From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: LABOR: ACTIVISTS TOUR MEXICAN BORDER
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 03:34:05 GMT

/** carnet.mexnews: 121.0 **/
** Topic: LABOR ACTIVISTS TOUR BORDER **
** Written 10:31 am  Jul 24, 1992 by tlaney in cdp:carnet.mexnews **
border tour
t. laney

"It makes me ashamed of my country.  I saw better living 
conditions in Vietnam."

Former paratrooper Dwight Watson did a tour of Vietnam with the 
101st Airborne so he is no stranger to Third World poverty.  But 
after staying with a family in one of Juarez, Mexico's poorest 
colonias and then witnessing Mexican farmworkers mid night 
border crossings to wait for El Paso's hiring growers, he 
wondered aloud how ANY civilized nation can treat people so 
poorly.

You'd think we were at war with the Mexican working class.

Watson is a member of UAW Local 879's MEXUSCAN Solidarity 
Committee and he spent nearly two weeks on a driving tour of the 
border organized by his Local Union and Mary McGinn of Labor 
Notes.  

Taking advantage of a temporary layoff at the St. Paul Ford 
plant, Local 879 rented a terrific Ford van and encouraged 
members to join the tour.  Watson was joined by myself and Jose' 
Quintana from the Local; Bill McGaughey, Mpls., author of "Free 
Trade: Do We Just Say No?"; Jack Hedrick, Vice President, UAW 
Local 249, Kansas City; Tom Bogden, reporter, Kansas City; Mary 
McGinn and Mary Hollens, Labor Notes; Ben Watanabe, Union 
President, Tokyo; Brad Markell, UAW Region 1A, Detroit; and, 
Bruce Allen, GM Council, Canadian Auto Workers  

Over the past two years, Local 879 has been instrumental in 
organizing Solidarity with Mexican Ford workers in Cuautitlan 
near Mexico City.  This work has created a "sister Local" 
relationship between 879 and the Cuautitlan Ford Workers 
Democratic Union to the consternation of Ford Motor Company.                            
Our Local's action on Free Trade includes both the legislative 
approach and Solidarity work.  Solidarity is emphasized because 
of the lack of confidence most of us have in our politicians and 
the fact that even the best legislation is worthless without 
real unions to enforce it.

A week ago, the National UAW ordered us to stop our Mexican 
Solidarity work.

The border tour was designed to acquaint us with conditions in 
the border maquiladora plants, make connections with labor 
organizers, and assess the organizing support performance of the 
national UAW and AFL-CIO.  An important focus of the visit were 
meetings with Base Christian Community (BCC) organizers in 
Juarez.

We met with La Mujer Obrera,/The Woman Worker in El Paso where 
organizer Pam Galpern arranged discussions and visits on both 
sides of the border.  La Mujer Obrera could be a model for Local 
Union organization but gets no help from the official unions in 
El Paso or the U.S.  A former UAW plant from Anderson, Indiana- 
Essex Wire - showed up on a visit to the Juarez maquilas as well 
as our friends from FMC.  We met a Mexican priest who organizes 
with BCC's when he's not working on an assembly line for $5 a day 
and another BCC priest who told us that the Church is assigning 
more conservative bishops in Mexico as openings develop.  We saw 
highly skilled seamstresses assembling the latest in fashions in 
19th century caliber sweatshops in El Paso.  The women are paid 
minimum wage.

Back in Juarez, a GM worker told us how he was fired along with 
29 others for nominating a fellow worker for delegate (shop 
steward).

Carlos Merentes, Director, Border Agricultural Workers Union, 
spent a day with us detailing the fight to gain recognition of  
its union, its battles for workers' and unemployment 
compensation, housing, fair pay, health care and protection 
against pesticides.  In the middle of the night, Carlos and 
Sin Fronteras organizer Sandy New take us to the border to meet 
hundreds of farmworkers crossing to El Paso hoping to be hired in 
early morning when the growers' buses show up to take some of 
them to the fields.  The workers sleep on the sidewalks and 
medians in groups so they won't be beaten up during their wait.

La Mujer Obrera and the Border Workers Union are renewing real 
labor organizing by assembling workers' power to collectively 
bargain.  "We used to have to call strikes," Marentes says, "but 
now, the workers strike and call us."  

Outside of the "official" U.S. labor movement's collective 
begging program, these unions have begun a real workers' movement 
where being pro-union means being pro-worker. Absolutely.

In San Antonio, we met with the Texas Committee on Responsible 
Investment (CRI); Sister Susan Mika, Chair,Coalition for Justice 
in the Maquiladoras (CJM) and Mary Berwick, Texas Conference of 
Churches;  Antonio Cabral, President Local 3320 AFGE; and Fuerza 
Unida, a rank and file union of former Levi workers who are 
organzing the Levi's boycott.

We attended the weekly union meeting of Fuerza Unida (Women 
United) where the 110 degree temperature didn't hamper turnout or 
enthusiasm for upcoming demos against Levis.

In Brownsville/Matamoros we met Ed Krueger, American Friends 
Service Committee Border Project and women from the Comite 
Fronteriza Obrera who explained their organizing work in the 
Matamoras maquiladoras and showed us around one of the citie's 
newest colonias. 

The next day Domingo Gonzalez, Board member CJM, who has worked 
on the border for 15 years gave us a tour of the maquiladoras, 
demonstrated the environmental destruction caused by the maquila 
industries and told of us his research linking pollution to birth 
defects on both sides of the border. 

WE later met with Director Ray Gill and Board members of the 
South Texas Project and United Farm Workers in San Juan, Texas.  
Here, organizers from the UFW and Texas Civil Rights Project 
detailed their work on housing and organic farming.  The UAW and 
Teamsters 22 years ago, provided $10,000 each to afford the UFW 
Local purchase of land for their Union Hall and farm.  Today, the 
Union needs $5000 to purchase a used tractor for its farm 
expansion.

This trip introduced us to very committed people who are doing  
difficult organizing work that benefits all of us.  But for the 
most part, they have no funding or support from organized Labor.  
In fact, we learned that some of their efforts meet with 
interference from Big Labor and it was hard for us to understand 
why since real union organization on both sides of the border are 
basic to the security of Big Labor's members.                            

My Union, the UAW for instance just spent 100's of thousands of 
dollars on its triennial convention and coronation parties in San 
Diego but continues to ignore the deplorable abuse of Mexican  
workers that is promoted in large part by the very corporations 
that the UAW calls its "partners".  In more than two years of 
begging the UAW to provide assistance to democratic Mexican 
unionists, the UAW has only come up with $15,000 for a recent 
strike support in Matamoros.  $15,000 is about one-tenth of what 
the UAW spent on one party at its convention.


Union and AFL-CIO members should begin to ask their own 
organizations why they are sitting this fight out.  

And, maybe we should ask ourselves whether our pickets and 
protests might be better directed at the U.S.'s Big Labor Barons 
whose love affair with the transnational corporate hog-troughers 
needs to end now.

Like my union brother Dwight Watson, I am ashamed of what my 
country is doing to Mexico.  I am also ashamed of what my Union 
is not doing to assist people who are asking for our help.

Its time to demand that our Unions start acting like Unions 
again.

A detailed report on this trip is being prepared and will be 
available from Local 879 in about one month.  Write us:  Tom 
Laney, Recording Secretary, UAW Local 879, 2191 Ford Parkway, St. 
Paul, 55116; or, Call: (612)699-4246.
** End of text from cdp:carnet.mexnews **

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