UAW supports organizing efforts at Honda in Mexico

It’s not exactly a new way to beat a union drive, but it remains quite effective: Give the workers a raise so they won’t join the union.

Or you could use a company union. Or fire their leaders. Of course, threats and intimidation are always helpful, too. Or pick from any combination of the above.

This isn’t the 1930s in Flint or Dearborn. This is present day Mexico, where Honda workers making $15.60 a day are seeking to improve their lives through forming an independent union. They face fierce resistance from the company, as well as from a “protection” union, the Mexican equivalent of a company union that seeks not to help lift workers out of poverty, but to keep wages and working conditions at the lowest levels at the behest of the company.

Thus far, managers at the company’s El Salto assembly plant in Jalisco have used all of the above tactics to thwart the organizing drive by the Independent Union of United Workers of Honda, including firing Jose Luis Solorio, the union’s general secretary.

“We understand that for far too long, the employers of the automobile industry have been able to divide us by race, border, language and political orientation, while increasing their profits as our wages, benefits and working conditions stagnate and get worse,” UAW President Bob King said in a letter of support to workers at the plant.

“It is time to say enough with the politics of division that make us weaker. It’s time to join forces in solidarity and defend ourselves against the attack of the anti-union transnational corporations – regardless of company,” King said. “It’s time that Honda Mexico employers know that the workers in El Salto are not alone. They have our backing and to deny them their rights, their justice and their democratic union is an attack on us as well.”

The UAW is giving the independent union organizing training and financial support as it seeks to organize under exceptionally difficult circumstances. In addition to Solorio, a model employee for 16 years, the company has fired other leaders of the independent union who are trying to get the Mexican government to recognize their organization as representatives of the 2,400 workers at the plant.

Unfortunately, a company union mysteriously reappeared after the workers tried to form their own. Solorio, in an interview with a Mexican newspaper, said this group is called a “ghost union” or “Caspar-like” because it wasn’t heard from for years until workers tried to organize themselves.

“The lack of a union was the reason we started to organize ourselves and form an independent union,” Solorio said.

The company union then announced that workers would be receiving their annual bonus a full month ahead of schedule. It is led by Carlos Arias Hernandez, who reportedly isn’t a worker at the plant or even elected, but rather, an appointed officer of the Jalisco state protection union racket. The company union says it now wants to review the six-page contract it has with Honda.

“The [company] union wants to win points by saying that they now want to review the collective bargaining agreement, but the question is, ‘Why now?’ Why didn’t they do it in the 23 years they have been at the plant?” said Manuel Becerra, the most-recently terminated of the independent union leadership.

King has written to Takanobu Ito, the president and general director of Honda of Mexico, demanding that the fired workers be reinstated and that Honda allow workers to decide on a union without company interference.

“I know from my participation in the International Metalworkers Foundation (IMF) that Honda enjoys a cooperative and productive relationship with its unionized workers in Japan and in many other countries around the world,” King wrote earlier this year. “Why is it then that you have elected to fight the lawful right of your employees to join the labor organization of their choosing in Mexico?”

“Furthermore, why have you resorted to such loathsome tactics as sponsoring a ‘ghost union’ at the El Salto plant and firing workers whose only ‘crime’ is demanding economic justice for themselves and their families?” King added.

The workers are looking to have an election toward the end of this summer. It’s important for the UAW to support these workers because of the global nature of the automobile business, said UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams.

“It’s all pretty much one industry now, becoming more and more fluid. Our goal is to organize the transplants in the United States, and we can’t really do that unless we engage Mexico,” Williams said. “If we don’t join with autoworkers to raise wages and standards in Mexico, all the work is just going to continue to go there because the cost of labor is so much cheaper.”

“The bottom line is the bosses don’t respect the border, and capital will always go where it is most profitable,” King added. “As unionists, we have to figure out how to work together regardless of our own individual national identities. Otherwise, we’re going to continue competing in a race to the bottom where only the auto bosses and their co-conspirators win.”

Vince Piscopo