Call # 254 November 2002

The company ALCOA is the world’s leading aluminium producer. The multinational employs 129,000 people in 38 countries. Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo was recently named to Alcoa’s Board of Directors, while Paul O’Neill, CEO from 1987 to 2000, left the company to become Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush. Alcoa Fukikara Ltd. (AFL), one of ALCOA’s subsidiaries, is one of the world’s top five parts manufacturers for the car industry. In Mexico it produces for Ford, Volkswagen, Subaru and Harley-Davidson, among others. Alcoa factories in the maquiladoras, Piedras Negras and Ciudad Acuña, employ over 17,000 workers. In two of the group’s factories, workers who tried to form a new trade union have encountered severe repression and some of them have been dismissed. The stakes are high for the entire region which attracts multinationals due to low labour costs. It is important for free and democratic trade unions to be able to entrench themselves firmly in this area.

In Mexico, maquiladoras, vast industrial areas created in the 1960s in free-trade zones, line the border with the US. The foreign sub-contracting firms operating in these areas constitute Mexico’s main source of tax-generated income. It was in one of these maquiladoras that Alcoa workers elected a new leadership for their trade union on 22 February 2002. The workers considered that their cause had not been adequately defended in wage negotiations in January when the house union, the CTM, accepted a substantial reduction in social benefits and seniority-based bonuses, replaced by productivity bonuses. Note that the CTM was led by a factory supervisor and funded by "dues" directly deducted from the workers’ wages by their employer!

The workers’ decision to replace union leaders naturally generated conflict. According to several witnesses, the former union representative violently assaulted two workers after the meeting at which he was ousted. Two days later several of his supporters manhandled unionists inside the factory. They subsequently announced, with management’s agreement, that six supporters of the new committee had been fired from the union and hence from the factory.

Despite all this pressure, on 4 March 2002 a second vote confirmed the workers’ original choice at their previous meeting.

For a free and independent union

On 30 April 2002 the workers held another meeting. Although they still had the majority in the CTM, they decided to create a new independent union called For Unity. Five hundred signatures were obtained and an application was filed with the Labour Ministry to register the union legally. After the application was rejected in late August the union appealed and is still awaiting a decision. The administrative situation is doubly complex because any new organization is subject to a multitude of formalities and because the examining committee consists of representatives of the government, of employer organizations and of the CTM which obviously prefers not to see a new rival organization emerge.

In the factory pressure of all kinds against the leaders of For Unity has intensified since April. Security agents film union meetings held outside the factory. Inside, meetings are organized to run down unionists.

Yet the unionists do manage to negotiate with management and have obtained some results, e.g. a special bonus for Mother’s Day, since many of the workers in the maquiladoras are women, often the breadwinners of their family. An even more significant achievement has been successful negotiations for a reduction in trade union dues deducted from wages.

Growth of trade unions

The situation deteriorated seriously in October 2002 when workers at another Alcoa factory also called for elections to replace CTM leadership and the creation of a For Unity section. On 4 October 20 workers were dismissed in the two factories, among them five members of the union committee in the first factory - as if management wanted to show workers what choice they should make. Yet elections went ahead and For Unity won the majority.

The stakes are particularly high. Alcoa workers and the organizations supporting them are engaged in a long-term battle for the emergence of real trade unionism in the maquiladoras. That is why Alcoa workers are supported by the Comité Fronterizo de Obreras (CFO) an association militating for trade union freedom and economic and social rights in six towns on the US border. Several US organizations are engaged in supporting Alcoa workers and campaigning in their country.

Further reading:

"L’enfer des maquiladoras", Patrick Bard, Alternatives économiques n°172, July-August 1999

" [...] The result is an appalling human waste. Trade union rights are non-existent and the most basic human rights are constantly flouted. Workers and their families live in cramped conditions in cardboard slums. Massive pollution leads to occupational diseases and babies are born with malformations. In short, a nineteenth century scenario with, to crown it all, the damage caused by technological progress." [our translation]

See also :

La Frontière, by Patrick Bard, Ed. du Seuil, 2002.

A thriller set on the Mexican border in the maquiladora atmosphere.

Call in liaison with Campaign For Labor Rights

www.campaignforlaborrights.org

To write...

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By fax: 412 553 4498

E-mail: alain.belda@alcoa.com

Mr Alain Belda

Chairman and CEO

Alcoa Inc

201 Isabella Street

PITTSBURG

PA 15212

USA

Dear Sir,

Through Solidarity Network (10, quai de Richemont, 35000 Rennes, France) I have been informed about the situation in Alcoa Fujikura plants, Piedras Negras, Mexico.

I urge you to discontinue all harassment and intimidation of workers inside and outside the plant and to reinstate all workers fired for supporting the democratic union initiative.

I furthermore ask you to replace Paulino Vargas and José Juan Oritz, respectively general manager and human resource manager of Alcoa Piedras Negras, who are responsible for firings and harassment of independent union supporters.

Yours faithfully,