[asia-apec 556] ARTICLE: Free Trade's Revenge (part 2 of2)

[PAN Asia Pacific]

        The series of events which set that into motion may have had their
start instead on the outskirts of Mexico City, at Echlin's ITAPSA brake
factory.  There, throughout 1996 and 1997, workers at the ITAPSA plant
endeavored to join STIMAHCS, an independent metal- and steelworkers union.
That effort was thwarted last summer through the combined efforts of the
company, the government-backed "official" union federation and the local
police.
        While squelching independent unions in Mexico is nothing out of the
ordinary, the international response to it broke new ground.  Since
'96, STIMAHCS has been part of a NAFTA-zone alliance of unions with
contracts in Echlin's factories, including the Teamsters, the United
Electrical Workers (UE), the Paperworkers and UNITE in the U.S., and the
Canadian Steelworkers and Auto Workers.  This unique labor alliance sought
to mobilize the unions' combined membership at Echlin factories to
assist each other in bargaining and organizing.  "Our primary purpose,"
says Kingsley, "is to achieve a situation where we're all sitting down at
the table with the same company, and bargaining together."
        When ITAPSA workers began facing firings in June of 1996, unions in
the alliance responded.  The most active U.S. local in that campaign was
the one at the Irvine Friction plant.
        Local 1090 members signed a petition after the September
10 sham-election at ITAPSA, demanding that Echlin stop firing workers
and recognize STIMAHCS.  When Villela and other executive board
members presented it to Friction plant manager Mark Levy, "we could see in
his face how angry he was.  He told us we had drawn a line between the
union and the company," she recalls.
        The battles around both Friction and ITAPSA show a new level of
union resolve to reach across borders in an effort to deal with a common
employer in the era of free trade - even as they underscore
the difficulties of prevailing in such efforts. As the U.S. auto
industry relies increasingly on parts made in maquiladoras and other
Mexican plants, however, the increased U.S. focus on struggles such at
those at ITAPSA may just be beginning.

        NAFTA had only been in effect for a few months when Ruben Ruiz got
a job at ITAPSA in the summer of 1994.  As his new boss showed him around,
Ruiz noticed with apprehension that the machines were old
and poorly-maintained.  He had hardly begun his first shift when
workers around him began yelling out as a machine suddenly
malfunctioned, cutting four fingers from the hand of the man operating it.
        "I was very scared," he later remembered.  "I wanted to leave." But
he needed a job.
        Accidents were only part of the problem. Asbestos dust from
the brake parts manufactured at the plant coated machines and people
alike. Workers were given X-rays, Ruiz says, and later some would be fired.
        Echlin says its ITAPSA plant complies with Mexican health
and safety laws.  "Medical records indicate that since Echlin has owned
the ITAPSA plant there have been no work-related employee deaths," a
company statement says.
        It seemed obvious to Ruiz, however, that things were very
wrong. When his friend David Gonzalez asked him to come to a meeting to
talk about organizing an independent union, he went. As workers at
ITAPSA organized, they discovered that the plant already had a union --
Section 15 of the Confederation of Mexican Workers, Mexico's largest
labor federation.  But ITAPSA's 300 employees had never even seen the
union contract.
        The CTM agreement with Echlin is a "protection contract,"
insulating the company from labor unrest.  Jesus Campos Linas, the dean of
Mexican labor lawyers, says there are thousands of such contracts,
arrangements of mutual convenience between government-affiliated unions
such as the CTM, and foreign companies who want to take advantage of
Mexico's low wages.
        In the process of making their decision to challenge the protection
union system in their factory, three ITAPSA workers visited their Irvine
counterparts to find out about conditions in U.S. plants.
        Once ITAPSA managers knew about the independent union, the firings
began.  In early June, 1996, 16 workers were terminated.  Ruiz was called
into the office of Luis Espinoza de los Monteros, ITAPSA's human relations
director.  "He told me he had received a phone call from the leaders of the
Echlin group in the U.S., who told him that any worker organizing a new
union should be discharged without further question," Ruiz recounts.  "He
told me my name was on a list of those people, and I was discharged right
there and then."
        Despite the firings, the independent union chosen by ITAPSA
workers, STIMAHCS, filed a petition with the regional office of Mexico's
labor board.  A date was set for an election between STIMAHCS and the CTM
-- August 28, 1997.
        That morning, the fired workers went to the plant, where they were
joined by union supporters from the swing and grave shifts, anxious to
vote.  But the day before, at the CTM's insistence, the labor board had
postponed the election without notifying STIMAHCS.  Company supervisors,
looking at the off-shift workers assembled at the gate, got a very good
idea of who was supporting the independent union.
        "That afternoon the company began to fire more workers," says
Benedicto Martinez, general secretary of FAT, a Mexican federation of
independent unions.  He says that 50 workers were eventually terminated - a
claim Echlin disputes. "Allegations of retaliation and dismissal of 50
employees as a result of their allegiance to FAT are false," it says.
        The election was finally held 13 days later.  The evening before, a
member of the state judicial police drove a car filled with rifles into the
plant, unloading them openly.  The next morning, two busloads of strangers
entered the factory, armed with clubs and copper rods.   STIMAHCS tried to
get the election canceled.  But the labor board went ahead, even after
thugs roughed up one of the independent union's organizers.
        As workers came to vote, escorted by CTM functionaries, they passed
a gauntlet of the club-wielding strangers.  At the voting table, they were
asked to state aloud which union they favored, in front of management and
CTM representatives.  STIMAHCS observers couldn't even inspect the
credentials of the voters.  Many voted who were unknown to the factory's
workers.
        Predictably, STIMAHCS lost.
        "The UE had a staff organizer present during the [ITAPSA] election,
Sam Smucker, who was on leave in Mexico at the time," Kingsley notes.
"Together with the way in which the Alliance was formed, and its origins,
this all made the UE a target.  That's why we believe the closure of the
plant in Irvine is an act of vengeance and retaliation."
        Echlin's Paul Ryder wouldn't respond to the allegation that the
closure is revenge for workers' solidarity actions.
        After the Mexico City election, the trinational alliance of
unions filed a complaint over the violation of workers' rights at
Echlin, before the administrative body set up to enforce the North
American Agreement on Labor Cooperation. This treaty, commonly known as
NAFTA's labor side-agreement, allows workers, unions, and other
organizations to charge that either Mexico, Canada or the U.S. is failing
to enforce its laws guaranteeing workers' rights.
        The Echlin case alleges collusion by the Mexican government, the
company and the CTM to deny workers the right to representation by an
independent union.  The charges were heard before Irasema Garza, secretary
of the National Administrative Office, a division of the U.S. Department of
Labor, in Washington on March 23. A number of ITAPSA workers submitted
affidavits about the firings and intimidation of workers.  Ruiz himself
testified.
        And - just days after being told her own Friction plant was closing
-- Maria Villela also went to Washington to support the ITAPSA workers at
the NAO hearing,  "We don't regret what we did for a minute," she says.
"The company is responsible for a great injustice."
        Echlin never showed up to contest the testimony. The NAO has not
yet reported its conclusions.

        In hundreds of small factories scattered across the California
southland, job security is evaporating as it did at Friction.  They've
become cogs within large corporations seeking to cut labor costs to the
bone, whipsawing workers and shifting production from plant to plant,
country to country, as though borders and distance have vanished.
        For years, workers have agonized over the resulting devastation to
lives and communities.  In Irvine, Friction workers moved beyond
complaining to action.  Villela and her union argue that the closure
provides telling evidence that agreements like NAFTA have undermined their
jobs.
        To date, however, NAFTA's side agreement has been largely
ineffective in protecting them, or other workers who have tried similar
efforts.
        The problem workers face at Mexican plants like ITAPSA is not a
lack of laws to protect them.  Mexican labor law is "very advanced and
progressive," according to STIMAHCS attorney Eduardo Diaz.  "The Federal
Labor Law and Article 123 of the Constitution [cover] fundamental social
rights," he points out.
        But Mexican economic development policy depends on encouraging
foreign investment.  "Low wages are part of that policy, and every
maquiladora that opens its doors is born with a union that protects it,"
says STIMAHCS general secretary Jorge Robles.
        U.S. trade policy reinforces those priorities, using NAFTA and
bailout loans to create favorable conditions for U.S. investment.
Corporations like Echlin reap the benefits.  According to University of
California Professor Harley Shaiken, "the productivity of workers in
Mexican plants is on a par with plants in the U.S.  Investors get
first-world rates of productivity, and a workforce with a third-world
standard of living."
        It's not a surprise that NAFTA's labor side agreement has a hard
time overcoming these obstacles.  "We recognize there's not enough power in
the process to overcome the economic incentives of free trade," says Robin
Alexander, the UE's director for international solidarity.  "It's an
extremely weak tool, and the lack of penalties for violating union rights
is a gaping hole."  Nevertheless, the union alliance convinced the AFL-CIO,
the Canadian Labour Congress and a new union federation in Mexico, the
National Union of Workers, to join in a complaint against Echlin under the
side agreement.  It is the first time they've taken such action together.
        "Wherever I look, I see unions making efforts to figure out how to
deal with each other, and face the danger of transnational corporations,"
Alexander observes.  "Maybe there is no single answer, at least not yet.
But we won't find any answers at all without getting out there and looking
for them."
        Workers at Irvine's Friction plant were some of the first to do so.
They may have been forced to sacrifice their jobs, but they see themselves
as pioneers, reaching across international boundaries to find new ways of
enforcing labor rights.

        - 30 -

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david bacon - labornet email            david bacon
internet:       dbacon at igc.apc.org      1631 channing way
phone:          510.549.0291            berkeley, ca  94703
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