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Abstract
The conflict in 2001 at the Kukdong (now Mexmode) maquila garment factory is one of the rare cases of success in the wider struggle for independent unionism in Mexico. The success of the struggle, which has attracted scholars interested in the campaigns against sweatshop labour conditions and on behalf of labour internationalism, has been attributed chiefly to the role played by transnational advocacy networks in mobilizing pressure on the global sportswear giant Nike, whose brand-name, collegiate apparel was being produced in the plant. In this paper we seek not to explain why the struggle was successful, but to examine the trajectory it took over a protracted period of about nine months. We draw on McAdam et al.'s reformulation of the analysis of contentious, transgressive politics to identify three mechanisms that were particularly salient in shaping the course taken by the conflict: scale shift, actor decomposition, and brokerage. Scale shift occurred as the workers quickly escalated the conflict by broadening their demands from the resolution of particular concrete grievances to a demand for freedom of association that made the existing corporatist union, the FROC-CROC, which had a signed a protection contract with the plant's management, the principal target of opposition and challenge. Actor decomposition occurred as the workers' strategy locally and transnationally sought to isolate the FROC-CROC by detaching it from other members of the corporate–state bloc (Kukdong management, Nike, and the local political authorities). Brokerage, finally, occurred as Nike in particular was used to mediate pressure from the workers' transnational supporters (principally labour rights NGOs and the anti-sweatshop movement) on Kukdong and the local political authorities to respect the workers' right to freedom of association, which resulted in the ouster of the FROC-CROC as the legally certified union at the factory and its replacement with an independent union (SITEMEX) formed by the workers themselves.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Amellali Salgado Cortes, Aleida Martinez Munoz, and Huberto Juárez Núñez of Benemerita Autonomous University, Puebla, Mexico, for their help with research for this paper. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers from Social Movement Studies as well as Tina Fetner, Jackie Smith, and Jack Veugelers for their helpful comments on a previous draft. The authors are also grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for funding this research. Graham Knight would also like to thank the Department of Management Communication and the Department of Societies & Cultures at the University of Waikato for the opportunity to discuss the ideas developed in this paper.
Notes
1. FROC-CROC is the Puebla state affiliate of the Federación Revolucionario de Obreros y Campesinos, a union federation linked to the historic ruling party (now opposition party) of Mexico, the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
2. A ‘protection contract’ protects employers against worker resistance. The Kukdong contract did not contain anything for workers beyond the minimal legal requirements (Alcalde, Citation2001), and in some cases even these were not met (Verité, Citation2001, p. 13; Worker Rights Consortium, Citation2001b, pp. 46–47).
3. Months after the plant opened, the workers were told that the FROC-CROC controlled their contract and that they must sign a form affiliating to the union or be fired.
4. Recently an independent union was formed at Manufacturas Lajat, a maquila garment manufacturer in northern Mexico, but as of March 2006 the union still had not secured a collective agreement.
5. Funded by the US government, NGOs and the AFL CIO, the Solidarity Center has a budget of over $20 million (larger than the budgets of all other US labour NGOs put together) (Anner & Evans, Citation2004).
6. As a component of political opportunity structures, external allies have been critical to the success of social movements of the ‘weak’. See, for example, the role played by external allies in the success of farm worker organizing in the USA in Jenkins & Perrow (Citation1977).
7. Soft power, increasingly associated with neo-liberal deregulation, is a key aspect of the power of corporations in the global economy. It is often associated with the ‘private authority’ of firms. Codes of conduct are one aspect of this non-state-centred soft law (Cutler, Citation1999; Wells, Citation2007).
8. Full package production refers to the integration of all stages of apparel production (e.g. textile manufacture, dyeing, assembly, embroidery, packaging) in one plant or cluster of plants.
9. According to interviewed workers, managers did not abuse male workers.
10. Testimonio: la vida de un trabajador, cited in Quintero Ramirez (2003, p. 8).
11. Interview, member of SITEMEX committee, Atlixco, 9 December 2003.
12. For example, a worker complained that production quotas were ‘so high that we cannot even go to the bathroom or drink water or anything for the whole day’ (Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador, Citation2001).
13. According to surveys, the wages of most maquila workers fall far below family needs (Rosenbaum, Citation2000).
14. Interview, Atlixco, 7 December 2003.
15. Interview, two SITEMEX leaders, Atlixco, Mexico, 6 December 2003.
16. In order to gain legal status as unions with the right to strike and bargain collectively, unions must be registered by the local Juntas de Conciliación y Arbitraje (conciliation and arbitration boards). The boards are tripartite, with government, employer and worker representatives.
17. Interview, Atlixco, 6 December 2003.
18. Interview, two SITEMEX leaders, Atlixco, Mexico, 6 December 2003.
19. Interview, Atlixco, 6 December 2003.
20. Up to this point, such codes had been practically unknown in Mexico's industrial relations (Juárez Núñez, Citation2002b, pp. 108–109).
21. Both management and the union continue to use Nike representatives to mediate labour–management conflicts. Interview, senior SITEMEX leader, Atlixco, 6 December 2003.
22. These allegations were publicly repudiated by the union that FROC-CROC accused (Manuel Garcia, Citation2001b, p. 11; Sanchez, Citation2001, p. 2).
23. The International Labor Rights Fund is a US non-profit organization promoting enforcement of labour rights internationally.
24. The Alcalde Justiniani (Citation2001) report also underlined the cultural dimension of this conflict.
25. As an alternative to enforcement of labour rights and standards through collective agreements and independent unions, corporate codes have generally been weaker (Wells, 2004a).
26. Interview, Atlixco, 8 December 2003.
27. The Global Alliance for Workers and Communities was a business-based NGO set up by Nike and other transnational firms and business-oriented organizations to carry out educational, health and other programmes in factories subcontracted by Nike and other member firms. The Global Alliance closed in 2005.
28. The Global Reporting Initiative is a UN organization that includes firms and other organizations. It was set up to promote voluntary guidelines for corporations. The guidelines focus on labour standards, the environment and other socio-economic issues.
29. The Global Compact is a UN-initiated network that brings firms together with UN and other civil society organizations to voluntarily promote labour rights and standards as well as other issues related to globalization.
