More from the worker’s rights organization in Tijuana
July 29, 2008
“Day Job 3″ by Kinsee Morlan
CENTRO DE INFORMACION PARA TRABAJADORAS Y TRABAJADORES
INFORMATION CENTER FOR WORKING WOMEN AND MEN
CITTAC
[Versión en español: ver abajo]
Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
July 28, 2008
Dear Friend,
We are the Information Center for Working Women and Men (Cittac) in Tijuana. We are a collective of workers and ex-workers mostly from maquiladoras, but also from other places of employment in Tijuana where workers are exploited. Our purpose is to support individual and group struggles against injustices in the workplace.
Maquila worker’s rights
July 23, 2008
Cittac is an excellent organization in Tijuana that fights hard for worker’s rights. They’re having a very affordable fundraiser on Aug. 8:
Pam and Ken Barratt
Invite you to
A FUNDRAISING DINNER
August 8, 2008
6:00 PM at
2961 Caminito Niguel, San Diego 92117
The food will be prepared by maquiladora workers. Following dinner, there will be an informative presentation by activist representatives of
Information Center for Working Women and Men (CITTAC):
ANTONIA ARIAS
The San Diego Maquiladora Workers’ Solidarity Network (SDMWSN):
ENRIQUE DÁVALOS and CLAUDIA ELÍAS
Their talk will focus on the difficulties that Tijuana maquiladora workers face as they attempt to organize for better wages and working conditions; and how they are supported by the Tijuana organization:
CITTAC – Centro de Información para Trabajadoras y Trabajadores, AC
(Information Center for Working Women and Men)
The cover charge for the dinner is:
$25.00 for Individual and $40.00 per couple
RSVP by August 5
Contact Pam or Ken at (858) 246-7177 or E-mail: pbarratt@qbl.org. The proceeds from this fundraising dinner will go directly to CITTAC. Please make your check payable to SDMWSN which is a 501(C)(3). This will make your contribution tax-deductible.
============================
Pam and Ken Barratt
Le invitan a:
NOCHE de CENA y ACTIVISMO
8 de Agosto, 2008
6:00 PM en
2961 Caminito Niguel, San Diego 92117
La comida será preparada por compañeras trabajadoras/activistas de la maquila. Después de las cena habrá una presentación de activistas:
Information Center for Working Women and Men (CITTAC):
ANTONIA ARIAS
The San Diego Maquiladora Workers’ Solidarity Network (SDMWSN):
ENRIQUE DÁVALOS and CLAUDIA ELÍAS
Su plática será acerca de las dificultades que enfrentan los y las trabajadoras de las nmaquilas en Tijuana para su organización por mejores salarios y condiciones laborales y de cómo son apoyadas por la organización de Tijuana:
CITTAC – Centro de Información para Trabajadoras y Trabajadores, AC
El precio de la cena es:
$25.00 por persona y $40.00 por pareja
Favor de responder antes del 5 de Agosto
Contacte Pam or Ken al (858) 246-7177 o E-mail: pbarratt@qbl.org. Lo recaudado en esta cena irá directamente a CITTAC. Favor de escribir sus cheques a SDMWSN la cual es una organización sin fines del lucro (501c 3). Así su contribución será deducible de impuestos.
“Play for your Wait” by Kinsee Morlan
I just watched The Grapes of Wrath movie for the first time a few nights ago (yep, read the book in high school like the rest of you), and I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice the similarities between the migration of the “Okies” and the rest of the Dust Bowl migrants of the 1930s and the current wave of Mexican farm workers immigrating to the U.S. today. The Okies were treated like shit, given unfair wages and sent to government-backed migrant work camps (which the Mexicans would begin to populate just a few years later). It took some time before the Okies were accepted into the California culture and treated like statesmen instead of strangers.
Problem is, whereas the light-skinned migrants. whose only noticeable difference at the time was the strange or “dumb” way they talked (which eventually went away with assimilation), the Mexican immigrants have noticeable physical differences that won’t go away anytime in the near future.
I hate to be the one to say it, but racism and bigotry will always exist as long as physical differences are apparent. Most people are just too stupid to look past the color of someone’s skin or the shape of their face. And you know what’s ironic and kind of funny about all of this — it’s the Okie-like people (read: The San Diego Minutemen) who now hate the influx of the Mexicans and treat them the same way their poor hillbilly ancestors were treated just a few decades ago.
Another one from the Red Maquiladora Network:
It is appalling to learn how much maquiladora managers are willing to sacrifice their workers in order to increase company profits. Alicia Lobato, mother of four children, used to work for the company Corrugados de Baja California, when, as a result of an “accident,” her back was injured. As a result, she is now a paraplegic, condemned to use a wheelchair, perhaps forever. A company manager forced her to operate a defective machine from atop a ladder. When Alicia fell down, the company blamed her for the “accident” and fired her. We ask for your support for Alicia in her fight against the company.
Alicia Lobato Palacios had an on-site work related injury on 03/02/2007 at Corrugados de Baja California- a maquiladora that manufactures cardboard boxes, and she continues to fight the employer and the Mexican public health system know as “Seguro Social” (social security) to resolve the matter of her pension.
On 3/02 Alicia was asked by her supervisor to work in the production line. She requested if anyone else could be asked and the supervisor replied with a threat- if she declined she would be sent home for a week with no pay. She was set up on a ladder to climb a platform of about four steps that had no safety measures and asked to fold cardboard boxes which is where Alicia fell. Alicia remembers waking up in the company’s infirmary and recalls intense hip pain without being able to stand up on her feet.
The human resources executive at Corrugados de Baja California while pretending to stroke her head for comfort whispered in Alicia’s ear that when the Red Cross came to pick her up she would need to claim the accident had taken place during her lunch hour. Alicia responded that she agreed, but when the Red Cross arrived to pick her up she instead told the truth. If Alicia had said what the human resources executive wanted, she would have almost lost the right to sue the company and obtain disability compensation.
The Mexican Constitution stipulates that the Mexican government must provide workers medical service. The Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) is a government institution that provides that service. It is funded by dues paid by both employees and employers. IMSS also pays disability compensation to workers affected by labor-related accidents or diseases. Each time an accident or disease is reported to IMSS, the company where the accident happened ,or where the disease was acquired, has its dues increased. That is why maquiladoras try to hide any labor health and safety problems in the factories. That is why Corrugados wanted Alicia to say her accident was personal, not job related.
Each year, the Mexican Department of Labor certifies Corrugados de Baja California, the company where Alicia used to work, as a “safe company,” meaning that labor health and safety standards are respected. However, insufficient fire prevention equipment in a factory where paper and cardboard are some of the main materials used has produced two fires in 2004 and 2005.
The brutal human management in the company combines with cruel treatment in the IMSS. Alicia needed surgery 24 hours after the accident. The surgery was performed after a month. The operation had negative results and she is now a paraplegic. Alicia was discharged to go home on 3/30 in a wheelchair and was warned about the need to return to work as soon as possible. Alicia presented herself to Corrugados de Baja California in a wheelchair to start her daily routine. She and her husband made an estimated amount of 26 dollars per day and 13 dollars of that amount went to transporting Alicia to work and back. The building along with the city of Tijuana is not structured to accommodate the disabled population. The maquiladora where Alicia and her husband worked had no ramp for her to enter the building and the bathroom access also has no accommodations. Alicia has no bowel control, so when the need came for her to go to the restroom she would have her husband leave his work site to assist her. Alicia attempted to work but she claimed the pain was intolerable. She first worked a few hours, then a few days but never a full week She has since not returned to work and her disability checks stopped coming since December, 2007. The Social Security agency provides physical therapy but it does not amount to the necessary time that Alicia would have any real benefits.
You can support Alicia’s struggle against the company with food, adult diapers or cash. To support Alicia, please contact us:
Tijuana: Margarita Avalos and Jaime Cota (Cittac, Information Center for Working Women and Men)
Phone: (664) 622-4269
E-mail: cittac@hotmail.com, magui2001camx@yahoo.com.mx
San Diego: Claudia Elias and Enrique Dávalos (San Diego Maquiladora Workers’ Solidarity Network)
Phone: (619) 245-9227, (619) 388-3634
E-mail: Claudia Elias, lazarela111@hotmail.com, maquilatijuanasandiego@earthlink.net
You may also send a check. Please make it out to “Cittac,” write “Alicia Lobato” in the memo line of the check and send it to the following address:
Cittac
PMB 193
601 E. San Isidro Blvd. Suite 180
San Ysidro, CA 92173
If you want your donation to be tax deducible, please make your check out to “SDMWSN” (San Diego Maquiladora Worker Solidarity Network) and write in the memo line “Alicia Lobato.” Your can also donate by using the SDMWSN website: sdmaquila.org.
100% of donations sent to Cittac and SDMWSN will be given to Alicia and her family.
This campaign is sponsored by Cittac (Centro de Información para Trabajadoras y Trabajadores – Information Center for Working Women and Men), Binational Feminist Collective and SDMWSN (San Diego Maquiladora Worker Solidarity Network).
Help the struggle of the former workers of ACORN Tijuana
April 15, 2008
And another bit of info from my inbox:
Monday, April 14 11:00AM in front of the offices of ACORN at Third Ave. Suite 102, Chula Vista CA 91911
The former workers of ACORN Tijuana and other organizations of Mexico and the United States are confronting ACORN over its practices against the rights of labor and the health of its Mexican workers. We demand:
A. The payment of the official judgment given which was handed down by the Local Board of Conciliation and Arbitration the 6th of September of 2007 in favor of the organizers Lilia Leon and Maria Antonieta Robles for being fired without justification and for other amounts due them such as the payment of lost wages from the day of their firing to the day they are paid, all their due under Mexican labor law.
B. The payment of 4 two week pay periods owed to Carmen Valadez as well as her medical costs in the IMSS for a week of hospitalization for diabetes in 2007 and the constitutional indemnification and other amounts owing for failure to comply with her labor contract for the reason that in the last two months of her work in ACORN they did not pay salaries due. In October 2007 Carmen Valadez renounced the labor relationship with ACORN because of the failure to pay her and the failure to provide medical and social
services owed.
C. We demand that ACORN stop its practices of violating the human and labor rights of its workers, of the health of its community organizers, women workers of ACORN in Tijuana, and of its workers in various cities throughout the United States in cities such as Saint Louis, Chicago, Seattle, and other places.
Our demands are directed to the central office of ACORN in New Orleans, to Wade Rathke, founder and chief organizer of ACORN USA and International, Ercilia Sahores, International Organizer responsible for ACORN Mexico, and Suyapa Amador, principle organizer of ACORN Tijuana, and Maude Hurde, President of the Executive Council of ACORN in the USA.
Endorsed by: Lilia León, Antonieta Robles y Carmen Valaldez Ex Trabajadoras de Acorn Tijuana in Struggle, Centro de Información para Trabajadoras y Trabajadores (CITTAC), Colectiva Feminista Binacional, La Otra Tijuana, San Diego Maquiladora Worker Solidarity Network
Information:
Claudia Elias, San Diego Maquiladora Worker Solidarity Network
(619) 245-9227
The dumps
January 25, 2008
I forgot to mention the cover story I wrote for CityBeat last week. You can read it here. Please tell me what you think. Mostly we writers feel like our words disappear into the void.
Mexican labor laws don’t mean squat to foreign owners
December 11, 2007
The Muebles Fino workers in Tijuana are still upset. I recently went to a gathering they held outside of the now closed maquila where some of them built furniture for over 15 years.
The rain kept most away, but the dozen or so workers and supporters who showed up were fervent in their demands for compensation. Mexican labor law, you see, demands the company give the longtime employees a severance payment.
According to the spokesperson I talked to, only a few of the workers have been paid any money and all. None have been paid what they’re owed. Somehow, though, the owners, a company called California FineWood Co. based in Carson, Calif., manages to pay the three or four security guards we saw blocking the entrance to the defunct maquila. There is still furniture and expensive equipment inside, which the workers argue should be sold off to pay the severance packages. Apparently, the California-based owners feel as though paying the security guards is a better use of their money.
The factory has been closed for nearly a year now and the case of the workers is still caught up in the equivalent of the Tijuana labor board. According to signs posted on the maquila, however, the company says the deadline for payment has past.
Unfortunately, this is just one example of how the Mexican labor laws are trampled on by foreign owners who use Mexico as their assembly plants.
Strike at Tijuana maquila
September 17, 2007
“Tijuana Dusk” by Kinsee Morlan
This is big and exceedingly good news. Strikes at Tijuana maquiladoras just don’t happen. The foreign-owned factories are too corrupt — they fire anyone who complains and if a large-scale strike looks eminent, they simply close shop and move to another third-world country where they can abuse workers without worry. Read the story below and send a letter!
