Free Trade With Mexico Will Escalate Crusades for Safe Garment-Industry Jobs : Unions: Latina workers fight for their pay under conditions that organizers fear will only be exacerbated as industry moves south of the border.

EL PASO, TEX. —  When her employer refused to pay her for five weeks of work, Eustolia Olivas chained herself to her sewing machine in protest. She spent the next three days in jail. Olivas is one of hundreds of sewing-machine operators owed thousands of dollars in back wages at small garment factories here. Despite efforts by workers, labor organizers and lawyers, most are never paid.

The situation is as old as the vintage-1960s Singer machines that the workers operate. And it promises only to worsen. As the impending free-trade agreement with Mexico encourages U.S. garment manufacturers to move their factories across the border, an increasing number of American workers will lose their jobs. Owners remaining here will be forced to compete by cutting labor costs, intensifying already hazardous working conditions.

The El Paso situation is a model of what may happen to workers all over the country. “You’ll see more extreme flight of capital to Mexico from industries all over the country, and a complete deterioration of workers’ rights. You’ll just see it here first,” explains Cindy Arnold, program developer for a local garment workers’ organization known as La Mujer Obrera, Spanish for “the woman worker.” La Mujer Obrera is leading the struggle for industry reform in El Paso, focusing on the 15,000 Latinas who work in the city’s garment factories.

Small factories make up the bulk of El Paso’s garment industry. They typically employ fewer than 70 workers in old warehouses with stacks of fabric piled on filthy floors. Windows, if any, are small and may be sealed shut. Fire exits are often locked. There is neither air-conditioning in summer nor heat in winter. Paint peels off the walls. And owners don’t provide water, although the summer heat usually breaks 100 degrees and workers regularly faint at their machines. On top of all this, when these small businesses suffer, workers’ wages are the first thing to go.

Carmen Dominguez, now executive director of La Mujer Obrera, is all too familiar with this situation. A sewing-machine operator for 26 years, Dominguez began at Farah, Inc., one of the largest clothing manufacturers in El Paso. She was paid regularly. But when the company moved production across the border, Dominguez lost her job and had no choice but to work in one of the transient factories.

When business got bad, the owner paid workers only seven hours’ pay for eight hours of work. By March, he stopped paying workers altogether. Dominguez protested, but others, afraid the owner could invalidate their working papers or have them deported, suffered in silence. Finally, the factory shut down, leaving workers unpaid for more than three weeks of work.

When Dominguez applied for unemployment benefits, she was denied. “The boss didn’t want to pay for me because I stood up for myself. He said I was fired for misconduct,” Doninguez explained.

Dominguez is fair and matronly, pleasant and smiling. Divorced, she raised two children on her own. She beams when she speaks of them. But as she talks of her former boss, her face reddens, and the lines on her face deepen. “Sometimes I get so mad, I feel like I’m going to cry,” she said recently.

Instead, Dominguez and a small group of workers have taken action. Since its inception 10 years ago, their grass-roots organization has tried to develop a political consciousness and activism among El Paso’s women garment workers. Leaders offer classes on progressive politics and economics, and attract workers through a food bank, free medical clinic and law center. The group holds demonstrations and meets regularly with local politicans and community leaders to press for action.

In May, workers took their most decisive step yet. With the help of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, workers began a strike against four factories. The first strike in El Paso’s garment industry in 20 years, the effort has galvanized community support and won modest recognition by authorities. A state law was passed holding employers criminally responsible for not paying wages. Regulations were enacted requiring the Texas Employment Commission to ensure that workers are paid at least twice a month. And a state judge in June determined that Andre Diaz, the contractor against whom the workers are striking, is responsible for paying his workers the back wages they are owed.

But so far, these are simply paper victories. The laws have not been enforced, the employment commission refuses to implement its regulations and Diaz’s workers remain unpaid. Striking workers and community organizers believe only a union will be able to galvanize the power to improve their working conditions.

The ILGWU opened its first office here less than a year ago, and has been sending organizers from Los Angeles and New York since March to prepare for the strike. They have encountered hostility from a suspicious community.

Owners assert that they cannot meet union demands. “They want us to give them a medical plan. We’re a small operation, we can’t afford that. What is the union in it for? They want to draw blood,” said J.Y. Ferry, manager of one plant where workers are striking.

And many workers, aware of management’s resistance to unions and threats to cross the border, are fearfully clinging to their jobs. Active members of La Mujer Obrera and the union have been harassed by employers; some have been fired for “misconduct.”

“They are afraid,” explained Adriana Meneses, a union organizer from Los Angeles. “There aren’t too many jobs here, and they’re thinking the industry will leave. In El Paso, they’ll take anything. They don’t think of wage increases, medical plans or holidays. They just want to get paid Fridays.”

Desperation among workers in border industries has grown since 1965, when Mexico’s border-industrialization program introduced maquilas, North American plants set up in Mexico that exploit cheap labor but are exempt from the usual tariffs and worker-protection regulations. The maquila program has encouraged exploitation of Mexican workers and has left thousands of U.S. workers jobless as North American companies have moved production south of the border.

Organizers predict that the same thing could happen to industries throughout the United States after the implementation of free trade, which lifts most remaining tariffs from Mexican exports. “Free trade will be a worsening of the maquila system,” said La Mujer Obrera’s Cindy Arnold. “But while maquilas are only on the border, free trade will affect everyone.”

Free trade may be the toughest challenge yet for the domestic garment industry. And solutions are not apparent. While the union has lobbied on a national level against it, local organizers are realists; they accept free trade as a fait accompli , but insist El Paso must plan for it by instituting intensive job retraining and education programs, and by overhauling the 100-year-old industry.

“Until now, the industry has been competitive by taking a skilled and experienced work force out of large manufacturers and putting them into sweatshops,” says Arnold. “That’s how they’ve cut costs. And that’s what we’re fighting. We don’t think an industry should maintain its competitiveness on the backs of the workers.”

Local activists hope that by improving working conditions, updating equipment and capitalizing on the skills and experience of the women in El Paso’s garment industry, company owners can earn profits and still provide respectable jobs. And the city is warming to the idea. In early August, the city gave the organization $100,000 to begin to transform four small sweatshops to safe, productive factories. La Mujer Obrera hopes to raise another $300,000 for the project’s first year.

But such programs are small steps for an industry that relies on more than 100 such shops. Unionizing workers and modernizing the industry will be essential to ensuring El Paso remains a center for garment manufacturing that offers decent jobs and marketable goods. And an active labor force will be a key factor in keeping acceptable jobs all over the United States after free trade is passed.