From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: MM: Labor Suppression in Mexico
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 09:15:09 GMT

[Taken from the November 1992 Multinational Monitor.  Subscription info below]

Mask of Democracy:
Labor Suppression in Mexico Today
By Dan La Botz
Boston: South End Press, 1992
190 pages

ON AUGUST 12, President Bush, Mexican President Salinas and Canadian
Prime Minister Mulroney announced the conclusion of negotiations over
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to encompass Canada,
Mexico and the United States.  In early October, presidential
candidate Bill Clinton expressed reserved support for NAFTA, yet
stipulated that he will only endorse an agreement that guarantees
protection of U.S. jobs.  In the United States, much of the debate over
the agreement has focused on NAFTA's threat to U.S. workers.  Economists
and labor leaders argue that the current version of NAFTA will
inevitably result in an enormous loss of U.S. jobs as corporations
relocate to Mexico to take advantage of lower wages and lax enforcement
of standards.  Both the AFL-CIO and the Washington, D.C.-based Economic
Policy Institute estimate that approximately 500,000 U.S. workers will
lose their jobs to lower-paid Mexican workers if the agreement goes
through.

Less frequently discussed north of the U.S./Mexican border are the
grave implications of this agreement for Mexican workers.  Over the past
20 years, multinational corporations have relocated to Mexico to take
advantage of the country's maquiladora system, which provides
non-Mexican corporations incentives to export into the United States.
Wages, as well as environmental and labor standards, are notoriously
low in the maquilas.  In light of the proposed agreement which will
expand the maquila system throughout the country, Dan La Botz's
disturbing book on labor rights in Mexico becomes all the more urgent.

Mask of Democracy:  Labor Suppression in Mexico Today examines the
history of the labor movement in Mexico, focusing on the country's legal
system which sanctions and promotes labor repression and on the effects
of privatization and export-driven development on Mexican workers and
unions.

La Botz outlines the working and living conditions faced by Mexicans
today.  Wages are half of what they were 10 years ago; the unemployment
rate hovers at 25 to 30 percent, not accounting for the underemployed;
safety and health conditions, already low, are deteriorating.  Working
conditions are tougher for Mexican women who work both in the formal
economy and in the informal sector as street vendors, domestic workers
or home workers and earn even lower wages than their male counterparts.
Few have access to daycare, severe sexual harassment in the workplace is
rampant and women's role in the labor movement is severely restricted.
Mask of Democracy also notes that millions of Mexican children work
illegally, often in hazardous jobs.

La Botz argues that employers, the corrupt leadership of "official
unions" and the repressive Mexican government use brutal methods to
squash attempts by workers to protest these conditions or advocate for
change.  "Employers and union officials have ... threatened, beaten,
kidnapped or even murdered labor activists.  Those responsible for the
violence are seldom brought to justice.  The government repeatedly and
continually uses massive police and military force to keep workers and
unions under the control of [Salinas's ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party] the PRI," he writes.

The book makes the case that the Mexican legal system is designed to
deny workers' rights.  La Botz writes, "The Mexican institutions which
deal with labor are organized to ensure control by the official party
and its unions, in an embrace that strangles all initiative or freedom.
Mexican labor law and the institutions which administer it
systematically deny workers their fundamental rights to free
association, to labor union organization, to internal union democracy,
and to carry out their own programs."

Most union members have been forced to join unions affiliated with the
PRI, many as a condition of employment.  Both the Boards of
Conciliation and Arbitration and the Secretary of Labor regularly refuse
to grant labor union charters to independent unions, with the exception
of "white," or company-controlled, unions, which are routinely
chartered.  State labor authorities routinely deny workers the right
to strike by declaring their strikes illegal or nonexistent on the
basis of technicalities.  Rank-and-file union members have little or no
control over union policies or leadership--dissident workers can be
expelled from the union by an exclusion clause which also allows
employers to fire them.

La Botz examines several private sector strikes and concludes that the
Salinas administration's push toward privatization and free trade pose
significant threats to Mexican labor.  "[Workers] demanding their
rights be respected in the private sector," he writes, "are an even
greater detriment to Mexico's 'modernization' program based on a
cheap-wage force and production for export than are public sector
workers, and are therefore at greater risk."  Workers at the Modelo
Brewery, the Tornel Rubber Company and Ford Motor Company were all
deprived of basic labor rights including the right to bargain
collectively and to strike.  Workers at all three companies met with
physical and legal abrogations of their rights when they attempted to
organize.

Perhaps most significant in light of the move toward NAFTA is La Botz's
examination of the maquiladora system as Mexico's chosen model of
development.  Wages have plunged in the maquilas, from an average U.S.
$1.38 per hour in 1982 to an estimated $.51 per hour in 1991.  Exposure
to toxics and environmental contamination along the U.S./Mexico border
where the maquilas are located pose grave threats to workers' health.
Workers in the maquilas receive little help from their unions, the
majority of which are affiliated with the PRI.

Mask of Democracy is a thorough and well-researched examination of the
origin and current state of labor repression in Mexico, based on
compelling interviews with Mexican workers and activists.  It is
particularly vital reading at a time when free trade is being strongly
advocated by industrialized nations.  The book is written with a deep
understanding of what the corporate push for global economic integration
will mean for labor standards and the lives of workers throughout the
world.  La Botz writes, "Mexican workers and their labor movement have
already felt the impact of freeing trade for an entire decade.  As they
have been required to shape themselves into a cheap labor force with no
rights, in order to make themselves more appealing to potential
investors, they have lost their human dignity inch by inch."

-- Holley Knaus

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