First steps: CFO organizing in Nuevo Laredo.
Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera Delegation, May 24—26, 2002 (our first delegation to Nuevo Laredo)
Judith Rosenberg
The CFO has two fulltime (paid) promotores or organizers in Nuevo Laredo, Jorge Zertuche and Juan Pablo Hernández who started working there in October and November 2001. Both are very experienced with the CFO, previously though as volunteers. Juan Pablo worked at one time at Dimmit (owned by Galey and Lord in New York City and producing apparel for Claiborn, Polo, Calvin Klein, and Levi’s) in Piedras Negras and, after he was fired for organizing, continued to organize as a CFO volunteer. Meanwhile, with the money he received in severance pay, he opened an estetica or beauty salon in his home. Dimmit closed in July of 2001 and at that time he fought hard for workers to receive full, legal severance pay. The effort was largely successful. Jorge is originally from Nuevo Laredo but has not lived there for a while. The two were formerly partners.
The delegation from Austin arrived on Friday afternoon and had an informal discussion with organizers, Juan Pablo Hernandez, Jorge Zertuche, and Paula Moran.
Juan Pablo described how they organize by visiting house to house to connect with workers. “If we knock on ten doors we get response only from 5 but no door is ever totally closed. People waiver. They’re scared, but never totally close the door.
“The workers we visit often ask, ‘who are you? Who pays you?’
We say, ‘we are not teachers. But we are here to pass on information about La Ley (the Mexican Federal Labor Law) as it has been passed on to us. We were workers too.’”
Juan Pablo has invented an analogy to explain where the CFO’s money comes from: “If you see children running wild in the street, street kids without homes, and you want to help them, you cannot just walk up to them and give them 20 dollars. It does no good. It’s better if you give the money though an organization. Well, there are people who care about labor rights and they want to make donations so they give it through an organization (the CFO). There are people in international organizations who care about labor rights, world-wide, globalized, like business.
“We know there are other organizers [independent, and not from unions] but we are proud of the CFO; it’s work from the heart.”
In describing the context in Nuevo Laredo, he said: “We find a quiet workplace here, submissive people. Union corruption is 100%. We know as organizers that we have a big job… to fight a monster with a hundred heads. An example of the corruption: Some union leaders have held their positions for 15 years and have not obtained any benefits for the workers. The workers do not know how to make a union change. They do not even know what is in their contract. The CFO is starting from zero. Now the CFO will take the blindfold off the eyes of the workers. “
Jorge told how he was scared by the CFO when he first met them. He wondered too, “where does the money come from? Are they trying to destabilize the maquiladoras as the press accuses them of doing?” Then he started to notice that the gabachos [northerners, from the US] would come into the factories and treat people better than the supervisors who were local people. He realized also that the CFO “was organizing for a life with dignity.” He started to see the problems in the unions as well as in the maquiladora administration and ultimately put responsibility on the people. Now when he organizes, he tells workers, “We are at fault too, not just foreign business.” On the other hand “it’s important for workers to know that the bad conditions under which they work in the maquiladoras are not a result of their personal failure. They must learn the context of globalization.”
He said about the efforts of the Fox administration to change La Ley: “First you have to respect that law, the way it exists. Then you can talk about changing it.”
Jorge recalled how before starting work in Nuevo Laredo he had strayed away from the CFO and was experiencing a lot of personal problems. “Julia [Quiñones, national CFO coordinator] went and pulled me back into the CFO, which helped me put myself back together—they repaired me. Where I was missing ‘clay’ they put it back. Even though I was missing skills, they hired me—mistakes and all; so now I feel morally bound to the CFO and that the CFO is a family, not a blood family, but morally. Yes there are conflicts, but that nourishes the intimacy.”
They compared the state government in Tamaulipas with the government in Coahuila where at least they know workers are exploited. In Tamaulipas they do not. “Right now we in the CFO are driven by successes in other places. We can do it here.”
Describing the dangers of organizing workers Jorge quoted Julia: “We want gains, not martyrs. And, if you walk among wolves, you learn to keep a low profile and howl like a wolf.”
They have attracted Paula Moran as a volunteer and remarked that she is a fearless woman. Paula is working in a maquila, Jehrel, which makes cosmetics cases and beauty products. She is talking to the other workers about their rights and says she has no fear of losing her job because she knows she could find another one “where they pay the same crummy salary. That’s what they pay women. For women,” she said, “they pay very low wages, less than for men. They can push us around easily because we work to feed kids and because we have necessities. We want equality.” She testified to the long hours, lack of security, the many health and hygiene problems and the maltreatment, for example “in the way they talk to us. They say ‘move, get along.’” She pointed to injustices: in her workplace “they fired obreras [women workers] who said how it really is and talked back—not what the company wanted to hear. Moreover, the payment is not legal. They don’t give prestaciones [or loans] a legal benefit that is also in our contract. Sometimes now they hold back utilidades [profit sharing] and aguinaldos [Christmas bonuses], deductions or earned credits that are proscribed by law.” In conclusion she said, “Workers don’t know how to ask for benefits.”
Paula comes from a town further south where her mother was an activist in land-rights struggles and affirmed that was how she learned to fight for rights.
On the second day we met at the home of Julio Huterra Garcia, his wife Sandra, and their two young children. We improvised seats in the dirt yard and found shade under sheets of plywood. “My house should be better,” Julio said, pointing to holes in the plywood, I’ve been building it for three years. But this is how it is.”
He started working at 18 and is now about to turn 32, in July. At first he didn’t have a “concrete knowledge” of what he was doing, no over view of the production process he was engaged in or “the dangers involved.” Starting in1994 he studied computers for 18 months. Eventually he got a better job at the same factory working with computers. But he receives the same pay as before. “I studied for a reason,” he says. “But I found out that the lower boss never took my case to the higher boss to get approval for using my skill. What future do I have? What shall I do to change the situation? Shall I flatter the boss? Wine and dine him? I support my family but I don’t want to be so tired every night.” Julio noticed that the man who took over his former job in production got a raise but that this fellow flattered the boss, brought him coffee, washed his car, even painted his house.
One woman worked for Letter Shop, stuffing envelopes for Readers Digest as fulfillment of special offers to customers. The delegation struggled to understand what work this company was doing. It sounded like they were creating what we would call “junk mail.” This company was notorious for bad treatment of employees, including women as young as 14 or 13. They fired workers often and instead of paying severance directly, they would give the women a slip of paper to redeem at the bank. The problem was that when they got to the bank the teller would often say, “Sorry, that account is empty.”
Conclusion: The delegation to Nuevo Laredo came to support this CFO initiative, which is, at the moment, better entrenched in Piedras Negras, Ciudad Acuña, and Reynosa. They have planted experienced organizers who are attracting new potential organizers, volunteers, and finding lots of workers who were starting to articulate grievances and see through the series of “dirty tricks” that employers—and unions— use to intimidate and control. Some times the disgruntled saw their problems and the injustices as only personal. Some were very angry. The CFO showed people how they could concretely use their protections under the Mexican Federal Labor Law to advocate for themselves. They staged a role play in which Olga Alicia, whose employer had threatened to fire her for being 5 minutes late to work, defended her self with La Lay, citing chapter and verse that stipulates allowable grounds for firing and sending the supervisor into a tail spin, at least in this role play rendition. I speculated that the CFO process of consciousness raising leads workers from seeing how individuals can use La Ley to how they can increase their effectiveness and all use it together, as they have in Piedras Negras, for example. Julia Quiñones, the CFO national coordinator came with a group of veteran organizers and activists from Piedras Negras. They were excited and expansive because of recent victories within the corrupt union where they had forced a democratic election. Thus visitors to Nuevo Laredo from both sides of the border gave support and useful examples to workers in Nuevo Laredo who were taking their first steps.