Mexican workers strike for paid home leave as Covid-19 crisis continues
Kent Paterson/The Digie Zone
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| Juarez skyline: Danielmm88/Wikimedia |
Wildcat strikes
involving hundreds if not thousands of workers erupted in the mainly
foreign owned assembly plants (maquiladoras) of northern Mexico in recent
days.
Alarmed by sick
co-workers, including some of whom had reportedly succumbed to the
health effects of the #COVID-19 coronavirus, workers demanded that, in
accordance with a federal decree ordering the closure
of non-essential industries, companies send their workers home with 100
percent salary compensation.
A survey of Mexican
media outlets and social media postings report work stoppages have
occurred at plants belonging to at least 31 different companies in the
cities of Mexicali, Juarez, Matamoros,
Nogales, and Gomez Palacio, Durango.
Concentrated in the
strategic electronics, telecommunications and automotive sectors, the
companies experiencing job actions include Honeywell, Lear Corporation,
Electrical Components International and Tridonex,
among others.
Together with their
demands for fully paid home leave, workers voiced complaints about
crowded shop-floor work environment coupled with the lack of protective
gear.
"We are risking the life of our family," maquiladora worker Antonio Gutierrez was quoted in El Diario de Juarez. "...And if you show up to work people are crowded
together; obviously we are exposed to (the virus) and transmitting the disease to our families."
As of April 19, at
least 13 workers from the Lear Corporation in Juarez, Chihuahua,
had reportedly perished due to the COVID-19 coronavirus, while four
deaths of workers from two other companies were
classified as "probable COVID," according to El Diario.
Citing Chihuahua state
health official Arturo Valenzuela, El Diario and Nortedigital.mx
reported a total of 119 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 29 related
deaths, in Juarez as of April 19. If accurate,
that would mean the reported deaths of maquiladora workers make up more
than half the total. However, there is questioning of the official
numbers. Writing at El Paso News, labor attorney and activist Susana
Prieto put the number of Juarez maquiladora worker
deaths alone at 29.
In Baja California,
the press quoted Baja California Health Secretary Oscar Perez as saying
40 maquiladora workers were sick and three dead from the pandemic,
mainly in Tijuana.
Interviewed on Mexican
journalist Julio Astillero's YouTube channel, Prieto said, "The poor
are going to die, Julio. The rich and the bureaucrats are at home."
Part of the labor
conflict in the northern Mexican borderlands and proximate cities is
over the definitions of what's essential and what's not.
Victor Hugo Delgado,
president of the Mexicali branch of the INDEX maquiladora employers'
association told the Baja California edition of La Jornada daily that
about 15 "non-essential" maquiladoras within
his organization had not stopped production, even though they had been
instructed to do so.
Of the 126 enterprises
affiliated with INDEX-Mexicali, 15 percent of them are considered
"essential," principally those factories that form part of the medical
cluster.
According to Delgado,
Mexicali maquiladoras employ more than 67,000 workers, or 6.7 percent of
the population of Baja California's capital city.
As of the weekend,
180,000 maquiladora workers in Juarez were idled while 120,000 were
still working, Ana Luisa Herrera, Chihuahua state labor department
chief, was quoted in El Diario. Of
the workers who've been sent home, it is unclear how many are getting
paid 100 percent of their salary as opposed to a percentage of their
pay.
Statistics compiled by
INDEX-Juarez report that 327 maquiladoras employed 301,444 workers in
the Mexican border city in January of this year. For the state of
Chihuahua, INDEX-Juarez pegged the number at
459,215. By far, the maquiladora sector is the main driver of the legal
economy in Juarez, a city of nearly 1.5 million people.
Although the goods
produced at plants in Juarez and other Mexican border cities are
almost entirely shipped to the U.S. and other foreign markets,
maquiladora workers are paid a fraction of the amount
received by U.S. workers, a disparity which has widened in recent weeks
as the Mexican peso took a steep dive amid the health and economic
crisis.
The COVID-19
coronavirus-related work stoppages mark the third big wildcat strike
wave in the northern Mexican maquiladora industry during the last
four-and-a half years, preceded by protests at several big Juarez plants in 2015-16 and the 20/32 movement centered in
Matamoros in early 2019. In the earlier protests, workers demanded
higher pay, improved working conditions and independent unions.
[Kent Paterson, an author-journalist based in New Mexico, is a frequent contributor to the Digie Zone.]
