[D66] Hundreds of Mexican maquiladora workers dying after back-to-work orders

[R.O.]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/19/mexi-m19.html

Hundreds of Mexican maquiladora workers dying after back-to-work orders 
take effect
By Eric London
19 May 2020

The decision by Wall Street and the Trump administration to restart 
production has produced an unprecedented health crisis in northern 
Mexico, where workers at maquiladora sweatshops that produce parts for 
export to the US are contracting coronavirus by the tens of thousands 
and dying at alarming rates.

On Saturday, the health secretary of Northern Baja California announced 
that 432 of the 519 people who have officially died from the virus in 
the state were maquiladora workers. In Baja cities like Tijuana and 
Mexicali, as well as other border cities like Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua 
and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, doctors report that their hospitals are 
overflowing with sick maquiladora workers, some of whom are dying in 
their work uniforms. Mexican maquiladora workers make between US$8 to 
$10 per day.

Hospital officials say the government’s official death toll and total 
number of positive cases nationwide—5,177 and 49,219 respectively, as of 
yesterday afternoon—vastly understate the real impact. They claim that 
hundreds or thousands more maquiladora workers are dying than is 
officially acknowledged, and that the Mexican government of Andrés 
Manuel López Obrador is obscuring the real toll in an effort to force 
workers back to work.

An investigation published yesterday by the San Diego Union-Tribune 
shows the death toll may be ten times higher than the official count:

“A review of 120 death certificates provided by a worker at a 
crematorium in the northern border city of Ciudad Juárez showed a total 
of 63 listed ‘probably COVID-19’ as the cause of death. Another 30 named 
pneumonia or other respiratory ailments often associated with 
coronavirus. Only 12 listed COVID-19 as the confirmed cause, meaning 
that only those cases would become part of the official count.”

The end of the last work week saw a spike in new positive cases 
nationwide, with 2,400 testing positive on May 14 and 15. But testing is 
almost nonexistent in Mexico, which has a rate of 0.5 tests per 1,000 
people, compared with 27 per 1,000 people in the United States, where 
the need still far exists current testing levels.

But even by the limited official count, one out of every 1,000 Tijuana 
residents has already tested positive—worse than some of the hardest hit 
parts of the United States, including Wayne County, Michigan.

The spike is the direct product of López Obrador’s “back to work” 
initiative, ordered from Washington and Wall Street. In Tijuana, the 
Mexican government opened 100 maquiladoras at the beginning of May, 
despite protests from workers. Yesterday, a Tijuana business association 
said the city’s maquiladoras were functioning at 60 percent capacity.

López Obrador has responded to the growing death toll by demanding an 
even more rapid return to work. Earlier this month, López Obrador stated 
that auto parts production at maquiladoras would reopen on June 1. 
Several days ago, however, the government reneged and has begun forcing 
plants to open this week, violating its own regulation.

The announcement came after GM CEO Mary Barra told investors that the 
company has been in “regular dialogue” with López Obrador’s 
administration and said the discussions had been “very constructive,” 
adding: “We’re in a good position as we talk to country leaders.” 
General Motors then announced it would force workers at its Silao 
facility in Guanajuato back to work this Wednesday.

Reopening Mexican production is imperative for American industry. 
Yesterday, the Detroit News explained, “nearly 40 percent of all part 
imports into the US come from Mexico, meaning the success of any 
domestic industry restart will rest heavily on a successful simultaneous 
rev-up south of the border.”

Ambrose Conroy, CEO of the pro-industry consulting firm Seraph, told 
CNBC, “Stoppage in Mexico would cause problems within a week.” The 
companies learned this in early 2019, when 70,000 maquiladora auto parts 
workers in Matamoros launched a weeks-long wildcat strike, slowing 
production across North America.

The Trump administration has applied tremendous pressure to force the 
reopening of Mexican factories as quickly as possible, regardless of the 
human cost. On April 30, US Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau 
threatened, “You don’t have ‘workers’ if you close all the companies and 
they move elsewhere,” urging plants to reopen despite the resulting loss 
of life. “It seems myopic to suggest that economic effects don’t 
matter,” he said.

The Pentagon has issued similar warnings, explaining that Mexican 
maquiladora workers produce parts that are necessary for the American 
imperialist war machine. On April 30, the New York Times said the 
Pentagon’s “talks with the Mexican government have been successful,” 
quoting spokeswoman Ellen Lord, who said, “We appreciate Mexico’s 
ongoing positive response.”

Shortly after his discussions with the Pentagon, López Obrador appeared 
on national television on May 2 and declared: “We are seeing the light 
at the end of the tunnel.” Daily positive tests have doubled since then.

Mexican workers are not the only ones whose lives the auto companies are 
prepared to sacrifice. In the US and Canada, yesterday was the first day 
of production at dozens of auto plants, and workers told the WSWS that 
next to nothing had been done to clean the facilities or protect 
workers’ lives.

The spike in the death toll in Mexico’s industrial cities shows what 
autoworkers in the US and Canada should expect in the coming weeks. The 
fact that workers in the US and Mexico are handling parts coming out of 
maquiladoras where masses of workers are infected is another sign that 
their lives are in danger. The virus can survive on metal and glass for 
almost one week.

Across North America, the trade unions are serving as the company’s 
enforcers, threatening workers that they will be fired if they do not 
return to work and filling workers’ ears with sweet phrases about 
nonexistent safety precautions at work.

In the US, former UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell was released from 
prison due to concerns that he might contract the coronavirus in jail. 
As the companies sentence tens of thousands of workers back into the 
dangerous auto plants, Jewell, who was convicted for accepting bribes 
from the company in exchange for forcing sellout contracts, will serve 
the rest of his sentence from the safety and comfort of his home.

The corporations, governments and unions will send wave upon wave of 
workers to their deaths until the workers recognize that they are strong 
enough to organize their own response and take action to protect their 
lives and the lives of their loved ones waiting for them at home.

The companies and unions will oppose anything that cuts down on line 
speed and profit. But the right to life is more important than company 
profit. To defend their lives, workers must elect committees to take 
control of their own health and safety conditions at work. They must 
elect worker-inspectors to patrol the facility, share violations on 
social media and exercise the power to stop production to fix anything 
they deem to be a danger to even a single worker’s life.

These basic demands place workers up against the capitalist system. But 
workers in Mexico, the US, Canada and worldwide possess tremendous 
social power that they can and must unleash together to stop the deaths 
and reorganize production to meet human need.