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UFTers get grim view of global trade at Mexican border
Apr 13, 2006 12:20 PM
A group of UFTers is helping to bring attention to the desperate living conditions of workers in factories operating under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) near the U.S.-Mexico border.
The nine UFTers recently returned from a border-witness delegation, which toured polluted slums where the workers live. The delegation, organized by the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition in late February, toured slums in Reynosa and Matamoros — across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas — and helped to patch up a one-room schoolhouse in a fishing community hit by Hurricane Katrina.
The slums, polluted by by-products from the very factories in which the workers are employed, have materialized from crowds of makeshift shacks. They have been built by workers in the factories and by people who have migrated from south and central Mexico in search of factory jobs that proliferated after the passage of NAFTA. Workers are paid as little as 89 cents an hour.
“Children start working as young as 16,” said Linda Vila-Passione, a UFT violence prevention facilitator, who co-led the delegation. To send a child to school for one year costs the equivalent of $200 in the towns, so most parents send their kids to work when they get old enough so they can help support the family’s income, she said.
“Maytag, Whirlpool — a lot of companies have gone down for cheaper labor,” Vila-Passione noted. And while Americans generally expect management in their factories to negotiate and bargain with the labor force, she said, “down there, there’s no such thing.”
Typically in the border factories, workers are placed on short work schedules and then are shifted from one factory site to another, which prevents them from gaining any kind of seniority, Vila-Passione said. “They’ll spend six weeks at one site, six weeks at another site — and kind of like teachers, right before they get tenure, where they would be considered a permanent employee, they’re let go.”
The state Labor-Religion Coalition works to eradicate poverty and to raise ethical standards for the treatment of workers, including advocating that a living wage be paid to all workers. It leads labor groups and students on three border-witness delegations each year — in February, April and October — to raise awareness about the effect of so-called “free trade” on the Mexican economy.
The latest such treaty — the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) — took effect March 1 amid ongoing protests, particularly in Costa Rica, after having narrowly passed Congress last summer. An implementation date remains undetermined for the five countries that are party to the agreement, which besides Costa Rica include Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
Other UFTers who joined the delegation to Mexico were: Cassandra Carlo, educational liaison, Manhattan; Evelyn DeJesus, District 2 representative; Julia DeVita, teacher at PS 152 in Queens; Virginia Hill, Teacher Center speech coordinator; Sally Morales, chapter leader at PS 92 in the Bronx; Nanette Rosario-Sanchez, chapter leader at PS 214 in the Bronx; Hector Ruiz, para coordinator for the Bronx; Brianne Salzman, speech therapist at PS 217 in Brooklyn; and Awilda Vargas, chapter leader at PS 179 in the Bronx.
