convierten en un mito.

Hay que recordar que en nuestro orden interno, cuando una comisión comprueba la violación de unos derechos humanos, su máxima facultad es hacer llegar a la autoridad responsable una atenta recomendación para que no se siga portando mal. Esa recomendación no puede ir acompañada de una amenaza de sanción, mucho menos de una condena.

De ello deriva que cuando el derecho no se cumple y no existen medidas coactivas que puedan hacerlo efectivo, la norma violada será lo que se quiera, menos una norma jurídica. Un derecho sin coacción no es derecho.

Hay, además, las excepciones que la propia Constitución establece y cuya importancia no es necesario destacar. Las resoluciones del Poder Judicial de la Federación, que son más que frecuentes, no pueden dar motivo a recomendaciones. Pero, además, no hay competencia de las comisiones cuando se trata de asuntos electorales, laborales y jurisdiccionales.

Y quedándonos en lo laboral: ¿Cuántas veces no se ha violado descaradamente por el gobierno actual el Convenio 87 de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT) sobre la libertad sindical y la protección del derecho de sindicación? Y por muchas protestas presentadas ante la comisión especializada de la OIT, las autoridades siguen tan flamencas en su posición violatoria.

Old Tijuana Virtual Postcard Tour

2011-01-19T23:10:00.000-08:00

Reminiscing through the past across the border at Tia Juana, Mexico

Welcome to this historical look back at Tijuana, Mexico viewed from the last century, during which it grew considerably on the flow of tourist visitor's dollars. Collected by Pernel S. Thyseldew. Don't miss the NEW page two and page three of "Vintage Tijuana Postcards!"

Go to the pctures: Old Tijuana Virtual Postcard Tour

Maquiladora Decline ?

2011-01-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

Mexico’s Maquiladora Decline Affects U.S.-Mexico Border Communities and
Trade; Recovery Depends in Part on Mexico’s Actions

Report to Conressional Requesters by GAO.

2003

Go to report: Mexico's Maquiladora Decline