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"Prove
You're Not Pregnant. Show Us Menstrual Blood!"
Psycho-Management
Hit Mexican Maquiladoras
By GREG MOSES
Workers at maquiladora factories in
Mexico told recent visitors from Texas that they are sometimes
asked to undo their work entirely or spend long hours in isolated
spaces.
"These tactics are a new
level in the psychological game, to get people used to the idea
that they are kind of owned and really don't have any worth apart
from the company," says Howard Hawhee, who helped to coordinate
a listening tour in late May.
"These kinds of stories
are very bizarre," says Judith Rosenberg, who has been organizing
tours across the border since 1999. "These are management
techniques that someone compared to Hitler."
For example, Hawhee and Rosenberg
say women in maquiladoras report that they are sometimes asked
to prove they are not pregnant by showing proof of menstruation.
"They are very distasteful
management techniques," says Rosenberg. "And you have
to call them that because they are used very methodically. This
business with the sanitary napkins is outrageous, and people
feel the attack on their dignity, the women do. And the men do
too."
In an interview conducted in
Austin after they returned (published at stateofnature.org) Hawhee
and Rosenberg said they also heard new stories about workers
who were directed to undo work or pass their shifts in isolation.
"One is they would have
a whole section of people in a factory that for instance manufactures
seat covers or seat belts," reported Hawhee. "And they
would do a whole day's worth of work, you know, sew everything.
And the next day when they came back their job was to un-sew
it all. Just to make the point that 'okay, we don't need you.
We just got you around because we like having you around, and
that's all'."
"Another worker, and I
think I heard more than one example of this while I was down
there, he said he'd been insisting on some rights that he had
under the Mexican Federal Labor Law," Hawhee continued.
"And the management had
been telling him no, so he kind of dug in his heels and wasn't
backing down, so he'd show up to work for his shift and he'd
be there for a full day and get paid, but his job was that they
would take him to a small room, maybe a six by ten foot room
and lock him in. And that's what he did. And they'd only let
him out on breaks and at the end of his shift."
In response to this escalation
in the psychological intensity of management control, Hawhee
said workers were asking for help with corporate research.
"So right now there is
a period where they are looking to figure out how to do some
economic analysis," says Hawhee, reporting that this is
also a new feature of the conversation he is encountering.
Says Hawhee, Mexican workers
want to know from workers in the USA, "What kinds of tricks
get played? And economically speaking, realistically, where are
they? What should we be doing on this end?"
"They've got some very
specific pieces of information they want so that they can do
an analysis and figure out what buttons to push and what buttons
not to push," says Hawhee.
"Realistic" is a
word Hawhee used to describe the workers' attitudes. They want
a better life, so they don't want to act in ways that will run
the companies out of town.
"We're looking for some
human dignity," says Hawhee reflecting the voices he has
heard. "We're looking to be treated like human beings. And
we expect to have a modicum of well being in our lives, and especially
for our children. And we really don't mind doing this kind of
work, working really hard, and that sort of thing, but we want
to be treated right and we want to think that this is going somewhere."
Rosenberg organizes four trips
per year to the maquiladoras, resuming in October. She has avoided
public relations tours of factories, preferring to listen to
workers.
"We never go in,"
says Rosenberg. "It's harder and harder to get in. But either
way, you get a public relations tour and we've never wanted to
do that. We have this position that if you want to know what's
going on inside the factories, ask the workers. And don't ask
them while they're in the factories, because they won't be able
to tell you then. There's somebody breathing down their neck."
Instead, Rosenberg organizes
small tours that pass through worker neighborhoods where visitors
from the USA can listen to stories of life and work. She co-founded
Austin Tan Cerca (Austin So Close) as a way to support workers'
rights and fight sweatshop conditions in the maquiladoras. In
addition to the tours, the group sends money to support an organizer
and office in the border town of Piedras Negras.
Rosenberg was drawn into the
activism after meeting Mexican labor organizer Julia Quinones
of the Comite Fronterizo de Obreras (Border Committee of Workers).
"It's been a very important
thing for me," says Rosenberg. "I think it's historically
extremely important to all of us, and we don't know about it."
Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights
Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther
King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached
at gmosesx@prodigy.net
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