Special Report
The Juarez Workers' Fight Crosses the Border in 2016
By Frontera NorteSur
Posted with permission at Censored News
Dutch translation by Alice Holemans, NAIS
http://www.denaisgazet.be/nieuws/de-strijd-van-de-juarez-arbeiders-gaat-in-2016-over-de-grens
French translation by Christine Prat
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2016/01/decaprio-what-about-donating-to.html?spref=fb&m=1
Beginning in the summer and fall of 2015, a wave of worker protests over low wages, sexual harassment and other adverse working conditions broke out in four foreign-owned factories, or maquiladoras, in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. In a city where genuine union representation in the export plants is practically unknown, the workers' demands for independent unions stood out.
As the days turned into weeks and months, speculation buzzed in the Juarez press whether the companies, which labor activists accuse of firing workers involved in protests and union organizing, would simply wait out the movement until hunger and cold set in.
In early 2016 not only have the protests defied the winter weather and persisted against at least three of the companies-Lexmark, Eaton and Foxconn's Scientific Atlanta division - but actions in support of former and current workers are growing both nationally and internationally.
Last week, in solidarity with Lexmark workers, demonstrations were staged in Mexico City, El Paso and Lexington, Kentucky, according to the Paso del Norte Regional Popular Assembly, a grouping of human rights and pro-labor organizations and individuals in Juarez, El Paso and Chihuahua.
"There is a lot of sexual harassment in the industry. The most common one is that the assembly line chiefs and supervisors demand sexual favors for such basic things as overtime hours," a Lexmark worker told a reporter in Mexico City. "The base salary never makes ends meet, and (supervisors) condition overtime to what the women workers agree to give them."
