Capital's Flight, The Aparel industry Moves South
UnpublishedMarch
1977
Volume:
11
Number:
3
Article
Four months after ex-President Echeverría's much-publicized land expropriation, the dust has yet to settle on Mexico's turbulent Yaqui Valley - the rich river valley in the northwestern state of Sonora where wealthy Mexican growers farm wheat and winter vegetables in partnership with U.S.
NACLA-East Apparel Project
The American economy has expanded at an unprecedented rate since World War II. Within the United States, however, economic growth has proceeded unevenly.
Understanding the geographic movement of capital in any given branch of production requires some understanding of that industry's basic structure and activities. What does the industry produce? How is it produced and by whom? What are the social and economic relationships that govern both the production and circulation of its products? The answer to the first question already reveals the complex nature of the industry under study.
The geographical pattern of capital accumulation in the apparel industry serves as a most dramatic illustration of the general post-war trends described in Part I of this Report. Since the advent of store-bought clothing in the late nineteenth century, cities in the Northeast such as Rochester, Boston, Philadelphia and New York have been the nation's major purveyors of men's and women's apparel.
With capital's assault on labor costs and the organization of the working class as a backdrop, then, we turn to the conditions confronting workers in the Northeast and the South, and will examine the role of the two major unions in this industry: How have they responded to capital's assault on wages and working conditions in the Northeast? What are they doing to counteract declining rates of unionization and to unionize the predominantly unorganized South? What is their strategy witn respect to capital's flight abroad and the growing problem of foreign imports? In short, what is the strategy of these unions to defend and protect workers from the effects of capital's movement in the post-war period? RESPONSE Since the 1960's, membership in both the ILGWU and the ACWA has dropped dramatically. In the Mid-Atlantic States alone, for example, the two unions combined lost over 145,000 members between 1968 and 1974--a decline of 34% for the ACWA and 14% for the ILGWU.