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