Han Young campaign
* USA/Mexico GM are revealing about the possibilities and limits of the moment. After nearly two decades of paralysis and near passivity, the rank and file in auto has begun to push for resistance at the local level, which for now is the only place they have the direct power to do so. Their renewed militancy has pushed the UAW leaders to open the gates of strike action and even to come up with a tactical approach to influencing the company-serial strikes that wound or
Yet the ranks do not yet have the power to push the leadership to the next step: a genuinely national strategy for taking on the universal issues. And the narrowness of the leaders' strategy in turn holds back a broader working-class mobilisation, even if a largely symbolic one, in support of the strikers.
It is a situation begging for a breakthrough, but the necessary forces have not yet assembled. It takes more than one or two strikes to accomplish much, unless they are tied to building a broader working class movement.
In 1898, Socialist Labor Party leader Daniel De Leon told striking New Bedford textile workers that their strike would simply become one of a series of lost struggles, unless it was tied to the building of a broader labour and socialist movement.
His linear solution (socialist party plus socialist labour federation leading to the general strike) is not even an option now. But building on these struggles to create a class movement once again presents itself as a possibility-even if a difficult and still distant one.
The challenge for leftists is to build within the ranks the power and organisation to make the breakthrough-to take the local struggle to the national level and to reach out beyond the unions to a class that is beginning to see itself as a class. * * Kim Moody is the director of Labor Notes, a newsletter and network for US labour radicals. This article was first published in the US magazine Against the Current with the title "What Means This Strike?"
The San Diego-based Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers and the Campaign for Labor Rights (based in Washington, DC) are renewing and intensifying a consumer pressure campaign focused on the Hyundai company.
The campaign started 12 months ago, and aims to bring about a just resolution of the labour conflict at a Mexican subcontractor plant, Han Young, in Tijuana.
"The crisis at Han Young exemplifies everything that is wrong with the North American Free Trade Agreement," explains Mary long, executive director of the Support Committee. "Refusal by Mexican authorities to enforce Mexico's own labour laws is causing citizens in Mexico, the USA and Canada to have serious second thoughts about proceeding any further down the road of free trade."
The renewed campaign against Hyundai will attempt for force the company and the Mexican government to recognise the workers' independent union.
Workers at Han Young weld chassis later assembled into tractor trailers ("semi's") by Hyundai Precision America. Both operations are in the Tijuana area although Hyundai Precision is headquartered in San Diego.
The Korean-based Hyundai Group has been experiencing severe financial stress due to the Asian currency Campaigners believe Hyundai is ill-prepared to ride out a campaign which might adversely affect its exports from the US.
The central issue at Han Young is winning respect for the workers' right to join an independent union of their choosing and the union's right to bargain a contract with management. The workers formed the "October 6" union (named for the date of the first of their union certification elections), and a clear majority of eligible workers has voted three times to be represented by the independent union. Workers at other factories in the Tijuana area are reportedly eager to be represented by the
Initial agreements broke down after Hyundai stood by while Han Young management proceeded to try to crush and/or circumvent the independent union. Many of these actions by Han Young management were in direct violation of Mexican labour law. In any case, Han Young could not have continued its course of action without the consent or possibly even the assistance of Hyundai (Han Young's only customer).
The renewed campaign is initially directing most of its pressure on Hyundai Motors dealerships.
On September 9, the Support Committee released an open letter to Hyundai, signed by representatives of 87 US religious organisations. "Because your company is in a position to insist on a just resolution to the current situation," they wrote, "continued violation of the rights of the Han Young workers will only serve to damage Hyundai's reputation in the United States.
Another open letter to Hyundai - this one sıgned by 136 community-based organisations and individuals, said "we are committed to an intensive long-term campaign to ensure that the members of our organisations and the broader public are fully aware of Hyundai's role in the Har Young labour dispute and will respond with appropriate consumer decisions.
We strongly urge you to intervene
Maquiladora sector growing fast
The most recent statistics indicate that one billion dollars in investment in July.
maquiladoras, the manufacturing and The maquiladoras generated $884m. in assembly plants mostly located on the foreign exchange, a 20% increase over
US-Mexican border, remain the strongest and fastest growing sector of the
Mexican economy. The success of this industry, however, often brings social
Usually non-union plants, or plants with government-controlled labour unions, low wages and little enforcement of health and safety or environmental laws, the maquiladoras have proven to be the ideal basis from a business point of view for Mexico's export for manufacture programme. Most maquiladora workers make only between the minimum wage
(US$3.00) and $6.00
The maquiladora sector saw more than
6 International Viewpoint #304
In July alone, the government approved 50 maquiladoras, and the expansion of 59 others, while only 12 were cancelled and five suspended temporarily. There are now more than 4,000 maquiladoras. The new plants will create about 23,000 new jobs.
Maquiladoras produce 44% of Mexico's foreign exports. Maquila sales abroad during the seven month period amounted to more than $4bn., a 3% increase over the same time last year.
US corporations remain the biggest investor in maquiladoras, followed by Mexicans. [MLNA] * decisively and swiftly to ensure that the Han Young workers are allowed to negotiate a fair contract in an environment free of intimidation and repression."
"Decent people everywhere are outraged at the treatment accorded the workers at Han Young," said Trim Bissell, national co-ordinator of Campaign for Labor Rights. "The Hyundai corporation is in for a rude awakening when it looks out the windows of its car dealerships to see picket signs and when it hears that its labour policies are being questioned in the halls of Congress." Mexican Labor News and Analysis Vol.3 No.16, Contact editor Dan La Botz at 3436 Morrison Place, Cincinnati, OH 45220, USA. Tel +1-513-961-8722. Email: <103144.2651@compuserve.com> Or on the Web at www.igc.apc.org/unitedelect/. Campaign for Labor Rights maintains an e-mail alerts service on sweatshop issues. For further information, write CLR @ige.apc.org and specify whether you want to receive alerts on sweatshop issues in Mexico only or on all of the major sweatshop campaigns.
working population, and supported by progressive social legislation. And the increasingly distant relationship with social democratic political parties (or, in some countries, the complete disconnection of the trade union bureaucracy from its traditional political reference point and pressure point) has completed the process.
The traditional left in the trade unions has also been weakened by these developments. In reality, apart from a very few countries, the trade union left no longer really exists as an active and coherent
If we are to end this situation, we need analysis, reflection and programmatic proposals which can rebuild common, unitary work. We need to redefine ways of action and organising on the ground, and re-find the autonomous behaviour and reflexes which every real emancipation movement needs. We need to re-legitimise trade union work outside the narrow confines of workplace issues, and outside the CapitalLabour relationship. We must seek to incorporate the needs of all the oppressed layers of society. Including, and particularly at the level of the European Union as a whole.
In recent weeks we have seen two encouraging developments. Leaders of