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Comité Fronterizo For the labor rights and all human rights of the maquiladora workers |
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Health and Safety Rollback in the Maquiladora Industry: |
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Workplace Health and Safety in the Global Economy Julia Quiñonez (CFO – Border Committee of Women Workers) and Ricardo Hernández American Friends Service Committee Presentation to panel: Local/Regional Approaches to Improving Workplace Safety and Health in Developing Countries: Labor and NGO Strategies and Projects The Comité Fronterizo de Obreras is led by its membership of female and male workers in Mexico’s maquiladora export industry. As a result, our understanding of the health and safety problems in that industry is informed by the shop floor experiences, ideas and concerns of the workers themselves. Graciela Oyervides is a 34-year-old woman from the hinterland of the Mexican state of Coahuila who came to work in the border town of Piedras Negras, which lies on the border with Texas. She has been working in a maquiladora form known as Mex-Star for two years, making Krazy Straws. She had worked previously in garment factories. A year ago she began feeling discomfort in her right hand. First she lost sensation in her fingers – first the middle finger, later the index finger and thumb. Her hand swelled up and she could not move her fingers. Often she felt a pain so severe that it made her cry. Graciela lives alone and she has been losing hope, because she has been many times to the Social Security clinic ( Mexico’s national health system for working people), without getting any help. The doctor who has seen her doesn’t listen to her any more, because all the tests he has done on her come out normal. On February 2, Graciela came to the CFO’s office to talk about her situation. She had already missed work three times and her hand was completely immobile. She complained about the doctors and said that they didn’t know what to do for her. The first two times she missed work, she went to Social Security, but it was of no use to her because they didn’t even give her the form to excuse her absence due to health reasons – they only gave her a note from the social work department, which carries no weight with the company. Graciela needs her job, which is her only means of support. The CFO staff explained that she should go to work the next day, because with four absences they would fire her. In reality, she could not work – but we explained that it was preferable for management to see her and for them to send her back to Social Security themselves. Graciela went back to the factory the next day, but since she had already missed three days of work, she was suspended for a week – the maximum permitted under Mexico’s labor code. This is only one of thousands of cases that are occurring right now, most of which are never reported. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Reviewing the list of health and safety problems in the maquiladoras may seem like old news, both for the workers themselves as well as for an audience like this one, which is familiar with the theme of workplace health and safety. Many of these problems are endemic to the industry, which this year will be marking its fortieth year of existence. We have been talking for decades about repetitive strain injury, the utilization of banned chemicals and other toxic substances, and the unhealthy environment that prevails in worker neighborhoods or colonias. These problems have been ignored for decades. Only the most dramatic cases have been addressed, like that of the Mallory children, a cluster of anencephalic births in Matamoros in the late 1980s. In other cases, the problem has been oversimplified by Mexican activists as well as well-intentioned visitors from north of the border. In reality, the maquiladora plants that line the Mexico-U.S. border don’t fit the image of the stereotypical sweatshop – and even less the model of health and safety, the image that the corporations would like to sell. What is different about the present moment? We hear every day about the problems faced by maquiladora workers. This permits us to have a picture of conditions in the industry that is anecdotal, but very up-to-date. This helps us to continually adjust the strategic focus of our efforts. In our opinion, we are currently seeing an intensified assault on human rights, including labor rights, in the maquiladora industry, which is not only perpetuating long-standing problems, but eroding what modest gains in health and safety we have been able to achieve over the years. There is little doubt that this intensification is directly related to increased global competition and the resulting “race to the bottom.” This downward spiral in working conditions, which knows no restraint, is overriding all other considerations, including the maintenance of minimal standards of workplace health and safety. Struggles over working conditions in the maquiladora industry have a long history. Waged in the first instance by workers themselves, such struggles have also brought together the work of groups like the CFO as well as unions, health professionals, and labor rights and solidarity groups in the United States. As a result, in the 1990s some corporations began to make improvements in health and safety conditions in maquiladora plants. These changes, which were welcomed by maquiladora workers, included:
The Changing Panorama of Maquiladora Health and Safety In the final section of this paper( Strategies on Stress and Working Conditions), we will highlight some positive achievements implemented in various factories as a direct result of initiatives involving the CFO. Before that, we would like to review some of the troubling changes we have seen over the past two or three years:
A few comments and reflections on the foregoing observations:
Strategies on Stress and Working Conditions In August 1999, we organized a needs assessment and strategy seminar for the CFO’s work on health, with the collaboration of the Labor Occupational Health Program of the University of California–Berkeley.This seminar developed a list of thirteen types of symptoms, related to forty distinct health problems. Stress was identified as the most serious health problem faced by maquiladora workers. Stress has a direct relationship with wage levels, job stability, and the workplace environment, especially supervisory relations. Emotional health is affected by the inhuman pressure for an ever-increasing level of work, by harassment from supervisors, by video surveillance of production operations, and by the pressures placed on workers older than 35 or with many years of seniority so that they will resign, as the maquiladora firms try to reduce their severance payments. CFO pursues an integrated strategy for defending labor rights and all human rights, including the right to health. The components of this strategy include:
In 2004, Alcoa created a maternity program that, in principle, could benefit 15,000 women workers, a third of whom could be pregnant at this moment. Through this program, mothers have the option of extracting and refrigerating their breast milk in special rooms installed in the plant by Alcoa Fujikura. They can also bring their babies and breast-feed them on site. As recognized expressly by the CEO of Alcoa Fujikura, this program was created as a “direct result of the dialogues” with shareholders and maquiladora workers. The program is not perfect – many of the workers live far from the plant and do not have someone who can bring their babies to the factory. But beyond question, this initiative had a positive impact. Returning to the case of Graciela, on March 4 Julia went with her to the Social Security clinic and the two of them spoke with the director. Graciela explained to him that the clinics doctors were treating her for arthritis. He examined her hand and told her that her symptoms were not caused by arthritis and that he would refer her to the clinic’s specialist in internal medicine for evaluation. It was explained to him that the maquiladora where she worked had sanctioned her for her absences, but that she was unable to work and that the clinic should authorize her to take sick leave. They gave her an appointment for March 10 and once again Julia accompanied her to the clinic. The specialist’s examination of Graciela’s hand made her cry, but he told her immediately that she had carpal tunnel syndrome and needed to see a specialist in this type of trauma. The specialist authorized Graciela for seven days of sick leave and placed a note in her file indicating that she met the requirements for disability coverage until her condition improved. This made Graciela very happy. Now Graciela is undergoing other tests; she has an appointment in April with the specialist in carpal tunnel syndrome. Meanwhile, she will be receiving disability payments until the doctors decide whether she needs an operation or whether her problem can be cured with rehabilitation and special exercises. |
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www.cfomaquiladoras.org is produced in cooperation with the Comité Fronterizo de Obrer@s (CFO) |
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