Mexico and China are two countries with striking similarities in their respective paths to development, according to workers’ rights activist Garrett Brown. Both operate in the global economy and encourage investment by transnational corporations which run factories characterized by long hours, low wages and abysmal working conditions. The way out of this seemingly intractable situation is the development of an informed, empowered workforce.

The number of less developed countries (LDCs) where the average take-home pay of workers is $75 per month has doubled in the last 30 years. At the same time, 80 countries have experienced a decline in real wages over the same period. Worldwide, there are 150 million migrant workers, and the growth of the contingent workforce has risen rapidly. Around 40 percent of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day.

Global wealth is now concentrated in the hands of corporations rather than nation states. Manufacturing has shifted to very low wage, non-union plants in the developing world, and is structured with international brands at the top, subcontractors in the middle and home workers on the bottom rung. Hence, Nike does not manufacture shoes. Instead, the company simply subcontracts out orders. Corporations such as Disney and Wal-Mart have a dense network of up to 20,000 factories in developing countries making their products. The world’s leading multinational corporation, Wal-Mart, has assets worth $245 billion and employs 27 million workers in Export Processing Zones around the world, with little or no regulatory standards in the workplace.

The Conditions in Mexican Factories

In Mexico, 54 million individuals live in poverty, 21 million of them in extreme poverty. Nearly half of the population in the Mexican countryside earns less than a dollar a day. Mexico’s minimum wage has declined 23 percent following NAFTA’s implementation. Three fifths of the working population is employed in the informal sector. Remittances sent back to Mexico from migrant workers in the U.S. are the top performing sector of the economy.

Maquiladoras began to proliferate after the implementation of NAFTA in 1994. By 2000 there were 3,700 of these factories, employing 1.3 million people. Approximately 60 percent of the workforce in this sector is female, young, unskilled and uneducated. These workers lack union representation and are unprotected by government agencies. Maquiladora workers typically work 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week. Wages have fluctuated but are generally around one dollar an hour. The production levels in these factories are generally very high, especially those owned by Asian capitalists. Export Processing Zones are characterized by a high incidence of sexual harassment of the female assembly-line workers. Currently, there is neither meaningful regulation by the Mexican government nor is there the political will to develop such a system given that Mexico is heavily dependent on foreign income. The workplace safety inspections that do occur are conducted by U.S.-based corporate industrial hygienists who do not speak Spanish and engage in minimal and superficial regulatory inspections.

The problems extend beyond the plants themselves. Mexico’s border industrialization programs are tariff and duty-free, with corporations taxed only on labor. The rise of maquiladoras has led to explosive growth in urban areas along the border, but the low rate of taxation has not provided sufficient funds to create adequate infrastructure and sewage systems. Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas is similar to other border cities in that it has no wastewater treatment system, and the city government is inattentive to these and other social services. The more activist city government of Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua, had the temerity to suggest local payroll taxes. Local companies objected heavily and the authorities quickly retreated. The local services that do exist in these cities are built with public funds. Ironically, the poorest communities are the ones subsidizing the city’s infrastructural services to the operations of the multinational corporations.

Workers in Mexico and China: Intertwined Fates

Meanwhile, Mexico’s interactions with China and its neighbors in Central America are characterized by fierce competition, particularly in their rivalry for U.S. markets. Despite manufacturing and wage competition, Brown noted that working people’s destinies are completely intertwined. Workers in both countries lack employment rights and are subject to unsafe health and working conditions. They often suffer abusive supervisors and sexual harassment on the job. Not only is there a lack of regulatory mechanisms to adequately enforce existing labor laws, the regimes in both countries are among the leading violators of human rights worldwide, he alleged.

Juliana So, a community organizer born in Hong Kong who has worked in China’s southern coastal provinces of Shenzhen and Guangzhou for many years, noted the recent phenomena of capital flight with factories in Mexico relocating to China. So also shared her recent experience of meeting with middle-aged garment workers in San Francisco, who are also afraid that their jobs will move offshore to China.

So discussed efforts to organize a women’s center in the Shenzhen Industrial area. The center provides support to non-unionized workers including informational leafleting, training in office skills, self-defense training and group recreational activities such as dramatic performance. The center also provides health education and occupational safety training as well as basic medical check-ups. The degree of health and environmental stressors facing Chinese factory workers is extreme, ranging from severe working conditions with only one or two days off a month, to difficulties in acquiring sick leave, and covering medical expenses. While initially very suspicious of the organizers, workers from various factories have been won over by their ability to better their working conditions. So and her colleagues often had to work clandestinely in organizing workers as government authorities often monitor activities occurring in any public areas.

In response to questions about the role of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the role of the United States, Brown noted that the most important foreign policy intervention on the part of the U.S. was that of forgiving debt in developing countries such as Mexico. In response to questions about corporate responsibility and codes of conduct, So noted the importance of consumer campaigns to build pressure for factory reform. Brown and So concluded that in the longer term, capacity-building is needed in both Mexico and China to get workers more actively involved in organizing for workplace reform, and to get workers to train themselves to do the organizing work.