Mexican women fight global exploitation
Mexico’s impoverished and abused workforce at the Duro factory in the unregulated maquiladora of Rio Bravo in the state of Tamaulipas have mounted a determined campaign for over a year for independent union recognition.
Duro is a Kentucky-based maker of gift bags for Hallmark card shops and a number of other major retailers.
At least some of the workers hoped that the government of Vincente Fox would listen to their demands.
Fox’s right wing Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) was swept to power last July when the Partido Revol-ucionario Institucional (PRI) was finally defeated after a staggering 71 years in power.
Fox’s programme is right wing and pro-American – essentially promising big capital that he would implement Thatcher-style neo-liberalism more efficiently than the PRI – but without the corruption scandals that had increasingly dogged the PRI’s latter years.
Many workers however voted for him not on that basis, but because they wanted to defeat the PRI and saw no other effective alternative.
But Fox’s Secretary of Labour is a former head of COPARMEX, the association of industrial employers, which has taken over legal representation of Duro at labour board hearings.
The Board has continued the same illegal actions as under the previous administration and, has reneged on promises made by the ousted Zedillo administration to the U.S. and Canada during negotiations with the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) .
The independent union at Duro had petitioned for the recognition ballot back in the autumn. After many delays and acts of intimidation the ballot was scheduled for Friday March 2.
But the ballot took place at the factory rather than on neutral ground as the workers had demanded. Nor was the ballot itself conducted without management intimidation. Workers had to declare out loud before a panel of bosses and union representatives which union they backed.
In the run up to the election there was an organised campaign of intimidation and violence against the workers. Key supporters of an independent union were sacked, and all workers were told that anyone who was to vote for the independent union would lose their job.
The company also threatened to close down the plant if the independent union won. Goons from company "unions" blocked the workers’ efforts to leaflet, and attacked them in the street.
Solidarity action with the workers has taken place in the US, targeted at Duro itself but also at Hallmark, its largest customer.
There were 20 demonstrations against Hallmark around Valentines Day organised by the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, which is based in San Antonio, Texas and brings together supporters from Mexico, Canada and the US.
In April 2000 the workers’ elected leaders were illegally fired for refusing to agree to a sweetheart contract negotiated with the company by the National Paperworkers Union (CTM).
On June 12 the workers began strike action, demanding reinstatement and recognition of the independent union. They have been occupying an encampment in Rio Bravo’s town plaza since that day.
When they struck, they were attacked and beaten by police armed with machine guns, arrested on trumped up charges (subsequently dismissed), and later blacklisted – effectively barring them from work in any of the maquilas in town.
The workers demand the right to be represented by a union willing to negotiate basic working conditions. They want medical attention inside the plant, and an environment where they have the right to toilet breaks – and don’t find mouse faeces in their food.
They need basic safety equipment: because there are no guards on the cutting machines, workers have lost fingers. They want an end to constant threats from management, and to sexual harassment.
Even the state government has acknowledged that Duro has some of the worst working conditions in the area.
After a summer of organising they succeeded in winning the first legal registration of an independent union in the history of their state. In late September the Duro Workers Union filed for a recuento – an election to win the right to negotiate on behalf of the workers instead of the CTM
For months the company used a series of stalling tactics to avoid scheduling an election date.
It introduced two phantom unions – with no base in Rio Bravo, let alone the plant – so that they had to be on the ballot. Intimidation and violence have continued – the key workers’ leader has his shack firebombed on October 31.
When it became obvious that support for the independent union was growing, the General Secretary of the CTM spent several days at the plant in late January holding meetings with the workers.
Line by line production was stopped with connivance from the employers, giving him a captive audience. He told workers to vote against the independent union, claiming it was controlled by "foreigners" who want their jobs back.
Then on Friday, January 26, the entire second shift was threatened with the sack if they voted for the Duro Workers Union, and 20 workers were fired for giving information to the union and organising. On February 5 an additional ten workers were fired for organising.
Finally, after numerous demonstrations targeting Duro’s customer Hallmark and a letter from 43 members of the US Congress to Mexican President Fox between February 10-15, the Federal Conciliation & Arbitration Board, at a hearing on February 19, scheduled the union election for March 2.
On February 26 twenty women workers -members of the new independent union at the Duro Bag Company - and a small number of their supporters from the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras faced their worst nightmare.
They were surrounded in the Hotel La Mansion and threatened by forty to fifty thugs brought in by the company. The police lounged outside, refusing to intervene.
CJM members outside tried to mobilise others in support, but Rio Bravo is remote, and difficult to get to. It was clear that the local authorities were on the side of the company – they had refused to deal with early complaints of intimidation.
It was only when a group from a Catholic lay organisation arrived, involving a priest and a young politician and offering Church support to the workers that the thugs began to back off.
Then the police arrived, calling out the name of the non-Hispanic American, and forcing the thugs to withdraw. The Mexican government provided the crucial police protection not to its own citizens but to avoid an international incident.
If the Duro workers succeed in getting an election, and if the election is democratic enough for them to win, then a real union, committed to negotiating improvements in wages and working conditions in the maquiladoras will have been born.
This would be a tremendous breakthrough. That’s why COPARMEX, Duro and political leaders from Fox to Governor Yarrington of the State of Tamaulipas, to the local Labor Board are all working hard to make sure this doesn’t happen.
The authorities blame everything on outside agitators – Americans who come to take their jobs back and on Mexicans intent on economic destabilisation.
The more the company and government fire, threaten and harass the Duro workers, however, the more determined they seem to be.
So far they have weathered nine months of hunger and repression, and they see their movement growing both inside the plant and among an increasing number of allies in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.
When they began their struggle, none of the largely young and female workers thought about the possibility of making real progress against a global economy which offers them only deadly working conditions, starvation wages and daily assaults on their dignity.
But this struggle could win real gains. The forces are arrayed on both sides, and the Duro workers’ determination and support in across the continent offer a real opportunity for a big step forward.
Contact CJM at [email protected] or fax 210-732-8324
Make a financial contribution: cheques to "Emergency Support Fund to The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, 530 Bandera Road, San Antonio, TX 78228.