Free Trade Endangers the Rule of Law on the Border

By David Bacon, Free Press Contributor

Mexican government policies encouraging foreign investment have undermined the traditional rights of Mexican workers, as well as the legal system which historically protected them, warn both U.S. and Mexican labor advocates.

According to University of California professor Harley Shaiken, "the productivity of maquiladoras [border plants] rivals plants in the U.S., but they combine first world quality with third world wages, right next to the U.S. market. While that's a very powerful incentive to companies to build factories, the Mexican government has created an investment climate which depends on a vast number of low wage-earners."

Key to maintaining low wages is a system of company-friendly unions, encouraged by the government, which sign labor contracts criticized by Mexican labor activists as "protection agreements." Workers often don't even know they have a union, since there are no meetings, and union officials do little to defend workers on the job.

Jesus Campos Linas, dean of Mexican labor lawyers, says there are thousands of such contracts in Mexico. "The government basically uses these labor federations to get votes during elections," Campos says. "Companies make hefty regular payments to union leaders under these contracts, and in return get labor peace."

For two years, workers at one such factory in Tijuana, the Han Young plant, which contracts the production of truck chassis for the huge Hyundai Corporation, have been challenging this system. They organized an independent union, and have been on strike for over a year, the first such strike in the history of the maquiladoras. Their union proposes to raise maquiladora wages from the present 50-60 pesos daily average to 100 pesos.

Pedro Martinez, director of the state chapter of the Mexican Employers Council (COPARMEX) and Jose Calleros Rivera, head of the Maquiladora Industry Association, called the strike a threat to investment all along the border in a May 5 press conference. They warned that independent unions could spread to other factories on the border in the wake of a victory at Han Young.

In a series of legal decisions, both Baja California state and Mexican federal courts have ruled that strikers are only exercising their rights under article 123 of the Mexican constitution, and the country's federal labor law. Nevertheless, for over a year city and state police, under the control of pro-investment government authorities, have tried continuously to suppress the strike and arrest its leaders.

Courts have held those efforts violate the law. On April 6, the First Collegial Court of the Fifteenth District, the highest judicial authority in Baja California Norte, ruled that actions taken by police were illegal. "The justice system of the republic protects [the independent union] against acts of the authorities," the court said, granting the strike legal status.

Yet repression of the strike and its leaders continues as though the courts have no authority. The situation has been called a growing political crisis by a group of federal senators who conducted an investigation in May. Speaking for the group, Sen. Rosa Albina Garabito declared that "violations of the rule of law by actions of the authorities themselves betrays an inadmissible contempt which we cannot tolerate ... We demand an immediate and definitive end to the repression."

Raul Ramirez, member of the Baja California Academy of Human Rights, warned that "the state is in danger of violating the Constitution and the Federal Labor Law...as it succumbs to the temptation to use force."

The North American Free Trade Agreement, while encouraging foreign investment, has had no effect in protecting workers' rights, according to its critics.

Over 15 complaints have been made under the treaty's labor side-agreement, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation. Hearings on these complaints have consistently found that Mexican labor law is not being enforced along the border.

A year ago, two such decisions were issued by Irasema Garza, hearing officer for the National Administrative Office, in the Han Young case. One held that the government allowed violations of normal legal procedures by the Tijuana labor board, intended to deny the independent union the right to represent workers. The other decision held that occupational safety and health laws weren't being enforced.

In the last year, proposals were made by the Mexican Federal government, as well as the more conservative National Action Party that rules Tijuana and Baja California, that Mexican worker protection law be further weakened.

Congressman David Bonior, one of NAFTA's severest critics, used the Han Young strike to raise enough opposition in Congress to defeat fast-track legislation requested by the Clinton administration in 1997 to negotiate an expansion of NAFTA. Bonior took a busload of congressmen to the border to give them a hands-on idea of the treaty's impact.

"The NAFTA process is completely inadequate to deal with the latent violations of workers' rights," he said recently. The Han Young case "shows it's virtually impossible to form independent unions in the maquiladora border area in Mexico. We need to fix NAFTA so that workers in the U.S., Mexico and Canada are protected as much as intellectual property rights."

During a meeting with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo on his recent visit to California, state AFL-CIO executive secretary-treasurer Art Pulaski also raised concerns about the Han Young strike and its significance. "Union members and working families are watching events there closely," he said later, "because in the expansion of the global economy, workers and their rights must be protected by every nation."

Illustration by Nina Frenkel