Gumercinda la Cruz del Ángel, CJM (Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras)

First of all I would like to thank the Committee of Asian Women for their kind invitation to participate in this important event.

My name is Gumercinda la Cruz del Ángel. I am from Mexico, originally from Veracruz. At the moment I am living at the Mexican border with the United States. I came to this city to look for a better future, because the Maquilas promised us a lot.

I am a worker from TRW, a multinational company. I already work there for more than 13 years and all the time have been watching how they were decreasing the few benefits we had.

The pressure at the working place is growing more and more, the salaries are decreasing all the time and the working days are becoming longer.

The TRW company employs more than 6000 workers in Mexico and is represented in 26 companies spread over all the countries. TRW produces auto parts and assemblages security belts, for General Motors (GM), Ford, FIAT, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen en other minor brands.

In Mexico, at the moment when you are employed by a company you automatically belong to a trade union that is manipulated by the employers and the local governments. We call these unions “sindicatos charros”.

Within my company there are three departments: buckles, belts (which is my department) and the classics of the collection. In my department “belts” we work with about 10 persons per production line and there are 20 lines in total.

With the production mapping we realized that each safety belt is worth 40 dollars (price). Per shift we produce more than 2000 pieces and we work in three shifts. Together we produce 6000 pieces per day. This means that the employer earns 240,000 dollar per shift per production line on a daily basis.

With the 20 lines together the manager receives 4.8000,00 (four million eight hundred thousand) dollars daily and they pay us 50 dollars per week per person. With a total of 600 workers in the three shifts the company pays us 30,000 dollars per week for all of us together.

The colleagues from the transport (cargo) section told us that with a one palette of products we were already earning the amount of all three shifts. Well, we produce almost 5 palettes per production shift.

By doing the mapping we started to organize ourselves and to learn to do the mapping all together. We organized meetings here, there, all over the company and they told us we were crazy. With the production mapping we also learned to identify the risks and damages to our health; carpal tunnel syndrome, torn ligaments, all caused because of the overload of work they asked us to do. Abortions, inflammations of the feet, the back, the neck, stress, allergies caused by chemicals. The most critical case were two colleagues to whom working with these materials left them mentally retarded.

We started to press the trade union but they never solved anything. In the meantime we continued to see all the things that the mapping has showed us. It was like if many colleagues opened their eyes and we realized that they were violating our rights. It was at that moment that we realized that it is not fair that the company owner turn into millionaires at the expense of our lives.

And we started to make the ‘organizational mapping’ to know with who we could count at the production line to be able to form a coalition to defend our rights. When the company realized that we were doing that they started to fire us. First half a week and then until complete weeks with only compensating half of the salary. We knew that this was not legal and as coalition we demanded a notification for the labour secretary.

After that the company told us, using the pretext of the so-called global crisis, that they were transferring us to a basement that was located at the other site of the city and two hours away from where we live. There was no place enough for the 800 workers, there were no transport routes. We had to leave our houses at 1.45 in the night and the last ride was at 1.00 a.m. This meant that the workers of the late shift had to wait outside the company all the night till 5 o clock in the morning until the next transport ride could take us home.

The company told us that they were going to put us in a small lodging in which we would not fit and that the only thing we needed to do was to renounce. So we did not recognize the trade union and we demanded the company that they negotiated with the coalition all the agreements on the replacement, and we also demanded a bonus for the replacement, transport and guards. The company neglected this and we presented 300 demands at the secretariat of labour for the violating the contract. All together we occupied the secretariat of labour because the company told us that they had the support of the three levels of government (local, regional and national) to do whatever they wanted to do with the employees

We started to involve the media and in September Ernesto LIzcano (employee TRW) supported by CJM went to the headquarters of TRW in Detroit Michigan in the United States to demand that they would respect our rights. However instead of allowing him access to negotiate and meet with them, the company called the police. Ernesto was supported by trade unions, religious organisations, journalists and a whole club of supporters from TRW.

That same day in Mexico was the day of independence and at the same time that Ernesto was at the headquarters of TRW, we blocked the official procession (protesting with banners and screaming with loud voices we moved on until the local government wanted to meet us. Ernesto passed through various cities in the United State, to press TRA. He managed to convince the workers of the sector 174 of the UAW in Michigan to travel 28 hours with him to Mexico to show up in front of the bridges (connecting Mexico with the US) to protest against the free trade, against TRW and in support of the workers of the coalition.

Protests took place in Windsor Canada, Detroit Michigan, McAllen y Brownsville Texas and Reynosa Mexico. It was a protest on the bridges between Canada, the US and Mexico. We continued pressing the secretary of labour and in November we handed over a letter to the governor in which we demanded that the TRW company would negotiate with the coalition of workers. Three days after the government secretary asked the workers of the coalition to come to the capital of the state. For us it was a very big victory because the government was finally recognizing the workers of the basis and not the corrupt trade unions that are only fighting for their own interests. We also demanded the government that the companies at the moment that they would arrive in Mexico needed to put their signature so that the payment to the workers is guaranteed and the rights of the workers are respected.

Currently we are in the final juridical state and this week, while I am here spreading the news of our struggle, my colleagues are mobilizing to press the company and the labour authorities and government. In Mexico we are hungry, but hungry for justice. However, it has become clear to us that only by struggling we will manage!

THANK YOU!!