Workers of the World, UNITE! For every Mexican, Central American or Caribbean work- er who migrates to the United States, another is hired by a U.S. firm that has migrated southward. Companies in virtually all indus- tries have discovered that geograph- ical mobility can have substantial payoffs, and have become adept at playing desperately poor countries and workers off against one another, convincing their hosts (and work- force) that awful jobs are better than none. Not only cheap labor, but low (or no) taxes and tariffs, and lax (or no) health, safety and environmental regulations have attracted U.S. firms to areas of the world not cov- ered by the gains won by U.S. labor, environmental and other progres- sive activists over the past century. In turn, a number of "free-trade" agreements have given those firms the same access to the lucrative U.S. market they would have if they were still producing in New Jersey or North Carolina. A new produc- tive sector defined by a variety of easy-access arrangements with the United States (ranging from desig- nated free-trade zones to in-bond maquila production) has attracted thousands of U.S. firms to areas in the Caribbean and Central America, as well as-of course-to Mexico. The sobering news for these com- panies is that U.S. unions are begin- ning to follow the work to other countries. The Teamsters, United Electrical Workers (UE), Communication Workers of America (CWA) and, among the most active in the free-trade zones, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), have established working relations with their counterparts abroad to deal with this internation- alization of production. UNITE's concern is the half-million unorga- nized apparel workers in Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico working for companies that sell exclusively to the U.S. market. This past March, the union held a meeting at its New York headquar- ters to announce its support for local organizing drives in Central America and the Caribbean-par- ticularly Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. "There is not a single collective-bargaining agreement in a maquiladora in Guatemala," UNITE president Jay Mazur told those assembled, "but we are hopeful there will soon be a breakthrough." The breakthrough came a few days later when Phillips Van Heusen, a major U.S. employer in the maquila sector, recognized the union which had organized its workers, and pledged to negotiate a contract. [See "Union-Organizing Breakthroughs," p. 1.] The rest of Guatemala's 80,000 maquila work- ers, however, remain without labor contracts. In the free-trade zones of the Dominican Republic-in which 140,000 out of 170,000 workers are in the apparel industry-there was not a single agreement until 1994. In that year, a contract was signed with a small subcontractor for a U.S. label in the Bonao free-trade zone. That contract was precedent- setting for the Dominican Republic. Since it was signed, seven new col- lective-bargaining agreements have been reached, covering 3,000 work- ers in that country. "International organization and pressure is the key," says Mazur. "Laws have to follow trade, and fol- low work." As UNITE follows the work to other countries, it concen- trates on building public awareness and consumer solidarity back home, and on providing advice and sup- port for host-country unions. In many Latin American countries, the legacy of U.S. domination is a hard one for a U.S. union--even a union as progressive as UNITE-to shake off. But union officials say that when they get attacked these days it is not from the left but from the right, and, they emphasize, the attacks are not meant to defend sov- ereignty but to neutralize attempts to organize. Even so, the union always establishes a "strategic part- nership" with a local union, fre- quently affiliated with the same international trade secretariat-in UNITE's case, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation, based in Brussels-so that the relation is clearly one of solidarity. UNITE has deep roots in New York City, the old center of U.S. apparel pro- duction. For a century, the union's precursors-the ILGWU and the ACTWU-have "followed the work," as manufacturers and their subcontractors, or "jobbers," tried to escape union jurisdiction by moving further and further from the city. While New Jersey and Pennsylvania were once considered foreign territory for the apparel unions, the past few decades have considerably broadened the indus- try's geographic scope. Once again, the union is catching up-this time internationally. As transnational capital increasingly considers the globe its home, labor is following suit. "The labor movement has always called itself international- ist," says Mazur, "but now we are moving into a practical dimension of that term." The union, says UNITE's leader, has both a right and an obligation to help workers of all countries defend themselves against the depredations of transna- tional companies, especially when those countries are producing for the U.S. market. It is a development well worth watching.
