The Resource Center Bulletin



The Resource Center Bulletin is published quarterly by the

Resource Center. The Bulletin explores U.S. influence in Mexico,

Central America, and the Caribbean.



PeaceNet: <carnet:resourcectr>

Mail: Box 4506, Albuquerque, NM 87196

Phone: (505) 842-8288 / Fax: (505) 246-1601





	Winter 1993: Global Capitalism, Global Unionism



		By Harry Browne and Beth Sims





The proposal for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

sounded a wake-up call for organized labor in the United States.

Signed in December and due to be voted on in the legislatures of

Canada, Mexico, and the United States this year, NAFTA

represents a further step toward the globalization of the U.S.

economy. NAFTA will eliminate all tariffs and most other

barriers to trade and investment among the three participating

countries by the end of 2008. But the trade accord threatens to

intensify the runaway plant phenomenon, the loss of U.S.

production and jobs to competition from cheap foreign imports,

and the downward pressure on wages and benefits that have marked

most of the last two decades. The unimpeded flow of capital and

goods in the region will place workers in all three countries in

direct competition with each other, raising fears that labor

standards and wages will be dragged down in the United States

and Canada rather than raised in Mexico.

     Because of these concerns, NAFTA focused U.S. labor's

attention on Mexico, forcing a long overdue effort to evaluate

the labor movement there and to strengthen relations with its

various elements. Especially if NAFTA is adopted, U.S. labor

must continue to expand and deepen its contacts with Mexican

unions. Accelerating U.S.-Mexico economic integration means that

increasing numbers of laborers in Mexico and the United States

work for the same transnational firms. The unions representing

or seeking to represent these workers will benefit from sharing

information and coordinating bargaining strategies. On the

global scale, U.S. labor must continue to develop and promote

its view of an international trading system based on fairness so

that labor rights, living standards, and the environment are not

further degraded under the banner of enhancing competitiveness.

Expanding communication with Mexican unions is a crucial part of

this effort and is the focus of this excerpt from our upcoming

book, The Great Divide: The Challenges of U.S.-Mexico Relations

in the 1990s.

     Since the 1970s, Mexico has been one of the most important

battlegrounds in U.S. labor's struggle to keep jobs from moving

overseas. Low wages, minimal regulations, a largely unorganized

work force, and geographic proximity made Mexican maquiladoras

irresistibly attractive for many U.S.-based manufacturers. But

these same characteristics also made Mexico an excellent place

for U.S. unions to begin to develop a more effective

international strategy. Nevertheless, until the early 1990s the

AFL-CIO's approach in Mexico mirrored its international strategy

elsewhere: support for a stable, capitalist system outranked the

pursuit of genuine labor rights even when more vigorous

organizing efforts by independent unions were crucial to U.S.

workers as well as Mexicans.

     From the American Federation of Labor's support for the

most conservative forces in the Mexican Revolution to outright

racism against Mexican workers in more recent years, organized

labor in the United States seemed bent on alienating progressive

elements in the Mexican labor movement. Between the world wars,

some labor leaders organized anti-Mexican drives that involved

both intimidation and illegal deportation. For much of the

century many U.S. unions or union locals refused to admit

Mexicans or Mexican-Americans as members. And the AFL-CIO and

others frequently blamed Mexican immigrants--and more recently,

workers in the Mexican maquiladora industry--for causing

unemployment in the United States.

     For decades the AFL-CIO seemed undisturbed by its

alienation of Mexican unionists. But in the late 1980s, and

especially after the free trade proposal, the federation began

to pay for its neglect. The AFL-CIO's central role in organizing

and funding the binational Coalition for Justice in the

Maquiladoras, for instance, made some Mexican organizations wary

of the coalition's purposes. In at least one case a U.S. group

turned down the coalition's invitation to join for fear of

damaging its working relations with Mexican counterparts.



Tentative Beginnings



     The first signs of changing attitudes and strategies within

the labor movement appeared at the grassroots level. In the late

1970s a number of union locals and district offices of the AFL-

CIO scrapped efforts to prevent immigrants from entering the

United States, focusing instead on organizing new workers and

improving the observance of their labor rights. Not

surprisingly, the first to do so were mostly in the Southwest.

In California's Los Angeles and Orange counties the AFL-CIO

launched an organizing drive in 1977 targeted at undocumented

workers, and followed this several years later with a similar

drive in El Paso. Numerous Los Angeles union locals followed

suit, signing up undocumented workers and helping defend them

against deportation when necessary.

     In a context of increasing economic integration the

theoretical jump from organizing immigrant Mexican workers and

improving their working conditions here to working with Mexican

unions toward the same ends in Mexico is a small one. In both

cases empowering workers with the lowest wages and the worst

working conditions not only is morally commendable, but also

helps protect the standards of better-off workers. However, the

practical jump from working with Mexicans in the United States

to seeking cross-border partners, developing joint strategies,

and devoting limited resources to international solidarity is

daunting. As a result, cross-border work remained limited to

isolated efforts by relatively small unions (or by a few

individuals within larger unions) until the late 1980s.

     Farm labor unions, many of whose members are Mexican

immigrants, led the way in working directly with Mexican

organizations on common projects. Beginning in 1979 the Arizona

Farm Workers union won clauses in many of its labor contracts

requiring employers to contribute ten (and later twenty) cents

per worker-hour to a development fund. The fund paid for

agricultural and community projects in the workers' hometowns in

Mexico.

     In 1987 the Ohio-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee

(FLOC) sought help from the National Union of Farm Workers

(SNTOAC) in Mexico. A year earlier, during FLOC's negotiations

with Campbell Soup, the company threatened to move tomato paste

production to Mexico, where it already operated a cannery. FLOC

overcame this threat, but anticipating Campbell's use of Mexico

as a bargaining tool in future negotiations, FLOC reached out to

SNTOAC, the union that represents workers at Campbell's tomato

paste factory in Sinaloa. The two organizations launched the

U.S.-Mexico Exchange Program and have continued to exchange

information and develop bargaining strategies to work for "wage

vs. living cost parity," full employment, protection of "guest

workers" in the United States, and the development of "strong

and democratic" unions in both countries. In 1989 FLOC's

solidarity and the mobilization of its support network helped

SNTOAC win a wage increase some 15 percent higher than the

government's legal cap for that year.



Counterproductive Alliances



     Until 1990 none of the industrial unions came close to

forging similarly close ties with Mexican counterparts. This

failure occurred despite the fact that U.S. corporations

frequently threatened to ship work to Mexico during contract

negotiations, and despite the steady ties that the AFL-CIO has

maintained with Mexico's official union, the Confederation of

Mexican Workers (CTM). Until recently the AFL-CIO posted a full-

time staff person to CTM headquarters in Mexico City. The AFL-

CIO also provides training in the United States for up to twenty

CTM staff members each year, in a program funded by the U.S.

Agency for International Development.

     But the U.S. labor federation has been unable to parlay its

relationship with the CTM into an effective organizing drive

among export-oriented assembly plants, the part of the Mexican

economy of greatest importance to U.S. workers. CTM officials

have repeatedly promised to make organizing these plants--

especially the maquiladoras--a priority, and just as repeatedly

have committed themselves to encouraging the growth of the

industry by ensuring labor peace. In the mid-1970s the official

unions collaborated with the government and maquila employers to

crush a series of strikes and the independent labor groups that

organized them. In 1983 CTM head Fidel Vel zquez intervened to

break a strike at Zenith's Reynosa plant--then the largest

maquiladora in the country--twice nullifying elections for local

CTM officials and cooperating with Zenith's forced resignation

of ten local activists. In 1989, after the CTM won an interunion

battle for representation at a number of plants in Reynosa,

Vel zquez reportedly promised visiting U.S. members of Congress

that there would be no further labor problems.

     There is not necessarily a contradiction between Vel zquez'

commitments to organize the maquiladoras and to promote the

industry. The maquiladora program competes directly with low-

wage export-processing zones around the globe, and one of the

principal arenas of competition is the stability of the work

force. Attracting investors means controlling worker activism,

and the most direct way the CTM and other official unions can do

that is to organize workers under their own banners. Accounts

abound of the efficiency with which official unions perform this

function. The Jalisco Maquila Association, for example, has

advised new members to accept the CTM, "especially since unions

in Guadalajara tend to facilitate rather than impede internal

plant relations."

     The founder of Mexico's first industrial park, located in

Ciudad Ju rez, had nothing but praise for the city's labor chief

in 1981: "Luis Vidal has always been understanding. He has been

a big help to us, and I think it's been to our advantage to have

a labor leader like Vidal--very, very advantageous." The general

manager of an assembly plant in Reynosa was even more explicit.

"We had some labor problems, so along with a dozen other plants

we went to Mexico City to make a special arrangement with the

CTM. It was time-consuming and expensive, but we arranged to

have a special union leader that our companies can deal with. .

. . If you have any disruptions in the plant, they are very

helpful with that, too."

     The CTM's reluctance to stray from government economic

policy, and its repression of independent labor activists who

might take a more militant stand has not persuaded the AFL-CIO

to support other unions or independent organizing efforts. Until

recently, the federation failed even to expand its contacts

outside of official union circles. The reason most frequently

cited for this commitment to the CTM is the weakness of the

independent union movements--it makes more sense, in this view,

to work with an imperfect partner that can get something done

than with a partner that agrees on important issues but is

powerless. But the AFL-CIO's overseas history suggests that

another reason for its past failure to support democratic union

movements in Mexico may be the U.S. federation's interest in

political stability, which includes preventing the emergence of

leftist labor movements.

     Yet another likely reason is that established unions and

labor federations in all countries are reluctant to deal with

dissident movements abroad for fear of setting a precedent. "As

soon as you start dealing with non-official labor unions in

other countries, you open it up to their dealing with non-

official bodies in this country," noted an academic observer of

international labor relations.

     Whether out of allegiance to the CTM or ignorance of the

Mexican labor situation, the attitudes of AFL-CIO affiliates

toward Mexico mirrored that of the federation until the late

1980s. In some cases, U.S. union leaders rejected the approaches

of independent Mexican labor groups. The September 19th National

Garment Workers Union--named for the date of Mexico City's

devastating 1985 earthquake--provides a case in point. Seeking

international support for its fledgling organizing effort among

the seamstresses of Mexico City's sweatshops, September 19th

union representatives traveled to New York and then across the

country to Los Angeles, visiting the headquarters and a number

of locals of the two largest U.S. garment workers' unions. The

Mexicans were largely ignored by the hierarchy of the

International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated

Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). What is more, both

headquarters sent instructions to their locals "warning them not

to receive the visitors, since they weren't part of the CTM,"

according to a U.S. labor activist working with the visiting

group. This attitude was especially surprising in the case of

ACTWU, since the union was an outspoken opponent of the AFL-

CIO's policies in Central America at the time.

     "The (U.S.) unions were uninterested" in the visit,

according to a former ACTWU staff member. "Mexico just didn't

exist in the minds of the trade union hierarchy at the time. All

they talked about was the [Caribbean Basin Initiative]." But the

farther the Mexican workers got from New York, the more

receptive U.S. unionists were. In Los Angeles, local leaders

organized a Labor Solidarity Network to support the new union's

efforts. They were forced to do so informally, however, without

official union backing.

     @B30HEAD-2 = A Change of Heart?

     NAFTA ended labor's inaction. A number of union officials

recognized that political activity within the United States was

only half of the response that NAFTA required. The anti-NAFTA

coalitions of labor, environmental, consumer, and other groups

represented exciting new possibilities in the United States,

but, as the political director of the United Electrical Work-

ers said, "Much of the work in those coalitions is ultimately

legislative. We don't think that's enough. . . In the last ten

years, [the UE] has lost 10,000 jobs to Mexico alone. The answer

that too often gets ignored by the labor movement is solidarity

across borders."

     The prospect of free trade with Mexico forced labor leaders

to take a long-term view. Gradually the AFL-CIO began to realize

that even defeating NAFTA--itself a great challenge given

labor's poor legislative record--would do little to keep jobs

and investment in the United States over the long haul. Capital

will move abroad with or without a North American agreement.

     What ties workers in different countries together is not an

abstract concept of worker solidarity, but the concrete

phenomenon of the internationalization of capital. The

internationalization of organized labor--in a variety of forms--

has to be part of the solution. But in what forms? And how to

get there? In developing answers to these questions, unions have

piggybacked onto the agendas for regional integration set by

their governments. In Europe labor organizations have joined

forces to shape the "social charter" that sets labor and

environmental standards for the European Community. In North

America, awakened by NAFTA, some unionists are attempting to

develop a similar continental social force in league with

Canadian and Mexican groups.

     Given the history of cross-border relations, however, both

Mexican and U.S. unions have proceeded cautiously. In many

cases, union staffers here have had only a dim picture of the

politically complex Mexican labor scene. A few unionists have

gained a head start in the effort to identify appropriate

Mexican counterparts through their participation in a series of

bi- and trinational exchanges launched in 1988. Sponsored by a

small, New York-based group called Mexico-U.S. Di logos, the

exchanges brought together North American counterparts from

different social sectors to share perspectives, problems, and

ideas for the future.

     Other U.S. unions have made contacts through efforts to

link NAFTA opponents across North America. At an October 1991

trinational, anti-NAFTA meeting in Zacatecas, Mexico, for

example, UE representatives met officials of the Authentic Labor

Front (FAT). The two groups have since embarked on the most

concrete example of labor solidarity to date, agreeing to

cooperate in organizing maquiladora workers. The effort is

focusing on "runaway" plants that started up in Mexico after

shutting down UE-represented shops in the United States. Other

unions, including the Communications Workers of America and the

Service Employees International Union, have also set up contacts

with Mexican unionists.

     Has there been a change of heart within U.S. labor? To be

sure, cross-border interest and activities have picked up

considerably, but to many long-ignored Mexicans this smacks of

opportunism, born of U.S. labor's struggle to defeat NAFTA.

Whether the interest endures, and whether the scope of North

American labor cooperation expands beyond mere statements of

solidarity depends on changes in the labor movements of both

Mexico and the United States. Mexican unions will have only

limited options for cross-border cooperation as long as they

remain dependent on the government and inattentive to their

membership. Unions in the United States will have to overcome a

legacy of arrogance, racism, and unilateralism, and an

entrenched hierarchy whose apparently inflexible world views

were shaped during the Cold War.



Forging Cross-Border Links



     A new international outlook for U.S. labor would of course

have to extend beyond the Western Hemisphere. But North America

is the first testing ground, and whether optimism or pessimism

is warranted will be determined by the evolution of nascent

U.S.-Mexico-Canada labor ties. Activists see two paths that must

be blazed: one that leads to coordinated bargaining strategies

among employees of individual transnational corporations, and

another that leads to the adoption by all three countries of

enforceable minimum labor standards.

     In February 1992 the UAW did make a concrete expression of

international solidarity, contributing $15,000 to the strike

fund of a maquiladora union in Matamoros, Mexico. The

contribution came in response to the Mexican government's arrest

of that union's leader, Agapito Gonz lez, on charges of tax

evasion. The arrest was a blatant and effective effort to give

maquila operators in Matamoros an advantage in their

negotiations with the union. Gonz lez, a long-time CTM official,

was released nine months later. He heads the Industrial

Journeymen and Workers Union, which represents workers at

numerous plants owned by U.S. auto makers. His relatively

assertive negotiating tactics achieved wages in the Matamoros

maquiladoras roughly 25 percent higher than those in other

border cities.

     As a first step toward joint bargaining strategies and in

order to prod the union hierarchy into greater activism,

grassroots groups began conducting cross-border worker

exchanges. These exchanges proliferated after a group called

Mujer a Mujer (Woman to Woman) began sponsoring visits by

Mexican unionists to the United States in 1985. Such exchanges

play a crucial role in enhancing rank-and-file understanding of

the process of globalization and add a human significance to

calls for international solidarity.

     ACTWU has promoted several such exchanges, and has begun to

share information about specific companies with several Mexican

labor organizations, including some independent groups. "We're

talking with anybody we can talk with" in Mexico, said ACTWU

research director Ron Blackwell. In some cases the talking

includes programmatic work, potentially involving joint

campaigns targeting specific companies. Several locals of the

Service Employees International Union have traveled to Mexico to

meet with counterparts. Representatives of Local 790 in San

Francisco were impressed with opposition party leader Cuauhtmoc

C rdenas--an ally of FAT--and sent observers to monitor state-

level elections in Michoac n in 1992.

     Another joint effort sprang from the labor violations that

are all too common in Mexico. After the murder of a Mexican Ford

worker in January 1990, several of his co-workers traveled to

the United States and Canada seeking support from the United

Auto Workers (UAW) and the Canadian Auto Workers. The Canadians

and a couple of UAW locals--in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Kansas

City, Missouri--launched publicity campaigns and encouraged

their members to write Ford's corporate headquarters and the

Mexican government. Delegations of U.S. and Canadian auto

workers traveled to Cuautitl n--just north of Mexico City--to

meet with the dissidents and to leaflet at the plant's gates.

Officials of the St. Paul local publicly challenged Ford

executives to explain the company's apparent violation of basic

labor rights in Mexico. The activists caused enough trouble for

Ford in the United States that the company demanded that Mexican

unionists cut their ties to U.S. groups before they would

receive their severance pay.

     If the UAW as a whole had picked up on these members'

efforts, activists argue, Ford would think twice before abusing

its Mexican workers' rights again. But the UAW hierarchy was

reluctant to follow the activists' lead and refrained from

organizing a symbolic unionwide action, much less sponsoring

trips to Mexico or providing financial support to the Mexican

dissidents' Ford Democratic Workers Movement.

     In addition to building direct contacts and forging joint

strategies with cross-border counterparts, a second

international labor strategy involves the establishment of

enforceable minimum labor standards. Enforcing existing laws is

a first step in this process. In the United States, this means

using the provisions of the 1984 Trade and Tariff Act that

require countries to meet internationally recognized minimum

labor standards in order to gain duty-free access to the U.S.

market for their goods.

     In 1991 a group of U.S. activists filed a petition with the

United States Trade Representative (USTR) requesting that

Mexican exports be denied eligibility for duty-free treatment,

based on the violation of workers' rights at the Ford plant in

Cuautitl n, among other items. The USTR rejected the petition

out of hand, illegally failing to detail its reasons. "How do

you overlook the fact that Mexican workers are routinely fired,

beaten, disappeared, shot, and even killed for exercising their

right to democratic trade unionism?" asked petitioner and Ford

worker Tom Laney in a "reminder letter" to USTR Carla Hills.

"The only reason for their rejection I can think of is that it

would mess up their negotiations of NAFTA," he said.

     The trade office's rejection of the petition highlighted

the difficulty of relying on individual nations to enforce

international labor rights. The process as it is now structured

is hostage to the political priorities of the executive branch.

But labor rights activists argue that only by bringing cases,

filing suits, and demonstrating the system's ineffectiveness

will they be able to force the issue onto the national agenda.

And only by working closely with labor organizations around the

globe will activists be able to build trust, incorporate

concerns, and create an international movement to include labor

rights in international trade and investment agreements.

     This is an area ripe for U.S.-Mexican labor cooperation.

Such issues as occupational health and safety, the rights to

bargain collectively and to strike without being fired, and the

enforcement of child labor laws are issues on which both sides

should be able to agree. The debate over NAFTA provides a

platform for raising labor standards in policy circles, even if

NAFTA itself is not modified.

     Much trickier, however, and more important in the long run,

is the question of how to guarantee that workers are free to

join the union of their choice and democratically elect their

leaders. It may well be that working toward these goals means

that U.S. labor will have to weaken or sever its ties with

official Mexican unions. It almost certainly means providing

moral and material support to independent unions in Mexico and

applying strong political pressure in the United States.

     But U.S. unions must also strengthen their own positions

through grassroots organizing, democratize their own internal

structures, and learn to think on a consistently global plane.

"Corporations already make plans and build alliances as though

national borders were not even there," notes Joe Fahey,

president of Teamsters Local 912, which lost hundreds of jobs

when its Green Giant plant ran away to cheaper pastures in

Mexico. "Labor has a long way to go to catch up."



Resources



American Labor Education Center, 2000 P St. NW #300, Washington,

DC 20036. Phone: (202) 828-5170.



Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, 3120 W. Ashby, San

Antonio, TX 78228. Phone: (512) 732-8957.



International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund, PO Box

74, 100 Maryland Ave. NE, Washington, DC 20002. Phone: (202)

544-7198.



Dan La Botz, Mask of Democracy: Labor Suppression in Mexico

Today (Boston: South End Press, 1992).



Kevin J. Middlebrook, ed., Unions, Workers, and the State in

Mexico (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1991).



Kim Moody and Mary McGinn, Unions and Free Trade: Solidarity vs.

Competition (Detroit: Labor Notes, 1992).



North American Worker-to-Worker Network, 7435 Michigan Ave.,

Detroit, MI 48210. Phone: (313) 842-6262.

.