Mexico
Workers Strike Against COVID Deaths in Border Factories
Living quarters of Maquiladora workers in Mexican barrio.
Workers' Forum is publishing below an article by David Bacon originally published by TruthOut on May 5.
***
In Washington, DC, President Trump is trying his best to
reopen closed meatpacking plants, as packinghouse workers catch the
COVID-19 virus and die. In Tijuana, Mexico, where workers are dying in
mostly U.S.-owned factories (known as maquiladoras) that produce and
export goods to the U.S., the Baja California state governor, a former
California Republican Party stalwart, is doing the same thing.
Jaime Bonilla Valdez rode into the governorship in 2018
on the coattails of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López
Obrador. And at first, as a leading member of López Obrador's
MORENA Party, he was a strong voice calling for the factories on the
border to suspend production.
López Obrador himself was criticized for not
acting rapidly enough against the pandemic. But in late March, in the
face of Mexico's rising COVID-19 death toll, he finally declared a
State of Health Emergency. Nonessential businesses were ordered to shut
their doors, and to continue paying workers' wages until April 30.
Bonilla's
Labor Secretary Sergio Martinez applied the federal government's rule
to the foreign-owned factories on the border, producing goods for the
U.S. market. Again, only essential businesses would be excepted.
When news spread that many factories were defying the
order to close, Bonilla condemned them. "The employers don't want to
stop earning money," he said at a news conference in mid-April. "They
are basically looking to sacrifice their employees." But now, a month
later, he is allowing many non-essential factories to reopen.
Explaining the about-face are two competing pressures.
At first, workers in the factories took action to shut them down, a
move widely supported in border cities. But as the owners themselves
resisted, they got the help of the U.S. government. The Trump
administration put enormous pressure on the Mexican government and
economy,
vulnerable because of its dependence on the U.S. market.
Now as the factories are opening again, the deaths are still rising.
Strikes Start in Mexicali
Although Baja California is much less densely populated
than other Mexican states, it's now third in the number of COVID-19
cases, with 1,660 people infected. Some 261 have died statewide, and
164 in Tijuana alone. That's more deaths than 131 in neighboring San
Diego, a much larger metropolis. Fifteen per cent of those with COVID-19
in Tijuana die, while only 3.5 per cent die in San Diego. As is true
everywhere, with the absence of extensive testing, no one really knows
how many are sick.
 "You can imagine how desperate we are, since we're so
poor, and without a law to protect us. Here, if you have no money, the
government won't enforce the law. We really have very good laws in
Mexico, but a very bad government." Veronica Vasquez spoke these words
in the middle of a dusty street in Tijuana. "Companies come to
Mexico to make money. They think they can do anything they want with us
because we're Mexicans. Well, it's our country, even if we're poor. Not
theirs."
In Tijuana, most who die are working-age. Since
one-tenth of the city's 2.1 million residents work in over 900
maquiladoras, and even more are dependent on those factory jobs, the
spread of the virus among maquiladora workers is very threatening.
Alarm grew when two workers died in early April at
Plantronics, where 3,300 employees make phone headsets. Schneider
Electric closed when one worker died and 11 more got sick. Skyworks, a
manufacturer of parts for communications equipment with 5,500 workers,
admitted that some had been infected.
In the growing climate of fear, workers began to stop
work. In Mexicali, Baja California's state capital, workers struck on
April 9 at three U.S.-owned factories: Eaton, Spectrum and LG.
Protesters said the companies were forcing people to come to work under
threat of being permanently fired, refusing to pay the
government-mandated wages
and failing to provide masks to workers. The factories were forced to
close by the state government.
Work then stopped at three more factories -- Jonathan,
SL and MTS. There, the companies offered bonuses of 20-40 per cent if
workers would stay on the job, but employees rejected the offer. One
striker, Daniel, told a reporter for the Mexican newspaper La Jornada,
"We want health -- we don't want money, or bonuses or even double
pay. We just want them to comply with the presidential order that
nonessential factories close, and to pay us our full salary." Jonathan
makes metal rails for machine guns and tanks for U.S. companies.
Workers denied company claims that they made "essential"
telecommunications equipment, a common claim by factories that want to
stay
open.
The Organization of the Workers and Peoples, a radical
group among maquiladora workers in Baja California, reported a week of
work stoppages at Skyworks, and a strike at Gulfstream on April 10. At
Honeywell Aerospace, workers began shutting down production on April 6.
"The company then laid off 100 people without pay, and fired
four of them," said Mexicali worker/activist Jesus Casillas. Honeywell
closed for a week, and then reopened.
As the strikes progressed, workers reported the death of
two people in Clover Wireless's two plants that repair cellphones. They
were closed for one shift, and then started up again. Finally, on April
14, a general strike was called by Mexicali maquiladora workers, and
supported by the state chapter of the New Labor Center, a union
federation
organized by the Mexican Electrical Workers Union.
The Factories Don't Actually Close
Companies that said they were closing never really did,
workers charged. "They'd close the front door and put a chain on,"
Casillas explained. "Then they bring workers in through the back door.
They'd call the workers down to the factory, and would tell them that
if they didn't go back to work, they'd lose their jobs permanently."
Elsewhere on the border, workers also complain about
being forced to work. Company scofflaws even included breweries. In the
rest of Mexico, beer began to disappear from store shelves as a result
of López Obrador's order, shuttering breweries because alcohol
production was not deemed "essential." Modelo and Heineken, two huge
producers, complied. Constellation Brands' two enormous breweries in
Coahuila, which make Corona and Modelo for the U.S. market, did not.
On May Day, a Facebook post even showed workers at the
Piedras Negras glass plant that makes the bottles for Constellation
Brands lined up without masks. A message from a worker, Alejandro
Lopez, charges, "We ask for masks and they deny us, like they do with
[sanitizing] gel, which they only give us at the [brewery] entrance,
and that's
it." The response posted by the plant human relations director, Sofia
Bucio, says the company does everything required, and then goes on to
berate the worker: "We didn't go take you out of your house and force
you to work with us, right? If you don't like the measures IVC [the
glass company] is taking, the doors were wide open to let you in
when you came here, and they're the same to let you out."
In border cities across the Rio Grande from Texas, other
factories that wanted to stay open said they'd let workers worried
about the virus stay home, but only at 50 per cent of their normal
wages. "People can't possibly live on that," charged Julia
Quiñones, director of the Border Women Workers Committee. Since
López Obrador ordered a
raise a year ago, the minimum wage on the border has been 185.56 pesos
($7.63) per day. Fifty percent of that, in Nuevo Laredo, would barely
buy a gallon of milk (80 pesos).
"There's no other work the women can do in town,"
Quiñones explained. "In the past, some workers crossed the
border to earn extra money by donating blood. But the border is now
closed, even for those that have visas. They can't sell things in the
street because of the lockdown. The only option is to work."
One worker told her, "It is better to work at 100 per
cent, even if we're risking our lives, than to be at home with 50 per
cent."
Meanwhile, work stoppages spread to other border cities,
as the death toll rose. Lear Corporation, which employs 24,000 people
making car seats in Ciudad Juárez, closed its 12 plants there on
April 1. Lear had more COVID-19 fatalities than any company on the
border. It won't cite a number, and says it only learned of the first
death on April
3. By the end of April, however, 16 Lear workers were dead from the
virus, 13 from its Rio Bravo factory alone.
As other plants continued operations despite a death
toll, strikes broke out. On April 17, workers struck at six
maquiladoras, demanding that the companies stop operations and pay
workers the government-mandated wages. Twenty people in the city had
died by then, including two workers at Regal Beloit (a coffin
manufacturer), and two
workers at Syncreon, according to protesters. At Honeywell, 70 strikers
said the company hadn't provided masks, and had forced people with
hypertension and diabetes to show up for work.
The Electrolux plant stopped work on April 24 after two
workers, Gregoria González and Sandra Perea, died. Two weeks
earlier, workers there had protested the lack of health protection.
When workers finally stopped working, the company locked them inside
and later fired 20. One told journalist Kau Sirenio, "The company
wouldn't tell us
anything though we all knew that we were working at the risk of getting
infected. They waited until two died before they closed, and fired
those who protested the lack of safe conditions. They still say their
operation is essential, but you can see how little they care about the
lives of the workers."
In Juárez, the mayor closed the city's
restaurants but allowed the maquiladoras to keep running. When workers
at TPI Composites began their protest, the city police were even called
out against them. Nevertheless, in Juárez and other border
cities throughout April, the pressure of workers did succeed often in
forcing the government to demand
compliance from the companies.
The U.S. Intervenes
At the end of April, the U.S. government intervened on
behalf of the owners of the stalled plants. The Trump administration is
set on protecting the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement set to
go into effect on July 1. While the agreement has theoretical
protections for worker health and safety, there is no expectation that
it would be
invoked to ensure that plants remain shut until the COVID-19 danger
recedes. Instead, its purpose is to protect the chains of supply and
investment between Mexico and the U.S., especially involving factories
on the border.
López Obrador's order classified as "essential"
only companies directly involved in critical industries such as health
care, food production or energy, and excluded companies that supply
materials to factories in those industries. But from the beginning,
many maquiladoras claimed they were "essential" anyway because they
supplied other
factories in the U.S. Luis Hernandez, an executive at a Tijuana
exporter association, admitted, "Companies have wanted to use the
‘essential' classifications of the U.S."
The military-industrial complex has a growing stake in
border factories, which exported $1.3 billion in aerospace and armament
products to the U.S. in 2004, climbing to $9.6 billion last year. To
defend that huge stake, Luis Lizcano, general director of the Mexican
Federation of Aerospace Industries, told the Mexican government it had
to give
Mexico's defense industry the "essential" status it enjoys in the U.S.
and Canada.
Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and
Sustainment Ellen Lord announced she was meeting Mexican Foreign
Minister Marcelo Ebrard to urge him to let U.S. defense corporations
restart production in their maquiladoras. "Mexico right now is somewhat
problematical for us, but we're working through our embassy," she said.
She later announced her visit had been successful.
Using the language of the Trump administration, U.S.
Ambassador Christopher Landau played down the risk to workers. "There
is risk everywhere but we don't all stay at home out of fear that we're
going to crash our cars," he said in a tweet. "Economic destruction
also threatens health.... On both sides of the border, investment =
employment
= prosperity."
Finally, on April 28, Baja Governor Bonilla bowed to the
pressure and ordered the reopening of 40 "closed" maquiladoras.
According to Secretary of Economic Development Mario Escobedo Carignan,
they are now considered part of the supply chain for essential
products. "We're not in the business of trying to suspend your
operations," he
told owners, "but to work with you to keep creating jobs and generating
wealth in this state."
Given that many "closed" factories in fact were
operating already, Julia Quiñones said bitterly, "This is what
always happens here on the border. The companies break the law, and
then the law is changed to make it all legal." And Mexico's federal
government itself has begun to back down as well, announcing three days
after a U.S. request
that it will allow the many enormous auto plants in Mexico to restart
their assembly lines once automakers restart them north of the border.
The announcements didn't indicate that Mexico had
flattened the coronavirus infection curve or that the factories were
now safe. In one 24-hour period, from April 29 to 30, the number of
cases per million people went from 138 to 149. A million workers labour
in over 3,000 factories on the border. The virus has already led to
numerous deaths
among them, and if all factories resume production while it still
rages, the death toll will surely rise.
Luis Hernández Navarro, editor at Mexico's
left-wing daily, La Jornada (no relation to the Tijuana businessman),
reminded his readers that the catastrophic spread of the virus in Italy
was caused by the continued operation of factories in Lombardy until it
was too late.
"The maquiladora industry has never cared about the
health of its operators, just its profits," he wrote recently. "Their
production lines must not stop, and in the best colonial tradition,
Uncle Sam has pressured Mexico to keep the assemblers operating . The
obstinacy of the maquiladoras makes it likely that the Italian case
will be repeated
here."
This article was published in
Number 33 - May 12, 2020
Article Link:
Mexico: Workers Strike Against COVID Deaths in Border Factories
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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