MAQUILADORAS: A PREVIEW OF NAFTA

Although foreign-owned maquiladora assembly plants were operating in the Mexico/US border region three decades before the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the maquiladora experience was a preview of what free trade held in store for the Mexican people.

What began as an exceptional program restricted to the border region, eventually became the core of the Mexican government's export-led economic development strategy. Under the program, foreign-owned companies are allowed to import component parts to be assembled by Mexican workers, and then to re-export the finished product almost duty-free.

Today, close to 4,000 maquiladora assembly plants employ an estimated 900,000 Mexican workers producing everything from auto parts to television sets to "docker" jeans. Though we tend to think of maquilas as low-tech sweat shops, many of the newer maquila factories employ state-of-the-art technology.

While 81 percent of Mexico's maquila plants are located in industrial parks along its 3,000 mile border with the US, increasingly multinational corporations are setting up maquilas in the interior of the country. Since the signing of NAFTA, there has also been an increase in foreign investment in garment production for export in southern Mexico. Many Mexicans fear that NAFTA could make the whole country into a maquila zone.

The names of the companies that have shifted or contracted parts of their production to the maquila zones are familiar to all of us - General Electric, Zenith, Honeywell, General Motors, Matsushita (Panasonic), Chrysler, Hallmark Cards, General Electric, Ford Motor, Panasonic, Sonyo, Mattel, Hasbro, Hyundai, Converse, etc.

Although some Canadian firms have invested in Mexico's maquilas, particularly in the autoparts sector, most maquilas are US- or Japan-owned. Recently, there has also been an increase in Korean investment in the Tijuana area. However, the fact that many US-based multinationals, such as General Motors and Ford, now produce in both Canada and Mexico means that our future is directly tied with the fate of Mexican workers and communities.

Moving Further South
Mexico is not the only country where you will find maquiladora export factories. There has also been a tremendous growth in foreign investment in Central America's free trade zones. Maquila factories in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua now employ over 200,000 workers, the vast majority of whom are young women who have migrated from rural communities that unable to compete with cheap agricultural imports.

Most maquilas in Central America are garment factories, though there are also some electronics assembly plants. Most large maquilas are Korean-, Taiwanese- or US-owned. They produce on a contract basis for the major US retailers and super labels that sell their products in the US and Canada.

"For every Canadian or American company that opens up in Mexico, three or four nationally-owned firms close down...." -- Angeles Lopez, organizer, Authentic Labour Front (FAT)

Some Canadian workers who have lost their jobs as a result of free trade and corporate restructuring view third world workers as the people who are "stealing our jobs". But how much do the people in Mexico and Central America really gain from maquila investment?

In Mexico, maquiladoras are part of a broader economic strategy to open up Mexico to foreign investment and imported consumer goods. While this strategy has created some new jobs, it has also caused the virtual destruction of domestic industries that couldn't compete with consumer goods produced on the global assembly line.

Even in the regions where maquilas are concentrated it is debatable whether the people gain more than they lose from unregulated foreign investment. Because maquila companies import almost all of their raw materials and technology, they do little to create secondary industries.

Since maquila companies pay almost no taxes, and the little they do goes to the central government, local governments are unable to provide minimal services like running water, electricity, paved roads, sanitation to the growing shanty towns inhabited by maquila workers and their families.

Certainly the thousands of people who migrate to the border region want an opportunity to work, even at low wages, but high turn-over rates show that maquila workers are not satisfied with their wages and working conditions.

The average salary for Mexican maquila workers is US$50 - 60 per week in a region where the cost of living is as high as on the US side of the border. In Guatemala the average wage is about US$25 per week.

"We can't pretend women and men are the same. It's the women who get up at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. to get the food prepared. It's the women who are being forced to show their soiled sanitary pad to prove they aren't pregnant. It's the women who have to fight off sexual advances. It's the women who have to keep the family together and are leading the fight for healthy communities." -- Betty Robles, Mexican Maquila Women Workers Network.

The growth of maquilas in Mexico and Central America has created a new, largely workforce with specific problems and needs. In Mexico, 70 percent of maquila workers are women, most of them between the ages of 16 and 24. In Guatemala 90 percent are women, some as young as 14 years of age. For most, the maquila is their first experience in the paid labour force.

Maquila managers use a number of rationalizations to explain their preference for young women workers - "manual dexterity", "patience", "cooperativeness", etc. - but clearly the use of female labour in the maquilas is primarily motivated by a desire to cut labour costs. Even in autoparts maquilas which employ more men, women are concentrated in the lowest paying, most labour intensive and least skilled jobs.

In the words of Carmen Valadez of Factor X in Tijuana, "a woman's rights are violated from the moment she goes looking for a job at a maquila plant." According to Valadez, most plants demand a doctor's certificate testifying that a woman isn't pregnant before she is considered for a job. To avoid paying maternity leave, some employers distribute "the pill" or provide monthly injections. Many require proof every three months that workers aren't pregnant.

Sexual harassment and violence are also common in maquilas. Central American workers complain of being beaten by Korean supervisors for not meeting production quotas. In the East-West Textiles maquila in Guatemala City, which does contract work for companies like Wal-Mart, women suspected of being pregnant have been beaten in the stomach by company security guards.

According to Valadez, the first successful attempt to organize an independent union in a maquila in Tijuana was provoked by the rape of a woman by the maquila manager.

Impact on Health and the Environment
Maquila work is intensive, repetitive and dangerous to workers' health, and particularly to women's health. In order to survive on inadequate salaries, women and men often work more than twelve hour days, with no additional overtime pay. Many women "choose" to work the night shift in order to be with their children during the day. As a result, accidents, illnesses and stress-related problems are common.

The unsafe use and disposal of toxic chemicals, many prohibited in the US and Canada, is a major cause of health and reproductive health problems. Women who regularly handle chemicals and solvents, often without any protective equipment, complain of headaches, upset stomachs, vomiting, skin rashes and heart palpitations. Chemicals are generally not labelled or are labelled only in English.

Between 1987 and 1993, there were 386 anencephalic births (babies born without brains) on the Mexican side of the border. In Matamoros, 54 children with multiple birth defects were born to women who had all worked for Mallory Capacitators where they were required to handle PCB's without protection. In Brownsville, Texas, across the border from Matamoros, 17 of the 28 mothers who conceived anencephalic children over a two-year period lived within a mile of the Rio Grande River.

According to Arturo Solis of the Centre for Border Studies and the Promotion of Human Rights in Reynosa, "approximately half of the 300 maquiladora assembly plants in the Tamaulipas border region are dumping toxic chemicals directly into the Rio Grande River, the primary source of drinking water for the people who live in the area."

"In Mexico we supposedly have the right to health, the right to organize a union, the right to housing, to educate our children. But none of these rights exist in practice." -- Cipriana Hererra, community organizer, Ciudad Juarez

Too often maquila workers are thought of as passive victims willing to work under any conditions. In fact, maquila workers have taken great risks in attempting to organize to improve their lives. However, most maquila organizing drives have been unsuccessful because of the absolute freedom of companies to violate workers' rights.

Workers who attempt to organize independent unions face mass firings, blacklisting of leaders, police violence, and the possibility their employer will close their plant and move elsewhere. In Guatemala, maquila organizers have received death threats, and at least one organizer has been shot in an attempted assassination.

In Mexico, most of the organized maquilas are represented by government-sanctioned unions. Collective agreements are negotiated without membership participation. In many cases, the terms of those agreements undercut rights and benefits guaranteed by law. Often workers aren't even aware they are represented by a union. Whenever leaders of these "official unions" have shown signs of independence, as in the case of Agapito Gonzalez in the state of Tamaulipas, they have become targets of government harassment.

"We see community organizing and women's organizing as key when organizing unions." -- Carmen Valadez, Factor X

While most unions have been slow to recognize the implications of the change in the gender of the workforce, the enormous obstacles blocking the organization of independent unions in the maquilas are forcing them to rethink their traditional organizing methods.

Women's and community groups have been more sensitive to the gender-specific problems and needs of the new workforce. Some of the most successful organizing work has been done by women focusing on community issues and issues that connect the community and the workplace - housing, child care, transportation, safe drinking water, health, environmental contamination.

In Ciudad Juarez, residents of a maquila neighbourhood pressured the government to shut down a Presto Locks plant which was dumping toxic waste into their community. In Tijuana, Factor X is training women maquila workers to become health promoters. In Nicaragua, the Movement of Working and Unemployed Women is offering leadership training workshops to women maquila workers.