OK, I didn’t want to hijack the other NAFTA thread with this but it’s a question that occured to me whilst reading it.
Many people have claimed that NAFTA hurts individuals (regardless of whether it hurts or helps society as a whole) by placing a means for corporations to move their operations to locations with a cheaper labor force. This may or may not be true. I’d suspect that it’s certainly easy enough to come up with specific examples of such.
My question is this:
If this is the case then why are the workers in those areas that are being ‘exploited’ (read: paid a lower wage for their work than their US compatriots) not unionizing?
Or it’s flip:
Why are the major labor unions in the United States not going down to Mexico and putting a full court press on the workers to unionize?
I would think that this would be my (if I were a union chief) first response to NAFTA and it’s apparent consequences for worker exploitation.
And I don’t think it’s because it would be dangerous to do so in Mexico. It was dangerous as hell in the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century…yet the unions survived and thrived.
So why don’t I hear anything about any attempts to unionize the workers of Mexico? Couldn’t the GWU or the AFL-CIO or the Teamsters get down there and get busy?
Mandatory Disclaimer
Never belonged to a union.
Never had the opportunity.
Once passed up for an entry level job for the AFL-CIO. They said I didn’t care enough. They were probably right.
Mrs Chance was forced to join once. As a teamster. She was a tour guide.
Harvard is a small town; this is a big economic blow, although they’re being very brave about it. “We’ll get by…” etc.
Motorola tried everything to cut production costs, but inevitably it was the labor cost that did 'em in. So all the white collar boys (and girls) are keeping their jobs, but all the grunt work from now on will be done by Mexicans.
You want to know why the Chihuahuan Mexicans aren’t organizing? Geez, they’re so happy to have the income I doubt if they’d even know what you’re talking about. What, “organize”? Jeopardize this job? No way, man.
Not to mention the fact that, recent elections notwithstanding, they live in a Third World country that’s just barely limping along, government-wise.
And why the U.S. unions aren’t down there organizing? Well, first they’d have to have permission from the Mexican government to do so, wouldn’t you think? Do you think Sr. Fox is going to let a lot of gringo rabble-rousers into his country so they can get all the honest hard-working people all worked up about labor troubles in the big bad Estados Unidos, and possibly jeopardize the big Mexican investments of corporations like Motorola? I don’t think so.
Disclaimer: Married to long-time, if reluctant, member of Letter Carriers union. Unions may drive you crazy sometimes, but just occasionally–they rock.
Thanks for the reply O mighty DDG. I thought this was going to die a horrible death.
FTR I think that a place like Mexico is exactly where unions are needed most. Increasing quality of life is necessary if Mexico is ever going to be more than a third world state.
This is precisely the situation that confronted union organizers in the northeast in the 1870s and the south in the 1950s. It’s clearly a case of short term gain versus long term benefit. By protecting their jobs now they damage their ability to make longer strides in the future.
It’s not a matter of permission. If you see injustice then shouldn’t a group dedicated to the betterment of the working people do what they can to ameliorate it? Unions were certainly illegal in the United States in the early 19th century but existed even so. One of the great victories for the early labor movement was simply getting themselves the legal right to exist.
And it’s not about people in Mexico getting worked up over labor displacement in the United States. It’s about getting a decent living wage for the Mexican workers out of the companies that move to Mexico as a result of the cheaper labor costs.
Yeah, I agree with you that it would be a Nice Thing if all those Mexicans could organize and we could all link arms, Yankees and Mexes together and march off into the sunset singing the Internationale. But it ain’t gonna happen, because it IS a matter of permission. Mexico is a foreign country, a sovereign nation, with its own set of rules and laws and customs, and it’s considered tacky, at the very least, for citizens of other sovereign nations to stroll in and start telling them what they’re doing wrong.
How would we feel if, say, somebody from Britain came over and started shooting off his mouth about national health care? And I don’t mean just speechifying from a soapbox or a morning TV show, I mean going out into the highways and byways and preaching the Gospel of national health care to just plain folks like my mom and dad out here in Boondocks, Illinois, so they get all upset. “Who’s he think he is, Oh, right, what they have over there works so well that they want everybody to have it? What’s in it for him? Why doesn’t he have a real job? He’s asking us all to drop our Blue Cross coverage and join together to boycott HMOs until we get national health care? Uh-huh. Fine for him, he’s got national health insurance back home in Merrie England…”
Wouldn’t play in Peoria, no sir. And I don’t think it’d play in Puebla, either.
And I think Mexico has bigger problems to solve before they ever manage to drag themselves out of the Third World pit. Really basic things like clean drinking water, decent sewage treatment, immunization programs, hospitals that actually function as hospitals, ROADS for heaven’s sake, schools, the problem of Mexicans who don’t wanna stay in Mexico, who’d rather take their chances with an illegal border crossing and go wash dishes in L.A. I think “labor relations” are probably way, way down the list, along with “Internet access”.